1492 – 1734 Early Encounters Supplemental Materials

Art Activities

Vermeer’s Portrait of Wealth and Trade

The trade empire created by the Dutch Republic in the 1600s was far-reaching and lucrative, and women were involved in every phase: as traders, manufacturers, consumers, and more (see Life Story: Johanna de Laet). Johannes Vermeer captures this in his painting Young Woman with a Water Pitcher. He embeds symbolic references and imported goods into this quiet domestic scene, reflecting the prevailing influence of global trade on Dutch society and the private sphere. The materials of the woman’s outfit come from Asia and she is surrounded by symbols of Dutch trade, like the carpet from India and silver from South America.

Four hundred years later, global trade is still essential to the success of many economies, including that of the United States. Imported products are prevalent in American homes and reflect our reliance on goods from abroad. Now, as then, many women are actively engaged in global trade.

To read and download the lesson plan for this art activity, click here.

For supplemental slides to walk you through the art activity, click here.

Adventuring for Art and Science

Maria Sibylla Merian was a scientist born in 1647 who traveled to the Americas to study insects. She intended her books to be used as educational tools from which scientists and scholars could learn and study, and therefore her published illustrations needed to be accurate, clear, and easy to read. Maria Sybilla used her artistic prowess to accomplish this, as is evident in Plate 11, Metamorphosis insectorum surinamensium.

The plant diagonally cuts across the page, framed by two moths on the top left and bottom right. The green leaves curve upward while the yellow flowers arc downward. This creates symmetrical balance and a unified composition that is pleasing to the viewer and highlights the final stage of metamorphosis and various parts of the plant. By placing the fully-grown caterpillar perpendicular to the branch in the center of the composition, Maria Sibylla has made the insect a key focal point— creating an “x” for the viewer to zero in on. The juvenile caterpillars are then strategically drawn adjacent to the adult to clearly show the physical differences between each stage.

To read and download the lesson plan for this art activity, click here.

Revolution in Art

Ceramics is a long-standing and important art form to the Pueblo and Hopi nations that dates back to the 1400s. Pottery is a useful tool that allowed for more efficient cooking and storage, and thus its production has traditionally been a woman’s job. Pots vary in size and shape, and painted designs are diverse, having evolved over time because of changing cultural influences. Today, ceramics continues to be a vibrant form of artistic expression practiced by these nations.

To read and download the lesson plan for this art activity, click here.

Source Notes

Women in the Dutch Colonies, 1624-1715

  • Breen, Louise. Converging Worlds: Communities and Cultures in Colonial America. (New York: Routledge, 2012).
  • Fabend, Firth Haring. New Netherland in a Nutshell: A Concise History of the Dutch Colony in North America. (Albany, NY: New Netherland Institute, 2012).
  • Goodfriend, Joyce D. “Writing/Righting Dutch Colonial History.” New York History 80, no. 1 (1999): 4-28. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23182347.
  • Romney, Susanah Shaw. New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).
  • Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America. (London: Abacus, 2014).
  • Todt, Kim. “‘Women Are as Knowing Therein as the Men’: Dutch Women in Early America.” In Women in Early America, ed. by Thomas A. Foster, 43-65. (New York: New York University Press, 2015).

Fighting for Freedom in New Amsterdam

Translating for the Dutch and Lenni-Lenape

  • Fabend, Firth Haring. New Netherland in a Nutshell: A Concise History of the Dutch Colony in North America. (Albany, NY: New Netherland Institute, 2017).
  • Lipman, Andrew. The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).
  • Otto, Paul. The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006).
  • Romney, Susanah Shaw. New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

Vermeer’s Portrait of Wealth and Trade

  • Boxer, Charles Ralph. The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600–1800. (New York: Penguin Books, 1989).
  • Grabar, Oleg, et al. “Oriental Rugs in the Metropolitan Museum.” Artibus Asiae 38, no. 1 (1976): 84. https://doi.org/10.2307/3250098.
  • Koning, Hans. The World of Vermeer 1632-1675. (Amsterdam: Time-Life International, 1978).
  • Laver, James. Costume and Fashion: A Concise History. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2014).
  • Romney, Susanah Shaw. New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).
  • Schoeser, Mary. World Textiles: A Concise History. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2003).
  • Steingruber, Elmar. “Indigo and Indigo Colorants.” In Ullmann’s Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry. (Wiley-VCH, Weinheim. 2004).
  • Wieseman, Marjorie E., et al. Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence. (Cambridge, UK: Fitzwilliam Museum, 2011).

