Power and Unpredictability, Conquistadors, and Native Peoples: Conquest of the Americas

Generations of students know that the first encounter between Europeans and Native Americans took place when Christopher Columbus “set sail on the ocean blue” for the first of his voyages to what came in Europe to be called the New World in 1492. Few students, however, are aware of the significance of the early years of the Euro-American encounter or how controversial these early cross-cultural meetings proved to be.