successfully urging his Indian allies to help him push farther west.
All his battles with the Five Nations were not victories, for the
Iroquois were fiercely stubborn foes. However Champlain forced his way
to Lake Ontario and Niagara. He ascended the Ottawa and visited Lakes
Nipissing and Huron, blazing a trail west for the beaver traders to
follow. Because of his tireless efforts in the western wilderness the
economy of the new country rested solidly on the fur trade for many
years, and the beaver rightfully came to occupy a prominent place in
the Canadian coat of arms.
Samuel de Champlain became the first Governor of French Canada, the
ruler of all New France. But he didn’t find the western sea, or a
passage to China.
He did force the Five Nations of the Iroquois into alliances with the
enemies of the French, the incoming Dutch fur traders who furnished the
savages with guns, and then with the English. The story of the brutal
border wars that resulted is in large measure the story of the colonial
struggle for most of the American continent.
V
_England Moves to Extend Her Realm_
England came of age in the sixteenth century. Labor troubles helped to
bring this about.
When the tenants on demesne land asserted their right to sell their
labor to the best advantage, the lords in turn claimed their right to
use their lands to the best advantage. Since profitable sheep farming
required fewer laborers than ploughing and reaping, less and less
acres were kept in cultivation by the lords. Frustrated and starving,
the tenants were forced to abandon their homes and seek precarious
employment in the towns and cities.
But feudalism retreated before this shift to community life and
a nation of five million restless people emerged from its former
agricultural isolation. Although the sheep farmers and wool merchants
improved their capital fortunes at the expense of the poor laborers,
they had notwithstanding built up a great national industry. England at
last had something to sell!
In 1553 an expedition carrying woolens for trade with the Tartars
attempted unsuccessfully to reach Cathay by a northeast polar passage.
Defeated by ice and death, a surviving remnant did nevertheless manage
to reach the White Sea and to journey south into Russia to Moscow.
There they made a trade agreement of sorts with Ivan IV, called “the
Terrible.”
The merchant adventurers of England promptly set up the Muscovy Company
to handle what looked like a promising commerce with Russia and through
that country with the caravans of Persia. But the English never found
the Russians rewarding as either customers or middlemen. While their
czar was willing to sell furs, felts and naval stores, or wax and
honey, he wasn’t particularly interested in buying coarse woolens. His
subjects wore fur.
The subjects of the czar did indeed indulge themselves in both the
beauty and warmth of fur.
Except for the summer months Russians of quality went about in all
manner of furred luxury. From bearskin, lynx, squirrel, beaver, fox and
marten were fashioned their capes and bonnets, as well as their fine
tailored coats sporting decorative braid loops and toggles. Women wore
handsomely brocaded velvet coats lined and trimmed with expensive fur.
Nowhere in the western world did royalty make such extravagant use of
precious pelts. The nobility of Russia affected enveloping gowns and
pelisses of sable, ermine and vair. Esteemed above all other pelts for
certain wear was black fox. Nobles used this rare fur to make up their
distinctive wide caps enclosing tall felted bonnets in the fashion of
Babylonian hats.
Millions of lesser folk in Russia, wearing caps and buskins, and
shedding cloth tunics for long waistcoats of fur in the winter,
consumed vast quantities of muskrat, wolf, lamb skin and reindeer hide.
Still, there were plenty of pelts for export. They were in fact the
country’s chief commodity. Caravans from Siberia brought their cargoes
of fine pelts to the great market towns of Novgorod and Moscow. Ivan
the Terrible personally enforced a tribute of thousands of sables each
year from the western Tartars across the Urals. The value of Russia’s
fur exports to Turkey, Persia and the countries of Christendom reached
into millions of rubles yearly.
Trade with the Russians, however, was very unsatisfactory to the
English. For one thing Dutch competition bid up the prices of Russian
fur. Some pelts “cost more there with you than we can sell them for
here” the London merchants wrote ruefully to their factors in Russia.
Then there was the fickleness and downright trickiness of the Russians
who being “very mistrustful ... doe not alwaies speake the trueth,
and think other men to bee like them.” To these woes were added the
enormous difficulties of the icy northern route. They were almost
insuperable; yet the taxes imposed on cargoes through the Baltic by the
King of Denmark were unbearably high. It was all very frustrating.
