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CANADA AND THE FAR NORTH A.D. 1401 to 1500
The last recorded voyage from Iceland to Greenland was in 1410. The worsening climate had reduced productivity of Greenland livestock and there was increasing navigational hazards from drift ice. Nevertheless, in 1432 a treaty had been reached between the Norwegian and English kings in an effort to stop English pirates from roving the Davis Strait and a papal letter of 1448 condemned these English pirates. All Greenland settlements were apparently abandoned by about 1500.

In the arctic there were Thule Eskimos and Aleuts and in the subarctic regions there were many Indian tribes, including Kutchin, Kaska, Chipewyan and Cree. There seems no doubt that the Thule people, previously described as inhabiting northern Canada and Greenland from at least A.D. 1000 onward, were the direct ancestors of today's Polar Eskimos, who live on Greenland's northwest coast. The Thule, like the Dorset before them, were artists of ivory carving, both for implements and decorative pendants. Although they apparently originally had pottery when they lived primarily in Alaska, their northeastern Canadian areas had a scarcity of clay and firewood, so they carved vessels out of soapstone for seal-blubber lamps, over which they boiled their meat or fish. At the end of this century large scale fishing enterprises began on the Newfoundland banks, where the warm waters of the Gulf Stream meet the colder arctic currents and the cod survive in amazing numbers. Basques, French, Dutch and English all scuffled for dominance, with the Spanish Basques finally being driven out. In 1497 Giovanni Cabato, a Genoese sailing under the British Union Jack and the anglicized name of John Cabot re-discovered Newfoundland and Nova Scotia for England. Three years later Corte-Real of Portugal explored the coast of Labrador. On the Canadian Pacific coast there were the Tlingit tribes and on the Great Plains were Blackfoot, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Huron and Micmac. The United States Apache are related to the Canadian Athapascan tribes, some of whom migrated to reach the southwest (Arizona) in this 15th century. By the 1490s there were about 200,000 Indians spread over much of Canada.

A.D. 1401 to 1500
It was mentioned earlier that this century has been called the "Little Ice Age" because of an overall drop in temperature. Although the Thule Arctic Culture was probably little affected, the arctic glacier now extended well down on Greenland, destroying the agricultural base there, which had helped to support neighboring Iceland.

Only 12 years after Columbus' first voyage to America, Breton fishermen were working the cod banks off Nova Scotia and soon were on the mainland, trading with the Indians for furs. Gaspar Corte-Real had discovered Newfoundland for Portugal and the French explorers Verrazano and Cartier initiated the "French Kingdoms of the North" to give needed revenues for the luxuries of the court of young Francois I. Giovanni de Verrazano (actually a Genoese) sailed all up the coast from Chesapeake Bay to the Strait of Belle Isle. Jacques Cartier followed in 1534, named the St. Lawrence River and then tried for a sea route to Asia, finding only auks, cod, herring, wolf fish, wapiti, elks, beaver and even a polar bear. Scurvy became rampant among his Frenchmen and the Hurons with whom they dealt. After that period for 50 years there were only trappers and traders, with trading posts at Quebec and Montreal. The name "Canada" is an Indian word meaning "village".

A.D. 1601 to 1700
The Thule Arctic Culture, which has been discussed in several previous chapters, is generally conceded to have ended about 1700, merging into the Modern Eskimo Culture. Samuel Champlain was sent out to Canada from France in 1603 to map the known rivers. Establishing Quebec as a base, he explored Lakes Huron and Ontario and sided with the Algonquin and Huron Indians, while defeating the hostile Iroquois. The Jesuit priest, Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix, who wrote a Histoire de la Nouvelle France in the 18th century, accumulated much information about the French-Iroquois war of 1610. He told of terrible atrocities committed by the Hurons on the Iroquois prisoners, including cannibalism. Champlain was the most versatile of colonial founders, a sailor, soldier, scholar and man of action, artist and explorer. The friendly Hurons became the middlemen for the fur trade between Montreal and the Indian trappers of the Great Lakes areas. Nova Scotia was founded as the French colony of Acadia in 1632.

At the death of Champlain in 1635 Canada was the property of a joint-stock company, the Hundred Associates. Settlement advanced very slowly, however, and by 1643, a year after a stronghold had been built at Montreal, there were not 300 Frenchmen in all New France, exclusive of Nova Scotia. Even by 1665 Quebec contained only 70 houses and 550 people. The French fur traders, however, soon carried their commerce 2,000 miles inland to the Tetons. They could live on the barest vegetation and in the crudest shelter, in terrible weather. It was those French guides who later staffed the Lewis and Clark expedition. In 1685 the governor of Canada wrote to Louis XIV complaining that the colonial French had not civilized the Indians, but on the contrary, the Frenchmen who lived among the savages themselves became savages.

Throughout the entire first 2/3 of the century New France had to continually fight the Five Nations of the Iroquois League and largely because of this the Hundred Associates gave up in 1663 and surrendered their charter, allowing Canada to become a crown colony of Louis XIV. In 1665 the Marquis de Tracy arrived with 800 soldiers to wage a total war campaign against the Iroquois, killing and burning their fields and villages. The new military regime was absolute, with severe laws stringently enforced by torture, when necessary. The Marquis' chief claim to fame is that he brought girls along to be the soldiers' wives and these, along with a few descendants of extraneous unions of coureurs de bois with young Indian girls, are primarily the ancestors of all present day French-Canadians.

Robert Cavelier de La Salle, born at Rouen and educated in a Jesuit seminary, emigrated to Canada early in life and from letters brought to life much later, it is apparent that he started his first exploratory trip south from Canada as early as 1671. In 1675 he visited France and received a grant of the government and property at Fort Frontenac (now Kingston, Ontario), which had been previously established in 1672 under the name of Fort Cataraqui. La Salle rebuilt the fort and in the spring of 1678 was commissioned to undertake the exploration of the Mississippi River. We shall here more of him in the next section. The first commercial venture into the Hudson Bay area was in 1668 when Fort Charles was built by Scottish entrepreneurs. Two years later the Hudson Bay Company was chartered with title to nearly 1.5 million square miles of territory. French and Scotch-English fought minor skirmishes in this region over control of the land and its furs for the next 100 years.

THE UNITED STATES A.D. 1401 to 1500
To supplement the remarks made in the paragraph above, in North America as a whole there were, in this century, about 1,000,000 Indians, with about 500 different languages. In northeastern United States there were Pottowatomie, Susquehannock, Iroquois, Erie, Miami, Illinois and Shawnee. In the southeast were Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, Chocktaw, Natchez and others. In the far west were the Nes Perce, the California tribes of Pima, Yokuts, Chumash, Cochimi and then inland the Shoshone, Utes, Apache and in the central plains the Sioux, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Wichita, Comanche and many others.

Regarding the Indians of the Great Plains, the Huff archeological site, some 20 miles south of Bismarck, N.D., shows a remarkable village built by the ancestors of the Mandan tribe and occupied from 1400 to 1600. House lodges still number more than 100 and the Missouri River has been cutting away an untold number by eroding the bluff on which the houses rest. These structures averaged 38 feet by 30 feet, supported by central posts. The walls were of wattle and daub and the roofs perhaps of sod. There is evidence of both horticulture and bison hunting.

The Mississippian Culture, which has been discussed in previous chapters, reached its climax about A.D. 1500, with the unique southern cult which included pyramids grouped around a central square or plaza with a wood, wattle and daub and thatch temple on its summit. These had a strong suggestion of influence from Mesoamerica. One of the most notable temple sites was Cahokia, at St. Louis, where groupings of pyramids and burial mounds cover several square miles. The largest is 104 feet high and covers 16 acres.

Bizarre articles of copper, shell, stone, wood and clay in some mounds in the south show a preoccupation with violence and death. Apparently southern Indians had kept captive slaves for centuries. For example: when the Whites arrived in the next century, the Lower Creeks had Yamasee slaves. The standard beverage in Mississippian times was the "black drink", usually made from parched leaves of the yaupon, a type of holly.

In the southwest something happened to the Hohokams about A.D. 1450 and their climb toward civilization rather abruptly ceased and their society collapsed, cause unknown. Their descendants are probably the unassuming Pima, living in modest pithouse villages, much like their ancestors did a thousand years before. Pueblo Indians remained scattered across the southwest, but chiefly in the Albuquerque, Sante Fe, Taos area. Kiva walls in the great 1,000 room complex at Kuaua, north of Albuquerque, had 85 coats of plaster, with paintings of spirit dancers invoking rain and other blessings.

Designs similar to, but smaller than the famous giant, ground drawings near Nazca, Peru, have been found near Blythe, California overlooking the Colorado River. These are judged to date to this 15th century, are of human and animal forms and have been extensively photographed by archeologist Jay von Werlhof and photographer Harry Casey over a several year period. One 75 foot tall, human effigy resembles the broad-shouldered figures of Navaho sand paintings. Another human caricature is 170 feet high and may represent Ha-ak, a mythical creature, who ate children.

