PART I.
PERIOD OF DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT,
1492–1765.

 

 

CHAPTER I.
discovery.

THE AMERICAN INDIANS.

Specimen of Indian Pottery,
from a mound near Pecan Point,
Arkansas. Now in the National
Museum at Washington.

Diego de Landa’s Maya
Alphabet.

1. The Aborigines.—When America became known to Europe at the end of the fifteenth century, it was by no means an uninhabited country. Wherever the discoverers effected a landing, and however far they pushed inland, they found themselves confronted by native inhabitants of varying degrees of savagery. Hence the settlement of both Americas, from first to last, has been dependent upon the supplanting of one race by another or upon their intermixture.

2. Characteristics of the Indians.—The original inhabitants of both continents have been known as Indians, in consequence of a mistake made by Columbus (§§ 5-7). The North American Indians were fiercer foes than the native Mexicans and Peruvians whom the Spaniards, under Cortez and Pizarro, overcame, and with whom they intermarried. We know, however, from linguistic characteristics, that all the aborigines from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn belonged to the same race. How they first came to America is a matter of dispute; but their main peculiarities are well understood. In Peru and Mexico they had made some progress toward civilization. They constructed good roads, were not unskillful artisans, and had even learned some astronomy. But they lived in large communal groups under their chiefs, and had made slight advance in the art of government; hence they fell an easy prey to small bodies of Spaniards. Similar in character to the Mexicans, but inferior to them, were the Pueblos and Cliff-dwellers of the region of New Mexico, Arizona, and Lower California, as well as the Natchez Indians of the Lower Mississippi Valley. Most of the North American Indian tribes lived in villages of wigwams and had a primitive form of government. In each village there was a communal, or “long,” house, in which clan business was transacted. In a few cases this “long” house gave shelter to a whole tribe. These Indians, except among the Southern tribes mentioned below, were chiefly in what is called the hunter and fisher state, although they frequently practiced a rude form of agriculture. Sometimes, however, as in the case of the Digger Indians, they subsisted mainly on roots.[1]

Inscription Rock, New Mexico.

3. The Principal Indian Tribes.—Of the North American Indians with whom our own forefathers came chiefly in contact, there were four principal groups, commonly known as the Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Southern Indians, and the Dakotahs. The Algonquins were the most numerous, although it is doubtful if at any time they numbered ninety thousand. Ranging through the vast forests from Kentucky to Hudson Bay and from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, they were naturally in frequent conflict with the whites. Opposed to these, and wedged into the very center of their territory, were the fierce Iroquois, the craftiest of their race, whose tribal names—Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas—are inseparably connected with rivers and lakes in the State of New York. They formed a loose confederacy, called by the whites the “Five Nations.”[2] The Southern Indians showed a milder disposition and were given to agriculture and rude manufactures. Of these the Creeks were the most advanced; beneath them in point of civilization were the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Seminoles.[3] West of the Mississippi ranged the wandering Dakotahs or Sioux, fierce fighters, whose descendants have given trouble down to our own day. Of the inferior tribes living in the extreme north of the continent, we need take no special account.

PRE-COLUMBIAN DISCOVERERS.

Cliff Dwellings on the
Rio Mancos.

Old Mill at Newport, long
erroneously supposed to have been
built by the Northmen.

Long House of the Iroquois.

4. The Northmen.—While Columbus and his followers were the real discoverers of America in the sense that they first made it generally known to Europe, it is practically certain that they were not the first Europeans to set foot on the new continent. It is possible that seamen from France and England preceded Columbus, but there is much better reason to believe that Scandinavians from Iceland, having first discovered Greenland, visited the North American mainland as early as the year 1000. Evidence to this effect is found in the so-called Sagas of the Northmen, poetic chronicles based on tradition and dating from about two centuries after the events which they recorded. According to these stories, navigators were driven south from Greenland to a strange shore about the year 985. Fourteen years later, Leif, son of Eric the Red, having introduced Christianity from Norway into Iceland and Greenland, visited the newly discovered land, with thirty-five companions. They wintered in a country which, from its abundance of wild grape vines, they called Vinland, built some houses, and then returned to Greenland with a cargo of timber. Several other voyages were made thither and a temporary colony was established, the latest mention of a voyage dating from about the middle of the fourteenth century. Such is the story of the Sagas. The main features of the account are generally held to be correct, but the location of the Northmen’s Vinland cannot be determined, and no archæological remains have been found on the American continent to corroborate the Sagas.[4]

North Pueblo of Taos.

Specimen of Saga Manuscript.

The Dighton Rock in Massachusetts,
long supposed to bear an inscription left by the Northmen.
The figures are now known to be Indian hieroglyphics.

 

COLUMBUS AND THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS.