Negotiating the Surrender of New Netherland

  • Fabend, Firth Haring. New Netherland in a Nutshell: A Concise History of the Dutch Colony in North America. (Albany, NY: New Netherland Institute, 2017).
  • Romney, Susanah Shaw. New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).
  • Testimony, March 4, 1667. Not. Arch. 3191, 101-102, Not H. Outgers, Stadsarchief Amsterdam. Archive 883, Archief van Dr. S. Hart, inventory 597.

Childcare in the New World

Hardenbroeck v. the Orphanmasters

Founding Mother: Catalina Trico

  • Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York
    City to 1898.
    (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
  • Romney, Susanah Shaw. New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America. (Chapel Hill, NC: 2014).
  • Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America. (New York: Random House, 2005).

Mohawk Interpreter

  • Schulze, Lorine McGinnis. The Van Slyke Family in America: A Genealogy of Cornelis Antonissen Van Slyke, 1604-1676 and His Mohawk Wife Ots-Toch, Including the Story of Jacques Hartel, 1603-1651, Father of Ots-Toch and Interpreter to Samuel de Champlain. (New York: Olive Tree Enterprises, 1996).
  • Staffa, Susan J. Schenectady Genesis: How a Dutch Colonial Village Became an American City, ca. 1661-1800. (Fleischmanns, NY: Purple Mountain Press, 2004).

Scandal in Schenectady

Selling Staten Island

Life Story: Johanna de Laet

  • Answer to complaint. October 13, 1661. New York State Archives. New Netherland. Council. Dutch colonial council minutes, 1638-1665. Series A1809. Volume 9.
  • Biemer, Linda Briggs. Women and Property in Colonial New York: The Transition from Dutch to English Law 1643-1727. (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1983).
  • Brink, Andrew. Invading Paradise: Esopus Settlers at War with the Natives, 1659, 1663. (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris US, 2003).
  • “Dutch Customs of Inheritance, Women, and the Law in Colonial New York City.” In Authority and Resistance in Early New York, ed. by William Pencak and Conrad Edick Wright. (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1988).
  • Fernow, Berthold. The Minutes of the Orphanmasters of New Amsterdam, 1655-1663. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1902).
  • Gehring, Charles T. Fort Orange Court Minutes, 1652-1660. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990).
  • ———. Fort Orange Records, 1656-1678. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000).
  • Hedges, Henry P., et al. The Second Book of Records of the Town of Southampton Long Island, N.Y.: With Other Ancient Documents of Historic Value. (Sag-Harbor, NY: John H. Hunt, Printer, 1877).
  • March 26, 1657. New York State Archives. New Netherland. Council. Dutch colonial council minutes, 1638-1665. Series A1809. Volume 8.
  • March 27, 1657. New York State Archives. New Netherland. Council. Dutch colonial patents and deeds, 1630-1664. Series A1880. Volume HH.
  • May 7, 1653. New York State Archives. New York (Colony). Council. Dutch colonial administrative correspondence, 1646-1664. Series A1810-78. Volume 11, document 78, 1.
  • New York Historical Manuscripts, Dutch: Published under the Direction of the Holland Society of New York. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1974.)
  • November 1, 1654. New York State Archives. New York (Colony). Secretary of the Province. Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1642-1660. Series A0270-78. Volume 3, document 125.
  • Pearson, Jonathan. Early Records of the City and County of Albany and Colony of Rensselaerswyck: Volumes 2-4. (Albany, NY: University of the State of New York, 1916).
  • Romney, Susanah Shaw. New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

Life Story: Quashawam

  • Romney, Susanah Shaw. New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).
  • Strong, John A. The Montaukett Indians of Eastern Long Island. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006).

Life Story: Lisbeth Anthonijsen

  • Fernow, Berthold. The Records of New Amsterdam from 1653 to 1674 Anno Domini. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1976).
  • Romney, Susanah Shaw. “Intimate Networks and Children’s Survival in New Netherland in the Seventeenth Century.” Early American Studies 7, no. 2 (2009): 270–308. jstor.org/stable/23546620.