A.D. 1492
COLUMBUS PLANS A ROUTE.--Meanwhile Christopher Columbus planned what he thought would be a shorter ocean route to the East. He had studied all that was known of geography in his time. He had carefully noted the
results of recent voyages of exploration. He had read the travels of Marco Polo and had learned that off the coast of China was a rich and wonderful island which Polo called Cipango. He believed that the earth is a sphere, and that China and Cipango could be reached by sailing about 2500 miles due westward across the Atlantic.

COLUMBUS SEEKS AID.--To make others think so was a hard task, for nearly everybody believed the earth to be flat, and several sovereigns were appealed to before one was found bold enough to help him. He first applied
to the king of Portugal, and when that failed, to the king and queen of Spain. When they seemed deaf to his appeal, he sent his brother to England, and at last, wearied with waiting, set off for France. Then Queen Isabella of Spain was persuaded to act. Columbus was recalled,[1] ships were provided with which to make the voyage, and on Friday, the 3d of August, 1492, the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Niña set sail from Palos, on one of the greatest voyages ever made by men.[2]

THE VOYAGE WESTWARD.--The little fleet went first to the Canary Islands and thence due west across the
Sea of Darkness, as the Atlantic was called. The voyage was delightful, but every sight and sound was a source
of new terror to the sailors. An eruption of a volcano at the Canaries was watched with dread as an omen of evil. They crossed the line of no magnetic variation, and when the needle of the compass began to change its usual direction, they were sure it was bewitched. They entered the great Sargasso Sea and were frightened out of
their wits by the strange expanse of floating vegetation. They entered the zone of the trade winds, and as the breeze, day after day, steadily wafted them westward, the boldest feared it would be impossible to return. When a mirage and flights of strange birds raised hopes that were not promptly realized, the sailors were sure they had entered an enchanted realm.[3]

LAND DISCOVERED.--Columbus, who was above such fear, explained the unusual sights, calmed the fears of the sailors, hid from them the true distance sailed,[4] and steadily pursued his way till unmistakable signs of land
were seen. A staff carved by hand and a branch with berries on it floated by. Excitement now rose high, and a reward was promised to the man who first saw land. At last, on the night of October 11, Columbus beheld a
light moving as if carried by hand along a shore. A few hours later a sailor on the Pinta saw land distinctly, and soon all beheld, a few miles away, a long, low beach.[5]

THE VOYAGE AMONG THE ISLANDS.--Columbus thought he had found one of the islands of the Indies, as the southern and eastern parts of Asia were called. Dressed in scarlet and gold and followed by a band of his men
bearing banners, he landed, fell on his knees, and having given thanks to God, took possession for Spain and called the island San Salvador, which means Holy Savior. The day was October 12, 1492, and the island was one of the Bahamas.[6]

After giving red caps, beads, and trinkets to the natives who crowded about him, Columbus set sail to explore the group and presently came in sight of the coast of Cuba, which he at first thought was Cipango. Sailing eastward, landing now and then to seek for gold, he reached the eastern end of Cuba, and soon beheld the island of Haiti; this so reminded him of Spain that he called it Hispaniola, or Little Spain.

THE FIRST SPANISH COLONY IN THE NEW WORLD.--When off the Cuban shore, the Pinta deserted Columbus. On the coast of Haiti the Santa Maria was wrecked. To carry all his men back to Spain in the little Nina was impossible. Such, therefore, as were willing were left at Haiti, and founded La Navidad, the first colony of Europeans in the New World.[7] This done, Columbus sailed for home, taking with him ten natives, and specimens of the products of the lands he had discovered.

THE VOYAGE HOME.--The Pinta was overtaken off the Haitian coast, but a dreadful storm parted the ships once more, and neither again saw the other till the day when, but a few hours apart, they dropped anchor in the
haven of Palos, whence they had sailed seven months before. As the news spread, the people went wild with joy. The journey of Columbus to Barcelona was a triumphal procession. At Barcelona he was received with great ceremony by the king and queen, and soon afterward was sent back with many ships and men to found a colony and make further explorations in the Indies.

OTHER VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS.--In all Columbus made four voyages to the New World. On the second (1493) he discovered Porto Rico, Jamaica, and other islands. On the third (1498) he saw the mainland of South America at the mouth of the Orinoco River.[8] On the fourth (1502-4) he sailed along the shores of Central America. Returning to Spain, he died poor, neglected, and broken-hearted in 1506. [9]

COLUMBUS BELIEVED HE REACHED THE INDIES.--To his dying day Columbus was ignorant of the fact that he had led the way to a new continent. He supposed he had reached the Indies. The lands he discovered were therefore spoken of as the Indies, and their inhabitants were called Indians, a name given in time to the copper-colored natives of both North and South America.

[1] On the way to France Columbus stopped, by good luck, at the monastery of La Rabida (lah rah'bee-dah), and so interested the prior, Juan Perez (hoo-ahn' pa'rath), in his scheme, that a messenger was sent to beg an interview for Perez with the queen of Spain. It was granted, and so well did Perez plead the cause of his friend that Columbus was summoned to court. The reward Columbus demanded for any discoveries he might make seemed too great, and was refused. Thereupon, mounting his mule, he again set off for France. Scarcely had he started when the royal treasurer rushed into the presence of the queen and persuaded her to send a messenger to bring Columbus back. Then his terms were accepted. He was to be admiral of all the islands and countries he might discover, and have a part of all the gems, gold, and silver found in them.

[2] The vessels were no larger than modern yachts. The Santa Maria was single-decked and ninety feet long. The Pinta and Niña were smaller caravels, and neither was decked amidships. In 1893 reproductions of the three vessels, full size and as exact as possible, were sent across the sea by Spain, and exhibited at the World's Fair in Chicago.

[3] The ideas of geography held by the unlearned of those days are very curious to us. They believed that near the equator was a fiery zone where the sea boiled and no life existed; that hydras, gorgons, chimeras, and
all sorts of horrid monsters inhabited the Sea of Darkness; and that in the Indian Ocean was a lodestone mountain that could draw nails out of ships. Because of the way in which ships disappeared below the horizon, it was believed that they went down hill, and that if they went too far they could never get back.

[4] The object of Columbus was not to let the sailors know how far they were from home.

[5] Columbus was not the first European to reach the New World. About six hundred years earlier, Vikings from Norway settled in Iceland, and from the Icelandic chronicles we learn that about 986 A.D. Eric the Red planted
a colony in Greenland. His son, Leif Ericsson, about 1000 A.D., led a party south-westward to a stony country which was probably the coast of Labrador or Newfoundland. Going on southward, they came at last to a spot
where wild grapes grew. To this spot, probably on the New England coast, Leif gave the name Vinland, spent the winter there, and in the spring went back to Greenland with a load of timber. The next year Leif's brother
sailed to Vinland and passed two winters there. In later years others went, but none remained long, and the land was soon forgotten. Iceland and Greenland were looked upon as part of Europe; and the Vikings' discoveries
had no influence on Columbus and the explorers who followed him. Read Fiske's Discovery of America Vol. I, pp. 148-255; and Longfellow's Skeleton in Armor.

[6] Nobody knows just which of the Bahamas Columbus discovered. Three of the group--Cat, Turks and Watling--each claim the honor. At present Watling is believed to have been San Salvador. A good account of the voyage is given in Irving's Life and Voyages of Columbus, Vol. I, Book iii, and in Fiske's Discovery of America, Vol. I, pp. 408-442.

[7] When Columbus on his second voyage returned to Hispaniola, he found that every one of the forty colonists had perished. They had been killed by the natives.

[8] Despite the great thing he did for Spain. Columbus lost favor at court. Evil men slandered him; his manner of governing the new lands was falsely represented to the king and queen; a new governor was sent out, and Columbus was brought back in chains. Though soon released, he was never restored to his rights.

[9] Columbus was buried at Valladolid, in Spain, but in 1513 his body was taken to a monastery at Seville. There it remained till 1536, when it was carried to Santo Domingo in Haiti. In 1796 it was removed and buried with imposing ceremonies at Havana in Cuba. In 1898, when Spain was driven from Cuba, his bones were carried back to Seville.

In 1497 John Cabot, sailing from England, reached Newfoundland, which he believed to be part of China. This discovery made a great stir in Bristol, the port from which Cabot sailed. A letter written at the time states, "Honors are heaped upon Cabot. He is called Grand Admiral, he is dressed in silk, and the English run after him like madmen." The king gave him £10 and a pension of £20 a year. A pound sterling in those days was in purchasing power quite the equal of fifty dollars in our time.

In 1498 John Cabot and his son Sebastian, while in search of the Spice Islands, sailed along the coast from Newfoundland to what is now South Carolina. These voyages of Cabot were not followed up at the time. But in the days of Queen Elizabeth, more than eighty years later, they were made the basis of the English claim to a part of North America.

