National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Teacher Serve: Three Worlds, Three Views
Essay examining the cultural and environmental changes spanning 300 years in the pre-Revolutionary South as three worlds, Native American, European, and African collide. Site includes guiding questions for student discussion and scholars...
OpenStax
Open Stax: The Impact of Colonization
By reading this section of a chapter on "Colonial Societies," students will be able to explain the reasons for the rise of slavery in the American colonies, describe changes in Indian life, including warfare and hunting, contrast...
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: America's History in the Making: Mapping Initial Encounters
Columbus' arrival laid the basis for encounters between Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans. This unit examines how these contacts altered the way of life of peoples around the globe.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: America in Class: Failed European Colonies in the New World
Lesson that examines some of the reasons European efforts to establish colonies in the New World were often met with failure. It focuses on the story of nine Jesuit priests who started a small colony on Chesapeake Bay in the hopes of...
Mariners' Museum and Park
Mariners' Museum: Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade
Online exhibition from the Mariners' Museum chronicles the plight of African slaves from the beginning of their journey when they are torn from their homeland all the way to the shores of the Americas. Caught up in the lucrative...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Enslaved Peoples, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
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.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Indian Relations, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
One modern historical assessment and several original accounts of the mistrust, negotiations, alliances, trading, and disease transmission between European colonizers and native peoples in North America.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Indian Wars, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Five documents representing the full range of Indian-European antagonisms, struggles for power, and outright warfare among the Spanish, Pueblo, Wampanoag, English, and French in New Spain, New France, New Mexico, and New England.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Africans Ii, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Three illustrations and five documents about slave codes, master-slave power dynamics, and free blacks within French and Spanish settlements of the Caribbean.
University of Groningen
American History: Essays: Unanticipated Changes Lead to War
Essay on the devastating changes the indigenous peoples of North America faced as Europeans encroached upon and colonized their land.
University of Groningen
American History: Essays: Final Stage of Conquest
Essay on the battle between indigenous peoples and Europeans and the beginnings of Anglo-European domination of North America during final stage of conquest, 1740s.
University of Groningen
American History: Essays: The Debate Over the Morality Question
Essay discussion about the 15th Century debate that went on among Europeans during the time of conquest concerning the morality of conquering the indigenous American people.
Other
Exploring the Atlantic World: 1450 1850: Conversion Tactics
The Europeans tried to convert Native Americans to Christianity in a variety of ways ranging from the brutal force methods of the conquistadors to acceptance of the other's spirituality and way of life.
Library of Virginia
Virginia Memory: Petition of the Meherrin Indians
A instructional activity exploring the steps taken by the Meherrin Indians in Virginia to try to protect their lands from encroaching colonists
Other
The Fur Trade: Its Impact on Native America
Information on the fur trade and its impact on Native Americans. The demands of the Europeans for fur increased competition among the Native American groups. It changed the character of warfare among Native American populations and...
The History Cat
The History Cat: Age of Exploration: The Columbian Exchange
A fascinating look at the exchanges that took place around the world after the Americas were discovered. This covered the gamut from diseases which wiped out 90% of the native peoples in North and South America, to farm animals, tools,...
Louisiana Department of Education
Louisiana Doe: Louisiana Believes: Social Studies: Grade 5: Early Colonization of North America
This sample task contains a set of primary and authentic sources about the early colonization of North America.