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Indigenous History

Featured Items

Detail of an engraved, hand colored print shows portrait of Hendrick, a Mohawk chief.

The brave old Hendrick the great Sachem or Chief of the Mohawk Indians...

1740
Cover of Instructio[n]

Instructio[n], y memoria, de las relaciones que se han de hazer, para la descripcion de las Indias

Juan López de Velasco
1577
Detail of printed frontispiece shows two men on either side of French title.

Le miroir de la tyrannie espagnole perpetrée aux Indes Occidentales

Bartolomé de las Casas
1620
Detail of a printed map shows text in Spanish reading "La Puna" and other labels over landmarks.

Carta de la Provincia de Quito y sus Adjacentes

Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville
1750
Detail of a colored manuscript chart shows a small cluster of homes and palm trees with text in English reading "Indian Village of Sancopana."

An actual survey of the River Orinoco from the great mouth up to the City of Angostura

1803
Detail of a printed book shows a decorative head piece on the title page written in Spanish.

Historia natural, civil y geográfica de las naciones situadaes en las riveras del Rio Orinoco

Joseph Gumilla
1791
Engraved fold-out map shows Greenland spelled "Grœnland" and other text in German.

Historie von Grönland

David Cranz
1765-1770
Detail of a manuscript, hand-colored map depicting the Great Lakes, scattered trees depicted on surrounding land, and text in French.

Nouvelle Découverte de plusieurs Nations Dans la Nouvelle France en l'année 1673 et 1674

Louis Joliet
1673-1674

Related

Engraving of two Nahua men speaking to one another. An angel hovers behind one of the men, preventing him from producing idolatrous speech, while the other has a snakes stemming from his mouth, which is representative of such language.
Fellow's Talk

"Brute animals" and "rational creatures": Defining humanity in the Indigenous-language vocabularies and pedagogies of New Spain

Detail from the Tovar Codex, showing a bearded Spanish man atop the symbol for house (calli), while holding a book that points to the letters of the Roman alphabet.
Fellow's Talk

Translating Late Medieval Classics into Nahuatl: The Imitatio Christi and How to Think About Latin-Nahuatl translation

printed text in English
Guided show-and-tell

A Curatorial Conversation: North American Indian Treaties at the JCB

A map showing the Americas and a constellation over them

Constellations: Reimagining Celestial Histories in the Early Americas

November 2020 - August 2021
cover image of Códice Santa María Tetelpan

Códice Santa María Tetelpan: A JCB manuscript transcribed, translated, and published in facsimile in Mexico City

October 7, 2020
Image of Peruvian Print Shop
Lecture

Historia del libro en lenguas originarias de América

Native Americans of present-day Mexico dance around two drummers

Picturing the Past: Indigenous Expressions in Colonial Mexico

Spring 2020
JCB Fellow Juan Cobo Betancourt views an exhibition at the John Carter Brown Library
Our Fellows

Juan Cobo Betancourt, Donald L. Saunders Fellow

November 25, 2019

See Also

American Revolutions

English