History - Getting Started

Examines the rich mixture of societies coexisting in five areas of this hemisphere before European arrival. It then surveys the polyglot Mediterranean world at a dynamic turning point in its development. The exhibition also examines the first sustained contacts between American people and European explorers, conquerors and settlers from 1492 to 1600.

Contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD 1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.

(Univ. CT Libraries)

100 maps, primarily woodcuts and printed engravings, from the Beinecke Library’s Western Americana and General collections.

(Colonial Society of Massachusetts)

National Humanities Center primary resources in U.S. History and Literature.

Selections from the more than 3,000 rare maps, documents, paintings, prints, and artifacts that make up the Jay I. Kislak Collection at the Library of Congress.