You're listening to an airwave media podcast.

Ben Franklin's world is a production of Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios.

In fact, the Honeoshoni, they explicitly opposed the idea of capital punishment, which Keith was kind of so proud to be offering.

And they also opposed the idea of incarceration.

They said that John Cartledge had been a long time confined

and it was time for him to go free and that he would be welcomed back into the

community at Conestoga now that Keith had finally done what

needed to be done. Hello and welcome to episode 389 of Ben Franklin's world. The podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and

events of our early American past have shaped the present day world we live in.

And I'm your host, Liz Covert. Early North America was a diverse place. It was a place that

contained hundreds of indigenous nations and peoples who spoke at least 2,000 distinct languages prior to European contact.

Then in the early 16th century, Spain began to establish colonies on mainland North America

and they were followed by the French, the Dutch, the English, and the

forcible migration of enslaved Africans who represented at least 45 different

ethnic and cultural groups from within Africa. With such diversity, early North America

was also a place full of cross-cultural encounters.

So what did it look like when people of different

ethnicities, races, and cultures

interacted with one another.

How were the people involved in these cross-cultural

encounters able to understand and overcome their differences?

Nicole Eustace is an award-winning historian at New York University.

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