Documents from Reading the American Past

Chapter 3

Introduction to the Documents

Native Americans, tobacco planters, servants, and slaves peopled the world of the seventeenth-century southern British colonies. Spanish New Mexico and Florida had few tobacco planters, but many more Indians and priests. Few of these people jotted down their activities, their thoughts, or their longings. Their experiences can nevertheless be glimpsed in rare private letters and more common official reports, court testimony, and political announcements. The documents that follow disclose tensions, conflicts, and pleasures of daily life in the seventeenth-century southern colonies.