WHY THE NEW WORLD WAS CALLED AMERICA.--In the party sent by the king of Portugal to explore the coast of Brazil, was an Italian named Amerigo Vespucci, or Americus Vespucius, who had twice before visited the coast of South America. Of these three voyages and of a fourth Vespucius wrote accounts, They were widely read, led to the belief that he had discovered a new or fourth part of the world, and caused a German professor of geography to suggest that this fourth part should be called America. The name was applied first to what is now Brazil, then to all South America, and finally also to North America, when it was found, long afterward, that North America was part of the new continent and not part of Asia.

A.D. 1501 to 1600
By 1600 there were probably 1,000,000 Indians, speaking some 2,000 languages, in the United States. New York state and the lower Great Lakes region were the lands of the Iroquois. Their village sites were built away from waterways and were sometimes fortified. They farmed maize and possibly beans and squash and hunted. Pottery was used for cooking and storing tobacco for their pipes. In 1845 settlers near Onandaga, not far from Lake Ontario, found a stone which was inscribed "Leo VI 1520" and this may indicate a Norse settlement proscribed by the then Pope Leo VI, some 14 years before the arrival of Jacques Cartier. In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh sent Amandes and Barlow to found a colony at Raleigh, Virginia, but it was subsequently lost, as were two following attempts in 1587 and 1589 by John White on Roanoke Island.

The century ended without even a trading post belonging to Britain in the New World.

Although there were the limited French and English efforts just mentioned, Spain owned America in this 16th century, as far as Europeans were concerned. After the Caribbean was ravaged by the dregs of Spanish civilization, it was the turn of the Gulf Coast of the United States.

A first expedition, led by Ponce de Leon (who had been on Columbus' second trip), landed in Florida in 1513 claiming that region for Spain. In the 16th century "Florida" meant the entire area of present day Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi and possibly more. Ponce may not have been the first Spaniard in Florida, as one early writer says that when Ponce arrived at Charlotte Harbor on the Gulf side, a Spanish-speaking Indian greeted him. This native, however, may have escaped from a passing Spanish ship or come from the Antilles on his own.

Archeological and linguistic evidence discloses numerous pre-Columbian contacts between these two places. In spite of all the stories in children's histories about Ponce de Leon's trip to "find the fountain of youth", he really sailed to Florida to capture slaves and find precious metals, if available. He was authorized to make war on the Lucayhos aborigines, if necessary. Florida was erroneously regarded as just another island and the term Lucayos (or Bimini) frequently included Florida. On his first voyage, Ponce was not very successful, obtaining little more than a handful of Indians, some of whom he trained as interpreters, but when he returned in 1521 he set off with arms, tools, horses, and two hundred men, landed on the west coast of Florida, lost many men in a fight with the Caluysa Indians, and received a wound of which he died soon after in Cuba.

In 1519 another Spaniard, Pineda, sailed along the Gulf coast from Florida to Mexico. On the way he entered the mouth of a broad river which he named River of the Holy Spirit. It was long supposed that this river was the Mississippi; but it is now claimed to have been the Mobile. Whatever it was, Pineda spent six weeks in its waters, saw many Indian towns on its banks, traded with the natives, and noticed that they wore gold ornaments.

In 1520 Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon commissioned Francisco Gordillo to sail to the northerly part of La Florida and he did so, going clear up to Chesapeake Bay, even making a short exploratory inland trip in the vicinity of Pawley's Island. After some other explorations by subordinates, Ayllon himself set forth in 1526 with 7 ships, 500 men, 100 women and Negroes, 89 horses and interpreters to settle in the region of the Cape Fear River or the Santee River. The enterprise did not prosper as one provision ship wrecked and sank and Ayllon died after an extended sickness. The remaining people relocated farther south near the future Georgetown, Carolina, where most died of disease, drowning or Indian warfare. A few remnants returned to Hispaniola.

Pineda's story of Indians with gold ornaments so excited Narvaez that he obtained leave to conquer the country, and sailed from Cuba with four hundred men. Landing on the west coast of Florida, in the vicinity of Tampa Bay, and detected gold among the natives' possessions. They claimed it had been obtained in Apalachee, a province in the north. Certainly there was gold in the Appalachian Mountains, but whether the Indians had mined it in truth or obtained the gold from shipwrecks or from Mexico, is not known. Narvaez searched for the source but was unsuccessful. When he returned to the coast the ships which were sailing about watching for him were nowhere to be seen. After marching westward for a month the Spaniards built five small boats, put to sea, and sailing near the shore came presently to where the waters of the Mississippi rush into the Gulf. Two boats were upset by the surging waters. The others reached the coast beyond, where all save four of the Spaniards perished.

After suffering great hardships and meeting with all sorts of adventures among the Indians, the four survivors, led by Cabeza de Vaca, wandered for 8 years across what is now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico to a little Spanish town near the Pacific coast. They had crossed the continent. The story of this remarkable march across the continent is told in "The Spanish Pioneers," by C. F. Lummis.

Cabeza de Vaca had wonderful tales to relate of "hunchback cows," as he called the buffalo, and of cities in the interior where gold and silver were plentiful and where the doorways were studded with precious stones. Excited by these tales, the Spanish viceroy of Mexico sent Fray Marcos to gather further information. Aided by the Indians, Marcos made his way over the desert and came at last to the "cities," which were only the pueblos of the Zuñi Indians in New Mexico. The pueblos were houses several stories high, built of stone or of sun-dried brick, and each large enough for several hundred Indians to live in. But Marcos merely saw them at a distance, for one of his followers who went in advance was killed by the Zuñi, whereupon Marcos fled back to Mexico.

There were apparently many shipwrecks of European vessels along the southern coasts in the 16th century - some say 10,000 - and the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex of Indians began to use the silver coins and jewelry for their own pendants, gorgets and beads. All of this means that the Algonquians, Siouans, Muskhogeans and Iroquoians living by the ocean knew a great deal about the Europeans before they actually landed.

Leaving Spain in 1538, Hernando de Soto landed in the vicinity of present day Tampa Bay in 1539 following Narvaez' trail with 600 men and more than 200 horses. He went up the peninsula, wintered in Apalachee, then struck out northward to Cofitachiqui, westward to present day Alabama and across the Mississippi into Arkansas before finally dying and being buried in the Mississippi River. On his travels he visited the Queen of the powerful Coitachiqui Chiefdom, occupying a central position in present day South Carolina, and was impressed by the numerous houses, large mounds and the grand wooden mat-covered temple. The queen and her court wore long pearl necklaces - those in her possession reputedly weighing all together some thousands of pounds. Her warriors had copper-tipped pikes, maces, battle axes and perhaps 50,000 bows and quivers. The Cofitachiqui language is unknown. Supposedly Cofitachique contained at least 500 houses, as did Caxa in Alabama and Ocale in Florida. All was not sweetness and light, however, as the Spanish say that an army of 10,000 Timucuans contested De Soto's trip through Florida and up to 7,000 warriors assaulted him in Mabila. But de Soto and his Spaniards brought small-pox, measles, tuberculosis, chicken-pox, scarlet fever, typhus, influenza, whooping cough and the common cold so that within a few decades the southeast became markedly depopulated and the economic and political structure of Mississippian life collapsed permanently. Furthermore, the Caluyas and the Cofitachiqui may already have been depleted and some settlements abandoned before De Soto arrived as a result of the migration of infected survivors from a great 1530 plague in Mexico City. Thus, before proceeding with a further description of the Spanish invasion, a few more words about the southeastern Indians prior to the advent of Spanish explorers seems advisable.

All southern Indians were essentially farmers and maize was the staff of life. Farming techniques had progressed far beyond any primitive slash and burn type of agriculture. The impression for years has been that the squaws did most of the work, but this is not correct. These Indians lived chiefly in towns and had their fields in the countryside. While women may have attended small garden plots, men did much of the work in the principal fields, clearing them, girdling large trees with stone axes and knives and fire, disposing of stumps, breaking the ground with hoes consisting of wooden handles with stone, conch shells or large animal bones at the ends. The maize was grown quite scientifically, planted at stated intervals in hills. As growth occurred, more dirt was piled up around the hill, keeping down weeds, trapping moisture and ensuring a higher yield. A Timucuan practice in Florida was to plant one crop of maize in the early spring and another in the summer on the same ground. It was also possible to grow dent, sweet, pop and other varieties of corn, which matured at different intervals. Although secondary in importance, hunting and gathering did occur. Deer were important, not only for food but for skins, and bears were hunted particularly for their oil, as well as fur and meat. It is not known whether maize was brought up from Meso-America overland via Texas or by sea through the West Indies.

It was in the Virginia and Carolina Tidewater area where mixing of the northern hunting-oriented culture with the southern maize-agrarian civilization can best be documented. The Algonquians, originally spread over Canada, were late arrivals in the Tidewater, becoming in part, the Powhatan Confederacy in Virginia and Pamlico and Machapunga of eastern North Carolina. A feature conspicuously absent in the Tidewater was the temple platform mound. Other Algonquians were the Roanoke, Croatoan and Chowanoc. At the time of white contact there were powerful chiefdoms which might almost be called empires all over the south and southeast, including the Cofitachiqui, Powhatan, Natchez and Calyusa. When the Natchez Sun died, his subjects staged an elaborate funeral which included immolation of his wives. Nearer the east coast local natives had had extensive contact with Europeans for generation before Raleigh's Roanoke fiasco, some from Spanish land contact, such as with Ayllon and otherwise with ships either wrecked or coming ashore for provisions.

