What narratives of heroism and adversity written from the perspective of Europeans also frequently ignore or put in the background are the striking and horrible realities brought by New World exploration. By some estimates, approximately three hundred thousand Spaniards immigrated to the settlements in the Americas during the sixteenth century; the suffering and destruction that they and others brought to the inhabitants of these lands was, by any measure, horrific. In 1519 it is estimated that the population of central Mexico was 25 million people; about eighty years later there were only between 1 and 2 million native peoples remaining because of the wars, epidemic diseases, and mistreatment that Europeans had brought. Entire populations on Caribbean islands were wiped out in a very short time. The roving expedition of Hernando de Soto in the southeastern part of North America left behind vastly altered and weakened...