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CHAPTER

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES STATE CONSTITUTIONS INDEX

LIST OF IMPORTANT MAPS

A SCHOOL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

EUROPE FINDS AMERICA

%1. Nations that have owned our Soil.%--Before the United States became a nation, six European powers owned, or claimed to own, various portions of the territory now contained within its boundary. England claimed the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida. Spain once held Florida, Texas, California, and all the territory south and west of Colorado. France in days gone by ruled the Mississippi valley. Holland once owned New Jersey, Delaware, and the valley of the Hudson in New York, and claimed as far eastward as the Connecticut river. The Swedes had settlements on the Delaware. Alaska was a Russian possession.

Before attempting to narrate the history of our country, it is necessary, therefore, to tell

%2. European Trade with the East; the Old Routes.%--For two hundred years before North and South America were known to exist, a splendid trade had been going on between Europe and the East Indies. Ships loaded with metals, woods, and pitch went from European seaports to Alexandria and Constantinople, and brought back silks and cashmeres, muslins, dyewoods, spices, perfumes, ivory, precious stones, and pearls. This trade in course of time had come to be controlled by the two Italian cities of Venice and Genoa. The merchants of Genoa sent their ships to Constantinople and the ports of the Black Sea, where they took on board the rich fabrics and spices which by boats and by caravans had come up the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris from the Persian Gulf. The men of Venice, on the other hand, sent their vessels to Alexandria, and carried on their trade with the East through the Red Sea.

%3. New Routes wanted.%--Splendid as this trade was, however, it was doomed to destruction. Slowly, but surely, the Turks thrust themselves across the caravan routes, cutting off one by one the great feeders of the Oriental trade, till, with the capture of Constantinople in 1453, they destroyed the commercial career of Genoa. As their power was spreading rapidly over Syria and toward Egypt, the prosperity of Venice, in turn, was threatened. The day seemed near when all trade between the Indies and Europe would be ended, and men began to ask if it were not possible to find an ocean route to Asia.

Now, it happened that just at this time the Portuguese were hard at work on the discovery of such a route, and were slowly pushing their way down the western coast of Africa. But as league after league of that coast was discovered, it was thought that the route to India by way of Africa was too long for the purposes of commerce. Then came the question, Is there not a shorter route? and this Columbus tried to answer.

His course led first to the Canary Islands, where he turned and went directly westward. The earth was not then generally believed to be round. Men supposed it to be flat, and the only parts of it known to Europeans were Iceland, the British Isles, the continent of Europe, a small part of Asia, and a strip along the coast of the northern part of Africa. The ocean on which Columbus was now embarked, and which in our time is crossed in less than a week, was then utterly unknown, and was well named "The Sea of Darkness." Little wonder, then, that as the shores of the last of the Canaries sank out of sight on the 9th of September, many of the sailors wept, wailed, and loudly bemoaned their cruel fate. After sailing for what seemed a very long time, they saw signs of land. But when no land appeared, their hopes gave way to fear, and they rose against Columbus in order to force him to return.

But he calmed their fears, explained the sights they could not understand, hid from them the true distance sailed, and kept steadily on westward till October 7, when a flock of land birds were seen flying to the southwest. Pinzon , who commanded one of the vessels, begged Columbus to follow the birds, as they seemed to be going toward land. Had the little fleet kept on its way, it would have brought up on the coast of Florida. But Columbus yielded to Pinzon. The ships were headed southwestward, and about ten o'clock on the night of October 11, Columbus saw a light moving in the distance. It was made by the inhabitants going from hut to hut on a neighboring coast. At dawn the shore itself was seen by a sailor, and Columbus, followed by many of his men, hastened to the beach, where, October 12, 1492, he raised a huge cross, and took possession of the country in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella, King and Queen of Spain, who had supplied him with caravels and men. He had landed on one of a group of islands which we call the Bahamas.

Of the greatness of his discovery, Columbus had not the faintest idea. That he had found a new world; that a continent was blocking his way to the East, never entered his mind. He supposed he had landed on some islands off the east coast of Asia, and as that coast was called the Indies, and as the islands were reached by sailing westward, they came to be called the West Indies, and their inhabitants Indians; and the native races of the New World have ever since been called Indians. Although Columbus in after years made three more voyages to the New World, he never found out his mistake, and died firm in the belief that he had discovered a direct route to Asia.

