Only two years after Coronado’s expedition to what is now New Mexico, Spanish officials conducted an inquiry into the effects of the expedition on the native people Coronado encountered. The documents that record that investigation are at the heart of this book. These depositions are as fresh as today’s news. Published both in the original Spanish and in English translation, they provide an unparalleled wealth of information about the Indians’ responses to the Europeans and the attitudes of the Europeans toward the native peoples.

This magisterial volume unveils Richard and Shirley Flint’s deep research into the Latin American and Spanish archives in an effort to track down the history of the participants who came north with the Coronado expedition in 1540. Through their investigation into thousands of legal cases, financial records, proofs of service, letters, journals, and other primary materials, they provide social and cultural documentation on the backgrounds of hundreds of individuals who made up the Coronado expedition and show that the expedition was the first phase of a three-phase effort to complete the Columbian project: to delineate a westward route to Asia from Spain.

Cundill History Prize Finalist Longman–History Today Prize Finalist Winner of the Roland H. Bainton Book Prize “Meticulous environmental-historical detective work.” —Times Literary Supplement When Europeans first arrived in North America, they faced a cold new world. The average global temperature had dropped to lows unseen in millennia. The effects of this climactic upheaval were stark and unpredictable: blizzards and deep freezes, droughts and famines, winters in which everything froze, even the Rio Grande. A Cold Welcome tells the story of this crucial period, taking us from Europe’s earliest expeditions in unfamiliar landscapes to the perilous first winters in Quebec and Jamestown. As we confront our own uncertain future, it offers a powerful reminder of the unexpected risks of an unpredictable climate. “A remarkable journey through the complex impacts of the Little Ice Age on Colonial North America...This beautifully written, important book leaves us in no doubt that we ignore the chronicle of past climate change at our peril. I found it hard to put down.” —Brian Fagan, author of The Little Ice Age “Deeply researched and exciting...His fresh account of the climatic forces shaping the colonization of North America differs significantly from long-standing interpretations of those early calamities.” —New York Review of Books

Originally published as a hardback in 2003.

Originally published: Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2005.