Columbus.[6]

5. Columbus and the Indies.—That Christopher Columbus[5] of Genoa is entitled to the honor of being considered the real discoverer of America is clearly proved by the fact that he was the first person who planned to sail westward over the unknown ocean, and that he never faltered in the prosecution of his heroic design. It is true that he made the mistake of thinking he would come to India rather than to a new continent, and that he underestimated the distance he would have to sail; but such mistakes were natural in view of the lack of geographical knowledge at that time. It was generally believed, by priest and layman alike, that the earth was flat, and good Scripture warrant was produced for the belief. Yet since the days of Aristotle a few scholars had concluded, from the evidences furnished by eclipses and from other reasons, that the earth was spherical in form. Columbus had obtained this idea from some source and seems to have been fascinated by the possibilities it opened. Oriental commerce, especially that from India, was then of great consequence to Italian merchants; and if the recent military successes of the Turks should close the overland routes to the East, it was thought this commerce would be destroyed. But Columbus held that, if the earth were round, India could be reached by sailing westward, and thus trade could be carried on in spite of the Turks.

Toscanelli’s Map (simplified)

6. Motives and Difficulties of Columbus.—Columbus was urged on by patriotism, desire of gain, missionary hopes of Christianizing distant lands, and a natural enthusiasm for heroic enterprise. He corresponded with Toscanelli, a learned Italian, who sent him letters and a map, but underestimated greatly the distance to be traversed. This mistake was fortunate, as Columbus would probably never have secured a hearing had he proposed to take a voyage of ten thousand miles,—the actual distance between Spain and the East Indies. As it was, for a long time he applied in vain to princes and potentates—who alone could sustain the expenses of such an expedition—for permission and means to make a voyage which he believed to be about three thousand miles in length. The record of his hopes and fears, his successes and reverses, reads like a heroic poem. Fortunately for him, the Portuguese had been making voyages down the African coast, with their eyes fixed on the Eastern trade, and the Spaniards, strong through the recent union of Castile and Aragon and the conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada, had been aroused to eager rivalry in maritime enterprise. At the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish monarchs, Columbus eloquently pleaded his cause. Success at last crowned his efforts. Under the patronage of Isabella he sailed from the port of Palos, with a fleet of three vessels, on the 3d of August, 1492.

Ships of the Time of Columbus.

7. Voyages of Columbus.—Within a month the adventurers had left the Canaries and were traversing the unknown ocean. As the days went by the crews became restless, but the dauntless resolution of Columbus prevented mutiny. Finally, after a fortunate change of course to the southwest, the great navigator saw a light ahead, on the evening of October 11, and the following morning he found that an island had been reached. It was probably Watling’s Island, one of the Bahama group, though the identity of the landing place has been a matter of much dispute.[7] On this first voyage Columbus coasted along the northern side of Cuba, and also discovered the island now known as Hayti. Then, after losing his largest ship and suffering many other trials, he returned to Spain, confident that he had reached islands off the coast of India. The Spanish sovereigns received him with great respect and pomp, and soon sent him back to take possession of his discoveries in the name of Spain. Unfortunately, there was little or no wealth to be obtained from the new possessions except by capable colonists, and Columbus was not fitted to govern dependencies. So great did the opposition to him become that he was arrested some years later, on account of charges of extortion and cruelty brought by his followers, and was sent to Spain in irons. He was soon released, however, and undertook his fourth and last voyage. The results of his last three expeditions were not important. He succeeded in exploring more of Cuba, and in discovering Jamaica. He reached also the mouth of the Orinoco, and was much puzzled to account for its size, which was too great for an island river. On his last voyage he coasted the shores of Central America, in a vain search for a waterway to India. He found no strait, but did find an isthmus; and when he heard reports of a vast body of water lying on the other side of the land, he thought that it must be the Indian Ocean. Thus he was confirmed in his error with regard to the nearness of India, and doubtless cherished his delusion to his death. After his fourth voyage he returned to Spain, and died there in 1506, in poverty and obscurity.

Sebastian Cabot.

8. The Cabots and the English Title.—Almost immediately after Columbus’s first voyage, Pope Alexander VI. issued a bull dividing the non-Christian portion of the world into two parts: Spain to have all that she might discover west of a line to be drawn one hundred leagues west of the Azores; and Portugal all that she might discover east of it. In the following year the rival nations fixed the line at three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. Aroused by these events, Henry VII. of England, who was laying the foundations of Tudor greatness, granted a license of exploration to John Cabot, an Italian then living in Bristol. This seaman landed somewhere near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, in 1497. Accounts of the voyage are unsatisfactory; and those of the voyage of 1498, supposed to have been made under the command of Cabot’s son Sebastian,[8] are still more vague. That the Cabots did make northerly discoveries on which the English based their right to colonize North America is, however, quite certain.