Life Story: Maria Sibylla Merian

  • Davis, Natalie Zemon. Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

Life Story: Lady Deborah Moody

  • Jordan, Jean P. “Women Merchants in Colonial New York,” New York History 58, no.4 (1977): 412–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23169726.
  • New England Historical Society. “Lady Deborah Moody—A Dangerous Woman Comes to New England.” Accessed March 22, 2017. http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/ladydeborah-moody-a-dangerous-womancomes-to-new-england/.
  • Overton, Jacqueline and Phoebe Dodge. “The Quakers on Long Island.” New York History 21, no. 2 (1940): 151–61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23134981.
  • Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America. (New York: Random House, 2005).

Life Story: Teuntje Straatmans

  • Adane, Virginie. “From the United Provinces to the Hudson Valley. The Reordering of Gender Relations in New Netherland (1624-1664).” Translated by Marian Rothstein. Women, Gender, History no. 51 (2020): 77–98. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27076665.
  • Cramer van den Bogaart, Annette. “The Life of Teuntje Straatmans: A Dutch Woman’s Travels in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World.” Long Island Historical Journal Vol 15.1-2 (2002): 35-53.
  • ———. “The Remarkable Life of Teuntje Straetmans, A Woman in New Amsterdam.” Gotham Center for New York City History. September 1, 2020. https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/the-remarkable-life-of-teuntje-straetmans-a-woman-in-new-amsterdam.
  • Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America. (New York: Random House, 2005).

Life Story: Margrieta van Varick

  • Piwonka, Ruth. “Margrieta van Varick in the West: Inventory of a Life.” In Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick, ed. by Deborah L. Krohn and Peter N. Miller. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
  • Voorhees, David William. “Flatbush in the Time of the van Varicks.” In Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick, ed. by Deborah L. Krohn and Peter N. Miller. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
  • ———. “Margrieta van Varick in the East: Traces of a Life.” In Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick, ed. by Deborah L. Krohn and Peter N. Miller. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

Women in the English Colonies, 1607-1715

  • Breen, Louise. Converging Worlds: Communities and Cultures in Colonial America. (New York: Routledge, 2012).
  • Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
  • Taylor, Alan and Eric Foner. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. (New York: Penguin Books, 2002).
  • Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Goodwives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750. (New York: Random House, 1986).

The Last Will and Testament of Joseph Grover

  • Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
  • Snyder, Terri L. “Women, Race, and the Law in Early America.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. September 2015.
  • Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Goodwives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750. (New York: Random House, 1986).

Legislating Reproduction and Racial Difference in Virginia

  • Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
  • Finkelman, Paul. “Crimes of Love, Misdemeanors of Passion: The Regulation of Race and Sex in the Colonial South.” In The Devil’s Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, ed. by Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
  • Law Library of Congress. “Slavery and Indentured Servants.” Accessed February 27, 2018. https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awlaw3/slavery.html.
  • Morgan, Jennifer L. Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
  • Snyder, Terri L. “Women, Race, and the Law in Early America.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Published September 3, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.12.

Mortar and Pestle for Pounding Rice

  • Morgan, Jennifer L. Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
  • Tuten, James H. Lowcountry Time and Tide: The Fall of the South Carolina Rice Kingdom. (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2012).

Patent for Cleaning and Curing Corn

Mourning Poetry of Anne Bradstreet

  • Bradstreet, Anne and John Harvard Ellis. The Works of Anne Bradstreet, in Prose and Verse. (Charlestown: A. E. Cutter, 1867).
  • Campbell, Helen. Anne Bradstreet and Her Time. (Boston: D. Lothrop, 1891).
  • Martin, Wendy. “Anne Bradstreet.” Poetry Foundation. Accessed February 28, 2018. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anne-bradstreet.
  • Miranda, Alberta M. “Anne Bradstreet.” In Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection, Volume 1, by Peg A. Lamphier and Rosanne Welch, 91-92. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2017).

Witchcraft in Bermuda

  • Bernhard, Virginia. “Religion, Politics, and Witchcraft in Bermuda, 1651–55.” The William and Mary Quarterly 67, no. 4 (2010): 677-708. https://doi.org/10.5309/willmaryquar.67.4.0677.
  • Dennis, Matthew and Elizabeth Reis. “Women as Witches, Witches as Women.” In Women in Early America, ed. by Thomas A. Foster. (New York: New York University Press, 2015).

Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion

  • Barker-Benfield, Ben. “Anne Hutchinson and the Puritan Attitude toward Women.” Feminist Studies1, no. 2 (1972): 65-96. https://doi.org/10.2307/3177641.
  • Barker, Kathleen. “Protestant Women.” In Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection, Volume 1, ed. by Peg A. Lamphier and Rosanne Welch, 158-59. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2017).
  • Robinson, David M. “The Cultural Dynamics of American Puritanism.” American Literary History6, no. 4 (1994): 738-55. http://www.jstor.org/stable/489963.
  • Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750. (New York: Random House, 1991).

Connecticut Witch Trials

  • Connell, Liam. “‘A Great or Notorious Liar’: Katherine Harrison and her Neighbours, Wethersfield, Connecticut, 1668 – 1670.” Eras 12, no. 2 (2011): 1-29. https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/1668440/lconnell1.pdf
  • Godbeer, Richard. Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
  • Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998).
  • Woodward, Walter W. “The Trial of Katherine Harrison.” OAH Magazine of History 17 no. 4 (2003): 37-56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25163621.

Tobacco Brides

  • Zug, Marcia A. Buying a Bride: An Engaging History of Mail-Order Matches. (New York, NY: NYU Press, 2016).

Captivity Narratives

  • Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn and James Levernier. The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550-1900. (New York, NY: MacMillan, 1993).
  • Potter, Tiffany. “Writing Indigenous Femininity: Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative of Captivity.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36, no. 2 (2003): 153-67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30053358.
  • Rowlandson, Mary White. A Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings and Removes, of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. (Boston: S. Hall, 1794).
  • Strong, Paula Turner. Captive Selves, Captivating Others: The Politics and Poetics of Colonial American Captivity Narratives. (Boulder, CO: Westview/Perseus Books, 1999).

Travel Journal of Sarah Kemble Knight

  • Clutterbuck-Cook, Anna J. “Sarah Kemble Knight.” In Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection, ed by. Peg A. Lamphier and Rosanne Welch. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2017).
  • Norton, Mary Beth. Separated by Their Sex: Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).

Depictions of Pocahontas

  • Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught between Cultures in Early Virginia. (New York: New York University Press, 2019).
  • Townsend, Camilla. Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004).

Anne Hutchinson

  • Bremer, Francis J., ed. Anne Hutchinson: Troubler of the Puritan Zion. (New York: Krieger Publishing, 2003).
  • LaPlante, Eve. American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman who Defied the Puritans. (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).

Life Story: Weetamoo

  • Leach, Douglas Edward. “The ‘Whens’ of Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity.” The New England Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1961): 352-63. https://doi.org/10.2307/362932.
  • Mather, Increase. A brief history of the war with the Indians in New-England. (Boston: John Foster, 1676).
  • Potter, Tiffany. “Writing Indigenous Femininity: Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative of Captivity.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36, no. 2 (2003): 153-67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30053358.
  • Rowlandson, Mary White. A Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings and Removes, of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. (Boston: S. Hall, 1794).
  • Steele, Ian K. Warpaths: Invasions of North America. (Bridgewater, NJ: Replica Books, 2000).

Life Story: Thomas(ine) Hall

  • Beeman, Genny. “Transgender History in the United States.” In Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, by Laura Erickson-Schroth, 501-32. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
  • Brown, Kathleen M. “‘Changed . . . into the Fashion of Man.’ The Politics of Sexual Difference in a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Settlement.” In The Devil’s Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, by Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie, 39-53. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
  • McIlwaine, H. R., ed. Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, 1622-1632, 1670-1676. (Richmond, VA: The Colonial Press, Everett Waddey Co., 1924), 194-95.
  • Vaughan, Alden T. “The Sad Case of Thomas(ine) Hall.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 86, no. 2 (1978): 146-48 http://www.jstor.org/stable/4248200.

