DISCOVERIES AND EARLY SETTLEMENTS.
(1492-1606.)
6. References.
Bibliographies.--Winsor, _Columbus_, and _Narrative and Critical History_,
I. xix-xxxvii, 33-58, 76-132, 369-444, II. 153-179, 205, III. 7-58, 78-84,
97-104, 121, 126, 184-218; Larned, _Literature of American History_, 50-68,
and _History for Ready Reference_, I. 54-79; Avery, _United States_, I.
376-403; Channing and Hart, _Guide_, §§ 81-96; also bibliographical
chapters in Bourne, Cheney, and Tyler, below.
Historical Maps.--No. 1, this volume (_Epoch Maps_, No. I); MacCoun;
Winsor, _Narrative and Critical History_, I., II.; H. Harrisse, _Discovery
of North America_, and _Découverte et Evolution Cartographique de
Terre-Neuve_; E. L. Stevenson, _Maps illustrating Early Discovery and
Exploration in America_; maps in _American Nation_ series (Bourne, Cheney,
and Tyler).
General Accounts.--On geographical knowledge of ancients, and pre-Columbian
discoveries: Winsor, _Narrative and Critical_, I. chs. i., ii.,; W. Wilson,
_American People_, I. ch. i.; Avery, I. chs. iii.-vi.; E. Cheney, _European
Background of American History_, chs. i.-v.--On discovery and settlement,
from Columbus to Jamestown: M. Creighton, _Age of Elizabeth_ (Epochs of
Modern History); R. Hildreth, _United States_, I. chs. i., iii.; G.
Bancroft, _United States_, I. chs. i.-v.; Winsor, _Narrative and Critical_,
II. chs. i.-vii., III. chs. i.-iv., and _Columbus_; Avery, I. chs.
vii.--xxi.; E. Channing, _United States_, I. chs. i.-v.; J. Doyle, _English
Colonies in America_, I. ch. iv.
Special Histories.--E. Bourne, _Spain in America_; Parkman, _Pioneers of
France in the New World_, 28-233, 296-309; Winsor, _Cartier to Frontenac_,
chs. i.-iii.; C. Baird, _Huguenot Emigration to America_; L. Tyler,
_England in America_, chs. i., ii. For lives of explorers, consult
bibliographies, above.
Contemporary Accounts.--Hakluyt, _Voyages_; Camden Society, _Publications_,
lxxxvii.; _Relation of Captain Gosnold's Voyage_ (1602); Breton, _Brief and
True Relation_ (1602); Pring, _Voyage for Discovery of North Part of
Virginia_ (1603); Rosier, _True Relation_ (1605); Amerigo Vespuccius,
_Letters._--Reprints: Prince Society, _Publications; American History told
by Contemporaries_, I. part ii.; J. Jameson, _Original Narratives of Early
American History; American History Leaflets_, 1, 3, 9, 13.
7. Pre-Columbian Discoveries.
Sidenote: The Scandinavian claim.
The Basques, Normans, Welsh, Irish, and Scandinavians are the principal
claimants for the honor of discovering America before Columbus; and there
are also believers in early African migrations to the western continent,
chiefly influenced by supposed ethnological and botanical evidences found
in South America. The Scandinavians make out the strongest case. Iceland,
so tradition runs, was first conquered by the Britons in the sixth century.
Then followed a succession of Danish and Irish settlements. But the Celts
were driven out by Ingolf, who led a colony of Norwegians thither in 875
and founded Reikjavik.
The ancient Norse sagas--oral traditions, none of which were fixed in
writing until the twelfth century, and most of them not until the
fourteenth--mention voyages to the west from Iceland, and the discovery of
new lands in that quarter as early as 876. In 985 Eric the Red is said to
have led colonies to this western land,--by this time called Greenland. The
following year (986) Bjarni Herjulfson claimed to have been driven by
contrary winds to a strange shore nine days' sail southwest from
Greenland,--"to a land flat and covered with trees." Then comes the
familiar story, that in the year 1000 Leif, son of Eric the Red, having
come from Norway and introduced Christianity into both Iceland and
Greenland, sailed away to the southwest with thirty-five companions, intent
on visiting the country which Bjarni had discovered before him. They
wintered, so the saga reads, "at a place where a river flowed out from a
lake," called the region Vinland because of wild grapes growing there,
"erected large buildings," and then set out for Greenland with a cargo of
timber,--a commodity much needed in the fishing colonies of the
less-favored North. It is related that other explorations succeeded this,
and that in 1007 a temporary settlement was formed in sunny Vinland, where
the colonists, nearly one hundred in number, "had all the good things of
the country, both of grapes and of all sorts of game and other things."
Trading voyages to the new country now became frequent, say the sagas, and
considerable shipments of timber were made from Vinland to Greenland. Eric
Upsi, a Greenland bishop, is alleged, on doubtful authority, to have gone
to Vinland in 1121; and in 1347 there is mention of a Greenland ship
sailing out there for a cargo of timber,--but this is the very last
reference to Vinland by the Norwegian bards.
Sidenote: It is shadowy, but not improbable.
