Interpreting a Continent Voices from Colonial America

Interpreting a Continent provides students with key documents from colonial American history, including new English translations of non-English documents. This collection takes the reader beyond the traditional story of the English colonies. Readers explore the Spanish, French, Dutch, Russian, German, and even Icelandic colonial efforts throughout North America, including California, New Mexico, Texas, the Great Plains, Louisiana, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New England. Throughout, the collection provides not only the perspectives of Europeans but also of Native Americans and Africans. By looking beyond traditional sources, students see the power and diversity of Native Americans and learn that European domination of the continent was not inevitable. They see different forms of slavery and ways that slaves dealt with their captivity. By considering multiple perspectives, students learn that colonial history was largely the attempts of various peoples to understand strangers and adapt them to their own will. Book jacket.

Kathleen DuVal is assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and author of The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent. John DuVal is professor of English and literary translation at the University of Arkansas and translator of award-winning books.