Life Story: Dennis and Hannah Holland

  • Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
  • Carr, Lois Green and Lorena S. Walsh. “The Planter’s Wife: The Experience of White Women in Seventeenth-Century Maryland.” The William and Mary Quarterly 34, no. 4 (1977): 542-71. https://doi.org/10.2307/2936182.
  • Somerset County Court Judicial Record, Archives of Maryland Online, January Court 1673/4, Vol. 87, 302-309. Accessed March 7, 2018.
  • Somerset County Court Judicial Record, Archives of Maryland Online, August Court 1674, Vol. 87, 368. Accessed March 7, 2018.
  • Somerset County Court Judicial Record, Archives of Maryland Online, August Court, 1690, Vol. 106, 167. Accessed March 7, 2018.
  • Somerset County Court Judicial Record, Archives of Maryland Online, October Court, 1690, Vol. 106. Accessed March 7, 2018.
  • Somerset County Court Judicial Record, Archives of Maryland Online, September Court, 1692, Vol. 406, 48. Accessed March 7, 2018.
  • Somerset County Court Judicial Record, Archives of Maryland Online, October Courts, 1692, Vol. 406, 126-127. Accessed March 7, 2018.
  • Somerset County Court Judicial Record, Archives of Maryland Online, November Court, 1694, Vol. 535, 89. Accessed March 7, 2018.
  • Woloch, Nancy. Women and the American Experience. 5th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2011).
  • Wood, Betty. “Servant Women and Sex in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake.” In Women in Early America, ed. by Thomas A. Foster, 95-117. (New York: New York University Press, 2015).

Life Story: Lady Frances Berkeley

  • Norton, Mary Beth. Separated by their Sex: Women in Public and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).

Life Story: Margaret Brent

  • Carr, Lois Green. “Margaret Brent – A Brief History.” Maryland State Archives. Accessed July 20, 2023. https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/002100/002177/html/mbrent2.html.
  • Mishra, Patit Paban. “Margaret Brent.” In Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection, ed. by Peg A. Lamphier and Rosanne Welch. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2017).

Life Story: Cockacoeske

  • McCartney, Martha W. “Cockacoeske, Queen of Pamunkey: Diplomat and Suzeraine.” In Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast by Gregory A. Waselkov. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2006).
  • Negrin, Hayley. “Cockacoeske’s Rebellion: Nathaniel Bacon, Indigenous Slavery, and Sovereignty in Early Virginia.” The William and Mary Quarterly 80, no. 1 (2023): 49-86. https://doi.org/10.1353/wmq.2023.0013.

Life Story: Mary Dyer

  • Myles, Anne G. “From Monster to Martyr: Re-Presenting Mary Dyer.” Early American Literature no 1 (2001): 1-30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25057215.
  • Plimpton, Ruth Talbot. Mary Dyer: Biography of a Rebel Quaker. (Boston: Brandon Publishing Company, 1994).
  • Winship, Michael Paul. Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

Life Story: Elizabeth Key Grinstead

  • Ball, Erica L., et al. As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
  • Lovell Banks, Tanya. “Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key’s Freedom Suit – Subjecthood and Racialized Identity in Seventeenth Century Colonial Virginia.” Akron Law Review 41 (2008): 799-837. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.672121.
  • Tarter, Brent. “Elizabeth Key.” Encyclopedia Virginia. Accessed December 7, 2020. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/key-elizabeth-fl-1655-1660/.

Life Story: Tituba

  • Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. (New York: Vintage Books, 2002).
  • Rosenthal, Bernard. “Tituba’s Story.” The New England Quarterly 71, no. 2 (1998): 190-203. https://doi.org/10.2307/366502.

Women in the Spanish Colonies, 1492-1700

  • Breen, Louise. Converging Worlds: Communities and Cultures in Colonial America. (New York: Routledge, 2012).
  • Burkholder, Mark A. and Lyman L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
  • Jaffary, Nora E. and Jane E. Mangan, eds. Women in Colonial Latin America, 1526 to 1806. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2018).
  • Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

Instructions for the New World

  • Simpson, Lesley Byrd. The Encomienda in New Spain. (Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1966).
  • Zavala, Cynthia M. “Queens, European, Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603) and Isabella of Castile (1451-1504).” In Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection, Volume 1, ed. by Peg A. Lamphier and Rosanne Welch. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2017).

Life on the Encomienda

  • Burkholder, Mark A. and Lyman L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
  • Simpson, Lesley Byrd. The Encomienda in New Spain. (Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1966).
  • Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

A Nun Challenges the Patriarchy

  • Bénassy-Berling, Marie-Cécile. Humanismo y religión en Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. (Mexico City: UNAM, 1983).
  • org. “Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.” Academy of American Poets. Accessed April 11, 2018. https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/sor-juana-in%C3%A9s-de-la-cruz.
  • Stavans, Ilan. Introduction to Poems, Protest, and a Dream: Selected Writings, by Juana Inés de la Cruz. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. (Penguin Books: New York, 1997).

