The broadening of the world-system, which involves the geographic expansion into previously external areas and integration of new economies into its network of economic relationships, is represented in world-system scholarship by two competing views. On the one hand, Wallerstein and his associates treat incorporation as being specifically contingent on the routine and systematic economic exchange for durable goods produced in the previously external area to the benefit of the core. In contrast, Hall and Chase-Dunn contend that incorporation is a synchronous process that takes different forms depending on the relative locations within the hierarchical world-economy of both the previously external areas and the “incorporating” area. Using the sixteenth-century North American Southeast as an episode of incorporation, this study examines the contact relationship between early European explorers and the indigenous groups in the formerly external area. My goal is to illuminate more fully how contact may permanently alter the social organization and relations within the region and, consequently, the form taken by subsequent integration into the world-system.