Discovery. Conquest. Encounter. Contact. Genocide. Colonization. All are terms used to describe the European enterprise in Amerindian lands. Each conveys a judgment, tacit or explicit, on its legacy in the wake of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the West Indies in 1492.
The Latin American Library is among the world’s foremost repositories for the study of this tumultuous historical period (1492–1820s). Dating from 1516, the library’s collection of books, manuscripts, and maps provides some of the earliest accounts of the colonization of the Americas. Few original Amerindian texts of the time survived that might have told us more about Native American perspectives. But the Tulane collections are especially rich in sources written by both Europeans and Indigenous scribes that allow glimpses into how native societies negotiated their survival and agency under Spanish rule. Featured are rare books and manuscripts that reflect representative genres, and often competing agendas, composed during the first two centuries of Spanish rule.