The Middle Passage

Marriage Contracts in the Spanish Colonies

  • Gauderman, Kimberly. Women’s Lives in Colonial Quito: Gender, Law, and Economy in Spanish America. (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2003).

Revolution in Art

The Diary of Úrsula de Jesús

  • Jaffary, Nora E. and Jane E. Mangan, eds. Women in Colonial Latin America, 1526 to 1806. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2018).
  • Úrsula de Jesús and Nancy E. van Deusen. The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of a Seventeenth-Century Afro-Peruvian Mystic, Ursula de Jesús. Translated by Nancy E. van Deusen. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2004).

Petition for Freedom

  • Jaffary, Nora E. and Jane E. Mangan, eds. Women in Colonial Latin America, 1526 to 1806. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2018).
  • McKinley, Michelle A. Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600-1700. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Women’s Labor Agreements

  • Jaffary, Nora E. and Jane E. Mangan, eds. Women in Colonial Latin America, 1526 to 1806. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2018).

Life Story: Doña Teresa de Aguilera y Roche

  • Gutiérrez, Ramón A. “Doña Teresa de Aguilera y Roche before the Inquisition: The Travails of a Seventeenth-Century Aristocratic Woman in New Mexico.” In Women in Early America, ed. by Thomas A. Foster. (New York: New York University Press, 2015).
  • Levine, Frances. Doña Teresa Confronts the Spanish Inquisition: A Seventeenth-Century New Mexican Drama. (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016).

Life Story: Malitzen (La Malinche)

  • Burkholder, Mark A. and Lyman L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
  • Chaison, Joanne Danaher. “Mysterious Malinche: A Case of Mistaken Identity.” The Americas 32, no. 4 (1976): 514-23. https://doi.org/10.2307/979828.
  • Cumo, Christopher. “Malinche.” In Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection, Volume 1, by Peg A. Lamphier and Rosanne Welch. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2017).
  • Kidwell, Clara Sue. “Indian Women as Cultural Mediators.” Ethnohistory 39, no. 2 (1992): 97–107. https://doi.org/10.2307/482389.
  • Townsend, Camilla. Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico. (Alberquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2006).

Life Story: The Gateras of Quito

  • Andrien, Kenneth J. “Economic Crisis, Taxes and The Quito Insurrection Of 1765.” Past and Present 129 (1990): 104-31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/650935.
  • Gauderman, Kimberly. Women’s Lives in Colonial Quito: Gender, Law, and Economy in Spanish America. (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2003).

Life Story: Isabel Hernández

  • Jaffary, Nora E. Reproduction and Its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contraception from 1750 to 1905. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).
  • Jaffary, Nora E. and Jane E. Mangan, eds. Women in Colonial Latin America, 1526 to 1806. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2018).
  • Sousa, Lisa. The Woman Who Turned into a Jaguar, and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017).

Life Story: Juana, la Virreina de Matudere

  • Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge, et al., eds. The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade. (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
  • Curto, José C. and Renée Soulodre-La France, eds. Africa and the Americas: Interconnections during the Slave Trade. (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004).
  • Landers, Jane. “Founding Mothers: Female Rebels in Colonial New Granada and Spanish Florida.” The Journal of African American History 98, no. 1 (2013): 7-23. https://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.98.1.0007.
  • Stevenson, Brenda E. “Introduction: Women, Slavery, and the Atlantic World.” The Journal of African American History no. 1 (2013): 1-6. https://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.98.1.0001.

Life Story: Tecuichpotzin “Isabel” Moctezuma

  • Chipman, Donald E. Moctezuma’s Children: Aztec Royalty under Spanish Rule, 1520-1700. (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005).
  • Jaffary, Nora E. and Jane E. Mangan, eds. Women in Colonial Latin America, 1526 to 1806. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2018).

Women in the French Colonies, 1600-1734

  • Breen, Louise. Converging Worlds: Communities and Cultures in Colonial America. (New York: Routledge, 2012).
  • Canadian Museum of History. “Virtual Museum of New France.” Accessed May 2, 2018. https://www.historymuseum.ca/virtual-museum-of-new-france/colonies-and-empires/governance-and-sites-of-power/.
  • Chmielewski, Laura M. The Spice of Popery: Converging Christianities on an Early American Frontier. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012).
  • Greer, Allan. The People of New France. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).
  • Noel, Jan. Along a River: The First French-Canadian Women. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013).
  • Taylor, Alan and Eric Foner. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. (New York: Penguin Books, 2002).

