Pre-1600: Communications: Publications

Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Castaways: The Narrative of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, edited by Enrique Pupo-Walker, translated by Frances M. López-Morillas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)—a translation of Cabeza de Vaca’s original narrative of the 1528 Narváez expedition and his experiences among the natives of the Southwest;

Jacques Cartier, The Voyages of Jacques Cartier: Published from the Originals with Translations, Notes, and Appendices, edited by H. P. Biggar (Ottawa: F. A. Acland, 1924)—includes annotated accounts of all three of Cartier’s voyages. The Frenchman was the first European to explore the St. Lawrence River Valley, and his texts include the earliest descriptions of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, who had vanished by the time of Samuel de Champlain’s arrival some seventy years later;

Cartier, Two Navigations to Newe Fraunce, The English Experience, no. 718 (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum; reprinted, Norwood, N.J.: W. J. Johnson, 1975)—a facsimile reprint of the original English edition (1580) of Cartier’s accounts of his first two voyages;

Samuel de Champlain, Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, 1604–1618, edited by W. L. Grant, Original Narratives of Early American History (New York: Scribner’s, 1907)—this contains the accounts of Frenchman Samuel de Champlain’s voyages to plant a French colony in the early seventeenth century, describing the local inhabitants of the St. Lawrence and New England coastal region and their relations with the French;

Lawrence A. Clayton, Vernon James Knight Jr., and Edward C. Moore, eds., The De Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America in 1539–1543, 2 volumes (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993)—includes firsthand narratives of the de Soto expedition, which contain accounts of the interior southeast and the native peoples dwelling there;

Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation [1589], edited by David B. Quinn and Raleigh A. Skelton, 2 volumes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965)—a facsimile edition of the original publication by the foremost promoter of English colonization in America, it contains the collected accounts of many sixteenth-century North American voyages;

Marc Lescarbot, The History of New France, translated by W. L. Grant, 3 volumes (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1907–1914)—a translation of the expanded 1618 Paris edition of Lescarbot’s 1609 account of Acadia. It is the earliest published history of New France and includes a great deal of information about sixteenth-century French ventures in the Gulf of St. Lawrence region and the interactions with the native peoples there;

Lescarbot, Nova Francia, or a Description of Acadia [1609], edited by Henry P. Biggar (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1928)—the first edition of Lescar-bot’s account of the voyages of Sieur de Monts and Jean de Biencourt de Poutrincourt to Acadia (Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) in 1606–1607. Lescarbot accompanied de Poutrincourt and was an eyewitness to many of the events and peoples depicted;

Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus posthumus, or, Purchas his Pilgrimes: contayning a history of the world in sea voyages and lande travells by Englishmen and others, 20 volumes (Glasgow: J. MacLehose & Sons, 1905–1907)—reprint edition of Purchas’s 1625 edition, which contains many early exploration and travel narratives, several of them taken from Hakluyt. Several of them deal with the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European voyages to North America;

David Beers Quinn, ed., New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612 (New York: Arno Press, 1979)—a five-volume compilation of contemporary fifteenth-, sixteenth-, and early-seventeenth-century publications, letters, and documents describing all aspects of European exploration and colonization, from the first conceptualization of America to the planting of the first colonies. Excellent coverage of all of North America, including the Northeast, Southeast, Gulf Coast, and Spanish borderlands and interior southwest.