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[Transcriber's Notes]

The HTML and TXT formats discard page boundaries but retain the year

references in square brackets. Thus [1492-1495] indicate the following

text covers this period, until the next such appearance.

Several books on Columbus are available at Gutenberg.org, including "The

Life of Columbus" by Arthur Helps.

A pound sterling in 1600 is worth about 135 pounds or 235 Dollars US in

2006.

Here are some unfamiliar (to me) terms.

camlets

Rich cloth of Asian origin, made of camel's hair and silk and later

made of goat's hair and silk or other combinations. A garment made

from this cloth.

contumacy

Stubborn perverseness or rebelliousness; obstinate resistance to

authority.

druggets

Heavy felted fabric of wool or wool and cotton, used as a floor

covering.

escheated

Reversion of property to the state in the absence of legal heirs or

claimants.

fee simple

An estate of inheritance in land, either absolute and without

limitation to any particular class of heirs (fee simple) or limited to

a particular class of heirs (fee tail).

glebe

Plot of land yielding profit to an English parish church or an

ecclesiastical office.

Pascua Florida

Feast of flowers; Easter.

quit rent

A land tax imposed on freehold or leased land by a landowning

authority, freeing the tenant of a holding from other obligations.

New Style (dates)

Describing dates after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. Various

nations adopted the Gregorian calendar between 1582 and 1752.

Old Style (dates)

Describing dates before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.

pompion

Pumpkin.

sedulous

Diligent in application or attention; persevering.

settle

Long wooden bench with a high back, often including storage space

beneath the seat.

[End Transcriber's Notes.]

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

Columbus

After a Portrait by Herrer.

HISTORY OF

THE UNITED STATES

FROM THE EARLIEST DISCOVERY OF

AMERICA TO THE PRESENT TIME

BY

E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS

CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

With 650 Illustrations and Maps

VOLUME I.

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1912

COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

TO MY WIFE

PREFACE

Notwithstanding the number of United States histories already in

existence, and the excellence of many of them, I venture to think that

no apology is needed for bringing forward another.

1. The work now presented to the public is believed to utilize, more

than any of its predecessors, the many valuable researches of recent

years into the rich archives of this and other nations.

2. Most of the briefer treatments of the subject are manuals, intended

for pupils in schools, the conspicuous articulation so necessary for

this purpose greatly lessening their interest for the general reader.

The following narrative will be found continuous as well as of moderate

compass.

3. I have sought to make more prominent than popular histories have

usually done, at the same time the political evolution of our country on

the one hand, and the social culture, habits, and life of the people on

the other.

4. The work strives to observe scrupulous proportion in treating the

different parts and phases of our national career, neglecting none and

over-emphasizing none. Also, while pronouncedly national and patriotic,

it is careful to be perfectly fair and kind to the people of all

sections.

5. Effort has been made to present the matter in the most natural

periods and divisions, and to give such a title to each of these as to

render the table of contents a truthful and instructive epitome of our

national past.

6. With the same aim the Fore-history is exhibited in sharp separation

from the United States history proper, calling due attention to what is

too commonly missed, the truly epochal character of the adoption of our

present Constitution, in 1789.

7. Copious illustration has been employed, with diligent study to make

it for every reader in the highest degree an instrument of instruction,

delight, and cultivation in art.

8. No pains has been spared to secure perfect accuracy in all references

to dates, persons, and places, so that the volumes may be used with

confidence as a work of reference. I am persuaded that much success in

this has been attained, despite the uncertainty still attaching to many

matters of this sort in United States history, especially to dates.

BROWN UNIVERSITY, September 15. 1894.

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

The last edition of President Andrews's History was issued in 1905, in

five volumes, and brought the narrative down to the inauguration of

President Roosevelt in March of that year. In preparing the extension of

the work by the addition of a sixth volume, entrusted to the competent

hands of Professor James Alton James of Northwestern University, it has

been thought desirable to begin this final volume with the chapters

entitled "The Rise of Roosevelt" and "Mr. Roosevelt's Presidency." This

has involved some expansion and revision of these chapters as well as

the continuance of the History from 1905 to the present time. The

Appendices, which include public documents of fundamental importance and

the significant results in various fields of the Census of 1910, are an

additional feature of the new edition.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS

Age and Origin of Man in America.

Primordial Americans unlike Present Asiatics.

Resemblances between their Various Branches.

Two Great Types.

The Mound-builders' Age.

Design of the Mounds.

Different

Forms.

Towns and Cities.

Proofs of Culture.

Arts.

Fate of the

Mound-builders.

The Indians.

Their Number.

Degree of

Civilization.

Power of Endurance.

Religion.

The Various

Nations.

Original Brute Inhabitants of North America.

Plants, Fruits, and Trees.

Indian Agriculture.

Part First

THE FORE-HISTORY

PERIOD I

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT

1492-1660

CHAPTER 1. COLUMBUS.

Bretons and Normans in the New World.

The Northmen Question.

Marco

Polo's Travels.

His Pictures of Eastern Asia.

Influence on

Columbus.

Early Life of Columbus.

His Cruises and Studies.

Asia to be Reached by Sailing West.

Appeals for Aid.

Rebuffs.

Success.

Sails from Palos.

The Voyage.

America Discovered.

Columbus's Later Voyages and Discoveries.

Illusion Respecting the New Land.

Amerigo Vespucci.

Rise of the Name "America."

CHAPTER II. EARLY SPANISH AMERICA.

Portugal and Spain Divide the Newly Discovered World.

Spain gets most of America.

Voyage of de Solis.

Balboa Discovers the Pacific.

Ponce de Leon on the Florida Coast.

Explorations by Grijalva.

Cortez Invades Mexico.

Subjugates the Country.

De Ayllon's Cruise.

Magellan Circumnavigates the Globe.

Narvaez's Expedition into Florida.

Its Sad Fate.

De Soto.

His March.

Hardships.

Discovers the Mississippi.

His Death.

End of his Expedition.

French Settlement in Florida.

St. Augustine.

French-Spanish Hostilities.

Reasons for Spain's Failure to Colonize far North.

Her Treatment of the Natives.

Tyranny over her own

Colonies.

CHAPTER III. EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION BY THE FRENCH AND THE ENGLISH

Verrazano.

"New France."

Cartier Discovers St. Lawrence Gulf and River.

Second Voyage.-Montreal.-Third.-De Monts.

Champlain.

Founds Quebec.

Westward Explorations.

John Cabot, Discoverer of the North American Main.

Frobisher.

Tries for a Northwest Passage.

Second Expedition for Gold.

Third.

Eskimo Tradition of Frobisher's Visits.

Drake Sails round the World.

Cavendish Follows.

Raleigh's Scheme.

Colony at Roanoke Island.