An enormous mass of literature has been the outgrowth of these geographical
puzzles in the sagas, and many writers have ventured to identify every
headland and other natural object mentioned in them. The common theory
among the advocates of the Scandinavian claim is, that Vinland was
somewhere on the coast south of Labrador; but as to the exact locality,
there is much diversity of opinion. There may easily have been early
voyages to the American mainland south of Davis Straits by the hardy Norse
seamen colonized in Iceland and Greenland, and it is probable that there
were numerous adventures of that sort.
The sagas, like the Homeric tales, were oral narrations for centuries
before they were committed to writing, and as such were subject to
distortion and patriotic and romantic embellishment. It is now difficult to
separate in them the true from the false; yet we have other contemporaneous
evidence (Adam of Bremen, 1076) that the Danes regarded Vinland as a
reality. Pretended monuments of the early visits of Northmen to our shores
have been exhibited,--notably the old mill at Newport and the Dighton Rock;
but modern scholarship has determined that these are not relics of the
vikings, and had a much less romantic origin. It is now safe to say that
nowhere in America, south of undisputed traces in Greenland, are there any
convincing archæological proofs of these alleged centuries of Norse
occupation in America.
8. Early European Discoveries (1492-1512).
Sidenotes: American development begun with Columbus.
The race for India.
The idea of sailing westward to reach India not original with Columbus.
But even granting the possibility, and indeed the probability, of
pre-Columbian discoveries, they bore no lasting fruit, and are merely the
antiquarian puzzles and curiosities of American history. The development of
the New World began with the landing (Oct. 12, 1492) on an island in the
Bahamas, of Christopher Columbus, the agent of Spain. It was an age of
daring maritime adventure. India, whence Europe obtained her gold and
silks, her spices, perfumes, and precious stones, was the common goal. For
many centuries the great trade route had been by caravans from India
overland through Central Asia and the Balkan peninsula to Italy, the Rhine
country, the Netherlands, and beyond; but the raids of the fierce desert
tribes and the capture of Constantinople (1453) had closed this path, and
now the trade passed through Egypt. With improvements in the art of
navigation there arose a general desire to reach India by sea. Three
centuries before Christ, Aristotle had taught that the earth was a sphere,
and that the waters which laved Europe on the west washed the eastern
shores of Asia. Here and there through the centuries others advanced the
same opinion, and the map which the great Italian astronomer Toscanelli
sent to Columbus (1474) showed China to be but fifty-two degrees west of
Europe. The idea that by sailing west India could be reached, was therefore
quite familiar to the contemporaries of Columbus, although he stands in the
front as the one man who put his faith to the test. The mistake lay in the
current calculations regarding the size of the earth. Instead of being only
three thousand miles to the west, Asia was twelve thousand, and the
continent of America blocked the way. It is probable that Columbus went to
his grave still firm in the belief that he had reached the confines of
India,--indeed, the names he gave to the islands and to the strange people
who inhabited them stand as enduring evidence of his geographical error.
Sidenote: Pope Alexander's bull.
The Portuguese, on the other hand, sought India by the southeast passage,
around the continent of Africa, and had been creeping southward along the
African coast for several years before Spain sent Columbus to reach Asia by
the west. Thus in the race for India and the discovery of intermediate
lands, the Portuguese and the Spanish had adopted opposite routes. Pope
Alexander VI. now issued his famous bull (May 4, 1493), partitioning the
un-Christian world into two parts,--Spain to have lands west of an
imaginary meridian 100 leagues west of Cape de Verde islands, and Portugal
those to the east--a simple arrangement, on paper. Next year, by agreement,
the line was moved to 270 leagues westward, but it was still supposed to be
in mid-ocean. By this change, however, the eastern part of what is now
Brazil fell to Portugal.
Sidenote: England sends out John Cabot.
England, although still Catholic, was not disposed to allow Spain and
Portugal to monopolize between them those portions of the earth which
Europeans had not yet seen; and we are told that there was grievous
disappointment at the court of London because Spain had been the
path-breaker to the west. In 1497 John Cabot set sail from England armed
with a trading charter, to endeavor to reach Asia by way of the northwest.
He had knowledge of the exploit of Columbus, and may well have heard of the
Scandinavian discovery of Vinland. Early in the morning of the 24th of June
he sighted the gloomy headlands of Cape Breton,--the first known European
to make this important discovery. It is on record that "great honors" were
heaped upon the adventurous mariner upon his return to England, and that
the generous king gave "£10 to him that found the new isle"--the equivalent
of $700 or $800 of our money.
Sidenotes: Portugal reaches India by the southeast.
Sebastian Cabot's voyage.
The year 1498 was one of the most notable in the long and splendid history
of maritime discovery. Young Vasco da Gama, of Portugal, turned the Cape of
Good Hope, and gayly sailed his little fleet into the harbor of Calicut
(May 20). At last India had been discovered by the southeast passage:
Portugal had first reached the goal. In May, also, Columbus set forth upon
his third voyage, during which he first discovered the mainland of South
America; and in the same month John Cabot's second son, Sebastian, left
Bristol in the hope of finding the northwest passage, which his father had
failed to reach, and which was undiscovered until our own times (1850).