In the end proclamations were published in England against the use of
foreign furs--and these laws were not entirely sumptuary.
True, the Renaissance had brought fashion consciousness to the middle
class Englishman to such an extent that it was often difficult to
distinguish between a noble and a well-furred commoner. There was
urgent need for proclamations to stop that. Often in the past such
proclamations had been necessary when the craze for furs mounted
inordinately. “Sabyls be for great estates” had been one historic royal
edict. Henry VIII, who decked himself lavishly with furs plundered from
the monasteries and indulged in cozily “furred nightgowns” for his
evening escapades, issued many a decree limiting the use of precious
pelts to the chosen few. Other monarchs had done the same thing.
Over and above this need for class distinction however, it irked the
relatively poor English royalty to be gouged in the market place for
one of its regal necessities.
From earliest Norman times imported furs had been used in England
to designate royal rank. Even before that, in the ninth and tenth
centuries, nobility and ranking clergy trimmed their garments with
beaver and fox. In the fourteenth century Edward III issued a decree
specifying ermine, symmetrically spotted with astrakan or other bits of
black, to be a royal fur. A whole set of heraldic tinctures was based
on fur. Ermine was represented by white flecked with black, variant
patterns and colors being termed ermines, erminois, pean and so forth.
Vair was shown as blue and white alternating in the manner of small
skins sewn together, some of its variants being counter-vair, potent
and counter-potent. Feudal lords of England had been inclined to treat
their equipage of furs as heirlooms, handing them down from generation
to generation.
The use of fur was so firmly embedded in English tradition that it
was not in the nature of things that the new restrictive laws now
promulgated would be accepted without protest. One English merchant put
it tellingly when describing presents of fur that had previously been
brought to Queen Elizabeth by a Russian ambassador.
“The Presents sent unto her Majesty were Sables, both in paires for
tippets, and two timbars, to wit, two times fortie, with Luzerns and
other rich furres. For at that time that princely ancient ornament of
furres was yet in use. And great pitie but that it might be renewed
especiall in Court, and among Magistrates, not only for the restoring
of an olde worshipful Art and Companie, but also because they be for
our Climate wholesome, delicate, grave and comely; expressing dignitie,
comforting age, and of longer continuance, and better with small cost
to be preserved, then these new silks, shagges and ragges, wherein a
great part of the wealth of the land is hastily consumed.”
Whether or not the merchant’s protest was heeded, it was in fact
prophetic in its suggestiveness.
The recent proclamations had decreed “that no furres shall be worn
here, but such as the like is growing here within this our Realme.”
Well, the “Realme” was about to be vastly extended.
* * * * *
Now that England was no longer in a state of complete commercial
dependence upon the continent, ingenuity at home and pluckiness abroad
were rising to meet the challenge. Participation in world affairs was
eagerly sought. While adventurers of purse formed companies to trade
overseas, venturers of person took a sudden interest in such things as
ship design and ordnance. With an eye on plunder as well as legitimate
commerce shipwrights were trained to turn out swift and manageable
craft of small burden, well gunned for oceanic warfare and easy to
maintain.
Of course Mary Tudor, the Catholic Queen of England who succeeded her
father Henry VIII, had prohibited her countrymen from sailing west to
America. It wouldn’t have pleased Philip II of Spain. He married her to
extend his empire, not to share it.
But Englishmen had tasted salt water and they liked it. They liked it
even more after seeing the American silver, fifty thousand pounds of
it, that Philip sent to London as a wedding present. When Mary died
in 1558 after a short but bloody reign and her Protestant sister,
Elizabeth, ascended the throne, there was no holding those who wanted
to sail west.
Elizabeth, herself, applied no restraints. Like the French king,
Francis I, she winked broadly enough when her own newly toughened
mariners pirated Spain’s shipping and disputed that country’s
ascendancy even on the Spanish main. The destiny of empire was
beckoning the English. John Hawkins, the slaver, and Francis Drake, the
privateer, were only the forerunners of captains of their stripe who
were to make their country the mistress of the seas.