"Virginia."

Second Colony.

Its Fate.

CHAPTER IV. THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA

The Old Virginia Charter.

Jamestown Settled.

Company and Colony.

Character of Early Virginia Population.

Progress.

Products.

Slavery.

Agriculture the Dominant Industry.

No Town Life.

Hardships and Dissensions.

John Smith.

New Charter.

Delaware Governor.

The "Starving Time."

Severe Rule of Dale and Argall.

The Change of 1612.

Pocahontas.

Indian Hostilities.

First American Legislature.

Sir Thomas Wyatt.

Self Government.

Virginia Reflects English Political Progress.

Dissolution of the Company.

Charles I. and Virginia.

Harvey, Wyatt. Berkeley.

Virginia under Cromwell.

CHAPTER V. PILGRIM AND PURITAN AT THE NORTH

The first "Independents."

John Smyth's Church at Gainsborough.

The Scrooby Church.

Plymouth Colony.

Settles Plymouth.

Hardships.

Growth.

Cape Ann Settlement.

Massachusetts Bay.

Size.

Polity.

Roger Williams.

His Views.

His Exile.

Anne Hutchinson.

Rhode Island

Founded.

Settlement of Hartford, Windsor, Wethersfield.

Saybrook.

New Haven.

New Hampshire.

Maine.

New England Confederation.

Its Function.

Its Failure.

CHAPTER VI. BALTIMORE AND HIS MARYLAND

Sir George Calvert Plants at Newfoundland.

Is Ennobled.

Sails for Virginia.

Grant of Maryland.

Lord Baltimore Dies.

Succeeded by Cecil.

Government of Maryland.

Conflict with Virginia.

Baltimore comes to Maryland.

Religious Freedom in the Colony.

Clayborne's Rebellion.

First Maryland Assembly.

Anarchy.

Romanism Established.

Baltimore and Roger Williams.

Maryland during the Civil War in England.

Death of Baltimore.

Character.

Maryland under the Long Parliament.

Puritan Immigration.

Founds Annapolis.

Rebellion.

Clayborne again.

Maryland and the Commonwealth.

Deposition of Governor Stone.

Anti-Catholic Laws.

Baltimore Defied.

Sustained by Cromwell.

Fendall's Rebellion.

Fails.

Maryland at the Restoration.

CHAPTER VII. NEW NETHERLAND

Henry Hudson and his Explorations.

Enters Hudson River.

His Subsequent Career.

And his Fate.

Dutch Trade on the Hudson.

"New Netherland."

Dutch West India Company.

Albany Begun.

New Amsterdam.

Relations with Plymouth.

De Vries on the Delaware.

Dutch Fort at Hartford.

Conflict of Dutch with English.

Gustavus Adolphus.

Swedish Beginnings at Wilmington, Delaware.

Advent of Kieft.

Maltreats Indians.

New Netherland in 1647.

Stuyvesant's Excellent Rule.

Conquers New Sweden.

And the Indians.

Conquest of Dutch America by England.

"New York."

Persistence of Dutch Influence and Traits.

CHAPTER VIII. THE FIRST INDIAN WARS

Beginning of Indian Hostility.

Of Pequot War.

Mason's Strategy.

And Tactics.

Capture of Pequot Fort.

Back to Saybrook.

Extermination of Pequot Tribe.

Peace.

Miantonomoh and Uncas.

Dutch War with Indians.

Caused by Kieft's Impolicy.

Liquor.

Underhill Comes.

Mrs. Hutchinson's Fate.

Deborah Moody.

New Haven Refuses Aid.

Appeal to Holland.

Underhill's Exploits.

Kieft Removed.

Sad Plight of New Netherland.

Subsequent Hostilities and Final Peace.

PERIOD II

ENGLISH AMERICA TILL THE END OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

1660--1763

CHAPTER I. NEW ENGLAND UNDER THE LAST STUARTS.

Charles II. and Massachusetts.

Massachusetts about 1660.

Its View of its Political Rights.

The King's View.

And Commands.

Commission of 1664.

Why Vengeance was Delayed.

Boldness of the Colony.

It Buys Maine.

Fails to get New Hampshire.

The King's Rage.

The Charter Vacated.

Charles II. and Connecticut.

Prosperity of this Colony.

Rhode Island.

Boundary Disputes of Connecticut.

Of Rhode Island.

George Fox and Roger Williams.

James II. King.

Andros Governor.

Andros and Southern New England.

In Massachusetts.

Revolution of 1688.

New Charter for Massachusetts.

Defects and Merits.

CHAPTER II. KING PHILIP'S WAR.

Whites' Treatment of Red Men.

Indian Hatred.

Causes.

Alexander's Death.

Philip

King.

Scope of his Conspiracy.

Murders Sausaman.

War Begun.

Nipmucks take Part.

War in Connecticut Valley.

Bloody Brook.

The Swamp Fight at South Kingston, R. I.

Central Massachusetts Aflame.

The Rowlandson History.

Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island again.

Connecticut Valley once more Invaded.

Turner's Falls.

Philip's Death.

Horrors of the War.

Philip's Character.

Fate of his Family.

CHAPTER III. THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT

New England Home Life.

Religion its Centre.

The Farmhouse.

Morning Devotions.

Farm Work.

Tools.

Diet.

Neighborliness.

New England Superstitions.

Not Peculiar to New England.

Sunday Laws.

Public Worship.

First Case of Sorcery.

The Witch Executed.

Cotton Mather.

His Experiments.

His Book.

The Parris Children Bewitched.

The Manifestations.

The Trial.

Executions.

George Burroughs.

Rebecca Nurse.

Reaction.

Forwardness of Clergy.

"Devil's Authority."

The End.

CHAPTER IV. THE MIDDLE COLONIES

English Conquest of New Netherland.

Duke of York's Government.

Andros.

Revolution of 1688.

Leisler.

Problems which Teased Royal Governors.

New Jersey.

Its Political Vicissitudes.

William Penn.

Character.

Liberality of Pennsylvania

Charter.

Penn and James II.

Penn's Services for his Colony.

Prosperity of the Latter.

Fletcher's Rule.

Gabriel Thomas's History of Pennsylvania.

Penn's Trials.

And Victory.

Delaware.

CHAPTER V. MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA

Maryland after the Stuart Restoration.

Navigation Act.

Boundary Disputes.

Liberality of Religion.

Agitation to Establish Anglicanism.

Maryland under William and Mary.

English Church Established.

Not Oppressive.

Fate of Virginia after the Restoration.

Virginia's Spirit, Numbers, Resources.

Causes of Bacon's Rebellion.

Evil of the Navigation Acts.

Worthless Officials.

Course of the Rebellion.

Result.

Dulness of the Subsequent History.