Icebergs turned Sebastian southward, and he explored the American shores
down to the vicinity of Chesapeake Bay. From this voyage sprang the claim
under which the English colonies in North America were founded.
Sidenote: Newfoundland as a colonial nucleus.
Three years later (1501) a Portuguese mariner, Gaspar Cortereal, explored
the American coast south of the Gulf of St. Lawrence for a long distance.
By 1504 we know that fishermen from Brittany and Normandy were at
Newfoundland, and from that time forward there appear to have been more or
less permanent colonies of fishermen there,~-French, Portuguese, Spanish,
and English,--with their little huts and drying scaffolds clustered along
the shores. Newfoundland proved valuable as a supply and repair station for
future explorers and colonizers. It was the nucleus of both French and
English settlement in America. By 1578 there were no less than one hundred
and fifty French vessels alone employed in the Newfoundland fisheries, and
a good trade with the Indians had been established.
Sidenote: Searching for a short cut through America.
The idea that America was but a projection of Asia possessed all the early
explorers; and indeed it was a century and a half later (1728) before
Bering sailed from the Pacific Ocean to the Arctic and proved that America
was insulated. There was another geographical error, which took even a
longer time to explode,--the notion that a waterway somewhere extended
through the American continent, uniting the Atlantic and the Pacific. John
Smith and other English colonists thought that by ascending the James, the
York, the Potomac, the Roanoke, or the Hudson, they could emerge with ease
upon waters flowing to the ocean of the west. Champlain sent (1634) the
fur-trader Nicolet up the Ottawa River and the Great Lakes into Wisconsin,
which he thought to be Asia; and Jolliet and Marquette (1673) imagined they
had found the highway thither when their birch-bark canoes glided into the
upper Mississippi at Prairie du Chien.
One hundred and seven years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock,
Balboa scaled the continental backbone at Darien (1513), and in the name of
Spain claimed dominion over the waters of the Pacific. With undaunted zeal
did Spanish explorers then beat up and down the western shore of the Gulf
of Mexico, vainly seeking for a passage through by water. A great stimulus
had now been given to the general desire to reach India by sea; for the
Turks were overrunning Egypt (1512-1520) and despoiling the caravans from
the East, so that the manufactures and trade of western Europe were sadly
crippled. But thus far Portugal alone held the key to the sea-route to
India.
9. Spanish Exploration of the Interior (1513-1542).
Sidenote: Ponce de Leon in Florida.
This same year (1513) was notable also for the first visit made by
Spaniards to the mainland of North America. Ponce de Leon, a valiant
soldier worn out in long service, and who had been serving as governor of
Porto Rico, went to the Florida mainland, where a popular legend said there
was a fountain giving forth waters capable of recuperating life. The
country was ablaze with brilliant flowers, but the elixir of life was not
there, and he returned disappointed.
Sidenote: Vasquez in South Carolina.
In 1519 Pineda, another Spaniard, explored the northern shore of the Gulf
of Mexico. The following year (1520) a slave-hunting expedition, under
Vasquez, visited the coast of South Carolina, which the commander styled
Chicora. The brilliant conquest of Mexico by Cortez (1519-1521) had made
that hardy adventurer the hero of Christendom; and in the hope of rivalling
his splendid achievement, Vasquez returned to Chicora in 1525, commissioned
by Charles V. as governor of the country. But Chicora was not Mexico, and
the Red Indians were of a different temper from the Aztecs. The expedition
met with disaster. While Vasquez was fighting the embittered savages in
South Carolina, Gomez, also in behalf of Spain, was ranging along the
Atlantic coast from Newfoundland to New Jersey, and instituting a
successful trade with the natives.
Sidenote: Narvaez in the Florida wilds.
In April, 1528, Narvaez, with three hundred enthusiastic young nobles and
gentlemen from Spain, landed at Tampa Bay and renewed his sovereign's claim
to Florida and its supposed wealth of mines and precious stones. Led by the
fables of the wily native guides, who were careful to tell what their
Spanish tormentors wished most to hear, they floundered hither and thither
through the great swamps and forests, continually wasted by fatigue,
famine, disease, and frequent assaults of savages. At last, after many
distressing adventures, but four men were left out of this brilliant
company,--Cabeza de Vaca, treasurer of the expedition, and three
companions. For eight years did these four bruised and ragged Spaniards
wearily roam through the region now divided into Texas, Indian Territory,
New Mexico, and Arizona,--through entangled forests, across broad rivers
and desert stretches beset with wild beasts and wilder men, but ever
spurred on by vague reports of a colony of their countrymen in the far
southwest. At last (May, 1536), the miserable wanderers reached Culiacan,
on the Gulf of California, whence they were borne in triumph to the city of
Mexico as the guests of the province.
Sidenote: Spaniards reaching northward from Mexico.