In spite of their early failures, Spain did not give up. Tristan de Luna took 1,500 men, women and black slaves to try 2 settlements, one at Pensacola and the other at Saint Elena (Port Royal). Lack of supplies, disease, internal bickering and native hostility again defeated the expectations. St. Augustine was founded by Menendez with more than 1,000 soldiers, farmers, artisans, their wives and Negroes in 1565. At first it was really a military base from which to attack the thousand or so French Huguenots, who had fortified Ft. Caroline just north on the St. Johns River. After these French were finally expelled, St. Augustine, with only a mediocre harbor and sandy, relatively unproductive soil, declined in significance. But from St. Elena, founded in South Caroline in about 1566 on the site of present day Parris Island Marine Corps base, soldiers and missionaries trekked into the interior, planting at least five garrisons in the Carolina back country and on the western side of the mountains. For 6 years a Father Sebastian Montero lived among the pagans, teaching them Spanish and the rudiments of Christianity. St. Elena existed for about 21 years and once had about 400 people in some 60 houses.

St. Augustine was burned in 1586 by the English privateer, Sir Francis Drake and he also made an unsuccessful attempt to destroy Santa Elena. He then stopped by Roanoke Island and picked up some of Raleigh's distressed soldiers. The few colonists who remained had either been killed or absorbed by the Indians, when a relief ship finally arrived in 1590.

The Indians bartered skins and furs with the whites. Chief Powhatan reportedly had 4,000 deerskins in a single wardrobe. But the whites took many of the natives captives – Ayllon and DeSoto counting their take in the hundreds.

In the southwest, Texas had been claimed for Spain by Alvarez de Pineda in 1519 and by the 1520s large quantities of horses, cattle and sheep had been brought into New Mexico. In the area of that state and Arizona, there were at that time about 40,000 Pueblo Indians. At about the same time that De Soto landed in Florida, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado had Friar Fray Marcos start north from Mexico on an exploration of what is now New Mexico. He used Esteban, the Moor who had wandered previously from Florida to New Spain, as a guide. Esteban's black color was accepted as a novelty by the Indians and some even thought he was a god. In the following year Coronado himself led an expedition searching for the "Seven Cities of Gold", reaching just south of Sante Fe and then back into the Texas Panhandle and on to the region of Independence, Kansas and the Nebraska border. He had 250 horsemen, 70 Spanish soldiers, 1,000 friendly Mexican Indians, baggage animals, sheep, goats and a train of priests. Others of the original party went around the north end of the Gulf of California and followed the Colorado River up to the Grand Canyon. On his way back to Mexico Coronado viciously attacked the Acoma Indian city about 40 miles west of present day Albuquerque, in spite of the pope's edict about humane treatment of the Indians, and in 3 days and nights the Spanish killed 600 Acomas and imprisoned and enslaved that many more. But Spaniards fell, too, and Coronado returned with only 1/3 of his original 300 plus white men. That Acoma pueblo, originally built by Kersan Indians on top of a rock mesa with edifices 3 stories high, was already ancient and may have been the oldest inhabited site in the United States. In spite of that bloody fight, those Acomas were converted to Christianity some 30 years later by a barefoot and unarmed Franciscan priest, Father Ramirez.

Beginning in 1596 Juan de Onate took an expedition from Mexico City to El Paso and then to Sante Fe and on to Quivera, Kansas and then returned via California, at the top of the Gulf. This was followed in 1598 by the arrival in the New Mexico area by 400 Spanish men, women and children with their 80 wagons and 7,000 head of live stock. Some 3,000 sheep were included. In the far west an Englishman did upstage the Spaniards, as Sir Francis Drake anchored in 1579 just north of San Francisco Bay, claiming the land for his queen, calling it Nova Albion (New England).

A.D. 1601 to 1700
By this time the eastern Woodland Indians were using some 275 plants for medicine, 130 for food, 31 as magic, 27 for smoking, 25 for dyes, 18 in beverages or flavoring and 52 for various other purposes. Most of the tribes of the northern United States and southern Canada belonged to the Algonquian linguistic stock, comprised of the Micmacs, Wabanakis, Etchemis, Montaignais, Natick, Abnaki, Massachuset, Penobscot, Wamponoag and Delawares, in the eastern area. The original name for the Delawares was "Lanape" and there is some evidence that they may have had some contact with the Dutch as early as 1609. Squeezed between the New York state Iroquois League, the Susquehannocks and the more southern Powhatan Confederacy, part of the Lenape moved on west and part stayed to become dependent on and eventually in some degree to fuse with the European settlers. The early history of the Shawnees is not known with certainty, but they considered the Delewares their "grandfathers". By 1650 they were living in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky where they remained for several years. Then, after quarrels with neighbors, they dispersed somewhat, from the Gulf Coast to the Delaware Valley in western New Jersey.

In what was then the "west", in addition to the Shawnee, were the Potowatami, Menominee, Cree, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Arapaho, Blackfoot and Cheyenne. A most interesting observation, recently validated to some extent by Professor Fell, is that the most western of these tribes have Mongolian physical features and Siberian root vocabularies, while their eastern cousins have markedly European physiognomies and marked grammatical and vocabulary similarities to the Semitic language of the Phoenicians (or North Africans). Even a few Celtic words have penetrated the eastern Algonquian dialects and finally there are some Norse words. Fell feels that the eastern Algonquians themselves are in great part descended from early Mediterranean colonizers and their tribal traditions, which included their ancestors crossing the sea and some of the local archaeological evidence, might be confirmatory. Few historians would back up Fell in these hypotheses and apparently no blood factor studies have been done that might tend to either deny or confirm such ideas. The Indians of North America used little cylinders cut from blue or violet sea-shells threaded on a string as money called "wampum". Even Europeans used this legitimately until 1670 and some even after that. In 1649 the Virginia assembly had even set standard values - one yard of wampum (peake or roanoke) equaled two shillings sixpence and one fathom equaled five shillings. If the peake was black it had double the value.

Early Spanish, French and English colonists in southeastern United States encountered a 50 settlement confederation of the Creek Indian Confederacy in an area now consisting of Alabama and Georgia. The confederacy included various peoples with several languages, including Chickasaw and Choctaw. To the north of the Creek also lived the Cherokees, some 60,000 strong in about 100 settlements. Their ancestors had built large mounds in West Virginia and Tennessee. On the lower Mississippi were the Natchez, inheritors of the Mississippian Culture. Mystery surrounds the Westos and Ricahecrians, who appeared menacingly on the South Carolina and Virginia frontiers in this century. Were they one and the same people? Did they speak Iroquoian or Siouan? Many of the coastal Indians relied heavily on the sea, eating mollusks and catching fish with spears. Bows and arrows, bone hooks, basket traps and poisons. Until Franciscans established missions and promoted agriculture, Gaule Indians in coastal Georgia depended primarily on marine life. As agriculture spread, time became available for perfection of crafts such as basket-making, carpentry, woodworking, pipe-making, weaving, pottery, tanning and even certain kinds of metal work. Tobacco cultivation created a demand for pipes, some finely wrought from clay and decorated.

The Calusa were not typical southern Indians and there is much mystery about them, also. They were excellent seamen, constructing large, seaworthy, dugout canoes, some of which would hold up to 80 men. Among almost all southern Indians the men were tall for that time, usually 5'6" but some 6' or more. Both sexes were well proportioned, with the men wearing deerskin breechcloths and the women skirts. Mantles of deer, bear or buffalo skins, woven feathers and Spanish moss provided warmth in the winter. Elaborate tattooing was widespread, with extensive body decoration indicating higher rank. Ornaments were worn by men and women alike. They lived in an essentially law-abiding society, although their laws and morals were different than their later white counterparts. Men could have as many wives as they could afford and young girls normally had sexual relations freely. Divorce was easy, but adultery resulted in severe punishment both for the guilty one and the clan. There is little question that Indians scalped their victims, even before Europeans arrived.

