This seminar will explore the earliest known accounts of indigenous music in Canada and environs. The body of evidence for this neglected topic comes in the form of travel accounts by European explorers, from Jacques Cartier to Martin Frobisher. The seminar will focus on descriptions and depictions of dance music. Beyond Canada, a good number of musical accounts exist for the Caribbean, Brazil, and parts of what is now the United States. The sum total of pertinent writings covers nearly every major European language, ranging chronologically from Fernández de Oviedo’s 1534 Historia general to Theodor de Bry's monumental America (1590–98). Other considerations will include the impact of 1) medieval travel literature, such as Prester John’s Travels, and 2) emerging European dance literature, both treatises and printed music, on sixteenth-century accounts of music in the New World.