Their coming revived the shadowy native tales of gold mines and wealthy
cities to the north, which had for some years been exciting the cupidity of
the conquerors of Mexico. In response to these rumors there had been
frequent reachings out northward. In 1528 Cortez had despatched Maldonado
up along the Pacific coast for three hundred miles. Two years later (1530)
Guzman penetrated to the mouth of the Gulf of California and established
the town of Culiacan. Cortez again had vessels on the Pacific in 1532, and
by 1535 his lieutenants were claiming for him the Lower California
peninsula. It is possible that Spanish vessels coasted northward beyond the
Columbia; but no news of their discoveries reached the geographers in
Europe.
Sidenote: The "Seven Cities of Cibola."
It was in 1530 that specific reports first came, through native slaves, of
seven great cities of stone-built houses a few hundred miles north of the
capital of the Aztecs, where the inhabitants had such a profusion of gold
and silver that their household utensils were made of those metals. The
search for "the seven cities of Cibola," as these alleged communities came
to be called by the Spaniards, was at once begun. Guzman, just then at the
head of affairs in New Spain, led northward a considerable expedition of
Spanish soldiers and Indians, which suffered great hardships, but failed to
discover Cibola.
Sidenote: Coronado's march.
Cabeza de Vaca and his fellow-adventurers claimed, upon their arrival, to
have themselves seen the seven cities; and they enlarged on the previous
stories. Coronado, governor of the northern province of New Gallicia, was
accordingly sent to conquer this wonderful country which Guzman had failed
to find. Early in 1540 he set out with a well-equipped following of three
hundred Spaniards and eight hundred Indians. The Cibola cities were found
to be but pueblos in Arizona or New Mexico, like the communal dwellings of
the Hopis and Zuñis, with the aspect of which we are so familiar to-day;
while the mild inhabitants destitute of wealth, peacefully practising their
crude industries and tilling their irrigated fields, were foemen hardly
worthy of Castilian steel. Disappointed, but still hoping to find the
country of gold, Coronado's gallant little army, frequently thinned by
death and desertion, beat for three years up and down the southwestern
wilderness,--now thirsting in the deserts, now penned up in gloomy cañons,
now crawling over pathless mountains, suffering the horrors of starvation
and of despair, but following this will-o'-the-wisp with a melancholy
perseverance seldom seen in man save when searching for some mysterious
treasure. Coronado apparently crossed the State of Kansas twice; "through
mighty plains and sandy heaths, smooth and wearisome and bare of wood....
All that way the plains are as full of crookback oxen as the mountain
Serena in Spain is of sheep.... They were a great succor for the hunger and
want of bread which our people stood in. One day it rained in that plain a
great shower of hail as big as oranges, which caused many tears,
weaknesses, and vows." The wanderer ventured as far as the Missouri, and
would have gone still farther eastward but for his inability to cross the
swollen river. Co-operating parties explored the upper valleys of the Rio
Grande and Gila, ascended the Colorado for two hundred and forty miles
above its mouth, and visited the Grand Cañon of the same river. Coronado at
last returned, satisfied that he had been made the victim of travellers'
idle tales. He was rewarded with contumely and lost his place as governor
of New Gallicia; but his romantic march stands in history as one of the
most remarkable exploring expeditions of modern times.
Sidenote: De Soto follows Narvaez.
Early in the summer of 1539 Hernando de Soto, the favorite of Pizarro in
the conquest of Peru (1532), anchored his fleet in the bay of Espiritu
Santo, Florida, determined to gain independent renown as the conqueror of
the North American wilds. His was a much larger and better-equipped party
than had subjugated either Mexico or Peru. But he met the fate of Narvaez.
False Indian guides led him hither and thither through the swamps and
moss-grown jungles of the Gulf region, and the survivors formed a sorry
company indeed when the Mississippi River was reached (April,
1541),--probably at the lowest Chickasaw Bluff,--after two years of
fruitless wandering. The next winter, still betrayed by his savage guides
and harassed by attacks from other natives, he spent upon the Washita, but
despairing of reaching Mexico by land, he returned to the Mississippi,
where he died of swamp-fever (May 21, 1542). The great river he had
discovered was his tomb. His wretched followers, by this time much reduced
in numbers, descended the stream, and after great hardships finally reached
the Mexican coast-settlements in September.
10. Spanish Colonies (1492-1687).
Sidenotes: Spanish friars in the southwest.
Spain's American possessions at close of sixteenth century.
A half century had now passed since the advent of Columbus in the Bahamas;
yet upon the mainland to the north, Spain as yet held neither harbor, fort,
nor settlement. In the southwest, the proximity of Mexico and the milder
character of the natives made it easier to maintain a settlement in what is
now United States territory. In 1582, forty years after Coronado's march,
Franciscan friars opened missions in the valleys of the Rio Grande and the
Gila,--the Cibola of old. Sixteen years later (1598) Santa Fé was
established as the seat of Spanish power in the north; by 1630 this power
was at its highest in New Mexico and Arizona, fifty missions administering
religious instruction to ninety Pueblo towns. In 1687 the chain of missions
had reached the Gulf of California, and then slowly extended northward
along the Pacific coast till San Francisco, with its system of Indian
vassalage, was established in 1776. In Florida, after the extermination of
the French Huguenot colony in 1564, Spain made wholesale claims to all that
region; but De Gourgues dealt her settlements a staggering blow, and she
seemed thereafter incapable of further colonizing the province. At the
close of the sixteenth century Spain held but few points in what is now the
United States,--Santa Fé in New Mexico, a few scattering missions along the
Gila and Rio Grande, and St. Augustine in Florida.