In the beginning it was envy of Spain, a thirst for silver and gold,
and the quest for a trade passage to Cathay that drove the English
westward, just as it had the French before them. Colonization, except
as an eventual means to an end, had no part in the French scheme--nor
in the English. The primary objects other than the harassment of Spain
were the discovery of mines and a northwest passage.
Colonization was visualized, when at all, only as occupation--to hold
the route to the mines or to Cathay against the possibility of foreign
claims.
Not until an English venturer in America by the name of John Smith
challenged the wasteful search for gold and demanded the development
of the country’s more obvious resources did it begin to dawn on
the merchant adventurers of England that colonization might be a
commercially desirable end in itself.
And it was this same John Smith who demonstrated how trade with the
natives could be employed to get the country planted with Englishmen.
Along with the usual trade for pelts he bartered successfully for
Indian corn and other food stuffs. This kept the colonists alive until
they were “seasoned” to the new land; then came the profits from
organized fur trading to maintain them until agricultural settlement
could be effected with some degree of economic success.
Prior to the coming of John Smith the English ventures in America had
been one costly failure after another.
Among the earliest of these were the expeditions led by that enigmatic
Yorkshireman, Martin Frobisher. Reputedly a successful privateer, it
was also said that he knew how to hold his tongue. Maybe what he did
tell gained in importance thereby. It might account for the otherwise
unaccountable backing he obtained for three successive voyages to
America. Many thousands of pounds sterling were wasted on these
ventures by a usually hard-headed merchant named Michael Lok. A large
part of the expenditure was underwritten by the queen, herself, and
Elizabeth was not normally one to squander her silver.
Frobisher went out first in 1576 in search of a northwest passage.
He succeeded only in discovering the bay, or “strait” as he called
it, that bears his name before coming on “gold ore” in the form of
bright, black rocks. Since the samples must have proved worthless on
his return to England, his promise of a strait to Cathay was probably
very impressive. Certainly the fur-clad Eskimo he brought back from
the north side of the “strait” was accepted as an Asiatic. In any
event, back he went to America the next year with three ships and the
financial blessings of Lok’s newly formed Company of Cathay.
Martin Frobisher did some further exploring on this voyage, but not
enough it appears to learn that his strait was only a bay. It is all
very strange. An abundance of spiders in the region was taken as
convincing evidence that gold-bearing ore was close at hand. In the end
Frobisher loaded his ships with worthless black earth and returned to
England. What he said, or didn’t say, must have been doubly impressive
this time for the merchants evidently were not one whit discouraged.
They backed him with a fine fleet, fifteen ships, for a third voyage in
1578.
A large band of miners was sent along this time by the company, and
two hundred twenty men were provided for the purpose of planting a
settlement on the “strait” that would protect both the mines and the
route to Cathay. But, so anxious was everyone to dig for gold, the
necessary buildings never did get erected. Again it is not clear what
happened, but apparently all thought of settlement was abandoned.
Before the ice began to close in, Martin Frobisher set sail for home
with all his company and another three hundred tons of fool’s gold,
bankrupting the Company of Cathay.
Next there was Sir Humphrey Gilbert. He and his half-brother, Sir
Walter Raleigh, were the queen’s two favorite gallants among her
soldiers of fortune. Both were brave men and both were intensely
nationalistic. Sir Humphrey said that a man is “not worthy to live at
all, that for feare, or danger of death, shunneth his country service,
and his owne honour.”
Like other gentlemen marauders of England at the time Gilbert and
Raleigh practiced piracy abroad because it was considered both
patriotic and sportingly profitable to do so. They were particularly
jealous of Spain’s sea commerce and lent support to raids on that
country’s shipping with lucrative results. But when they personally
led forays against the silver fleet they were none too successful.
Humiliatingly enough, they were beaten off with severe losses.
Sir Humphrey, however, was good at drawing maps. Using a globe he
showed the queen how interminably long were the southern routes to the
Indian Ocean as compared with a great circle route to the northwest.
