Electronic Resources

Parallel Histories: Spain, the United States, and the American Frontier

Parallel Histories: Spain, the United States, and the American Frontier includes some 55,000 images from the rare book, manuscript, map, and print collections of the Library of Congress and the National Library of Spain. Among the items available on the site are Columbus' letter of 1493 describing his first voyage to the New World; Naufragios [Shipwrecked], the account of the eight-year trek in the 1520s and 1530s by Alvar N Cabeza de Vaca from Florida to Mexico; Villagra's Historia de Nueva Mexico, the first Spanish history of New Mexico; and manuscript items from the Hans P. Kraus Collection of Hispanic American Manuscripts relating to Arredondo, Las Casas, Verrazano, Vespucci, and others. The site also includes rare maps showing the voyages and discoveries of De Soto, Coronado, Father Eusebio Kino, Father Junipero Serra, and other prominent Spaniards.