A School History of the United States by John Bach McMaster

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[Footnote 1: Do not fail to read a delightful little book called _The
Spanish Pioneers_, by Charles F. Lummis. In it the story of these great
journeys is told on pp. 77-88, 101-143.]

[Illustration: The kind of cities found by Marcos and Coronado in the
Rio Grande valley.]

[Illustration: CORONADO'S EXPEDITION 1540]

%13. The Spaniards on the Mississippi.%--In 1537 De Soto was
appointed governor of Cuba, with instructions to conquer and hold all
the country discovered by Narvaez. On this mission he set out in May,
1539, and landed at Tampa Bay, on the west coast of our state of
Florida. He wandered over the swamps and marshes, the moss-grown
jungles, and the forests of the Gulf states, and spent the winter of
1541 near the Yazoo River. Crossing the Mississippi in the spring of
1542 at the Chickasaw Bluffs, he wandered about eastern Arkansas, till
he died of fever, and was buried in the Mississippi. His followers then
built rude boats, floated down the river to the Gulf, steered along the
coast of Texas, and in September, 1543, reached Tampico, in Mexico.

More than half a century had now gone by since the first voyage of
Columbus. Yet not a settlement, great or small, had been established by
Spain within our boundary. Between 1546 and 1561 missionaries twice
attempted to found missions and convert the Indians in Florida, and
twice were driven away. In 1582 others entered the valleys of the Gila
and the Rio Grande, took possession of the pueblos, established
missions, preached the Gospel to the Indians, and brought them under
the dominion of Spain. But when Santa Fe (sahn'-tah fa') was founded, in
1582, the only colony of Spain in the United States, besides the
missions in Arizona and New Mexico, was St. Augustine in Florida.

[Illustration: A Spanish mission]

%14. St. Augustine.%--St. Augustine was founded by the Spaniards in
order to keep out the French, who made two attempts to occupy the south
Atlantic coast. The first was that of John Ribault (ree-bo'). He led a
colony of Frenchmen, in 1562, to what is now South Carolina, built a
small fort on a spot which he called Port Royal, and left it in charge
of thirty men while he went back to France for more colonists. The men
were a shiftless set, depended on the Indians till the Indians would
feed them no longer, and when famine set in, they mutinied, slew their
commander, built a crazy ship and went to sea, where an English vessel
found them in a starving condition, and took them to London.

In 1564 a second party, under Laudonniere (lo-do-ne-ar'), landed at the
St. Johns River in Florida, and built a fort called Fort Caroline in
honor of Charles IX. of France. But the King of Spain, hearing that the
French were trespassing, sent an expedition under Menendez
(ma-nen'-deth), who founded St. Augustine in 1565. There Ribault, who
had returned and joined Laudonniere, attempted to attack the Spaniards.
But a hurricane scattered his ships, and while it was still raging,
Menendez fell suddenly on Fort Caroline and massacred men, women, and
children. A few days later, falling in with Ribault and his men, who had
been driven ashore south of St. Augustine, Menendez massacred 150
more.[1] For this foul deed a Frenchman named Gourgues (goorg) exacted a
fearful penalty. With three small ships and 200 men, he sailed to the
St. Johns River, took and destroyed the fort which the Spaniards had
built on the site of Fort Caroline, and put to death every human being
within it.

[Footnote 1: The story of the French in Florida is finely told in
Parkman's _Pioneers of France in the New World_; also J. Sparks's _Life
of Ribault_; Baird's _Huguenot Emigration_.]

[Illustration: Gateway at St. Augustine[2]]

[Footnote 2: Remaining from the Spanish occupation of Florida.]

SUMMARY

1. From 1492 to 1513 the Europeans who came to America explored the
coasts of North and South America, but did not go inland.

2. In 1513 exploration of the interior of the two continents began.
Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama, 1513, and Cortes conquered
Mexico, 1519-21.

3. In 1528 Narvaez made the first serious attempt to enter the
Mississippi valley. He died, and some of his followers, under Cabeza de
Vaca, crossed the continent.

4. When the Spanish governor of Mexico heard their story, he sent Fray
Marcos to find the "Seven Cities of Cibola"; and began the exploration
of the southwestern part of the United States.

5. In 1539-1541 De Soto and his band explored the southeastern part of
the United States from Florida to the Mississippi River.

6. By 1582 two Spanish settlements had been made in the United States
--St. Augustine, 1565, and Santa Fe, 1582.

EUROPE FINDS AMERICA.

DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATIONS, 1492-1600.

ATLANTIC COAST.

