North/Central America
Misión San Francisco de la Espada
The Misión San Francisco de la Espada is one of the many churches that Spanish friars founded along the modern-day Southwestern United States. This area was a frontier-zone, bordering indigneous communities and British and French territories.
Misión San José y San Miguel de Aguayo
The San Jose Mission in San Antonio, Texas is one of the most complete complexes in the southwest. It was built in the mid-eighteenth century to evangelize approximately 300 indigenous people.Their tiny, two-room living quarters lined the interior walls of the complex.
Misión Santa Cruz de San Sabá
The ruins of the Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá are located in Menard, Texas. It once operated as a Spanish colonial church and military outpost. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Spanish friars established many such structures across the Southwestern United States.
Nuestra Señora de la Bahía del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga
This church was built as part of the larger project of indigneous evangelization, in which the Spanish Crown sent missionaries along the northern border of its North American possessions to establish churches and convert the natives.
La Misión de Corpus Christi de San Antonio de la Ysleta del Sur
Although the Spanish Crown claimed possession of the modern-day US borderlands, it was not able to send many settlers to the region. As a result, the priests and missionaries stationed there often took on both religious and government responsibilities.
Negro Slavery Described by a Negro
Ashton Warner lived in the British Caribbean colony of Saint Vincent in the early 1800s. He was raised free before being re-enslaved at the age of ten. In this passage, he describes his experience laboring on a sugar plantation.
The World: Map of N. & S. America
Matthaeus Seutter was an acclaimed German mapmaker in the early eighteenth century. He published maps that introduced the geography of the Americas to many people who would never set foot on the continents themselves.
Death Mask of Pancho Villa
Pancho Villa (1878-1923) was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution, which lasted from 1910-1920. The revolution began with the overthrow of President Porfirio Diaz, who had been in power for 31 years.
Museo Regional de Oriente
The Museo Regional de Oriente is a state-run history and anthropology museum in San Miguel, El Salvador. The complex that houses this institution began as a textile factory in the 1940s.
Iglesia Colonial de Conchagua
The Iglesia Colonial de Conchagua is one of the oldest churches in El Salvador. It stands in the shadows of the town’s namesake feature, the Conchagua volcano.