This portrait of a Cherokee man was painted during a peace delegation from the Indigenous nation to meet the King of England
Seeing America – Topic: European colonies in the Americas
This manuscript contains about 180 illustrations of people, plants, and animals—including a unicorn
Codex Canadensis
The Levy-Franks were a prosperous Jewish family in early 18th century New York. Their portraits help to reveal a closely-connected British Empire spanning the Atlantic. The Levy-Franks supplied the British during the Seven Years' War, carried goods on Caribbean trade routes, and possibly brought enslaved people to the Americas.
APUSH: KC-2.2.I.A, KC-2.2.I.B
APUSH: KC-2.2.I.A, KC-2.2.I.B
Teaching guide
Six Portraits of the Levy-Franks family
In New Spain, Indigenous people, Africans, Spaniards, and their descendants mixed together. Casta paintings show one way Spaniards attempted to place these mixed-race families and their children into a hierarchy, although the realities of race and status in Spanish colonial society were much more complex.
APUSH: KC-2.1.I.A
APUSH: KC-2.1.I.A
Teaching guide
Constructing identity in the Spanish colonies ...
A Jewish family in New York and London during the French Indian Wars
A Jewish Family in Early New York
Re-examining a founding American myth
The making of an American myth
Between the Seven Years' War and the Revolutionary War, conflict between Indigenous people, American colonists, and British imperial officials intensified as American colonists encroached on Indigenous land. Benjamin West's painting of a popular myth helps to illustrate the changes in this period.
APUSH: KC-2.1.I.C
APUSH: KC-2.1.I.C
Teaching guide
Benjamin West, Penn’s Treaty with the ...
Among the earliest European representations of North America
Europe’s earliest views of America
De Soto led hundreds of soldiers on the first European expedition into what became the United States.
Spanish conquest and U.S. expansion
De Bry's images of the Americas affirm and assert a sense of European superiority.
Picturing America
West turned the conventions of history painting on their head by choosing a contemporary subject and dress.
Painting the French and Indian War
We think of Puritans aesthetics as restrained and humble, but this elaborate cupboard proves otherwise.
Thought the Puritans were dour?
This mesa in New Mexico is believed to hold one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the US.
The mission church at Acoma Pueblo
Forget what you think you know about Puritan fashion and get ready to Freake.
The quiet ostentation of early Puritans
The artist used Spanish coins as models for the coats of arms woven into this basket in California, then New Spain.
When California was Spanish
This outfit was likely made for a British lieutenant and gifted to him in a ritual exchange to show mutual respect.
Fashioning diplomacy
These challenging paintings visually separate Indigenous Americans from the Spanish elite; most were exported.
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