William and Mary College.

Governor Spotswood.

Blackbeard.

Carolina.

Its Constitution.

Conflict of Parties.

Georgia.

CHAPTER VI. GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE COLONIES.

Origin of American Political Institutions.

Local Self-Government.

Representation.

Relation of Colonies to England.

Classification of Colonies.

Changes.

Conflict of Legal Views.

Colonists' Contentions.

Taxation.

CHAPTER VII. SOCIAL CULTURE IN COLONIAL TIMES.

Population of the Colonies at Different Dates.

Differences according to Sections.

Intellectual Ability.

Free Thought.

Political Bent.

English Church in the Colonies.

Its Clergy.

In New York.

The New England Establishment.

Hatred to Episcopacy.

Counter-hatred.

Colleges and Schools.

Newspapers.

Libraries.

Postal System.

Learned Professions.

Epidemics.

Scholars and Artists.

Travelling.

Manufactures and

Commerce.

Houses.

Food and Dress.

Wigs.

Opposition to Them.

Social Cleavage.

Redemptioners.

Penal Legislation.

Philadelphia Leads in Social Science.

CHAPTER VIII. ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA

The French in the Heart of the Continent.

Groseilliers, Radisson, La Salle.

Joliet and Marquette Reach the Mississippi.

Baudin and Du Lhut.

La Salle Descends to the Gulf.

"Chicago."

The Portages.

La Salle's Expedition from France to the Mississippi.

Its Fate.

French, Indians, and English.

France's Advantage.

Numbers of each Race in America.

Causes of England's Colonial Strength.

King William's War.

The Schenectady Massacre.

Other Atrocities.

Anne's War.

Deerfield.

Plans for Striking Back.

Second Capture of Port Royal.

Rasle's Settlement Raided.

George's War.

Capture of Louisburg.

Saratoga Destroyed.

Scheme to Retaliate.

Failure.

French Vigilance and Aggression.

CHAPTER IX. THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

Struggle Inevitable.

George Washington.

Fights at Great Meadows.

War Begun.

English Plans of Campaign.

Braddock's March.

Defeat and Death.

Prophecy Regarding Washington.

The "Evangeline" History.

Loudon's Incompetence.

Pitt at the Head of Affairs.

Will Take Canada.

Louisburg Recaptured.

"Pittsburgh."

Triple Movement upon Canada.

The Plains of Abraham.

Quebec Capitulates.

Peace of Paris.

Conspiracy of Pontiac.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

COLUMBUS. (After a portrait by Herrera) Frontispiece

TEMPLE MOUND IN MEXICO

BIG ELEPHANT MOUND, WISCONSIN

DIGHTON ROCK

THE OLD STONE MILL AT NEWPORT, R. I.

PRINCE HENRY OF PORTUGAL--"THE NAVIGATOR." (From an old print)

QUEEN ISABELLA OF SPAIN.

COLUMBUS BEGGING AT THE FRANCISCAN CONVENT

EMBARKATION OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AT PALOS. (From an old print)

AMERIGO VESPUCCI. (Fac-simile of an old print)

VASCO DA GAMA. (From an old print)

BALBOA DISCOVERING THE PACIFIC OCEAN

PONCE DE LEON

HERNANDO CORTES, (From an old print)

MONTEZUMA MORTALLY WOUNDED BY HIS OWN SUBJECTS

DEATH OF MAGELLAN

FERDINAND DE SOTO

A PALISADED INDIAN TOWN IN ALABAMA

BURIAL OF DE SOTO IN THE MISSISSIPPI AT NIGHT

FORT CAROLINA ON THE RIVER OF MAY

PEDRO MELENDEZ

INDIANS DEVOURED BY DOGS. (From an old print)

VERRAZANO, THE FLORENTINE NAVIGATOR

JACQUES CARTIER, (From an old print)

SEBASTIAN CABOT, (From an old print)

AN INDIAN VILLAGE AT THE ROANOKE SETTLEMENT

SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

QUEEN ELIZABETH

KING JAMES I. (From Mr. Henry Irving's Collection)

TOBACCO PLANT.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.

POCAHONTAS SAVING CAPTAIN SMITH'S LIFE. (From Smith's "General History ")

THE COUNCIL OF POWHATAN. (From Smith's "General History ")

POCAHONTAS.

SIGNATURE OF BERKELEY.

PLYMOUTH HARBOR, ENGLAND.

HARBOR OF PROVINCETOWN, CAPE COD, WHERE THE PILGRIMS LANDED.

THE LIFE OF THE COLONY AT CAPE COD.

SIGNATURES TO PLYMOUTH PATENT.

SITE OF FIRST CHURCH AND GOVERNOR BRADFORD'S HOUSE AT PLYMOUTH.

GOVERNOR WINTHROP.

FIRST CHURCH IN SALEM.

SEAL OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY COMPANY.

ROGER WILLIAMS' HOUSE AT SALEM.

EDWARD WINSLOW.

MARYLAND SHILLING.

HENRIETTA MARIA.

SUPPOSED PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM CLAYBORNE.

CLAYBORNE'S TRADING POST ON KENT ISLAND.

FIGHT BETWEEN CLAYBORNE AND THE ST. MARY'S SHIP.

OLIVER CROMWELL.

SEAL OF NEW AMSTERDAM.

PETER STUYVESANT.

SEAL OF NEW NETHERLAND.

EARLIEST PICTURE OF NEW AMSTERDAM.

DE VRIES.

COSTUMES OF SWEDES.

THE OLD STADT HUYS AT NEW AMSTERDAM.

NEW AMSTERDAM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

THE DUKE OF YORK, AFTERWARDS JAMES II.

THE TOMB OF STUYVESANT.

ATTACK ON THE FORT OF THE PEQUOTS ON THE MYSTIC RIVER.

ATTACK ON THE PEQUOT FORT.

SIGNATURE OF MIANTONOMOH.

THE GRAVE OF MIANTONOMOH.

TOTEM OR TRIBE MARK OF THE FIVE NATIONS.

KING CHARLES II.

JOHN WINTHROP THE YOUNGER.

SIR EDMOND ANDROS.

THE CHARTER OAK AT HARTFORD.

BOX IN WHICH THE CONNECTICUT CHARTER WAS KEPT.

THE MONUMENT AT BLOODY BROOK.

GOFFE AT HADLEY.

INCREASE MATHER.

COTTON MATHER.

OLD TITUBA THE INDIAN.

LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR STOUGHTON.

FAC-SIMILE OF SHERIFF'S RETURN OF AN EXECUTION.

SLOUGHTER SIGNING LEISLER'S DEATH WARRANT.

SEAL OF THE CARTERETS.

SEAL OF EAST JERSEY.

