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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Contact, American Beginnings: 1492 1690

For Students 9th - 10th
Thirty one primary sources including historical documents, literary texts, and visual images from which to explore European reactions to the land and the people of the New World and the Natives' responses to European contact and conquest.
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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Contact: First Impressions

For Teachers 9th - 10th
English, Spanish, and Portuguese maps and letters of about the voyages of Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and Portuguese explorer, Gaspar Corte Real, which describe impressions of the lands explored.
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Graphic
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: New World: Part I: American Beginnings: 1492 1690

For Students 9th - 10th
A variety of paintings and drawings that display European images of their first encounters with the land, plants, animals, and native peoples of the western hemisphere. With questions for discussion.
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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Pacific Coast, American Beginnings: 1492 1690

For Students 9th - 10th
Primary resources for U.S. history and literature offer two excerpts from the explorations of the Pacific coast by Sir Francis Drake and Vitus Bering as well as maps drawn to reflect those journeys. Includes questions for discussion.
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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: The French, American Beginnings: 1492 1690

For Students 9th - 10th
Three maps reflecting French exploration along rivers in North America and three French explorers' accounts of the astonishing hardships they endured and the possibilities for trade with natives they opened.
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Article
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Northwest Passage, American Beginnings: 1492 1690

For Students 9th - 10th
Four maps examining the hunt for a Northwest Passage and three English accounts detailing the curiosity, greed and optimism that fueled English exploration of North America.
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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: New World: Part Ii, American Beginnings: 1492 1690

For Students 9th - 10th
Two European maps of Florida and Roanoke, and a British and a French account-with associated engravings of these settlements-that promote a European interpretation of and claim over these areas.
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Unit Plan
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Enslaved Peoples, American Beginnings: 1492 1690

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Two Spanish accounts of enslaved Indians in the Caribbean and enslaved Africans in Mexico and statements of the difficulty of maintaining slavery and the lurking threat of a slave revolt.
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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Permanence, American Beginnings: 1492 1690

For Students 9th - 10th
Forty-two primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, and visual images-that explore the complex and interrelated factors that led to a permanent European presence in the New World.
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Primary
National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Rivalry Ii, American Beginnings: 1492 1690

For Students 9th - 10th
Two eighteenth-century maps and four accounts of the mutual perceptions, suspicions, and observations between Spanish and French explorers on the Gulf Coast.
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Graphic
Curated OER

Quad, Novi Orbis Pars Borealis, 1600

For Students 9th - 10th
Four maps examining the hunt for a Northwest Passage and three English accounts detailing the curiosity, greed and optimism that fueled English exploration of North America.