The Powhatans in the Virginia Tidewater were the most densely populated of any Indians of the south, and even in 1650 after white contact had begun its depopulation from disease, Dobyns estimated that there were 1,357,000 Indians in the South as a whole. Archeological finds backup this high population density. We have already detailed the story of the early Spanish explorations in the southern United States and something about their contacts with the Indians. The early English crossing of the Atlantic westward had to take essentially the same course as Columbus and the Spanish, because of the currents and winds that have been mentioned on several occasions. Raleigh's expedition to Roanoke Island, in the last century, sailed through the West Indies before the Gulf Stream carried his ships northward and the early Jamestown settlers had to follow the same course. In the first half of the 17th century 60,000 Englishmen sought refuge in the New World, chiefly in the United States. In addition there were a few Dutchmen and Frenchmen and a sprinkling of Swedes and Finns, as we shall see below. After the original colonization period along the Atlantic coast, there was a period from about 1640 to 1660 when the colonies were left pretty much alone, because of civil war and its sequelae in England. From 1675 to 1691 or after, however, there was a time of troubles in the colonies, including Indian Wars, local rebellions, French incursions, etc. It will be most convenient to discuss the history of this century under regional headings:

NEW ENGLAND COLONIES
This designation included colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Connecticut. By 1700 there were 130,000 people in this geographical area, with 7,000 in Boston and 2,600 in Newport. These settlers all belonged to the more independent classes and possessed a great mass of intelligence, which was to greatly influence the government and commerce of America for generations to come. The first Englishman to explore the New England area was Bartholomew Gosnold, who sailed from the Azores in 1602 to go along the coast from Maine to Cape Cod. He built a house on Cuttyhunk, traded with Indians and left smallpox on the new continent. He was followed by Thomas Hunt, taking Indians as slaves in 1615 and perhaps again introducing smallpox. By 1617 an epidemic of this disease reduced the Indian population by over a thousand, some say as much as 10,000.

NEW HAMPSHIRE
Two small proprietary colonies were set up - one in New Hampshire and one in Maine. The latter belonged to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, whose heirs soon sold out to Massachusetts, but small settlements at Portsmouth and Exeter, N.H., which began as personal estates of Captain John Mason, persisted even after being sold to the crown. New Hampshire was not truly a separate province from Massachusetts until after 1691. In 1690 the first man-of-war built for the British navy in America, the "Falkland", was completed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

MASSACHUSETTS BAY
Some Puritan separatists, who had seceded from the Church of England to the Netherlands, under William Brewster and accompanied by William Bradford, founded the new Plymouth colony in 1620. They immediately set up their own self government under the Mayflower compact. The Mayflower expedition was subsidized by a loan of 7,000 pounds and it had 149 people, including about 40 "separatists" (i.e. separating from the English Church), chiefly from Leyden where they had previously gone. In the first winter in the new land over 1/2 died of scurvy or general debility. They had tried to hit northern Virginia, but missed their target. After the first few seasons, William Bradford became their governor. These Pilgrims deserve to be famous for two things; first, they survived and secondly they proclaimed the Mayflower compact, a bold assertion of their right to self-government.

Following the Mayflower was the great Puritan migration of the 1630s. The promoters of the Massachusetts Bay Colony put up 200,000 pounds. The group was led by John Winthrop, a Puritan (different from the "Separatists"), who only wanted to "purify" the Church of England. They first sailed in March, 1630 with 500 men, women and children. On arrival, they raised cattle, Indian corn and vegetables and soon developed both a fur trade and cod fishing. Winthrop was very concerned about the saintliness of his colony, but not his customers, as he sold cod and later ships to Roman Catholics and to slave-holding Virginian planters alike. This colony was at once a theocracy and an oligarchy, yet it adopted trial by jury, freedom from self-incrimination, and levied no taxes on those who could not vote. But there was no religious tolerance.

Baptists and Quakers were the Devil's agents and the Quakers were the worst. By the penal law of the colony any Catholic priest, who reappeared there after having once been driven out, was subject to death. Witchcraft was persecuted, but chiefly after Winthrop's death. The Puritan migrations continued until 1637 when the English Puritans decided to stay and contest their fate in England, itself, as its Civil War started. That war kept Charles I from suppressing the Bay Colony and its government became a model for the other colonies. In 1634 Massachusetts joined with her neighboring Puritan colonies to form the New England Confederation. This was a loose union formed to settle boundary disputes and give mutual protection from Indians, French and Dutch. Free, public education was soon established, a printing press appeared in Cambridge in 1639 and Harvard University was established in the same city in 1650.

In 1675 serious Indian troubles began in the so-called King Philip's War. Metacom, chief of the Wampanoag and called King Philip by the English, was one of the original friends of the Pilgrim fathers and a frequent patron of Boston stores. But he became surly over various chastisements and developed a plot to attack the settlers. The chief's Harvard educated Indian secretary, Sassamon, tipped off Governor Winslow, however, and Sassamon was subsequently killed by other Indians. The murderers were found, tried and hanged. Two weeks later war broke out with Philip's Wampanoag and their allies, the Nipmuch. The New England Confederation retaliated with a declaration of war, thus involving Connecticut. The Indians were not organized and had only hit and run tactics. The Narragansett tribe on the Bay sheltered some of the Indian refugees, giving Winslow the excuse to attack them with 1,000 men and finally winning in the roughest battle ever fought on New England soil, save the later battle of Bunker Hill. Philip was killed in August 1676 and most of his Indians were captured. The women and children were used as house servants and the men were shipped to the West Indies as slaves. The war in the area of Maine did not end until 1678 and the Indians there retained their land and later helped the French against the English.

When the Catholic king, James II, assumed the English throne in 1685 the Massachusetts Bay Colony was given a new administrator, Sir Edmund Andros. When William and Mary ascended the English throne, however, the people of Boston jailed Andros and returned to their pre-Andros government. New troubles began in 1689 when the French and their Indian allies began to raid in Maine and New Hampshire. The New England authorities at Boston struck back directly at Port Royal and Quebec, as the first offensive of the King William's War. The campaign, under Sir William Phips in 1690, was a fiasco. The dreary war dragged on and although King William ended the European end of the conflict in 1697 with the Treaty of Ryswick, the American battles continued until 1699.

RHODE ISLAND
This Puritan colony was founded by the Reverend Roger Williams, who had been banished from the Massachusetts Colony. Williams was loved by the Indians, lodged with them, learned their language and respected them. He felt that it was possible that God might feel their religion equal to Christianity, a heresy of that day. The only unity in the colony was one of religious liberty. Its fate was to be found with the other Puritan colonies in the New England Confederation.

CONNECTICUT
Connecticut, too, was formed as a migration from the Massachusetts colony, led by the Reverends Hooker and Stone. The original settlements were along the Connecticut River at Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield. New Haven was settled separately, but all joined together as Connecticut, in 1662. A code of laws was drawn up, beginning with penal laws, which were actually borrowed from the Bible. Like Rhode Island, this colony's history in this century is bound to that of Massachusetts, in the Confederation.

MIDDLE COLONIES
This designation included New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania along with the small area of Delaware. By 1700 there were approximately 65,000 people in this group of settlements.

NEW YORK
In 1609 Henry Hudson sailed up the river bearing his name and by 1629 his Dutch people had settled New Amsterdam at the mouth of the river, using a Dutch Company charter. The famous purchase of Manhattan Island from the Wappinger Indian Confederacy for a few trinkets occurred in 1626. The social structure was a type of feudalism and the colony did not do well. By 1660 New Netherland had only 1/2 the population of Connecticut. The Dutch traded with the Delaware Indians some, but then got into warfare at the future site of Esopus on the Hudson. The Delawares then sold most of their land and moved to the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania. In 1644, as a by-product of a Dutch-English War, the Duke of York sailed into the New Amsterdam harbor with four English frigates and took the city without a shot being fired. New York has never been racially or geographically homogeneous, even in the beginning. The Jesuit Simon Le Moyne visited the area of future Syracuse in 1654, finding important salt deposits there.

New York did not contribute to the defense of New England in their early troubles and the Duke of York pretty well made his own laws and levied his own taxes. The province extended from Canada to the edge of Maryland and the cost of administration was great.

In 1683 the Duke instructed his Irish governor, Colonel Thomas Dongan, to summon an assembly primarily for the purpose of raising funds. It met and enacted "The Charter of Liberties and Privileges", declaring that the assembly had the supreme legislative authority and that no taxes were to be levied without its consent. Shortly thereafter, however, the erstwhile Duke of York had become King James 11 and he promptly disallowed this declaration of rights and New York became a royal province, with no assembly. With the subsequent banishment of King James, there was much confusion in the colony and this was augmented by a combined French and Indian attack from the north, resulting in the destruction of the town of Schenectady.

NEW JERSEY
The Duke of York originally gave New Jersey as a gift to two friends, George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley. Philip Carteret, cousin of Sir George, came over from England to take possession in 1665. He gave a liberal grant of political privileges - the best on the continent - to the few hundred Dutchmen and English Puritans who lived there. A representative assembly first met in 1668. The situation became very complicated a few years later when there were two Jersies - East New Jersey, with an assembly meeting at Elizabethtown and a West New Jersey, with an assembly meeting at Salem or Burlington. Confusion in land titles for the next 75 years resulted from these conflicts. The proprietors did not surrender their governmental powers to the crown until 1702.