WAMPUM RECEIVED BY PENN IN COMMEMORATION OF THE INDIAN TREATY.

WILLIAM PENN.

THE TREATY MONUMENT, KENSINGTON.

THE PENN MANSION IN PHILADELPHIA.

CHARLES, SECOND LORD BALTIMORE.

REV, DR. BLAIR, FIRST PRESIDENT OF WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE.

GEORGE MONK, DUKE OF ALBEMARLE.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

SEAL OF THE PROPRIETORS OF CAROLINA.

JOHN LOCKE.

SAVANNAH. (From a print of 1741)

JAMES OGLETHORPE.

COSTUMES ABOUT THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

JAMES LOGAN.

KING WILLIAM.

QUEEN MARY

CHIEF JUSTICE SEWALL.

THE PILLORY.

SIGNATURE OF JOLLIET. (old spelling)

TOTEM OF THE SIOUX.

A SIOUX CHIEF.

TOTEM OF THE ILLINOIS.

THE RECEPTION OF JOLIET AND MARQUETTE BY THE ILLINOIS.

LOUIS XIV.

COINS STRUCK IN FRANCE FOR THE COLONIES.

ASSASSINATION OF LA SALLE.

NEW ORLEANS IN 1719.

SIGNATURE OF D'IBERVILLE.

THE ATTACK ON SCHENECTADY.

HANNAH DUSTIN'S ESCAPE.

QUEEN ANNE.

GOVERNOR SHIRLEY.

SIR WILLIAM PEPPERRELL

THE AMBUSCADE

THE DEATH OF BRADDOCK.

MONTCALM.

WILLIAM PITT.

GENERAL WOLFE.

LANDING OF WOLFE.

QUEBEC IN 1730. (From an old print)

BOUQUET'S REDOUBT AT PITTSBURGH.

LIST OF MAPS

GLOBUS MARTINI BEHAIM NARINBERGENSIS, 1492

EUROPEAN PROVINCES IN 1655.

MARQUETTE'S MAP.

PLAN OF PORT ROYAL, NOVA SCOTIA.

MAP SHOWING POSITION OF FRENCH AND ENGLISH FORTS AND SETTLEMENTS.

BRADDOCK'S ROUTE.

MAP OF BRADDOCK'S FIELD.

INTRODUCTION

AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS

Man made his appearance on the western continent unnumbered ages ago,

not unlikely before the close of the glacial period. It is possible that

human life began in Asia and western North America sooner than on either

shore of the Atlantic. Nothing wholly forbids the belief that America

was even the cradle of the race, or one of several cradles, though most

scientific writers prefer the view that our species came hither from

Asia. De Nadaillac judges it probable that the ocean was thus crossed

not at Behring Strait alone, but along a belt of equatorial islands as

well. We may think of successive waves of such immigration--perhaps the

easiest way to account for certain differences among American races.

It is, at any rate, an error to speak of the primordial Americans as

derived from any Asiatic stock at present existing or known to history.

The old Americans had scarcely an Asiatic feature. Their habits and

customs were emphatically peculiar to themselves. Those in which they

agreed with the trans-Pacific populations, such as fashion of weapons

and of fortifications, elements of folk-lore, religious ideas,

traditions of a flood, belief in the destruction of the world by fire,

and so on, are nearly all found the world over, the spontaneous

creations of our common human intelligence.

The original American peoples, various and unlike as they were, agreed

in four traits, three of them physical, one mental, which mark them off

as in all likelihood primarily of one stock after all, and as different

from any Old World men: (1) They had low, retreating foreheads. (2)

Their hair was black. (3) It was also of a peculiar texture, lank, and

cylindrical in section, never wavy. And (4) their languages were

polysynthetic, forming a class apart from all others in the world. The

peoples of America, if from Asia, must date back to a time when speech

itself was in its infancy.

Temple Mound In Mexico.

The numerous varieties of ancient Americans reduce to two distinct types

--the Dolicocephalous or long-skulled, and the Brachycephalous or

short-skulled. Morton names these types respectively the Toltecan and

the American proper. The Toltecan type was represented by the primitive

inhabitants of Mexico and by the Mound-builders of our Mississippi

Valley; the American proper, by the Indians. The Toltecans made far the

closer approach to civilization, though the others possessed a much

greater susceptibility therefor than the modern Indians of our prairies

would indicate.

Of the Mound-builders painfully little is known. Many of their mounds

still remain, not less mysterious or interesting than the pyramids of

Egypt, perhaps almost equally ancient. The skeletons exhumed from them

often fly into dust as soon as exposed to air, a rare occurrence with

the oldest bones found in Europe. On the parapet-crest of the Old Fort

at Newark, 0., trees certainly five hundred years old have been cut, and

they could not have begun their growth till long after the earth-works

had been deserted. In some mounds, equally aged trees root in the

decayed trunks of a still anterior growth.

Much uncertainty continues to shroud the design of these mounds. Some

were for military defence, others for burial places, others for lookout

stations, others apparently for religious uses. Still others, it is

supposed, formed parts of human dwellings. That they proceeded from

intelligence and reflection is clear. Usually, whether they are squares

or circles, their construction betrays nice, mathematical exactness,

unattainable save by the use of instruments. Many constitute

effigies--of birds, fishes, quadrupeds, men. In Wisconsin is a mound 135

feet long and well proportioned, much resembling an elephant; in Adams

County, 0., a gracefully curved serpent, 1,000 feet long, with jaws

agape as if to swallow an egg-shaped figure in front; in Granville, in

the same State, one in the form of a huge crocodile; in Greenup County,

Ky., an image of a bear, which seems leaning forward in an attitude of

observation, measuring 53 feet from the top of the back to the end of

the foreleg, and 105-1/2 feet from the tip of the nose to the rear of

the hind foot.

Big Elephant Mound, Wisconsin.

The sites of towns and cities were artfully selected, near navigable

rivers and their confluences, as at Marietta, Cincinnati, and in

Kentucky opposite the old mouth of the Scioto. Points for defence were

chosen and fortified with scientific precision. The labor expended upon

these multitudinous structures must have been enormous, implying a vast

population and extensive social, economic, and civil organization. The

Cahokia mound, opposite St. Louis, is 90 feet high and 900 feet long.

The Mound-builders made elegant pottery, of various design and accurate

shapes, worked bone and all sorts of stones, and even forged copper.

There are signs that they understood smelting this metal. They certainly

mined it in large quantities, and carried it down the Mississippi

hundreds of miles from its source on Lake Superior. They must have been

masters of river navigation, but their mode of conveying vast burdens

overland, destitute of efficient draft animals as they apparently were,

we can hardly even conjecture.