11. The French in North America (1524-1550).
Sidenotes: The French enter the field.
Cartier at Montreal; and Quebec.
The French were not far behind the Spanish in their attempts to colonize
North America. In 1524 John Verrazano, a Florentine in the employ of
Francis I., while seeking the supposed water passage through America to
China, explored the coast from about Wilmington, N. C., to Newfoundland.
Ten years later (1534) Jacques Cartier, a St. Malo seaman, sailed up the
north shore of the estuary of the St. Lawrence "until land could be seen on
either side." The next year he was back again, and ascended to the first
rapids at La Chine, naming the island mountain there, Mont-Réal. Having
spent the winter in this inhospitable region, his reports were such as to
discourage for a time further attempts at colonization in America by the
French, who were just now engaged at home in serious difficulties with
Spain.
A truce being at last declared between France and Spain, Cartier was made
captain-general and chief pilot of an American colonizing expedition which
Francis allowed the lord of Roberval to undertake. But this conflict of
authority was distasteful to both Cartier and Roberval, and the former
started off before his chief in May, 1541. He built a fort near Quebec, but
a year later returned to France, just before Roberval arrived with
reinforcements for the colony. The latter remained for a year in America
before returning home, and it is thought that he visited Massachusetts Bay
in his voyages alongshore. France was now ablaze with civil war, and the
Huguenots, with their independent notions, were engaging all the resources
of the royal power, so that further American discoveries were for the time
postponed. The Newfoundland industry, however, grew apace, for the Church
prescribed a fish diet on certain days and at certain seasons, and the
consumption of salted fish in Europe had grown to be enormous. Breton
vessels were from the first prominent in the traffic.
12. French Attempts to colonize Florida (1562-1568).
Sidenote: Coligny's colony at Port Royal.
Admiral Coligny, the great Huguenot leader, was ambitious to establish a
colony of French Protestants in America which should be a refuge for his
persecuted countrymen whenever it became desirable for them to seek new
seats. Jean Ribaut went out under his auspices in 1562, discovered St.
John's River in Florida, went up Broad River, named the country Carolina,
after the boy-king, Charles IX., and left twenty-six colonists at Port
Royal, on Lemon Island. But the settlers soon tired of their enterprise,
and the following year set out for home. An English cruiser captured the
party on the high sea when it was reduced to the last extremity for want of
food. The more exhausted of the company were landed in France; the rest
were taken to England.
Sidenote: Laudonnière in Florida.
The succeeding season (1564), another colonizing expedition, made up of
Protestants, headed by René Goulaine de Laudonnière, and aided by the king,
sought Carolina. Avoiding Port Royal as ill-omened, they established
themselves on St. John's River. The emigrants were a dissolute set, as
emigrants were apt to be in an age when the sweepings of European jails and
gutters were thought to furnish good colonizing material for America.
Laudonnière hung some of his followers for piracy against Spanish vessels;
others were captured in the act by the Spaniards, and sold into slavery in
the West Indies. What remained of the colony soon lost, through dishonesty
and severity, the respect of the Indians, who had at first received the
intruders kindly. When, in August, 1565, Sir John Hawkins, the noted slaver
and navigator, appeared with his fleet, he was able to render the now
half-starved settlers most needed help. Ribaut soon came also, with
recruits, provisions, seeds, domestic animals, and farming implements,
greatly to the joy of the little colony.
Sidenote: The Spanish massacre.
But this happiness was not of long duration. The attention of Philip II. of
Spain was at length called to this colony of French heretics which was
gaining a foothold upon his domain of Florida. In August, 1565, his agent,
Pedro Melendez de Aviles, appeared on the scene and announced his purpose
to "gibbet and behead all the Protestants in these regions." Melendez
established St. Augustine, which is thus the oldest town in the United
States east of the Mississippi, and then with blood-thirsty deliberateness
proceeded to wipe the French settlement out of existence. French writers
claim that nine hundred persons were cruelly massacred; and the Spanish
estimate is not far below that number.
Sidenote: The Huguenots avenged.
A Gascon soldier, Dominic de Gourgues, soon came over (1567) to avenge the
wrong done his fellow-Huguenots. He captured all the Spanish establishments
left by Melendez, except St. Augustine. When he found, the following year,
that he could not hold his prizes, he hung the Spanish prisoners to trees
and hastened back to France. His king, however, being under the influence
of Spain, disavowed this act of reprisal, and relinquished all further
claim to Florida.
13. The French in Canada (1589-1608).
Sidenote: De la Roche's ill-fated venture.
