Spanish-led entradas—expeditions bent on the exploration and control of new territories—took place throughout the sixteenth century in what is now the southern United States. Although their impact was profound, both locally and globally, detailed analyses of these encounters are notably scarce. Focusing on several major themes—social, economic, political, military, environmental, and demographic—the contributions gathered here explore not only the cultures and peoples involved in these unique engagements but also the wider connections and disparities between these borderlands and the colonial world in general during the first century of Native–European contact in North America. Bringing together research from both the southwestern and southeastern United States, this book offers a comparative synthesis of Native–European contacts and their consequences in both regions. The chapters also engage at different scales of analysis, from locally based research to macro-level evaluations, using documentary, paleoclimatic, and regional archaeological data.

No other volume assembles such a wide variety of archaeological, ethnohistorical, environmental, and biological information to elucidate the experience of Natives and Europeans in the early colonial world of Northern New Spain, and the global implications of entradas during this formative period in borderlands history.

Clay Mathers is an archaeologist, the Executive Director of the Coronado Institute, and a research affiliate at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology in New Mexico. Jeffrey M. Mitchem is an associate archaeologist with the Arkansas Archeological Survey and a research associate professor at the University of Arkansas. Charles M. Haecker is the staff archaeologist for the National Park Service Intermountain Region-Heritage Partnerships Program.

“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 approach that is a first in the scholarly study of the sixteenth-century Spanish entradas.”—American Archaeology

"Any historian who seeks to engage the deep history of North America must, by necessity, deal with the often-unfamiliar research of our archaeology and anthropology colleagues. So this collection of essays comparing sixteenth-century Spanish colonial entradas (expeditions) . . . makes for a fantastic starting point.”—Western Historical Quarterly

“Despite an extensive documentary record and a century of archaeological investigations into Spanish entradas and Native-European contact sites in North America, a comparative synthesis has long remained elusive. This new collection admirably and effectively succeeds in filling in this formidable gap in Spanish borderlands culture history and research.”—Choice Reviews

“This volume moves Native people from the backdrop of history to play an active role in shaping the varied encounters set in motion by early Spanish entradas as well as later, more permanent colonial entanglements.”—KIVA

“This volume is a remarkable merger of original and analytical works focusing on the earliest Spanish expeditions into the New Mexico and Florida frontier.”—Southwestern American Literature

“This long-overdue contribution offers cutting-edge research into the nature and respective impacts of Spanish/native interactions in the sixteenth century. . . . it is destined to become a classic reference for serious researchers.”—Economic Botany

 “The value of this book lies in its use of rigorously collected archaeological, historical, and scientific data to investigate the many types of cultural entanglement and colonialism that occurred between European and Native peoples in the New World and the varying outcomes these held for the peoples involved. . . . [A]n outstanding piece of research.”—Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology

 “An important and needed contribution to studies of the Southwest and Colonial Mexico. One of its principal values rest in the interdisciplinary route it charts for historians. Yet its diverse approach offers more general readers a beneficial tool for understanding Southwestern and Southeastern history and the complexities of sixteenth-century colonization.”—Catholic Southwest

“This book represents the most comprehensive scholarly review of the sixteenth-century entradas yet written.”—Russell K. Skowronek, co-editor of Beneath the Ivory Tower: The Archaeology of Academia

“This book makes an important contribution to what will continue to be an active area of scholarship.”—Gregory A. Waselkov, author of A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813–1814