The firsthand accounts of the explorers and conquerors that are excerpted and discussed in the following pages represent the period of early European exploration of the New World. Some accounts are from letters directed toward a patron or monarch, others are from books and journals published many years after the events themselves. Others are even taken from books written by sixteenth-century historians, who culled through the narratives of the explorers as they constructed specific histories of the first few decades when the civilizations of Europe and the Americas discovered each other.

The accounts contained within tell the stories of people who often overcame great obstacles and displayed perseverance and courage in exploring the oceans and the newly discovered lands. Less directly, the narratives also tell about the experiences of the natives of the New World in their early encounters with the Europeans. In...