Marrying into the New World

  • Gagné, Peter J. Before the King’s Daughters: The Filles à Marier, 1634-1662. (Orange Park, FL: Quintin Publications, 2002).
  • Lanctot, Gustave. Filles de joie ou filles du roi. (Montréal: Les Éditions Chantecler Ltée, 1952).
  • Zug, Marcia. Buying a Bride: An Engaging History of Mail-Order Matches. (New York: New York University Press, 2016).

Education in New France

  • Davis, Natalie Zemon. Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
  • Greer, Allan. The People of New France. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).
  • Marie de l’Incarnation and Claude Martin. From Mother to Son: The Selected Letters of Marie de L’Incarnation to Claude Martin. Translated by Mary Dunn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

Women and the Code Noir

  • Aubert, Guillaume. “‘The Blood of France’: Race and Purity of Blood in the French Atlantic World.” William and Mary Quarterly 61, no. 3 (2004): 439–78. https://doi.org/10.2307/3491805.
  • Jones, Terry L. The Louisiana Journey. (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 2007).
  • Le Code Noir, ou Edit Du Roy, Servant De Reglement Pour Le Gouvernement & l’administration de Justice & la Police des Isles Françoises De l’Amerique, & Pour la Discipline & le Commerce des Negres & Esclaves dans Ledit Pays. (Paris: Au Palais, Chez G. Girard, 1735).
  • Stovall, Tyler. “Race and the Making of the Nation: Blacks in Modern France.” In Diasporic Africa: A Reader, ed. by Michael Angelo Gomez. (New York: New York University Press, 2006).

Indigenous Agricultural Innovation

Colonial Cooking

Populating the Colonies

Life Story: Agathe Saint-Père

  • Foster, William Henry. “Agathe Saint-Père and Her Captive New England Weavers.” French Colonial History 1 (2002): 129-41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41938111.
  • ———. The Captors’ Narrative: Catholic Women and Their Puritan Men on the Early American Frontier. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003).
  • Noel, Jan. Along a River: The First French-Canadian Women. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013).

Life Story: Charlotte-Françoise Juchereau de Saint-Denis

  • Caldwell, Norman W. “Charles Juchereau de St. Denys: A French Pioneer in the Mississippi Valley.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 28, no. 4 (1942): 563–80. https://doi.org/10.2307/1916543.
  • Dechêne, Louise. “Dauphin de la Forest, François.” In Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Accessed April 30, 2018. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/dauphin_de_la_forest_francois_2E.html.
  • Drolet, Antonio. “Juchereau de Saint-Denis, Charlotte-Françoise.” In Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Accessed April 30, 2018. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/juchereau_de_saint_denis_charlotte_francoise_2E.html.
  • Fortier, John and Donald Chaput. “A Historical Reexamination of Juchereau’s Illinois Tannery.” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908-1984) 62, no. 4 (1969): 385-406. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40190890.
  • Hamelin, Jean. “Viennay-Pachot, François.” In Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Accessed April 30, 2018. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/viennay_pachot_francois_1E.html.
  • Marreno, Karen L. “Women at the Crossroads: Trade, Mobility, and Power in Early French America and Detroit.” In Women in Early America, ed. by Thomas A. Foster, 159-85. (New York: New York University Press, 2015).
  • Noel, Janet. “‘Nagging Wife’ Revisited: Women and the Fur Trade in New France.” French Colonial History 7, no. 1 (2006): 45–60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41938264.
  • Peyser, Joseph L. “The Fall and Rise of Thérèse Catin: A Portrait from Indiana’s French and Canadian History.” Indiana Magazine of History 91, no. 4 (1995): 361–79. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27791869.
  • Ross, J. Andrew and Andrew D. Smith. Canada’s Entrepreneurs: From the Fur Trade to the 1929 Stock Market Crash. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011).
  • Weilbrenner, Bernard. “Juchereau de Saint-Denis, Nicholas.” In Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Accessed April 30, 2018. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/juchereau_de_saint_denis_nicolas_1E.html.