1492. Columbus. Islands off the coast.
1493. Columbus. Islands off the coast.
1497. John Cabot. North America. Labrador.
1498. John and Sebastian Cabot. Labrador to Cape Cod.
Pinzon and Solis. Florida to Chesapeake Bay.
1500. Cabral. Discovers Brazil.
1501. Vespucius. Explores Brazilian coast.
1500-1502. Cortereals. Explore coast North America.
1513. Ponce de Leon. Discovers and names Florida.

GULF COAST.

1498. Pinzon and Solis. Explore Gulf of Mexico and
coast of Florida.
1519. Pineda. Sails from Florida to Mexico.
1528. Narvaez. Florida to Texas.
1543. Followers of De Soto sail from Mississippi River
to Mexico.

THE INTERIOR.

1519-21. Cortes. Conquers Mexico.
1534-36. De Vaca. From the Sabine River to the Gulf
of California.
1539. Fray Marcos. Search for the Seven Cities. Wanders
over New Mexico.
1540-42. Coronado, Gila River, Rio Grande, Colorado
River.
1539-41. De Soto. Wanders over Florida, Georgia, and
Alabama, and reaches the Mississippi River.
1582-1600. Spaniards in the valleys of the Gila and Rio
Grande.

PACIFIC COAST.

1513. Balboa. Discovers the Pacific Ocean.
1520. Magellan. Sails around South America into the
Pacific.
1578-1580. Drake. Sails around South America and
up the Pacific coast to Oregon. (See p. 26.)

CHAPTER III

ENGLISH, DUTCH, AND SWEDES ON THE SEABOARD

%15. The English Claim to the Seaboard.%--After the Spaniards had
thus explored the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and what is now Arizona,
New Mexico, and Texas, the English attempted to take possession of the
Atlantic coast. The voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot in 1497 and 1498
were not followed up in the same way that Spain followed up those of
Columbus, and for nearly eighty years the flag of England was not
displayed in any of our waters.[1] At last, in 1576, Sir Martin
Frobisher set out to find a northwest passage to Asia. Of course he
failed; but in that and two later voyages he cruised about the shores of
our continent and gave his name to Frobisher's Bay.[2] Next came Sir
Francis Drake, the greatest seaman of his age. He left England in 1577,
crossed the Atlantic, sailed down the South American coast, passed
through the Strait of Magellan, and turning northward coasted along
South America, Mexico, and California, in search of a northeast passage
to the Atlantic. When he had gone as far north as Oregon the weather
grew so cold that his men began to murmur, and putting his ship about,
he sailed southward along our Pacific coast in search of a harbor, which
in June, 1579, he found near the present city of San Francisco. There he
landed, and putting up a post nailed to it a brass plate on which was
the name of Queen Elizabeth, and took possession of the country.[3]
Despairing of finding a short passage to England, Drake finally crossed
the Pacific and reached home by way of the Cape of Good Hope. He had
sailed around the globe.[4]

[Footnote 1: For Cabot's voyages read Fiske's _Discovery of America_,
Vol. II., pp. 2-15.]

[Footnote 2: See map of 1515.]

[Footnote 3: The white cliffs reminded Drake strongly of the cliffs of
Dover, and as one of the old names of England was Albion (the country of
the white cliffs), he called the land New Albion.]

[Footnote 4: For Drake read E.T. Payne's _Voyages of Elizabethan
Seamen_.]

%16. Gilbert and Ralegh attempt to found a Colony.%--While Drake was
making his voyage, another gallant seaman, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, was
given (by Queen Elizabeth) any new land he might discover in America.
His first attempt (1579) was a failure, and while on his way home from a
landing on Newfoundland (1583), his ship, with all on board, went down
in a storm at sea. The next year (1584) his half-brother, Sir Walter
Ralegh, one of the most accomplished men of his day and a great favorite
with Queen Elizabeth, obtained permission from the Queen to make a
settlement on any part of the coast of America not already occupied by a
Christian power; and he at once sent out an expedition. The explorers
landed on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina,
and came home with such a glowing description of the "good land" they
had found that the Virgin Queen called it "Virginia," in honor of
herself, and Ralegh determined to colonize it.[1]

[Footnote 1: For Ralegh read E. Gosse's _Raleigh_ (in English Worthies
Series); Louise Creighton's _Sir W. Ralegh_ (Historical
Biographies Series).]

%17. Roanoke Colony; the Potato and Tobacco.%--In 1585, accordingly,
108 emigrants under Ralph Lane left England and began to build a town on
Roanoke Island. They were ill suited for this kind of pioneer life, and
were soon in such distress that, had not Sir Francis Drake in one of his
voyages happened to touch at Roanoke, they would have starved to death.
Drake, seeing their helplessness, carried them home to England. Yet
their life on the island was not without results, for they took back
with them the potato, and some dried tobacco leaves which the Indians
had taught them to smoke.

