Type: Unpublished

PRIMARY DOCUMENT

Letters between King Philip III and Don Pedro de Zúñiga (1609–1610)

In the following excerpts, translated from the Spanish, King Philip III of Spain and his ambassador to London, Don Pedro de Zúñiga, exchange communiqués, many of them originally encoded, about the English colony at Jamestown. Zúñiga keeps the king informed of a frustrated English baron who may be interested in spying for Spain, of the activity surrounding the Second Charter, and of a huge English resupply mission—led by Sir Thomas Gates aboard the flagship Sea Venture—that appears to have been lost at sea. Zúñiga even provides the king regular updates on the situation of Sir Walter Raleigh.

PRIMARY DOCUMENT

Bayley Wyat’s Speech (December 1866)

In a December 1866 speech Bayley Wyat, a freedman, protests the closing the contraband camps in Yorktown. The camps were established during the American Civil War (1861–1865) as places of refuge for men and women who escaped from slavery to Union territory. Wyat argues that African Americans have a rightful claim to the land based on their service to the Union Army and their contribution as enslaved laborers to building the American economy.

PRIMARY DOCUMENT

“In wishing him well, he killed him”; excerpt from Relation of Juan Rogel (ca. 1611)

This excerpt, translated from the Spanish, is from the “Relation of Juan Rogel,” the original manuscript of which was lost but can be found paraphrased by Father Juan Sánchez Vaquero (b. 1548) in his unpublished history, Fundación de la Compañía de Jesús en Nueva España, 1571–1580. Father Juan Rogel, a Jesuit priest born in Pamplona, Spain, in 1519, here tells the story of the Virginia Indian Don Luís de Velasco (Paquiquineo), who accompanied the Spanish in 1561 to Spain, Mexico, and Cuba before returning with a mission to the Chesapeake Bay in an area the priests understood to be called Ajacán.

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