Historically scholars have claimed that when Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the Caribbean islands in 1492, he unwittingly changed the course of European history. This event led to an influx of western European colonizers and the violent usurpation and re-settling of the Americas, and a biological exchange that decimated the Indigenous populations. The ramifications of the genocide and conversion of the Indigenous populations of the Americas, as well as the forced labour in the form of slaves to further Europe’s grip on American territories, continue to resonate today and have become entrenched into the very fabric of these continents’ societies.

At present, the images in this collection mainly feature illustrations by John White’s voyage into the Roanoke colony of Virginia (now North Carolina), an English traveler active during the sixteenth century, and Jacques le Moyne, a French member of Jean Ribault’s expedition to Florida. According to Abigail Tucker’s article, “Sketching the Earliest Views of the New World,” while John White’s watercolours were not very precise, they functioned as a pictorial menu of sorts, especially as crops suffered during Europe’s mini ice age. Illustrations like the ones below, found in the Johann Wechel 1590 edition of Thomas Hariot’s “A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia,” served to entice Europeans to dare cross the Atlantic and help compete against established colonizers like Spain (Tucker, 2008).

Works Cited: Tucker, Abigail. “Sketching the Earliest Views of the New World.” Smithsonian Magazine, December, 2008.