Life Story: Kateri Tekakwitha

  • Greer, Allan. Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Life Story: Marie de l’Incarnation

  • Marie de l’Incarnation and Claude Martin. From Mother to Son: The Selected Letters of Marie de L’incarnation to Claude Martin. Translated by Mary Dunn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

Life Story: Marie-Josèphe Angélique

  • Beaugrand-Champagne, Denyse and Leon Robichaud. “Torture and Truth: Angelique and the Burning of Montreal.” Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History. Accessed April 27, 2018. http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/angelique/contexte/laville/indexen.html.
  • Cooper, Afua. The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal. (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2007).
  • Greer, Allan. The People of New France. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017).

Life Story: Marie Rouensa

  • Morrissey, Robert Michael. Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country. (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).
  • The Randolph Society. “Marie Rouensa.” Accessed August 11, 2023. https://randolphsociety.org/marie-rouensa/.
  • Sleeper-Smith, Susan. Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes. (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001).

Suggested Reading

Books and Articles

Beeman, Genny. “Transgender History in the United States.” In Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community, ed. by Laura Erickson-Schroth. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Available online at: https://www.umass.edu/stonewall/sites/default/files/Infoforandabout/transpeople/genny_beemyn_transgender_history_in_the_united_states.pdf

Breen, Louise. Converging Worlds: Communities and Cultures in Colonial America. (New York: Routledge, 2012).

Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

Burkholder, Mark A. and Lyman L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Bush, Barbara. “African Caribbean Slave Mothers and Children: Traumas of Dislocation and Enslavement Across the Atlantic World.” Caribbean Quarterly 56, no. 1/2 (2010): 69-94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40654953.

Clinton, Catherine and Michele Gillespie, eds. The Devil’s Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

Davis, Natalie Zemon. Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

Evans, Sara M. Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).

Fabend, Firth Haring. New Netherland in a Nutshell: A Concise History of the Dutch Colony in North America. (Albany, NY: New Netherland Institute, 2012).

Foster, Thomas A., ed. Women in Early America. (New York: New York University Press, 2015). 66-94.

Gauderman, Kimberly. Women’s Lives in Colonial Quito: Gender, Law, and Economy in Spanish America. (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2003).

Greer, Allan. Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

——— . The People of New France. 2nd rev. ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).

Lamphier, Peg A. and Rosanne Welch, eds. Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection, Volume 1. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2017).

Levine, Frances. Doña Teresa Confronts the Spanish Inquisition: A Seventeenth-Century New Mexican Drama. (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016).

Lipman, Andrew. The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).

Marie de l’Incarnation and Claude Martin. From Mother to Son: The Selected Letters of Marie de l’Incarnation to Claude Martin. Translated by Mary Dunn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

Maskiell, Nicole Saffold. Bound by Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of a Northern Gentry. (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2022).

Morgan, Jennifer L. Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

———. Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2021).

Mosterman, Andrea C. Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York. (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2021).

Otto, Paul. The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006).

Romney, Susanah Shaw. New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-Century America. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

Ross, J. Andrew and Andrew D. Smith. Canada’s Entrepreneurs: From the Fur Trade to the 1929 Stock Market Crash. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011).

Steele, Ian K. Warpaths: Invasions of North America. (Bridgewater, NJ: Replica Books, 2000).

Taylor, Alan and Eric Foner. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. (New York: Penguin Books, 2002).

Townsend, Camilla. Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2006).

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Goodwives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750. (New York: Random House, 1986).

Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

White, Sophie. Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019).

Woloch, Nancy. Women and the American Experience. 5th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2011).

Websites

New Netherland Institute: http://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/

  • The main website of an institute dedicated to promoting a broader public awareness of the history of Dutch New Netherland.

Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library: http://www.leventhalmap.org/

  • A collection of 7,700 digitized maps dating from the 1400s to the present, as well as lesson plans for use with students.

Poetry Foundation: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/

  • An archive of poetry, short biographies, and scholarly articles that spans centuries of American and world history.

Poets.org: http://www.poets.org/

  • An archive of poetry, short biographies, and scholarly articles that spans centuries of American and world history.

Voyages, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database: http://www.slavevoyages.org/

  • A fully searchable online database of over 36,000 Atlantic slaving voyages that also provides analysis of the data and educational materials.

Virtual Museum of New France: https://www.historymuseum.ca/virtual-museum-of-new-france/

  • A fully interactive and comprehensive history of the founding and growth of New France by the Canadian Museum of History.

Torture and Truth: Angelique and the Burning of Montreal: http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/angelique/contexte/laville/indexen.html