This was true enough in theory--only there was land and ice to block
the northern way. But Humphrey Gilbert didn’t let that bother him. He
drew in a convenient strait, and once a thing is drawn in detail on a
map it has a way of looking real, even to the artist who conceived it.
So the queen gave Gilbert a patent to “discover and inhabit” all the
land in the west not occupied by another Christian prince. In the
language of the time this meant to explore and occupy such land. And as
an incentive the patentee was given absolute title to all the country
he occupied, except of course for precious metals. One-fifth of that
went to the crown.
Sir Humphrey planned to occupy Newfoundland as a starter. It was
conveniently situated off the entrance to his strait--the Gulf of St.
Lawrence!
Newfoundland had natural advantages for colonization. Englishmen were
in fact already living there at some seasons--fishermen comfortably
occupying their well-lardered huts alongside their drying frames.
Domination of the fishing banks would surely prove profitable, Gilbert
thought. Naval stores were plenteous too, according to all reports.
And everyone knew that Newfoundland was as rich in furs as Muscovy.
Only a year or so earlier an English sea-captain, Richard Whitbourne,
bound for the Gulf of St. Lawrence to kill whales, had put in at
Trinity Harbor in Newfoundland. There he took so great a store of
bears, beaver, otter and seal that after killing a few fish he returned
forthwith to Southampton to sell his more profitable cargo. There were
few of the difficulties in taking these furs that impeded trade with
Russia.
However, when Gilbert took possession of Newfoundland at St. John’s in
1583, he showed small interest in fish, naval stores or furs.
Certainly, he was not much concerned with the potentials of the fur
trade. That there were “foxes, which to the Northward a little further
are black, whose furre is esteemed in some Countries of Europe very
rich: Otters, bevers and marternes,” he seems to have acknowledged. And
an American pine marten appears to have arrested his attention at least
fleetingly. “The Generall had brought unto him a Sable alive, which he
sent unto his brother Sir John Gilbert, knight of Devonshire.” But that
was all.
From the first hour of his arrival at Newfoundland, Humphrey Gilbert
showed deep interest only in metals. He commanded his miners to be
diligent, and they obediently discovered what he took to be copper
and silver. Excitedly loading one of his ships with a treasure trove
of this ore, Sir Humphrey postponed the planting of Newfoundland. He
sailed to discover other mines to the south under his patent.
But, unfortunately, he met with bad weather and his supply ship
foundered. Even after changing his course for England, storms plagued
his fleet. The “treasure” was lost, and Gilbert himself went down in
the sea after having gallantly refused to abandon the men aboard his
own leaking craft when he might have transferred to a safer consort
ship. “We are as near to heaven by sea as by land!” he cried out above
the tempest at the last.
Sir Walter Raleigh took over his half-brother’s patent. Since there was
no limit placed on the land to be explored and occupied, except that it
should not be already occupied by another Christian prince, Raleigh had
wide latitude in choosing a theatre for his operations. Newfoundland
didn’t appeal to him. It wasn’t the most favorable site for what he had
in mind.
The survivors of Sir Humphrey’s ill-fated expedition had been
thoroughly interrogated; obviously it wasn’t silver that had been mined
in Newfoundland. After all, precious metals didn’t come from the bleak
coasts of the north, but from the warmer regions of the south where
the Spaniards had discovered them. And that suited Raleigh’s purpose,
as much as the rising hope that a passage to the Indian Ocean might
also lie in those parts where Verrazano once claimed to have actually
sighted the other sea. Those southern coasts were near New Spain!
For, what Raleigh really had in mind was a site close to the route
of the Spanish treasure galleons. He wanted an English outpost, a
garrisoned base, within easy striking distance of the silver fleets.
That was the quickest way to riches and the surest means of destroying
the power of Spain. The Caribbean was the Spaniard’s Achilles’ heel.
The first step in the achievement of this purpose was to be the
planting of a colony.
A reconnaissance expedition, sent out by the southern route in 1584,
chose the vicinity of Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds near Hatteras for
the settlement. Curiously, however, this party failed to recognize the
poor harbor and stormy hazards of the location. Possibly it was just
the first agreeable site they came upon as they coasted north from the
borders of Spanish-held Florida. If they had gone on just a little
farther they would have found Chesapeake Bay, a likely spot indeed.