Ralegh, of course, was greatly disappointed to see his colonists again
in England. But he was not discouraged, and in 1587 sent forth a second
band. The first had consisted entirely of men. The second band was
composed of both men and women with their families, for it seemed likely
that if the men took their wives and children along they would be more
likely to remain than if they went alone. John White was the leader, and
with a charter and instructions to build the city of Ralegh somewhere on
the shores of Chesapeake Bay he set off with his colonists and landed on
Roanoke Island. Here a little granddaughter was born (August 18, 1587),
and named Virginia. She was the child of Eleanor Dare, and was the first
child born of English parents in America.

[Illustration: Roanoke Island and vicinity]

Governor White soon found it necessary to go back to England for
supplies, and, in consequence of the Spanish war, three years slipped by
before he was able to return to the colony. He was then too late. Every
soul had perished, and to this day nobody knows how or where. Ralegh
could do no more, and in 1589 made over all his rights to a joint-stock
company of merchants. This company did nothing, and the sixteenth
century came to an end with no English colony in America.[1]

[Footnote 1: Doyle's _English Colonies in America_, Virginia, pp. 56-74;
Bancroft's _History of the United States_, Vol. I., pp. 60-79;
Hildreth's _History of the United States_, Vol. I., pp. 80-87.]

%18. Gosnold in New England.%--With the new century came better
fortune. Ralegh's noble efforts to plant a colony aroused Englishmen to
the possibility of founding a great empire in the New World, and
especially one named Bartholomew Gosnold.

Instead of following the old route to America by way of the Canary
Islands, the West Indies, and Florida, he sailed due west across the
Atlantic,[2] and brought up on the shore of a cape which he named Cape
Cod.[3] Following the shore southward, he passed through Nantucket Sound
and Vineyard Sound, till he came to Cuttyhunk Island, at the entrance of
Buzzards Bay. On this he landed, and built a house for the use of
colonists he intended to leave there. But when he had filled his ship
with sassafras roots and cedar logs, nobody would remain, and the whole
company went back to England.[4]

[Footnote 2: By thus shortening the journey 3000 miles, he practically
brought America 3000 miles nearer to Europe.]

[Footnote 3: Because the waters thereabout abounded in codfish. For a
comparison of Gosnold's route with those of the other early explorers
see the map on p. 15.]

[Footnote 4: Bancroft's _United States_, Vol. I., pp. 70-83. Hildreth's
_United States,_ Vol. I., p. 90.]

%19. The Two Virginia Companies.%--As a result of this voyage,
Gosnold was more eager than ever to plant a colony in Virginia, and this
enthusiasm he communicated so fully to others that, in 1606, King James
I. created two companies to settle in Virginia, which was then the name
for all the territory from what is now Maine to Florida.

1. Each company was to own a block of land 100 miles square; that is,
100 miles along the coast,--50 miles each way from its first
settlement,--and 100 miles into the interior.

2. The First Company, a band of London merchants, might establish its
first settlement anywhere between 34 deg. and 41 deg. north latitude.

3. The Second Company, a band of Plymouth merchants, might establish its
first settlement anywhere between 38 deg. and 45 deg..

4. These settlements were to be on the seacoast.

5. In order to prevent the blocks from overlapping, it was provided that
the company which was last to settle should locate at least 100 miles
from the other company's settlement.[1]

[Footnote 1: Over the affairs of each company presided a council
appointed by the King, with power to choose its own president, fill
vacancies among its own members, and elect a council of thirteen to
reside on the company's lands in America. Each company might coin money,
raise a revenue by taxing foreign vessels trading at its ports, punish
crime, and make laws which, if bad, could be set aside by the King. All
property was to be owned in common, and all the products of the soil
deposited in a public magazine from which the needs of the settlers were
to be supplied. The surplus was to be sold for the good of the company.
The charter is given in full in Poore's _Charters and Constitutions_,
pp. 1888-1893.]

%20. The Jamestown Colony.%--Thus empowered, the two companies made
all haste to gather funds, collect stores and settlers, and fit out
ships. The London Company was the first to get ready, and on the 19th of
December, 1606, 143 colonists set sail in three ships for America with
their charter, and a list of the council sealed up in a strong box. The
Plymouth Company soon followed, and before the year 1607 was far
advanced, two settlements were planted in our country: the one at
Jamestown, in Virginia, the other near the mouth of the Kennebec, in
Maine. The latter, however, was abandoned the following year (see
Chapter IV).