The Mound-builders, as we have said, were related to the antique

populations of Mexico and Central America, and the most probable

explanation of their departure from their Northern seats is that in face

of pestilence, or of some overpowering human foe, they retreated to the

Southwest, there to lay, under better auspices, the foundations of new

states, and to develop that higher civilization whose relics, too little

known, astound the student of the past, as greatly as do the stupendous

pillars of Carnac or the grotesque animal figures of Khorsabad and

Nimrud.

So much has been written about the American Indians that we need not

discuss them at length. They were misnamed Indians by Columbus, who

supposed the land he had discovered to be India. At the time of his

arrival not more than two hundred thousand of them lived east of the

Mississippi, though they were doubtless far more numerous West and

South. Whence they came, or whether, if this was a human deed at all,

they or another race now extinct drove out the Mound-builders, none can

tell.

Of arts the red man had but the rudest. He made wigwams, canoes, bone

fish-hooks with lines of hide or twisted bark, stone tomahawks,

arrow-heads and spears, clothing of skins, wooden bows, arrows, and

clubs. He loved fighting, finery, gambling, and the chase. He

domesticated no animals but the dog and possibly the hog. Sometimes

brave, he was oftener treacherous, cruel, revengeful. His power of

endurance on the trail or the warpath was incredible, and if captured,

he let himself be tortured to death without a quiver or a cry. Though

superstitious, he believed in a Great Spirit to be worshipped without

idols, and in a future life of happy hunting and feasting.

Whether, at the time of which we now speak, the Indians were an old

race, already beginning to decline, or a fresh race, which contact with

the whites balked of its development, it is difficult to say. Their

career since best accords with the former supposition. In either case we

may assume that their national groupings and habitats were nearly the

same in 1500 as later, when these became accurately known. In the

eighteenth century the Algonquins occupied all the East from Nova Scotia

to North Carolina, and stretched west to the Mississippi. At one time

they numbered ninety thousand. The Iroquois or Five Nations had their

seat in Central and Western New York. North and west of them lived the

Hurons or Wyandots. The Appalachians, embracing Cherokees, Creeks,

Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles and a number of lesser tribes, occupied

all the southeastern portion of what is now the United States. West of

the Mississippi were the Dakotas or Sioux.

Since the white man's arrival upon these shores, very few changes have

occurred among the brute inhabitants of North America. A few species, as

the Labrador duck and the great auk, have perished. America then

possessed but four animals which had appreciable economic value; the

dog, the reindeer at the north, which the Mound-builders used as a

draft animal but the Indians did not, and the llama and the paco south

of the equator. Every one of our present domestic animals originated

beyond the Atlantic, being imported hither by our ancestors. The Indians

of the lower Mississippi Valley, when De Soto came, had dogs, and also

what the Spaniards called hogs, perhaps peccaries, but neither brute was

of any breed now bred in the country. A certain kind of dogs were native

also to the Juan Fernandez and the Falkland Islands.

Mr. Edward John Payne is doubtless correct in maintaining, in his

"History of the New World called America," that the backwardness of the

American aborigines was largely due to their lack of animals suitable

for draft or travel or producing milk or flesh good for food. From the

remotest antiquity Asiatics had the horse, ass, ox and cow, camel and

goat--netting ten times the outfit in useful animals which the

Peruvians, Mexicans, or Indians enjoyed.

The vegetable kingdom of Old America was equally restricted, which also

helps explain its low civilization. At the advent of the Europeans the

continent was covered with forests. Then, though a few varieties may

have since given out and some imported ones run wild, the undomesticated

plants and trees were much as now. Not so the cultivated kinds. The

Indians were wretched husbandmen, nor had the Mound-builders at all the

diversity of agricultural products so familiar to us. Tobacco, Indian

corn, cocoa, sweet potatoes, potatoes, the custard apple, the Jerusalem

artichoke, the guava, the pumpkin and squash, the papaw and the

pineapple, indigenous to North America, had been under cultivation here

before Columbus came, the first four from most ancient times. The manioc

or tapioca-plant, the red-pepper plant, the marmalade plum, and the

tomato were raised in South America before 1500. The persimmon, the

cinchona tree, millet, the Virginia and the Chili strawberry are natives

of this continent, but have been brought under cultivation only within

the last three centuries.

The four great cereals, wheat, rye, oats, and rice, constituting all our

main food crops but corn, have come to us from Europe. So have cherries,

quinces, and pears, also hops, currants, chestnuts, and mushrooms. The

banana, regarded by von Humboldt as an original American fruit, modern

botanists derive from Asia. With reference to apples there may be some

question. Apples of a certain kind flourished in New England so early

after the landing of the Pilgrims that it is difficult to suppose the

fruit not to have been indigenous to this continent. Champlain, in

1605 or 1606, found the Indians about the present sites of Portland,

Boston, and Plymouth in considerable agricultural prosperity, with

fields of corn and tobacco, gardens rich in melons, squashes, pumpkins,

and beans, the culture of none of which had they apparently learned from

white men. Mr. Payne's generalization, that superior food-supply

occasioned the Old World's primacy in civilization, and also that of the

Mexicans and Peruvians here, seems too sweeping, yet it evidently

contains large truth.

PART FIRST

THE FORE-HISTORY

PERIOD I.

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT

1492-1660

CHAPTER I.

COLUMBUS

[1000]

There is no end to the accounts of alleged discoveries of America before

Columbus. Most of these are fables. It is, indeed, nearly certain that

hardy Basque, Breton, and Norman fishermen, adventuring first far north,

then west, had sighted Greenland and Labrador and become well acquainted

with the rich fishing-grounds about Newfoundland and the Saint Lawrence

Gulf. Many early charts of these regions, without dates and hitherto

referred to Portuguese navigators of a time so late as 1500, are now

thought to be the work of these earlier voyagers. They found the New

World, but considered it a part of the Old.

Important, too, is the story of supposed Norse sea-rovers hither,

derived from certain Icelandic manuscripts of the fourteenth century. It

is a pleasing narrative, that of Lief Ericson's sail in 1000-1001 to

Helluland, Markland, and at last to Vineland, and of the subsequent

tours by Thorwald Ericson in 1002, Thorfinn Karlsefne, 1007-1009, and of

Helge and Finnborge in 1011, to points still farther away. Such voyages

probably occurred. As is well known, Helluland has been interpreted to

be Newfoundland; Markland, Nova Scotia; and Vineland, the country

bordering Mount Hope Bay in Bristol, R. I. These identifications are

possibly correct, and even if they are mistaken, Vineland may still have

been somewhere upon the coast of what is now the United States.

In the present condition of the evidence, however, we have to doubt

this. No scholar longer believes that the writing on Dighton Rock is

Norse, or that the celebrated Skeleton in Armor found at Fall River was

a Northman's, or that the old Stone Mill at Newport was constructed by

men from Iceland. Even if the manuscripts, composed between three and

four hundred years after the events which they are alleged to narrate,

are genuine, and if the statements contained in them are true, the

latter are far too indefinite to let us be sure that they are applicable

to United States localities.