%5. The Atlantic Coast explored.%--And now that Columbus had shown the way, others were quick to follow. In 1497 and 1498 came John and Sebastian Cabot , sailing under the flag of England, and exploring our coast from Labrador to Cape Cod; and Pinzon and Solis, with Vespucius for pilot, sailing under the flag of Spain along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, around the peninsula of Florida, and northward to Chesapeake Bay. Between 1500 and 1502 two Portuguese navigators named Cortereal went over much the same ground as the Cabots. For the time being, however, these voyages were fruitless. It was not a new world, but China and Japan, the Indian Ocean, and the spice islands, that Europe was seeking. When, therefore, in 1497, Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon, passed around the end of Africa, reached India, and came back to Portugal in 1499 with his ship laden with the silks and spices of the East, all explorers turned southward, and for eleven years after the visit of the Cortereals no voyages were made to North America.

%6. Why the Continent was called America.%--But some great voyages meantime were made to South America. In 1500 a Portuguese fleet of thirteen vessels, commanded by Cabral, started from Portugal for the East. In place of following the usual route and hugging the west coast of Africa, Cabral went off so far to the westward that one day in April, 1500, he was amazed to see land. It proved to be what is now Brazil, and after sailing along a little way he sent one of his vessels home to Portugal with the news.

He did this because six years before, in June, 1494, Spain and Portugal made a treaty and agreed that a meridian should be drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands and be known as "The Line of Demarcation" All heathen lands discovered, no matter by whom, to the east of this line, were to belong to Portugal; all to the west of it were to be the property of Spain. Now, as the strange coast seemed to be east of the line of demarcation, and therefore the property of Portugal, Cabral sent word to the King that he might explore it.

Accordingly, in May, 1501, the King sent out three ships in charge of Americus Vespucius. Vespucius sighted the coast somewhere about Cape St. Roque, and, finding that it was east of the line of demarcation, explored it southward as far as the mouth of the river La Plata. As he was then west of the line, and off a coast which belonged to Spain, he turned and sailed southeastward till he struck the island of South Georgia, where the Antarctic cold and the fields of floating ice stopped him and sent him back to Lisbon.

The results of this great voyage were many. In the first place, it secured Brazil for Portugal. In the second place, it changed the geographical ideas of the time. The great length of coast line explored proved that the land was not a mere island, but that Vespucius had found a new continent in the southern hemisphere,--off the coast of Asia, as was then supposed. This for a time was called the "Fourth Part" of the world,--the other three parts being Europe, Asia, and Africa. But in 1507 a German professor published a little book on geography, in which he suggested that the new part of the world discovered by Americus, the part which we call Brazil, should be called America.

As Columbus was not supposed to have discovered a new world, but merely a new route to Asia, this suggestion seemed very proper, and soon the word "America" began to appear on maps as the name of Brazil. After a while it was applied to all South America, and finally to North America also.

%7. The Pacific discovered; the Mexican Gulf Coast explored.%--A few years after the publication of the little book which gave the New World the name of America, a Spaniard named Balboa landed on the Isthmus of Panama, crossed it , and from the mountains looked down on an endless expanse of blue water, which he called the South Sea, because when he first saw it he was looking south.

Meantime another Spaniard, named Ponce de Leon , sailed with three ships from Porto Rico, in March, 1513, and on the 27th of that month came in sight of the mainland. As the day was Easter Sunday, which the Spaniards call Pascua Florida, he called the country Florida.

Six years later Pineda skirted the shores of the Gulf from Florida to Mexico.

%8. Spaniards sail round the World.%--In the same year that Pineda explored the Gulf coast, a Portuguese named Magellan led a Spanish fleet across the Atlantic. He coasted along South America to Tierra del Fuego, entered the strait which now bears his name, passed well up the western coast, and turning westward sailed toward India. He was then on the ocean which Balboa had discovered and named the South Sea. But Magellan found it so much smoother than the Atlantic that he called it the Pacific. Five ships and 254 men left Spain; but only one ship and fifteen men returned to Spain by way of India and Cape of Good Hope. Magellan himself was among the dead.