The three ships which carried the Virginia colony reached the coast in
the spring of 1607, and entering Chesapeake Bay sailed up a river which
the colonists called the James, in honor of the King. When about thirty
miles from its mouth, a landing was made on a little peninsula, where a
settlement was begun and named Jamestown.[1] It was the month of May,
and as the weather was warm, the colonists did not build houses, but,
inside of some rude fortifications, put up shelters of sails and
branches to serve till huts could be built. But their food gave out, the
Indians were hostile, and before September half of the party had died of
fever. Had it not been for the energy and courage of John Smith, every
one of them would have perished. He practically assumed command, set the
men to building huts, persuaded the Indians to give them food, explored
the bays and rivers of Virginia, and for two dreary years held the
colony together. When we consider the worthless men he had to deal with,
and the hardships and difficulties that beset him, his work is
wonderful. The history which he wrote, however, is not to be trusted.[2]

[Footnote 1: Nothing now remains of Jamestown but the ruined tower of
the church shown in the picture. Much of the land on which the town
stood has been washed away by the river, so that its site is now
an island.]

[Footnote 2: Read the _Life and Writings of Captain John Smith_, by
Charles Dudley Warner; also John Fiske in _Atlantic Monthly_, December,
1895; Eggleston's _Beginners of a Nation_, pp. 31-38. Smith's _True
Relation_ is printed in _American History Leaflets_, No. 27, and
_Library of American Literature_ Vol. I.]

[Illustration: All that is left of Jamestown]

Bad as matters were, they became worse when a little fleet arrived with
many new settlers, making the whole number about 500. The newcomers were
a worthless set picked up in the streets of London or taken from the
jails, and utterly unfit to become the founders of a state in the
wilderness of the New World. Out of such material Smith in time might
have made something, but he was forced by a wound to return to England,
and the colony went rapidly to ruin. Sickness and famine did their work
so quickly that after six months there were but sixty of the 500 men
alive. Then two small ships, under Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George
Somers, arrived at Jamestown with more settlers; but all decided to
flee, and had actually sailed a few miles down the James, when, June 8,
1610, they met Lord Delaware with three ships full of men and supplies
coming up the river. Delaware came out as governor under a new charter
granted in 1609.[1]

[Footnote 1: Read "The Jamestown Experiments," in Eggleston's _Beginners
of a Nation,_ pp. 25-72.]

[Illustration: Vicinity of Jamestown]

%21. The Virginia Charter of 1609% made a great change in the
boundary of the company's property. By the 1606 charter the colony was
limited to 100 miles along the seaboard and 100 miles west from the
coast. In 1609 the company was given an immense domain reaching 400
miles along the coast,--200 miles each way from Old Point
Comfort,--and extending "up into the land throughout _from sea to sea_,
west and northwest." This description is very important, for it was
afterwards claimed by Virginia to mean a grant of land of the shape
shown on the map.[1]

[Footnote 1: Read Hinsdale's _Old Northwest_, pp. 74, 75.]

[Illustration]

%22. The First Representative Assembly in America.%--Under the new
charter and new governors Virginia began to thrive. More work and less
grumbling were done, and a few wise reforms were introduced. One
governor, however, Argall, ruled the colony so badly that the people
turned against him and sent such reports to England that immigration
almost ceased. The company, in consequence, removed Argall, and gave
Virginia a better form of government. In future, the governor's power
was to be limited, and the people were to have a share in the making of
laws and the management of affairs. As the colonists, now numbering 4000
men, were living in eleven settlements, or "boroughs," it was ordered
that each borough should elect two men to sit in a legislature to be
called the House of Burgesses. This house, the first representative
assembly ever held by white men in America, met on July 30, 1619, in the
church at Jamestown, and there began "government of the people, by the
people, for the people."

%23. The Establishment of Slavery in America.%--It is interesting to
note that at the very time the men of Virginia thus planted free
representative government in America, another institution was planted
beside it, which, in the course of two hundred and fifty years, almost
destroyed free government. The Burgesses met in July, and a few weeks
later, on an August day, a Dutch ship entered the James and before it
sailed away sold twenty negroes into slavery. The slaves increased in
numbers (there were 2000 in Virginia in 1671), and slavery spread to the
other colonies as they were started, till, in time, it existed in every
one of them.

%24. Virginia loses her Charter, 1624.%--The establishment of popular
government in Virginia was looked on by King James as a direct affront,
and was one of many weighty reasons why he decided to destroy the
company. To do this, he accused it of mismanagement, brought a suit
against it, and in 1624 his judges declared the charter annulled, and
Virginia became a royal colony.[1]

[Footnote 1: On the Virginia colony in general read Doyle's volume on
_Virginia_, pp. 104-184; Lodge's _English Colonies in America_, pp.
1-12; of course, Bancroft and Hildreth. For particular epochs or events
consult Channing and Hart's _Guide to American History_, pp. 248-253.]

