Less than 20 years after the conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521, Spanish entradas—armed expeditions seeking wealth and territory—began probing the Southern United States. The impact of these entradas was immense, both for the Native Americans they encountered and for Spain and Europe. Nonetheless detailed analyses of these encounters are scarce, with research focusing on the historical documents and not on the material record. In this important volume, the editors have assembled contributions from some 24 scholars to shed new light on this critical era.
The authors focus on several major themes—social, economic, political, military, environmental, and demographic—to explore the first century of interaction between natives and Europeans. It is a comprehensive approached that is a first in the scholarly study of the 16th-century Spanish entradas.