PENNSYLVANIA
William Penn got the charter for Pennsylvania from Charles II in 1681 and brought over Quaker dissidents from England, Wales, the Netherlands and France. The voyage took two months and one-third of his people died of small-pox, en route. The Quakers, as we have noted previously, were a left wing Puritan sect founded by George Fox in 1650. Penn established the city of Philadelphia in 1682, where some Swedes and Finns were already settled. Germans of the Mennonite sect soon also arrived and settled, so that by 1700 Philadelphia had outstripped New York City and was pushing Boston as a cultural center. Yellow fever killed 220 people in Philadelphia at the end of the century.

DELAWARE
The Swedish West India Company had established the small colony of New Sweden, centering on Fort Christina on the site of present Wilmington, in 1638. This consisted of only 200 to 300 Swedes and Finns, but they brought log construction and the log cabin to America. Peter Stuyvesant, of the New Netherland Colony, annexed this weak Swedish settlement in 1655 so that when the Duke of York took over the Dutch possessions, this area became part of that. William Penn later purchased the region from the Duke and for years it was called the "Three Lower Counties" of Pennsylvania. The Charter of Privileges, which Penn brought back in 1699, allowed these three counties to have their own assembly, but their governor was always the same as Pennsylvania's. These three counties, however, were the future state of Delaware.

CHESAPEAKE BAY COLONIES

VIRGINIA
The first true and lasting settlement in the United States was made at Jamestown, off Chesapeake Bay, in 1607 by Englishmen who, according to de Tocqueville, "were seekers of gold, adventurers without resources and without character.” Existence in this nucleus of the Dominion of Virginia in the early days, was miserable. Of the initial group, consisting of 104 men and boys, 51 died of disease and starvation within 6 months. Help from Indians and the arrival of a supply ship saved the rest. That ship also brought 2 women and 5 Poles, who had been recruited to begin the production of pitch, tar and turpentine. In the end, however, salvation came with the Indian crop, tobacco. Between the years 1616 and 1624 Virginia was changed from a trading post to more of a genteel, permanent community. There were several factors in this transition. One was tobacco, of which Virginia exported some 50,000 pounds as early as 1618. A second factor was the institution of private property and a third reason was political, in that English common law was in effect along with a representative assembly.

The Indians of the Tidewater at the time of the planting of the Jamestown colony were the powerful Powhatan Confederacy (Tsenacommacah). They were Algonquians, but Iroquois, Sioux and Muskogeans all lived close by. There were rumors of blond, blue-eyed Indians to the south, but these were probably survivors from Raleigh's lost colony or shipwrecks. Although a century earlier Tsenacommacah may have had over 100,000 inhabitants, the population was considerably less in this 17th century. The microparasites introduced by the visits of Verazzano, Menendez and Raleigh had already done much of their destructive work. Contemporary writers accused the Powhatans of sacrificing children, but this was a mistaken concept of the huskanaw, an initiation rite in which at the appropriate time children were collected and sent to a designated spot in the woods, where for weeks they subsisted on a limited diet. Perhaps some drugs and rigorous mental and physical ordeals were supervised by their priests, but they were not killed, although some of the weaker may have perished. The local chief at the time of the Jamestown founding was Powhatan, whose daughter was the famous Pocahontas, captured in 1613 by Samuel Argall, to be used to influence the chief to make peace. She married John Rolfe in 1614, visited England and died there in 1617, though her son Thomas survived. Thomas Rolfe was not the only mestizo born from the white-Indian contact at Jamestown.

The Virginia Company was reorganized in 1619 and a new leadership was established. Captain George Thorpe, a pious Anglican, who had started to build a college in Jamestown, might have risen to leadership, but in 1622 Opechancanough, successor to Chief Powhatan, rebelled and massacred some 300 whites, burying an axe in Thorpe's skull. Thereafter the settlers waged a relentless war against the Indians, burning and pillaging their villages and cutting down or carrying off their crops. This also gave the opportunity for capturing slaves, which the English, as the Spanish before them, did with enthusiasm, using them locally or sending them to Bermuda or Barbados. A treaty was negotiated with the rebellious tribes in the Potomac River area in 1623. After a toast was drunken symbolizing eternal friendship, the Chiskiack chief and his sons, advisers and followers totaling 200, abruptly dropped dead from poison and soldiers put the remainder out of their misery. It was perhaps from this encounter that Captain William Tucker and his men brought back 50 Indian "heads", presumably scalps, though somewhat more may have been included. The second and last major conflict in the Tidewater was the 1644 massacre, plotted again by the aged Opechancanough, with more than 500 colonists killed. One out of every 16 Virginians perished.

In the meantime in 1624 Virginia had become a crown colony with a governor and council appointed by the king and it was well governed and prospered. Although the Indians had grown and smoked tobacco for centuries, their variety was too bitter for the whites and John Rolfe imported a new species from the West Indies and perfected a method of curing it. This was the tobacco that was to be exported. The transplanted English soon imported or manufactured locally their own wampum, the blue beads which had become standard trade items. An aboriginal canoe in 1624 was worth 10,000 blue beads, a stack of mats brought 20,000.

The most serious Indian conflict in the latter half of the century was the fighting associated with Bacon's rebellion. Susquehannocks had moved into the Potomac area and although they at first were treated badly, Governor Berkeley had them protected by scattered forts.

But whites continued to be killed, including the overseer at the plantation of Nathanial Bacon, Jr., so Bacon and his neighbors denounced the governor for depending so much on the frontier forts and implied that he had a secret interest in Indian trade. Bacon's men surprised the Occanechees, who were allies of the Susquehannocks, burning and capturing their fort and shooting or burning to death almost all the Indians. Hostilities flared all along the frontier and Governor Berkeley finally in June of 1676, authorized a full campaign against the natives, with Bacon as commander. When Bacon became sick and died, however, Berkeley regrouped and had Bacon's followers executed and their property confiscated. Although he then negotiated still another treaty with the Indians, the whites continued their destruction so that by 1700 there were only approximately 1,400 aborigines left in the Tidewater. Near the end of the century the depleted Powhatans were led by the good Queen of Pamunkey, who actually accepted a tributary status to the whites. The English policy of encouraging tribal rivalries, of dividing and conquering, had succeeded. Farther inland the Tuscarora, Cherokee and Seneca warriors, although possibly never seeing a white face, were well aware of their presence in the Tidewater because of the commerce and the small-pox epidemics that reached them.

We should add a few final notes before we leave Virginia in this early colonial period. In 1609 "Martin's Hundred" had made a settlement at Walstenholme. It was actually larger than Jamestown, but it disappeared in an Indian massacre and has only recently been excavated. The "dig" shows that the Englishmen were in full metal armor like medieval knights and the heavy armor and a closed helmet hampered movement, restricted vision and muffled warning signs of approaching enemies. It is no wonder they were no match for the Indians.

An interesting sidelight is also to be found in recent recovered fragments from a 1619 shipwreck in Castle Harbor - 5 sherds of Roman pottery. It was initially thought that these might have been picked up from old gravel beds along the Thames, used for ballast pebbles in the ship, but experts have said definitely that the gravel did not come from the Thames. So, the riddle of Roman pottery in Castle Harbor remains unsolved. Could this have some bearing on Barry Fell's hypotheses about European visitors to the American hemisphere around the time of Christ?

Finally we should note that English ships brought the first black slaves to Virginia in 16194 but in the first 40 years no more than 300 arrived altogether. By the 1680s, however, they were brought in at the rate of 60,000 every decade. In time both Negro and Indian slavery assumed more and more importance in Virginia. Often young Indians were taken into apprenticeships, but of ten the terms never expired and in essence it was still slavery. According to a 1669 law, foreign - that is non-Virginian Indians - captured in war and those imported by sea and sold, were to remain slaves for life. Governor Berkeley owned native slaves. A frequent reason for the hostilities with Indian enemies and allies, alike, was the opportunity to capture slaves. Rather than peltry, they were the real plunder. The Indians themselves kept slaves and had severe punishments for runaways. They severed their Achilles tendons or cut off their toes and half of their feet, carefully folding the skin over the stumps so that they would heal. The slaves could then work in the field, but could hardly run away again.

MARYLAND
Maryland was a part of Virginia until 1632 when King Charles I gave a slice of that original colony to his friend, Lord Baltimore (George Calvert of an old Yorkshire family). Baltimore died quickly, however, and his son got the charter and administered Maryland from England. It was basically a Catholic colony and although named Maryland ostensibly after Queen Henrietta Marie, it was in reality named in honor of the Virgin Mary. Tobacco was the one great cash crop. Servants might be of any class from poor gentlemen working off the cost of transport, to convicted felons. Many of the English sovereigns transported Scottish and Irish prisoners from the civil wars to Virginia and Maryland, as well as to the West Indies. Negroes were also imported and in 1664 the Maryland assembly passed a "black code" which declared each Negro to be a slave for life by virtue of his color. At all times during the century, except for a short period in the 1650s, Catholics were the ruling class in this colony, although with increased immigration Protestants became finally the overwhelming numerical majority.