Dighton Rock.

[l260]

But were we to go so far as to admit that the Northmen came here and

began the settlements ascribed to them, they certainly neither

appreciated nor published their exploits. Their colony, wherever it was,

endured but for a day, and it, with its locality, speedily passed from

knowledge in Scandinavia itself. America had not yet, in effect, been

discovered.

The Old Stone Mill at Newport, R. I.

[1300]

We must remember that long anterior to Columbus's day unbiassed and

thoughtful men had come to believe the earth to be round. They also knew

that Europe constituted but a small part of it. In the year 1260 the

Venetian brothers Niccolo and Maffeo Polo made their way to China, the

first men from Western Europe ever to travel so far. They returned in

1269, but in 1271 set out again, accompanied by Niccolo's son, a youth

of seventeen. This son was the famous Marco Polo, whose work, "The

Wonders of the World," reciting his extended journeys through China and

the extreme east and southeast of Asia, and his eventful voyage home by

sea, ending in 1295, has come down to our time, one of the most

interesting volumes in the world. Friar Orderic's eastern travels in

1322-1330, as appropriated by Sir John Mandeville, were published before

1371.

Columbus knew these writings, and the reading and re-reading of them had

made him an enthusiast. In Polo's book he had learned of Mangi and Far

Cathay, with their thousands of gorgeous cities, the meanest finer than

any then in Europe; of their abounding mines pouring forth infinite

wealth, their noble rivers, happy populations, curious arts, and benign

government. Polo had told him of Cambalu (Peking), winter residence of

the Great Khan, Kublai--Cambalu with its palaces of marble,

golden-roofed, its guard of ten thousand soldiers, its imperial stables

containing five thousand elephants, its unnumbered army, navy, and

merchant marine; of oxen huge as elephants; of richest spices, nuts

large as melons, canes fifteen yards long, silks, cambrics, and the

choicest furs; and of magic Cipango (Japan), island of pearls, whose

streets were paved with gold.

Globus Martini Behaim Narinbergensis 1492.

[1456]

Columbus believed all this, and it cooperated with his intense and even

bigoted religious faith to kindle in him an all-consuming ambition to

reach this distant Eden by sea, that he might carry the Gospel to those

opulent heathen and partake their unbounded temporal riches in return.

Poor specimen of a saint as Columbus is now known to have been, he

believed himself divinely called to this grand enterprise.

Christopher Columbus, or Christobal Colon, as he always signed himself

after he entered the service of Spain, was born in Genoa about 1456.

Little is certainly known of his early life. His father was a humble

wool-carder. The youth possessed but a sorry education, spite of his few

months at the University of Pavia. At the age of fourteen he became a

sailor, knocking about the world in the roughest manner, half the time

practically a pirate. In an all-day's sea fight, once, his ship took

fire and he had to leap overboard; but being a strong swimmer he swam,

aided by an oar, eight leagues to land.

[1470]

From 1470 to 1484 we find him in Portugal, the country most interested

and engaged then in ocean-going and discovery. Here he must have known

Martin Behem, author of the famous globe, finished in 1492, whereon Asia

is exhibited as reaching far into the same hemisphere with Europe.

Prince Henry of Portugal earnestly patronized all schemes for

exploration and discovery, and the daughter, Philippa, of one of his

captains, Perestrello, Columbus married. With her he lived at Porto

Santo in the Madeiras, where he became familiar with Correo, her

sister's husband, also a distinguished navigator. The islanders fully

believed in the existence of lands in the western Atlantic. West winds

had brought to them strange woods curiously carved, huge cane-brakes

like those of India described by Ptolemy, peculiarly fashioned canoes,

and corpses with skin of a hue unknown to Europe or Africa.

Prince Henry of Portugal--"The Navigator." From an old print

[1475-1484]

Reflecting on these things, studying Perestrello's and Correo's charts

and accounts of their voyages, corresponding with Toscanelli and other

savans, himself an adept in drawing maps and sea-charts, for a time his

occupation in Lisbon, cruising here and there, once far northward to

Iceland, and talking with navigators from every Atlantic port, Columbus

became acquainted with the best geographical science of his time.

This had convinced him that India could be reached by sailing westward.

The theoretical possibility of so doing was of course admitted by all

who held the earth to be a sphere, but most regarded it practically

impossible, in the then condition of navigation, to sail the necessary

distance. Columbus considered the earth far smaller than was usually

thought, a belief which we find hinted at so early as 1447, upon the

famous mappe-Monde of the Pitti Palace in Florence, whereon Europe

appears projected far round to the northwest. Columbus seems to have

viewed this extension as a sort of yoke joining India to Scandinavia by

the north. He judged that Asia, or at least Cipango, stretched

two-thirds of the way to Europe, India being twice as near westward as

eastward. Thirty or forty days he deemed sufficient for making it.

Toscanelli and Behem as well as he held this belief; he dared boldly to

act upon it.

Queen Isabella of Spain.

But to do so required resources. There are indications that Columbus at

some time, perhaps more than once, urged his scheme upon Genoa and

Venice. If so it was in vain. Nor can we tell whether such an attempt,

if made, was earlier or later than his plea before the court of

Portugal, for this cannot be dated. The latter was probably in 1484.

King John II. was impressed, and referred Columbus's scheme to a council

of his wisest advisers, who denounced it as visionary. Hence in 1485 or

1486 Columbus proceeded to Spain to lay his project before Ferdinand and

Isabella.

On the way he stopped at a Franciscan convent near Palos, begging bread

for himself and son. The Superior, Marchena, became interested in him,

and so did one of the Pinzons--famous navigators of Palos. The king and

queen were at the time holding court at Cordova, and thither Columbus

went, fortified with a recommendation from Marchena. The monarchs were

engrossed in the final conquest of Granada, and Columbus had to wait

through six weary and heart-sickening years before royal attention was

turned to his cause. It must have been during this delay that he

despatched his brother Bartholomew to England with an appeal to Henry

VII. Christopher had brought Alexander Geraldinus, the scholar, and also

the Archbishop of Toledo, to espouse his mission, and finally, at the

latter's instance, Ferdinand, as John of Portugal had done, went so far

as to convene, at Salamanca, a council of reputed scholars to pass

judgment upon Columbus and his proposition. By these, as by the

Portuguese, he was declared a misguided enthusiast. They were too much

behind the age even to admit the spherical figure of the earth.

According to Scripture, they said, the earth is flat, adding that it was

contrary to reason for men to walk heads downward, or snow and rain to

ascend, or trees to grow with their roots upward.

