16th century in North American history

The 16th century in North American history is dominated by the rapid progress of European colonization.

Calusa culture flourishes in Key Marco, Florida. Their culture is known for its intricate woodcarving. Navajo people learned loom-weaving techniques from Pueblo people.

André Thevet's The new found worlde, or Antarctike is an English translation of Thevet's Les singularitez de la France antarctique, first published in 1558.

André Thevet was a Franciscan friar who accompanied Villegagnon in 1555 when he went to establish a French colony on the coast of Brazil. He was there for only a few months, but in that time gained a considerable knowledge of the manners and customs of the natives. His observations were considered unreliable by some of his contemporaries and there is still some doubt as to whether or not his accounts can be regarded as accurate.

By his translation of Thevet, Thomas Hacket presented the first account in English of a curious American custom – the smoking of tobacco by means of burning leaves wrapped in a small cylinder (the cigar), or in a pipe: "Their maner to use it, is this, they wrappe a quantitie of this herbe being dry in a leafe of a palme tree which is very great, and so they make rolles of the length of a cãdle, and than they fire the one end, and receive the smoke therof by their nose and by their mouthe." Thevet's account of this practice is the first clear description of the cigar and its use.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert published his book, A discourse of a discoverie for a new passage to Cataia. This book, which is an essay to prove the practicality of the Northwest Passage, was written partly in support of Gilbert's still unanswered petition of November 1566 for privileges "concerning the discoveringe of a passage by the North west to go to Cataia", partly to reassure his elder brother, Sir John, who, having no issue, was adverse to Sir Humphrey embarking personally on such an enterprise. Gilbert had shown his friend, the poet George Gascoigne, "sundrie profitable and verie commendable exercises which he had perfected painefully with his owne penne"; one of these "exercises" was the Discourse. Gascoigne edited it and published it in 1576, probably without Gilbert's authority. In 1583 Gilbert landed at Newfoundland and there founded the first British colony in North America. After a voyage of discovery along the south coast he sailed for home, but was lost in a storm off the southern Azores. A year later his patents were renewed in the name of his half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh.

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