Indians--First contact with Europeans--Historiography
America--Discovery and exploration--Historiography
America--Early accounts to 1600--History and criticism
Inventing Americans in the age of discovery
Introduction: encounter, invention, narration -- Narrating encounter: The book of John Mandeville -- Translation, compilation, and triangulation: Richard Eden's invention of English discovery -- Evolutions of racial discourse: George Best and the narration of English-Inuit encounters, 1576-1578 -- Bruites and conspiracies: Ralph Lane's narration of native counter-intelligence -- "[Y]et hee so demeaned himselfe": John Smith's confidence games -- Terror and tears in New England: gender, violence, victimhood, and American identity -- Conclusion: the significance of encounter from an early Americanist perspective.