THE CAROLINAS
In this century the English began referring to the great land south of the James River as "Carolina". Going south from the James, one had to go 500 miles to encounter another European settlement and that would be the Franciscan mission at Port Royal Sound. Mississippian style villages with council houses or rotundas, plazas and fields of maize were still present throughout that area. Lord Ashley (John Colleton, a Barbadian planter) received a Charter for the Carolinas in 1963, but there was no settlement there until 1670, when Charleston was founded. Even then little was accomplished until the Huguenots came in 1680. Those French formed, eventually, the aristocratic South Carolina while North Carolina was settled by poor whites moving in from Virginia. The two Carolinas were not separated in this 17th century, however.

The aborigines surrounding Charleston already had guns, which they had obtained from the Spaniards and even from some Virginia traders. Some tribes, such as the Westos, were well armed, using more European weapons than bows and arrows and they terrified their less well-armed neighbors at the time. They lived on the Savannah or Westo River near present day Augusta, in part of the kingdom of the Cofitachique. Whether there was any connection between the two tribes in uncertain. The Westos have now become extinct, apparently having been destroyed by the Shawnees (Savannahs) who subsequently migrated westward again into Alabama, then northward into Kentucky and the Ohio country and eventually to Oklahoma. Among a few others, the pack trains of Abraham Wood, working out of Charleston, helped to supply the Westos with guns. He knew a great deal about the southern Indians, most of which were tribes that were remnants of the Cusabo chiefdom. None were strong enough to protect themselves and they looked to the English, the Spaniards or the Westos for protection. But Woodward felt that the Westos depended too much on Virginia and, changing his alliances, he and other Carolinians resolved to exterminate the Westos and install the Shawnees in their stead.

A group of Indian fighters called the "Goose Creek men" then emerged and assumed more power in the colony. Most of them were originally from Barbados, and at the end of the century one of them, James Moore, even became governor. These men soon brought most of the southern aborigines into their commercial orbit, at the expense of Spain, Virginia and later France. The Creeks, Shawnees (Savannahs), Cherokees and Yamasees usually could get cheaper guns, hardware and clothing from Carolinians than from anyone else. Incited by the Goose Creek men, the natives overran Spanish missions, burned chapels and sometimes the padres and carried off booty. First to fall were the Guale missions and some of those in Timucua. Timucuan, Guale and Yamasee Indians lived in those missions which in 1670 had stretched north from St. Augustine to the Savannah River. Yamasees from both the coastal missions and the Chattahoochee, for protection, began moving in large numbers closer to Charleston. Then the Goose Creek men began to use the Yamasees to demolish missions in Guale and Timucua. The booty included silver plate, ornaments, peltry, and especially slaves, all of which the Carolinians exchanged for guns, powder, hardware and textiles. Af ter white contact, the Indians relied less on agriculture and hunted more, with young ones ranging hundreds of miles, some even crossing the Mississippi River and covering more than 1,000 miles before returning home.

Carolina, established relatively late, nevertheless soon had an Indian slave trade that overshadowed other mainland colonies. In late century these normally came from the interior and were marched in large numbers to the coast for sale to English purchasers. As in Africa, natives captured and sold natives. Westos, Savannahs, Lower Creeks and Yamasees, among others, raided remote towns and brought their prisoners to Charleston. Incidentally, yellow fever killed 150 people in Charleston in 1698. Sometime during this century the London Company started a settlement in what was to be South Carolina, which thrived on ambergris, a secretion from the whale's intestine that was to be found floating on the sea. It was used in perfumes.

EXTRA-COLONIAL AREAS OF THE UNITED STATES

THE SOUTHEAST
Spain began establishing her second great mission system in the province of Apalachee after 1630, well after the founding of Jamestown. By the 1670s some 20 smaller missions radiated from the principal one at San Luis (Tallahassee) and a road connected that province with St. Augustine. Still Spain's grasp on the area was weak and the garrisons averaged only 300 to 400 men and even these were not the flower of the Spanish army. They were greatly outnumbered by the surrounding natives and, as we have noted in the preceding section, these were of ten encouraged to attack by the Carolinians. The priests did make many converts, however, and since the cross had long been one of the symbols of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, the padres reported that the Indians fervently came forward to kiss the newly erected cross. Even as early as the preceding century Franciscans had learned the tongue of the Timucuan and Apalachee and that knowledge helped preserve much information about those peoples. Some Timucuans and other natives were actually reading, writing and singing in Castilian, as well as writing in their own language. But the missionaries could also be cruel and they whipped Indians who missed Mass, forcing them to be porters transporting goods some 200 miles from St. Augustine without pay, among other penalties. It is no wonder that they could easily be influenced to revolt.

Because of the fear of the French in Louisiana, Spain had a mission on the Neches River in 1690 and later a garrison at Pensacola, Florida. Even so Florida remained sparsely populated. There were droves of wild pigeons, parrots and other birds, so that many boats came away loaded with birds and their eggs.

THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER REGION AND LOUISIANA
The French explorer Jean Nicolet, who had lived among the Hurons since Champlain's expedition of 1618, explored the Lake Michigan and Wisconsin regions in 1634. Courcelles and Frontenac explored farther in the Great Lakes regions in - 1671 which was about the same time that Robert Cavelier de La Salle made some preliminary investigations down in the headwaters of the Mississippi River. In the following year Jacques Marquette explored the region around Chicago and a few years later, with Father Louis Jolliet, went down the Mississippi to the Arkansas tributary.

We noted above, in the section on Canada, that La Salle obtained some permits from the French crown to continue studies of the Mississippi. He and his party left Fort Frontenac (Kingston, Ontario) in the fall of 1678 and after some backtracking, failure to get more funds from the French king and other troubles, La Salle and his trusted aid De Tonty arrived at the Miamis River in November, 1681 with a party of 23 Frenchmen, 18 savages, Abenakis, and Loups, 10 Indian women and 3 children. They reached the Mississippi in February 1682 and on their course down river first fell in with the Chickasaw Indians, who practiced the flattening of the heads of their children. They reached the Gulf of Mexico on April 7, 1682 and formally took possession in the name of Louis XIV.

Some of the adventures and hardships experienced by La Salle's company on its trip down the Mississippi are best taken from La Salle's own Memoirs, as translated in 1844 by Falconer. La Salle wrote that he undertook the trip to satisfy the wish of the late Monseigneur Colbert, finance minister of France, of finding a port where the French might establish themselves and harass the Spaniards in those regions from where they derived all their wealth. He described the mouth of the Mississippi by saying that the coast and the banks were overflowed for more than 20 leagues above the mouth, making it inaccessible by land. He told of an assembly of more than 18,000 Indians of various nations, some of whom had come from a distance of more than 2,000 leagues (probably 600 to 700 miles) to throw themselves "into his arms". Because these Indians had already carried on war against the Spaniards, even without firearms, La Salle felt that it would be possible to form an army of more than 15,000 savages who would follow him to attack the adjacent provinces where there were not more than 400 native Spanish. He was apparently speaking of New Bisca, the most northern province of Mexico. He strongly advised the French crown to consider settling the Mississippi mouth region because "firstly, the service of God may be established there by the preaching of the Gospel to numerous docile and settled nations. They have already temples and a form of worship." He added that provinces which might be seized were very rich in silver mines; that the river itself was navigable for more than a 100 leagues for ships and 500 leagues for barks and overall for more than 800 miles from east to west.

Concerning the trip down the river, itself, the following information has been taken from writings of both La Salle and the Cavalier Henry de Tonty, as translated again by Falkoner. La Salle actually made 5 voyages under extraordinary hardships, extending over more than 5,000 leagues, most commonly on foot, through snow and water, almost without rest over 5 years. He traversed more than 600 leagues of unknown country among many barbarous and cannibalistic nations, against whom he was obliged to fight almost daily, although he was accompanied by only 38 men. Many of the various tribes he encountered lived in settled villages consisting of hundreds of cabins, of ten made of mud, with cane mats. In one such village the cabin of the chief was 40 feet square, the walls 10 feet high and 1 foot thick, with a 15 feet high, dome-shaped roof. The chief was seated on a camp bed with 3 of his wives and more than 60 old men, clothed in large white cloaks of mulberry bark were present. Sieur de Tonty was told that when the chief dies, his youngest wife, his house-steward and 100 men accompany him into the other world. In one village of the Natchez, there were more than 300 warriors. De Tonty contrasts these lower Mississippi people with those in Illinois who lived in some of the finest lands he had ever seen. He said the Illinois Indians were brave but extremely lazy, except in war, when they think nothing of seeking their enemies at a distance of 600 leagues. Polygamy prevailed there also.

Finally La Salle's application to form a colony on the south of the Mississippi was authorized and this time he approached from the sea in the summer of 1684, with 4 vessels. Unfortunately, after passing Cuba they inadvertently missed the river and finally landed in what appears to have been Matagora Bay. La Salle built a fort there, left 130 men to man it and then left in March, 1685 with another 50 men to find the Mississippi. Still not locating his goal, he built another fort on a river he named "Vaches" and abandoning the first fort, 70 men, women and children moved to this new place. But 30 of his company had died and the master carpenter had been lost. Still this second fort had more people than the colony of Smith of Virginia or of those who embarked in the Mayflower. This was the settlement on which France based claims that Texas was a part of Louisiana.