The colonial policy of Henri IV. (1589-1610) was more progressive and
enlightened than that of his immediate predecessors on the throne of
France. But he had not yet learned what succeeding generations were to
discover to their cost,--that criminals and paupers do not make good
colonists. In 1598 the familiar error was repeated, when the Marquis de la
Roche took out a company of forty jail-birds, liberated for the purpose,
and landed them on the dreary, storm-washed Isle of Sable, off the Nova
Scotia coast, where, eighty years earlier (1518), the Baron de Léry had
made a vain attempt to start a colony. La Roche, beggared on his return
home, was unable to succor his colonists, who on their inhospitable sands
lived more like beasts than men. Five years later the twelve skin-clad
survivors were picked up by a chance vessel and taken back to France, to
tell a tale of almost matchless horror.
Sidenotes: Champlain's first voyage.
De Monts' colony.
Quebec established.
It was an age of licensed commercial monopolies, as well as of other
economic experiments. In the year 1600 Chauvin obtained the exclusive right
to prosecute the fur-trade in the New Land to the west, and united with him
a St. Malo merchant, Pontgravé. They made two lucrative voyages, but
established no settlement. Samuel de Champlain, in Pontgravé's company,
went out in 1603, ascending the St. Lawrence as far as Montreal. Later
(this same year) De Monts, a Calvinist, was given the viceroyalty and the
fur-trade monopoly of Acadia,--between the fortieth and sixtieth degrees of
latitude,--and religious freedom was granted there for Huguenots, though
the Indians were to be instructed in the Romish faith. De Monts and his
strangely assorted party of vagabonds and gentlemen first settled on an
island, near the present boundary between Maine and New Brunswick, in the
fall of 1604, but the following spring moved to Port Royal,--now Annapolis,
Nova Scotia. This, the first French agricultural colony yet planted in
America, suffered disaster after disaster; but although Port Royal was
abandoned in 1607, the germ of colonization lived. In 1608, Champlain--who
had, four years before, while in the employ of De Monts, explored the coast
as far south as Cape Cod--set up a permanent French post upon the gloomy
cliff at Quebec. Soon the Jesuits came; and by the time the "Mayflower" had
reached New England, New France was established beyond a doubt, and French
influence was penetrating inland. Wandering savages from the Upper Lakes,
nearly a thousand miles in the interior, had at last seen the white man and
begun to feel his power.
14. English Exploration (1498-1584).
Sidenote: English interests at Newfoundland.
England would have followed up Cabot's discovery of North America with more
vigor had not Henry VII., being a Catholic prince, hesitated to set aside
the Pope's bull giving the new continent to Spain. His subjects, however,
made large hauls of fish along the foggy shores of Newfoundland, and in
1502 some American savages were exhibited to him in London. Henry VIII. was
at first similarly scrupulous; but when, in 1533, he got rid of his queen,
Catharine of Aragon, he was free from Spanish entanglements, and aspired to
make England a maritime nation. Among many other enterprises the northwest
passage allured him, although nothing came of his ventures in that
direction. With the accession of Edward VI. (1547) a progressive era
opened. The Newfoundland fisheries were now so effectively encouraged that
by 1574, under Elizabeth, from thirty to fifty English ships were making
annual trips to the Grand Banks.
Sidenote: Elizabeth's courtiers looking towards America.
The most popular ventures among the nobles of Elizabeth's court were the
northwest passage, American colonization, and freebooting voyages. Writers
of voyages and travels and cartographers sprang up on every hand, the most
noteworthy being Richard Eden, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Richard Hakluyt, and
Martin Frobisher. Patronized by the powerful Earl of Warwick, Frobisher in
three successive voyages (1576-1578) vainly sought gold in Labrador.
Francis Drake, on his famous buccaneering tour around the world, explored
the Pacific coast of the United States as far north as Cape Blanco (1579),
unsuccessfully searching for a short cut by water through the continent.
Sidenote: Gilbert's voyage.
Gilbert saw that Newfoundland must thereafter be considered as the nucleus
of English settlement in America; and in 1579 Sir Humphrey, himself a
soldier and a member of Parliament, accompanied by his step-brother, Sir
Walter Raleigh, went out to lead the way. Storms and other disasters drove
them back, and it was 1583 before another squadron could be equipped.
Raleigh remained in England; but Gilbert landed at St. John's, where he
found that four hundred vessels of various nationalities, mainly Spanish
and Portuguese, were annually engaged in the fisheries. He took possession
of the island for the queen, examined the neighboring mainland, and
freighted his ships with glistening rock, ignorantly declared by an
unskilful expert accompanying the expedition to contain silver. Upon the
return voyage the vessel carrying Gilbert was lost, the companion ship,
with its worthless cargo, reaching Falmouth safely.
15. English Attempts to colonize (1584-1606).
Sidenote: Amadas and Barlowe.