%25. Maryland begun.%--A year later James died, and Charles I. came
to the throne. As Virginia was now a royal colony, the land belonged to
the King; and as he was at liberty to do what he pleased with it, he cut
off a piece and gave it to Lord Baltimore. George Calvert, Lord
Baltimore, was a Roman Catholic nobleman who for years past had been
interested in the colonization of America, and had tried to plant a
colony in Newfoundland. The severity of the climate caused failure, and
in 1629 he turned his attention to Virginia and visited Jamestown. But
religious feeling ran as high there as it did anywhere. The colonists
were intolerantly Protestant, and Baltimore was ordered back to England.

Undeterred by such treatment, Baltimore was more determined than ever to
plant a colony, and in 1632 obtained his grant of a piece of Virginia.
The tract lay between the Potomac River and the fortieth degree of north
latitude, and extended from the Atlantic Ocean to a north and south
line through the source of the Potomac.[1] It was called Maryland in
honor of the Queen, Henrietta Maria.

[Footnote 1: It thus included what is now Delaware, and pieces of
Pennsylvania and West Virginia.]

[Illustration: ORIGINAL BOUNDARY OF MARYLAND]

The area of the colony was not large; but the authority of Lord
Baltimore over it was almost boundless. He was to bring to the King each
year, in token of homage, two Indian arrowheads, and pay as rent one
fifth of all the gold and silver mined. This done, the "lord
proprietary," as he was called, was to all intents and purposes a king.
He might coin money, make war and peace, grant titles of nobility,
establish courts, appoint judges, and pardon criminals; but he was not
permitted to tax his people without their consent. He must summon the
freemen to assist him in making the laws; but when made, they need not
be sent to the King for approval, but went into force as soon as the
lord proprietary signed them. Of course they must not be contrary to the
laws of England.

%26. Treatment of Catholics.%--The deed for Maryland had not been
issued when Lord Baltimore died. It was therefore made out in the name
of his son, Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, who, like the
first, was a Roman Catholic, and was influenced in his attempts at
colonization by a desire to found a refuge for people of his own faith.
At that time in England no Roman Catholic was permitted to educate his
children in a foreign land, or to employ a schoolmaster of his religious
belief; or keep a weapon; or have Catholic books in his house; or sit in
Parliament; or when he died be buried in a parish churchyard. If he did
not attend the parish church, he was fined L20 a month. But it is
needless to mention the ways in which he suffered for his religion. It
is enough to know that the persecution was bitter, and that the purpose
of Lord Baltimore was to make Maryland a Roman Catholic colony. Yet he
set a noble example to other founders of colonies by freely granting to
all sects full freedom of conscience. As long as the Catholics remained
in control, toleration worked well. But in the year 1691 Lord Baltimore
was deprived of his colony because he had supported King James II., and
in 1692 sharp laws were made in Maryland against Catholics by the
Protestants. In 1716 the colony was restored to the proprietor.

The first settlement was made in 1634 at St. Marys. Annapolis was
founded about 1683; and Baltimore in 1729.[1]

[Footnote 1: Read Scharf's _History of Maryland_; Doyle's _Virginia_;
Lodge's _English Colonies_; Eggleston's _Beginners of a Nation,_.]

%27. The Dutch on the Hudson.%--Meantime great things had been
happening to the northward. In 1609 Henry Hudson, an English sailor in
the service of Holland, was sent to find a northwest passage to India.
He reached our coast not far from Portland, Maine, and abandoning all
idea of finding a passage, he sailed alongshore to the southward as far
as Cape Cod. Here he put to sea, and when he again sighted land was off
Delaware Bay. In attempting to sail up it, his ship, the _Half-Moon,_
grounded, and Hudson turned about. Running along the Jersey coast, he
entered New York Bay, and sailed up the river which the Dutch called
the North River, but which we know as the Hudson. Hudson's voyage gave
the Dutch a claim to all the country drained by the Delaware or South
River and the Hudson River, and some Dutch traders at once sent out
vessels, and were soon trading actively with the Indians. By 1614 a rude
fort had been erected near the site of Albany, and some trading huts had
been put up on Manhattan Island. These ventures proved so profitable
that numbers of merchants began to engage in the trade, whereupon those
already in it, in order to shut out others, organized a company, and in
1615 obtained a trading charter for three years from the States General
of Holland, and carried on their operations from Albany to the
Delaware River.

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