In that case Virginia, as Raleigh called the new country in honor
of his “virgin” queen, might have been successfully planted in the
sixteenth rather than the seventeenth century.
However the reconnaissance expedition suggested Roanoke Island, near
Cape Hatteras, bringing back glowing reports of the country, a few dark
pearls and a good quantity of soft furs. “Chamoys, Buffe, and Deere
skinnes” had been taken in trade with the friendly natives. A single
bright tin dish given in barter had gained twenty skins, each worth
all of a crown, and a copper kettle had gained as many as fifty. The
voyagers also brought back two of the native inhabitants who were as
anxious to please the white men with tales that found favor as was
Chief Donnacona of Canada when he was taken to France, and probably for
the same reasons.
Sir Walter Raleigh tried hard during the next three years to plant
a colony at Hatteras, sending out one expedition after another.
Everything failed. Storms contributed to the disasters as much as bad
leadership and worsening relations with the Indians. But, mainly, the
objectives were wrong.
It was the search for precious metals, the quest for a trade passage
through to the Indian Ocean, the harrying of Spain, all coupled with a
complete neglect of the country’s more obvious resources, that brought
defeat. No one thought of growing food or trading with the Indians. The
“colonists” were mostly fortune hunters, ex-soldiers and adventurers,
bent on finding El Dorado in one form or another.
All except one--he was Thomas Hariot, a precise man and an observant
one. Raleigh sent him out as geographer to the second expedition.
Noting the resources of the country, he listed among other things wine,
“medicinal” tobacco and furs as saleable exports. He made special
mention of the fur trade potential.
“All along the Sea coast,” Hariot wrote, “there are great store of
Otters, which being taken by weares and other engines made for the
purpose, wil yeeld good profit. We hope also of Marterne furres, and
make no doubt by the relation of the people, that in some places of the
countrey there are store, although there were but two skinnes that came
to our hands. Luzernes also we have understanding of, although for the
time we saw none.”
But even Hariot, along with Ralph Lane, the governor of the colony at
the time, listened gullibly to the tales of Indians who wanted to gain
favor. While Sir Richard Grenville, the admiral of the Virginia fleet,
raided the Spaniards in the West Indies, Lane and his men spent months
of fruitless search in the interior for white pearls or mines, and
followed many a river whose source might prove to be “near unto a sea.”
They explored north as far as the Chesapeake, entering the capes and
looking for a channel that might be the passage, while one of their
party, John White, made sketches of the region. The south side of the
bay thus became well known in England about 1590 when White’s work was
included in the first engraved map of Virginia published by Theodore de
Bry. What the Englishmen failed to understand at the time, because they
were more concerned with gold mines and channel passages, was that the
Chesapeake tidewater represented a storehouse of valuable fur--muskrat,
beaver, mink and otter--all in vast reserve.
Lane, however, was convinced that only “the discovery of a good mine
by the goodness of God, or a passage to the South Sea, or some way to
it, and nothing else, can bring this country in request to be inhabited
by our nation.” If only he had realized that within easy reach there
was far more quick gold in fur than the English would ever take out of
America in ore!
A last contingent of Raleigh’s colonists, which included some women and
children, provided one of history’s most mystifying episodes when the
entire colony simply vanished from Roanoke Island. Among them was the
first Christian child born in English Virginia, little Virginia Dare,
granddaughter of the colony’s new governor, John White, the artist.
The word “Croatan,” carved in “faire Romane letters” on a post of the
abandoned stockade, was the only clue to the lost colony ever found by
those who came later to search for it. A tribe of Indians by that name
lived on a near-by island. Even this proved futile however, and the
mystery has only darkened with the passing of the centuries.
Other English ventures in America also ended in failure. Beginning in
1585 Captain John Davis, an expert navigator, went out three times in
quest of a northwest passage to Cathay. He penetrated farther north
than anyone before him to discover the straits that bear his name,
never fully realizing that beyond lay only pack ice. Captain George
Weymouth followed Davis’ track in 1593, meeting eventual defeat.