Under Raleigh's auspices two vessels set out in 1584, commanded by Philip
Amadas and Arthur Barlowe. They landed at the island of Roanoke, the
southernmost of the reefs enclosing Albemarle Sound, in North Carolina; but
although charmed with the country, which they declared to be "the most
plentiful, sweet, fruitful, and wholesome of all the world," and well
treated by the Indians,--"people most gentle, loving, and faithful,"--they
made no settlement, and returned to England. Raleigh, however, was pleased
by the reports brought back; he was knighted, his claim was confirmed, he
named the country Virginia, in token of his virgin queen, and he
entertained visions of establishing a considerable province there, and of
enjoying a comfortable rent-roll.
Sidenote: Raleigh's first colony.
In 1585, aided by the queen, he sent out seven vessels and one hundred and
eight colonists, the fleet being commanded by Sir Richard Grenville, and
the intending settlers by Ralph Lane, a soldier of much merit. Few maritime
enterprises were sent out by England in the Elizabethan age that did not
include in their orders a project for preying on Spanish commerce by the
way; for our ancestors were as yet not far removed in this regard from the
spirit of the old Norse pirates. Grenville therefore sailed around by the
Canaries, picked up Spanish prizes partly to meet the cost of the
undertaking, and in due time anchored at Wocoken, whence he proceeded to
Roanoke island.
With the colonists was Manteo, a native who had gone to England with some
former expedition; and the good-natured fellow secured for his new friends
a warm reception on the part of the aborigines. But Grenville before his
return treated them harshly, leaving to them and the colonists a legacy of
mutual distrust and grievances. In March, 1586, Lane ascended the Roanoke
River, hoping to find rich ores and pearls in the upper country; for the
deceitful savages, wishing to divide the white men's forces, had told him
that the stream had its source near the western ocean, in a country
abounding with these articles, and encouraged his expedition with promises
of assistance. The enterprise proved full of hardship and peril, and the
governor returned just in time to check a conspiracy to attack the
garrison.
Lane had employed his men in frequent explorations, their journeyings
reaching on the north to Chesapeake Bay and Elizabeth River, on the south
to the Secotan. But the situation became irksome. The spirit of adventure
and wealth-seeking prevailed among the colonists; it was not a community
calculated for the uneventful and toilsome prosecution of agriculture; and
before long the fretful disease of homesickness prevailed on the island of
Roanoke.
Sidenote: The enterprise abandoned.
In June, 1586, Sir Francis Drake appeared with twenty-three vessels. He had
made a rich haul from Spanish treasure-ships in the West Indies, and had
turned aside on his return trip, curious to see how his friend Raleigh's
colony fared. Yielding to the importunities of the settlers, he took them
aboard his fleet and carried them back to England. They had been gone from
Roanoke but a few days, when a ship, bringing supplies sent out by Raleigh,
sailed into the inlet, only to find the place deserted. In another
fortnight, Grenville appeared with three well-furnished ships, and left
fifteen men on the island to renew the colonizing experiment.
Sidenote: Raleigh's second attempt.
Raleigh displayed most remarkable persistence. He was undismayed by this
long chapter of disasters. Men on whose judgment he relied brought back
good reports from the site of the ill-fated colony, and again he fitted out
an expedition,--this time entirely at his own charge, for Elizabeth had had
enough of the experiment. It was in July, 1587, when John White arrived
with Raleigh's new colonists off the shores of North Carolina. At Roanoke,
deer were quietly grazing in a field fertilized by the bones of Grenville's
contingent of the year before, and the fort was in ruins. Governor White
re-established the settlement.
Sidenote: Birth of Virginia Dare.
The 18th of August the daughter of White, Eleanor Dare, gave birth to a
daughter, called Virginia, after the country,--the first child of English
parents born on the soil of the United States. A few days later, White left
for England,--ostensibly for recruits and supplies, the colony which he
left behind being composed of eighty-nine men, seventeen women, and two
children. But England was now threatened with invasion from Spain; the
energy and resources of the island were being mustered in its defence;
Raleigh, Drake, Grenville, Frobisher, Hawkins, and the rest were engaged in
preparing to resist the enemy. It was no time for colonization schemes. The
Armada scattered, the father of English colonization in America found
himself ruined, having spent £40,000 in his several fruitless ventures.
Still hopeful, he next adopted a scheme of making large grants in Virginia
to merchants and adventurers, and in this manner obtained some aid.
Sidenote: Wreck of the colony.
In 1591 White returned to Roanoke, to find it again deserted, with no
traces of his daughter or of the other colonists. They had probably been
overcome by the Indians, and those whose lives were spared adopted into the
neighboring tribes. In spite of the many costly attempts, the sixteenth
century closed with no English settlement on the shores of America.
Sidenote: Causes of English failures thus far.
Among the principal causes of this early failure in Virginia were the
improper character and spirit of the emigrants, who, instead of looking to
the soil as the chief source of supplies, expected to find rich mines, or
tribes possessing gold, and relied upon England for the necessaries of
life; they had not enough occupation to keep them from brooding over their
isolation, and by their harshness they turned the Indians into harassing
enemies.
Sidenotes: Gosnold's voyages.
Pring in Maine, and Weymouth at Cape Cod.
Gorges becomes interested.