%9. Importance of Magellan's Voyage.%--Of all the voyages ever made by man this was the greatest. In the first place, it proved beyond dispute that the earth is round. In the second place, it proved that South America is a great continent, and that there is no short southwest passage to India.

%10. Search for a Northwest Passage; our North Atlantic Coast explored.%--All eyes, therefore, turned northward; the quest for a northwest passage began, and in that quest the Atlantic coast of the United States was examined most thoroughly.

SUMMARY

THE SPANIARDS IN THE UNITED STATES

%11. The Spaniards explore the Southwest.%--Now it must be noticed that up to 1513 no European had explored the interior of either North or South America. They had merely touched the shores. In 1513 the work of exploration began. Balboa then crossed the Isthmus of Panama. In 1519 Cortes landed on the coast of Mexico with a body of men, and marched boldly into the heart of the country to the city where lived the great Indian chief or king, Montezuma. Cortes took the city and made himself master of Mexico. This was most important; for the conquest of Mexico turned the attention of the Spaniards from our country for many years, and finally led to the exploration of the Southwest. But the first explorers of what is now the United States came from Cuba in 1528.

In that year Narvaez , excited by Pineda's accounts of the Mississippi Indians and their golden ornaments, set forth with 400 men to conquer the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico. At Apalachee Bay he landed, and made a raid inland. On returning to the shore, he missed his ships, and after traveling westward on foot for a month, built five rude vessels, and once more put to sea. For six weeks the little fleet hugged the shore, till it came to the mouth of the Mississippi, where two of the boats were upset and Narvaez was drowned. The rest reached the coast of Texas in safety. But famine and the tomahawk soon reduced the number of the survivors to four. These were captured by bands of wandering Indians, were carried over eastern Texas and western Louisiana, till, after many strange adventures and vicissitudes, they met beyond the Sabine River. Protected by the fame they had won for sorcery, and led by one Cabeza de Vaca, they now wandered westward to the Rio Grande and on by Chihuahua and Sonora to the Gulf of California, and by this to Culiacan, a town near the west coast of Mexico, which they reached in 1536. They had crossed the continent.

%12. "The Seven Cities of Cibola."%--The story these men told of the strange country through which they had passed, aroused a strong desire in the Spaniards to explore it, for somewhere in that direction they believed were the Seven Cities. According to an ancient legend, when the Arabs invaded the Spanish peninsula, a bishop of Lisbon with many followers fled to a group of islands in the Sea of Darkness, and on them founded seven cities. As one of the Indian tribes had preserved a story of Seven Caves in which their ancestors had once lived, the credulous and romantic Spaniards easily confounded the two legends. Firmly believing that the seven cities must exist in the north country traversed by Vaca, Mendoza, the Spanish governor of Mexico, selected Fray Marcos, a monk of great ability, and sent him forth with a few followers to search for them. Directed by the Indians through whose villages he passed, he came at last in sight of the seven Zu?i pueblos of New Mexico, all of which were inhabited in his time. But he came no nearer than just within sight of them. For one of the party, who went on in advance, having been killed by the Zu?i, Fray Marcos hurried back to Culiacan. Understanding the name of the city he had seen to be Cibola , he called the pueblos the "Seven Cities of Cibola," and against them the next year Coronado marched with 1100 men. Finding the pueblos were not the rich cities for which he sought, Coronado pushed on eastward, and for two years wandered to and fro over the plains and mountains of the West, crossing the state of Kansas twice.

%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 F? 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.

%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 . 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.

SUMMARY

EUROPE FINDS AMERICA.

DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATIONS, 1492-1600.

ATLANTIC COAST.

GULF COAST.

THE INTERIOR.

PACIFIC COAST.

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. 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. 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. 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.

%16. Gilbert and Ralegh attempt to found a Colony.%--While Drake was making his voyage, another gallant seaman, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, was given any new land he might discover in America. His first attempt was a failure, and while on his way home from a landing on Newfoundland , his ship, with all on board, went down in a storm at sea. The next year 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.

%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 , and named Virginia. She was the child of Eleanor Dare, and was the first child born of English parents in America.

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.

%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, and brought up on the shore of a cape which he named Cape Cod. 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.

%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 .

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. 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.

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.

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