Native and Spanish New Worlds

Spanish-led entradasexpeditions bent on the exploration and control of new territoriestook place throughout the sixteenth century in what is now the southern United States. Although their impact was profound, both locally and globally, detailed analyses of these encounters are notably scarce. Focusing on several major themessocial, economic, political, military, environmental, and demographicthe contributions gathered here explore not only the cultures and peoples involved in these unique engagements but also the wider connections and disparities between these borderlands and the colonial world in general during the first century of NativeEuropean contact in North America. Bringing together research from both the southwestern and southeastern United States, this book offers a comparative synthesis of NativeEuropean contacts and their consequences in both regions. The chapters also engage at different scales of analysis, from locally based research to macro-level evaluations, using documentary, paleoclimatic, and regional archaeological data. No other volume assembles such a wide variety of archaeological, ethnohistorical, environmental, and biological information to elucidate the experience of Natives and Europeans in the early colonial world of Northern New Spain, and the global implications of entradas during this formative period in borderlands history.