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Christofel Colonus John Ogilby America (London, 1671) More than one hundred years before the first English colony was founded at Jamestown in 1607, Spanish explorers and settlers had established a network of thriving communities in the Caribbean and were preparing to embark on a spectacular enterprise to conquer and colonize much of the Western Hemisphere. They, like Christopher Columbus, were guided by two powerful beliefs: first, that these unknown lands held wonders and riches encountered only in poetry and legends; and second, that they, as loyal subjects of the Crown, had a duty to spread the Christian gospel to pagan peoples. Sustained by this relatively simple faith, they created and recorded in countless documents a complex texture of social, economic, and cultural systems in Spanish America, stretching from Chile and Argentina in the south to the northern frontier of New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and California. |