9. Other Successors of Columbus.—The discovery of the West Indies, as the new islands were named in consequence of Columbus’s mistake, naturally gave a great impetus to exploration. In 1497–98 the Portuguese under Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached the real India, the goal of their desires. In the last year of the same century another Portuguese, Gaspar Cortereal, explored a good deal of the North American coast, and in a few years Newfoundland was much frequented by fishermen, especially from France and England.[9] Little was known, however, about the geography of the new world. Many strange errors were current respecting it, and some years passed before it was given a name. One of the errors was that North America was a projection of Asia, which was not disproved until 1728, when the Russian navigator Vitus Bering sailed from the Pacific into the Arctic Ocean. This error had much to do with the delay in furnishing the two continents with names. By a curious chain of circumstances, too, the name finally settled upon did not do honor to Columbus.

Americus Vespucius.

10. The Name “America.”—Among the early successors of this great explorer was another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, or, in the Latin form then current, Americas Vespucius.[10] Little is known of him or his voyages, but it is clear that he was one of the first Europeans after Columbus to visit the northern coast of South America, and that in 1504 he wrote an account of his adventures. This account circulated as far as the college town of St. Dié in the Vosges Mountains, and was there printed with an introduction by one of the professors, Martin Waldseemüller by name, who proposed that, since now a fourth division of the earth’s inhabited surface must be named, this should be known as America, in honor of Americus Vespucius, who was supposed to have discovered it. There appears to have been no intention to slight Columbus, whose voyage to the Orinoco was probably not widely known. At any rate, the suggestion was followed, first as regards South America, later with regard to both continents.

Balboa.

11. Balboa’s Discovery of the Pacific.—Geographical knowledge was much advanced by the discovery of the Pacific Ocean by Vasco Nuñez de Balboa[11] in 1513. This brave Spaniard had sought the New World for the sake of wealth, but had met with many difficulties. Lured by tales told by the natives of Panama of a large ocean and lands abounding in gold beyond the mountains, he made his way to the top of the Cordilleras, and thence beheld a great sea to the south of him, which he called the South Sea, a name long retained by English writers. It is the irony of fate that in the best-known reference in English literature to this discovery,—in the famous sonnet by Keats,—the honor of making it should have been transferred to Cortez, who had celebrity enough of his own.

Magellan.

12. The Voyage of Magellan.—The name Pacific was given to the great ocean by the most glorious of Columbus’s successors, the Portuguese Fernãdo de Magalhães,[12] better known as Magellan. In 1519, while in the service of Spain, he followed the coast of South America, hoping to find a strait that might lead into the South Sea. Late in the next year he discovered the strait that bears his name, and sailed into the great ocean to which he gave the name Pacific, on account of its peaceful character. This name was ironical so far as his own career was concerned; for one of his five crews mutinied, one ship was cast away and another abandoned him, and he himself was killed in an encounter with the natives of the Philippine Islands. But he had won a glorious immortality, although it was really the survivors of his crews that finally made their way around the Cape of Good Hope and completed the first circumnavigation of the globe.

Ponce de Leon.

De Soto.

13. Spanish Conquests.—Meanwhile a Spaniard, Ponce de Leon,[13] had discovered Florida in 1512 and had found the perfect climate, but not the gold and silver and fountain of youth he sought. His attempt nine years later to establish a colony there was a complete failure. Success attended, however, the expedition of Hernando Cortez for the conquest of Mexico (1519–1521), and similar good fortune befell that of Francisco Pizarro for the subversion of Peru (1532). The New World was rapidly alluring the Spaniards, who made many explorations. For example, Cabeza de Vaca, an officer in Panfilo de Narvaez’s unfortunate expedition to the Gulf coast, wandered in the interior regions a long while, and finally emerged on the Mexican border, with marvelous tales of what he had seen and heard (1536). These tales caused the Viceroy of Mexico, Mendoza, to send a certain friar to investigate them; and, upon the facts and the numerous errors contained in the friar’s report, hopes were founded that induced the sending out of a large force under Francisco Vasquez Coronado (1540–1542). This expedition conquered many pueblo villages of the Southwest, but obtained no gold or silver, and, after struggling as far north as Kansas, ended in a disconsolate retreat. At about the same time another expedition was moving westward from Florida through the Gulf region, under the command of Hernando de Soto (1539–1542). This gallant man pushed northwest across the mountains and discovered the Tennessee River, and later the Mississippi; but he died soon after, and his followers abandoned their enterprise. Thus by the middle of the century no permanent Spanish settlement had been made in what is now the United States. Nor was Spain long to have things her own way.

 

THE FRENCH EXPLORERS.

Jacques Cartier.

14. French Discoveries.—As we have seen, French fishermen were among the first to reach Newfoundland. A little later the voyage of Giovanni da Verrazano, a native of Florence, under commission of Francis I., showed the dawning interest in the New World taken by the French court. In 1524 Verrazano explored much of the Northern coast as far as Newfoundland. In 1534 and 1535 Jacques Cartier[14] discovered Prince Edward Island, sailed up the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and penetrated the great river as far as the present site of Montreal, fancying most of the time that he was rapidly nearing China.[15] A few years later he came again, bringing colonists with him; but the enterprise did not succeed, and in consequence was soon abandoned.

15. Arrival of Huguenots.