Columbus begging at the Franciscan Convent.

[1484-1492]

The war for Granada ended, Santangel and others of his converts at court

secured Columbus an interview with Isabella, but his demands seeming to

her arrogant, he was dismissed. Nothing daunted, the hero had started

for France, there to plead as he had pleaded in Portugal and Spain

already, when to his joy a messenger overtook him with orders to come

once more before the queen.

Fuller thought and argument had convinced this eminent woman that the

experiment urged by Columbus ought to be tried and a contract was soon

concluded, by which, on condition that he should bear one-eighth the

expense of the expedition, the public chest of Castile was to furnish

the remainder. The story of the crown jewels having been pledged for

this purpose is now discredited. If such pledging occurred, it was

earlier, in prosecuting the war with the Moors. The whole sum needed for

the voyage was about fifty thousand dollars. Columbus was made admiral,

also viceroy of whatever lands should be discovered, and he was to have

ten per cent of all the revenues from such lands. For his contribution

to the outfit he was indebted to the Pinzons.

This arrangement was made in April or May, 1492, and on the third of the

next August, after the utmost difficulty in shipping crews for this sail

into the sea of darkness, Columbus put out from Palos with one hundred

and twenty men, on three ships. These were the Santa Maria, the Nina,

and the Pinta. The largest, the Santa Maria, was of not over one hundred

tons, having a deck-length of sixty-three feet, a keel of fifty-one

feet, a draft of ten feet six inches, and her mast-head sixty feet above

sea-level. She probably had four anchors, with hemp cables.

Embarkation of Christopher Columbus at Palos. From an old print.

From Palos they first bore southward to the Canary Islands, into the

track of the prevalent east winds, then headed west, for Cipango, as

Columbus supposed, but really toward the northern part of Florida. When

a little beyond what he regarded the longitude of Cipango, noticing the

flight of birds to the southwest, he was induced to follow these, which

accident made his landfall occur at Guanahani (San Salvador), in the

Bahamas, instead of the Florida coast.

Near midnight, between October 11th and 12th, Columbus, being on the

watch, descried a light ahead. About two o'clock on the morning of the

12th the lookout on the Pinta distinctly saw land through the moonlight.

When it was day they went on shore. The 12th of October, 1492,

therefore, was the date on which for the first time, so far as history

attests with assurance, a European foot pressed the soil of this

continent. Adding nine days to this to translate it into New Style, we

have October 21st as the day answering to that on which Columbus first

became sure that his long toil and watching had not been in vain.

[1493-1500]

The admiral having failed to note its latitude and longitude, it is not

known which of the Bahamas was the San Salvador of Columbus, whether

Grand Turk Island, Cat (the present San Salvador), Watling, Mariguana,

Acklin, or Samana, though the last named well corresponds with his

description. Mr. Justin Winsor, however, and with him a majority of the

latest critics, believes that Watling's Island was the place. Before

returning to Spain, Columbus discovered Cuba, and also Hayti or

Espagnola (Hispaniola), on the latter of which islands he built a fort.

In a second voyage, from Cadiz, 1493-1496, the great explorer discovered

the Lesser Antilles and Jamaica. In a third, 1498-1500, he came upon

Trinidad and the mainland of South America, at the mouth of the Orinoco.

This was later by thirteen months and a week than the Cabots' landfall

at Labrador or Nova Scotia, though a year before Amerigo Vespucci saw

the coast of Brazil. It was during this third absence that Columbus,

hated as an Italian and for his undeniable greed, was superseded by

Bobadilla, who sent him and his brother home in chains. Soon free again,

he sets off in 1502 upon a fourth cruise, in which he reaches the coast

of Honduras.

To the day of his death, however, the discoverer of America never

suspected that he had brought to light a new continent. Even during this

his last expedition he maintained that the coast he had touched was that

of Mangi, contiguous to Cathay, and that nineteen days of travel

overland would have taken him to the Ganges. He arrived in Spain on

September 12, 1504, and died at Segovia on May 20th of the next year.

His bones are believed to rest in the cathedral at Santo Domingo,

transported thither in 1541, the Columbus-remains till recently at

Havana being those of his son Diego. The latter, under the belief that

they were the father's, were transferred to Genoa in 1887, and deposited

there on July 2d of that year with the utmost ecclesiastical pomp.

[1500-1507]

As Columbus was ignorant of having found a new continent, so was he

denied the honor of giving it a name, this falling by accident, design,

or carelessness of truth, to Amerigo Vespucci, a native of Florence,

whose active years were spent in Spain and Portugal. Vespucci made three

voyages into the western seas. In the second, 1501, he visited the coast

of Brazil, and pushed farther south than any navigator had yet done,

probably so far as the island of South Georgia, in latitude 54 degrees.

His account of this voyage found its way into print in 1504, at

Augsburg, Germany, the first published narrative of any discovery of the

mainland. Although, as above noted, it was not the earliest discovery of

the main, it was widely regarded such, and caused Vespucci to be named

for many years as the peer, if not the superior of Columbus. The

publication ran through many editions. That of Strassburg, 1505,

mentioned Vespucci on its title-page as having discovered a new

"Southern Land." This is the earliest known utterance hinting at the

continental nature of the new discovery, as separate from Asia, an idea

which grew into a conviction only after Magellan's voyage, described in

the next chapter. In 1507 appeared at St. Die, near Strassburg, a

four-page pamphlet by one Lud, secretary to the Duke of Lorraine,

describing Vespucci's voyages and speaking of the Indians as the

"American race." This pamphlet came out the same year in another form,

as part of a book entitled "Introduction to Cosmography," prepared by

Martin Waldseemuller, under the nom de plume of "Hylacomylus." In this

book the new "part of the world" is distinctly called "THE LAND OF

AMERICUS, OR AMERICA," There is some evidence that Vespucci at least

connived at the misapprehension which brought him his renown--as

undeserved as it has become permanent--but this cannot be regarded as

proved.

Amerigo Vespucci. Fac-simile of an old print.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY SPANISH AMERICA

[1498]

As we have seen, Spain by no means deserves the entire credit of

bringing the western continent to men's knowledge. Columbus himself was

an Italian. So was Marco Polo, his inspirer, and also Toscanelli, his

instructor, by whose chart he sailed his ever-memorable voyage. To

Portugal as well Columbus was much indebted, despite his rebuff there.