Bartholomew Gosnold has had the reputation of being the first mariner who
set out for America on a direct voyage from England, thus avoiding the West
Indies and the Spanish, and saving nearly a thousand miles; but others
before him had taken the direct course,--notably Verrazano (1524). In 1602,
while trading with the Indians, Gosnold explored the coast from Cape
Elizabeth, Maine, to the Elizabeth Islands, on his way landing upon and
naming Cape Cod. The following year Martin Pring discovered many harbors
and rivers in Maine. In 1605 George Weymouth, sent by the Earl of
Southampton and Lord Arundel, explored from Cape Cod northward. He carried
back with him several kidnapped natives, three of whom he gave to Sir
Ferdinando Gorges, governor of the English port of Plymouth. Gorges was
particularly struck with the reported abundance of good harbors in the
north, compared with the scarcity of such in Virginia and Carolina, and
became at once strongly interested in New England exploration.
Public attention in England had by this time become strongly attracted to
the northern region as probably the most desirable for future experiments
in colonization; it was pointed out with much force that the lack of good
anchorage was one of the reasons why the southern attempts had failed.
Conditions in England, too, had at last so changed as to make it possible
to undertake colonization with better assurances of success. But New
England was not destined to be the site of the first permanent plantation.
That honor was reserved for what is now Virginia.
16. The Experience of the Sixteenth Century
(1492-1606).
Sidenote: Sixteenth century notable for interest in discovery and
settlement.
In reviewing the period from 1492 to 1606,--practically the sixteenth
century,--we see that it was notable for the extraordinary interest
displayed in discovery and settlement. Attention has been called to the
part played by the general desire of Europeans to secure the trade of
India. But we must not forget as well that, as a feature of the great
Renaissance and Reformation movement, the spirit of investigation was
abroad, in religion, philosophy, and the arts; there had grown up great
commercial and trading cities, in which the successful foreign merchant
became a part of a powerful aristocracy; popular imagination had been fired
by traders' stories of India, China, and Japan; there was an eagerness to
reach out into the regions of mystery, to enlarge the horizon of human
knowledge. The effect was greatly to increase skill in navigation, to build
up a merchant marine, and--it being an age of universal freebooting--to
cultivate an experience in naval warfare which was a preparation for the
great sea-fights of the eighteenth century.
Sidenote: Causes of failure in North American colonization.
Of the three nations which, in the sixteenth century, attempted to colonize
America north of the Gulf of Mexico, all had practically failed. Spain had
with comparative ease conquered the unwarlike natives of Mexico and Peru
upon their cultivated plains. That very ease took away the disposition,
even had her people been capable of the effort, slowly and painfully to
subdue the tangled forests and savage warriors of Florida, with no other
promise of reward than the possession of unredeemed soil. Not suited to the
task, she utterly wasted alike the resources of the home government
applicable to colonization, and those of the established colonies. France
had failed because of dissensions at home, inferior powers of organization,
the want of the proper colonizing temper, and the severity of the climate
in that portion of the New World which she had seized upon as the seat of
her colonies. English colonization thus far had been unproductive because
there was a want of understanding of the difficulties, because of the
selection of colonists who lacked experience in agriculture, because poor
harbors were generally chosen, because there was difficulty in keeping up
communications with the mother-land, because the resident leaders lacked
courage and had not the staying qualities which were in after years the
salvation of the Plymouth Pilgrims. But the effect of these early English
efforts was important in giving the people needed training in navigation
and colonization, and a knowledge of the country.
Sidenote: European claims in America, 1600.
Taking a general view of America at the close of the sixteenth century, we
find Spain in undisputed possession of Peru, Central America, the country
west and northwest of the Gulf of Mexico, the greater part of the West
Indies, and the coast of what is now Florida; while they claimed all of the
southern third of the present United States and the greater part of South
America, except Guiana and Brazil. The French laid claim to the basin of
the St. Lawrence and to the coast northward and southward, but their
colonies were not as yet permanently planted; the attempts to make Huguenot
settlements in Brazil (1555) and Florida had been unsuccessful, and French
claims there had been abandoned under Spanish influence. It was not until
1609, when Hudson sailed up the river named for him, that the Dutch laid
any claims to American soil. Cabral discovered Brazil for the Portuguese in
1500; but when Portugal, eighty years later, became the dependency of Spain
(a condition lasting sixty years), her South American colonies were harried
by the Dutch, though she did not relinquish control of them. The English
claimed all the North American coast from Newfoundland to Florida, and of
course through to the Pacific, no one then entertaining the belief that the
continent was many hundred miles in width; but as yet none of their
colonizing efforts had been successful. The Bermudas, Bahamas, and Barbados
were neither claimed nor settled by Englishmen until the seventeenth
century. The great Mississippi basin had been visited by a few Spanish
overland wanderers, but as yet was practically forgotten and unclaimed,
except so far as it was included in the undefined Spanish and English
transcontinental zones; the Hudson Bay country, Oregon, and Alaska were
also undiscovered lands. A few thousand miles of American coast-line were
now familiar to European explorers; but of the interior of the continent
scarcely more was known than might be seen over the tree-tops from the
mast-head of a caravel.