Portugal then led the world in the art of navigation and in enthusiasm

for discovery. Nor, probably, would Columbus have asked her aid in vain,

had she not previously committed herself to the enterprise of reaching

India eastward, a purpose brilliantly fulfilled when, in 1498, Vasco da

Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and sailed to Calicut, on the coast

of Malabar. Already before this Spain and Portugal were rivals in the

search for new lands, and Pope Alexander VI. had had to be appealed to,

to fix their fields. By his bull of May 3, 4, 1493, he ordained as the

separating line the meridian passing through a point one hundred leagues

west of the Azores, where Columbus had observed the needle of his

compass to point without deflection toward the north star. Portugal

objecting to this boundary as excluding her from the longitude of the

newly found Indies, by the treaty of Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, the two

powers, with the Pope's assent, moved the line two hundred and seventy

leagues still farther west. At this time neither party dreamed of the

complications destined subsequently to arise in reference to the

position of this meridian on the other side of the globe.

Vasco da Gama; From an old print.

The meridian of the Tordesillas convention had been supposed still to

give Spain all the American discoveries likely to be made, it being

ascertained only later that by it Portugal had obtained a considerable

part of the South American mainland Brazil, we know, was, till in 1822

it became independent, a Portuguese dependency. Spain, however, retained

both groups of the Antilles with the entire main about the Gulf of

Mexico, and became the earliest great principality in the western world.

[1506-1513]

Before the death of Columbus, Spain had taken firm possession of Cuba,

Porto Rico, and St. Domingo, and she stood ready to seize any of the

adjoining islands or lands so soon as gold, pearls, or aught else of

value should be found there. Cruises of discovery were made in every

direction, first, indeed, in Central and South America. In 1506 de Solis

sailed along the eastern coast of Yucatan. In 1513 the governor of a

colony on the Isthmus of Darien, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, from the top of

a lofty mountain on the isthmus, saw what is now called the Pacific

Ocean. He designated it the South Sea, a name which it habitually bore

till far into the eighteenth century. From this time the exploration and

settlement of the western coast, both up and down, went on with little

interruption, but this history, somewhat foreign to our theme, we cannot

detail.

Balboa discovering the Pacific Ocean.

Ponce de Leon.

The same year, 1513, Ponce de Leon, an old Spanish soldier in the wars

with the Moors, a companion of Columbus in his second voyage, and till

now governor of Porto Rico, began exploration to the northward. Leaving

Porto Rico with three ships, he landed on the coast of an unknown

country, where he thought to find not only infinite gold but also the

much-talked-about fountain of perpetual youth. His landing occurred on

Easter Sunday, or Pascua Florida, March 27, 1513, and so he named the

country Florida. The place was a few miles north of the present town of

St. Augustine. Exploring the coast around the southern extremity of the

peninsula, he sailed among a group of islands, which he designated the

Tortugas. Returning to Porto Rico, he was appointed governor of the new

country. He made a second voyage, was attacked by the natives and

mortally wounded, and returned to Cuba to die.

[1518-1520]

Juan de Grijalva explored the south coast of the Gulf of Mexico, from

Yucatan toward the Panuco. Interest attaches to this enterprise mainly

because the treasure which Grijalva collected aroused the envy and greed

of the future conqueror of Mexico, Hernando Cortez.

In 1518, Velasquez, governor of Cuba, sends Cortez westward, with eleven

ships and over six hundred men, for the purpose of exploration. He

landed at Tabasco, thence proceeded to the Island of San Juan de Ulua,

nearly opposite Vera Cruz, where he received messengers and gifts from

the Emperor Montezuma. Ordered to leave the country, he destroyed his

ships and marched directly upon the capital. He seized Montezuma and

held him as a hostage for the peaceable conduct of his subjects. The

Mexicans took up arms, only to be defeated again and again by the

Spaniards. Montezuma became a vassal of the Spanish crown, and

covenanted to pay annual tribute. Attempting to reconcile his people to

this agreement he was himself assailed and wounded, and, refusing all

nourishment, soon after died. With re-enforcements, Cortez completed

the conquest of the country, and Mexico became a province of Spain.

Montezuma mortally wounded by his own subjects.

Hernando Cortes. From an old print.

Vasquez de Ayllon, one of the auditors of the Island of Santo Domingo,

sent two ships from that island to the Bahamas for Indians to be sold as

slaves. Driven from their course by the wind, they at length reached the

shore of South Carolina, at the mouth of the Wateree River, which they

named the Jordan, calling the country Chicora. Though kindly treated by

the natives, the ruthless adventurers carried away some seventy of

these. One ship was lost, and most of the captives on the others died

during the voyage. Vasquez was, by the Emperor Charles V., King of

Spain, made governor of this new province, and again set sail to take

possession. But the natives, in revenge for the cruel treatment which

they had previously received, made a furious attack upon the invaders.

The few survivors of the slaughter returned to Santo Domingo, and the

expedition was abandoned. These voyages were in 1520 and 1526.

In connection with the subject of Spanish voyages, a passing notice

should be given to one, who, though not of Spanish birth, yet did much

to further the progress of discovery on the part of his adopted country.

Magellan was a Portuguese navigator who had been a child when Columbus

came back in triumph from the West Indies. Refused consideration from

King Emmanuel, of Portugal, for a wound received under his flag during

the war against Morocco, he renounced his native land and offered his

services to the sagacious Charles V., of Spain, who gladly accepted

them, With a magnificent fleet, Magellan, in 1519, set sail from

Seville, cherishing Columbus's bold purpose, which no one had yet

realized, of reaching the East Indies by a westward voyage, After

touching at the Canaries, he explored the coast of South America, passed

through the strait now called by his name, discovered the Ladrone

Islands, and christened the circumjacent ocean the Pacific.

The illustrious navigator now sailed for the Philippine Islands, so

named from Philip, son of Charles V., who succeeded that monarch as

Philip II. By the Tordesillas division above described, the islands were

properly in the Portuguese hemisphere, but on the earliest maps, made by

Spaniards, they were placed twenty-five degrees too far east, and this

circumstance, whether accidental or designed, has preserved them to

Spain even to the present time. At the Philippine Islands Magellan was

killed in an affray with the natives. One of his ships, the Victoria,

after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, arrived in Spain, having

been the first to circumnavigate the globe. The voyage had taken three

years and twenty-eight days.

[1528-1540]

The disastrous failure of the expedition of Vasquez de Ayllon to Florida

did not discourage attempts on the part of others in the same direction.

Velaspuez, governor of Cuba, jealous of the success of Cortez in Mexico,

had sent Pamphilo de Narvaez to arrest him. In this attempt Narvaez had

been defeated and taken prisoner. Undeterred by this failure he had

solicited and received of Charles V. the position of governor over

Florida, a territory at that time embracing the whole southern part of

what is now the United States, and reaching from Cape Sable to the

Panuco, or River of Palms, in Mexico. With three hundred men he, in

1528, landed near Appalachee Bay, and marched inland with the hope of

opening a country rich and populous. Bitterly was he disappointed.

Swamps and forests, wretched wigwams with their squalid inmates

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