While La Salle's ship Belle sailed along the coast with his papers and equipment, he took 20 men and started overland, still seeking the Mississippi delta. He returned in 4 months but the Belle had apparently been lost. The leader then selected 20 men to accompany him back to Canada overland, leaving the fort on April 22, 1686. He became ill on the Trinity River, however, and had to return to Vaches. There then remained about 40 of the original 180 people, who had landed in Texas. La Salle again started north in January of 1687 only to be assassinated along with some of his most faithful followers, by a group of 4 disgruntled Frenchmen, at Navasoto, Texas. A few of the party eventually reached St. Louis, where De Tonty was found. In the spring of 1686 he had sailed down the Mississippi and, reaching the sea, had sent canoes east and west, vainly seeking his old companion and friend. The few survivors left in Texas from La Salle's expedition were subsequently either captured by Indians or by Spaniards, and taken to Mexico.

The failure of this expedition did not deter the French government in its pursuit of Gulf settlement. In 1697 the Canadian D'lberville sailed down the Mississippi and with other voyages planted a colony which he left in charge of his brother Bienville. The brave and generous De Tonty joined D'lberville at the mouth of the Mississippi about the year 1700. This was at about the same time that Cadillac was founding a fort at Detroit in the north.

THE SOUTHWEST
Governor Don Juan de Onate set up the first Spanish government in the southwest at Santa Fe, 10 years before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. For the next 200 years Spanish outposts in Arizona, Texas, California and New Mexico slowly developed an economy. The Spanish introduced 2 indispensable elements in the life of western America - the horse and the cow. The horse, originally terrifying the Indians, eventually set them free from Mexico to the Canadian tundra. The Spanish also left the whole heraldry of ranching in the language - corral, mesa, arroya, patio, adobe, mustang, sombrero, desperado, poncho, alfalfa, bronco, lariat and others. By 1630 there were 1,000 people in Santa Fe and the immediate area, including 250 garrisoned soldiers. There were 50 friars distributed in 90 villages, each with their own church.

Trouble between civil and church authorities was not long in appearing. By 1680 the population in the area had increased to 2,800 and there were towns at Pecos, Taos, Santa Cruz, San Marcos, etc. but all were evacuated when an Indian revolt of Zuni, Hopi, Tano and Keres Indians, under Pope', revolted. Some 2,000 refugees reached El Paso. Pope' made himself governor, but his bad reign and a long drought led to disarray, allowing recapture of this area of present day New Mexico and western Texas by Diego de Vargas rather easily in 1692.

Alonso de Leon had established a mission at San Francisco de los Tejas, near the Neches River in 1690, but it was abandoned in 1693. Father Eusebio Kino visited the Pima Indians on the Gila River in southern Arizona in 1697 and, finding them friendly, he established a mission near present day Tucson, in 1700. The Pima were experts with bow and arrow and had war clubs and rawhide shields.

THE FAR WEST
The Great Plains and the far west were certainly moderately populated with many and varied Indian tribes in this century, but in the absence of contact with whites little accurate information is available. The reader is referred to the l8th and l9th centuries.

Incursions in North America The French, Spanish, Portuguese, and English arrived in North America in the 16th century, sporadically and in small numbers. Fishermen plied their trade off the Newfoundland coast from around 1500. Some Europeans hoped to find an alternative route to Asia (the Northwest Passage), wealthy civilizations, or precious metals, but few found what they sought. They did not however, confront an untamed wilderness but rather people who often lived in villages and towns.

The European intruders depended almost entirely on the indigenous people, who provided them food and guides, sometimes under duress. They made few serious attempts to settle in the early years. Frequently, the most enduring impact of their expeditions was negative. Their diseases devastated native populations, and violence and wholesale commandeering of food supplies left a legacy of fear and hostility.

1420 (??)  FIRST DISCOVERY OF NORTH AMERICA?
Chinese explorers may have discovered America 72 years before Christopher Columbus landed in 1492. There are reports that Chinese explorers came in 499 A.D., is based upon a curious historical statement in the works of Ma Twan-lin, one of the most notable of Chinese historians. It is professedly an extract from the official records of China, embracing a traveler's tale told in the year 499 A.D. by a Buddhist priest named Hwui Shin, on his return from a journey he had made to a country lying far to the east. This story seems to have been considered of sufficient importance to be recorded by the imperial historiographer, from whom Ma Twan-lin copied it. It describes the people and natural conditions of a country known as Fu-sang, and has given rise to considerable controversy, some writers asserting that Japan was the country visited, others claiming this honor for America. The literature of the subject is summed up in E. P. Vining's "An Inglorious Columbus," a recent work, in which the Chinese record is exhaustively reviewed, and the balance of proof shown to incline towards the American theory.

Gavin Menzies, British historian and map expert, made these findings to the prestigious Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in 2002. Mr Menzies said the Chinese discoveries were made by ships of the Emperor Zhui Di. The fleet, under the command of top Chinese admiral Zheng He, set sail in the early 1420s to bring back treasures from foreign lands. The ships were the best and the fleet the biggest in the world at the time.

Zheng He was a eunuch for Emperor Yongli of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) before he was made an admiral. He was well-known at the time and his life was recorded in detail in the book "The History of Ming Dynasty." The evidence includes travel manuscripts, including maps, written in 1434 by Venetian merchant Nicolo da Conti, who was aboard one of the Chinese vessels. Other maps made by officers on the admiral's ships include those of America, the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan, which links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

1490's Letter from Christopher Columbus to the King & Queen of Spain

1502 Amerigo Vespucci lived from 1454 to 1512. He was a merchant and an explorer of Spanish descent. Vespucci took part in many early voyages to the New World for the Spanish. He was chief navigator for the Spanish and this included preparing maps and routes to the New World. Of his two or three voyages, one was the discovery of parts of South America, specifically Argentina and Pategonia areas. In 1502, his voyages were highly important because they confirmed doubts of the New World being a separate land from Asia. In 1504 or 1505 accounts of his voyages came out on "A Chronicle of Navigation, Mundus Novus". The New world was named after him in 1507 by Martin Waldseemuller who also wrote travel accounts of Vespucci. Although this name was derived primarily for South America, the name stuck for North America as well.
Submitted by Dennis Wilkens

1550-1728  Hassanamesit or "Place of the Small Stones": Notes on the Indian Reservation at Hassanamesit or Hassanamisco And the Nipmuc People of Hassanamesit (later Grafton, Massachusetts), Part 1 of a documentary summary of the history of the "Praying Indians" of the Nipmuc settlement at Hassanamesit, by a former Nipmuc tribal historian. This section of Hassanamesit history covers the period from the seventeenth century through the creation of Grafton, Massachusetts in 1728 from the reservation lands of the Nipmucs at Hassanamesit. For additional information on Nipmuc Indian families in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Massachusetts, see "Unseen Neighbors" by Thomas Doughton.

1565 to 1815, during the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade, Filipinos were forced to work as sailors and navigators on board Spanish Galleons. They arrived in Morro Bay, California. A landing party consisting of Filipino seamen, namely Luzon Indios (Luzon Indians ), were sent to the California shore to claim the land for the Spanish king.

158? John White: There are not many original written records of John White so his birth place is not known for certain. It is however speculated that he was born in England. By 1580 he was an experienced traveler and artist. He had painted many water colors of native life in Florida, Greenland and Caucasus. For this reason he was selected by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585 to accompany Ralph Lane on an expedition to Roanoke Island, North Carolina. His duties on this voyage were to provide pictures of life in the new world that might stimulate interest in further ventures. Here he painted the first scientific pictures of the flora and fauna of America as well as the customs of the Native Americans.

In 1587 Raleigh commissioned White to lead 117 settlers back to Roanoke Island acting as Governor. Not long after their arrival White's daughter, Ellinor, gave birth to a daughter of her own, Virginia, the first English child born in America. Soon, provisions ran out and John White was selected to return to England for supplies. When he reached England the Spanish Armada was already threatening. This caused White to be unable to return to Roanoke until 1590. When he did finally get back to the colony at Roanoke, White found no trace of the settlers. All he did find was the letters CRO carved on a tree and CROATOAN cut on a door post of the palisade. Because of this it is assumed that the colonists went to the friendly Croatoan Island but it has also been suggested that they were the victims of the Spanish or the Indians, either way it remains a mystery to this day. Obviously John Whites greatest contribution to the new world was not his skills as a Governor. He did however provide some of the earliest and most valuable paintings for the study of the natural history and aboriginal life of this continent.
Submitted by Ben Nevejans

1584 Sir Walter Raleigh: English soldier, seaman, courtier, author and explorer, Sir Walter Raleigh campaigned in Ireland and Cadiz, explored Guiana, and was first to colonize Virginia, and first to open up Guiana to English enterprise. He was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, and in April of 1584, after receiving a patent from the queen for colonization in the New World, Raleigh dispatched Philip Anadas and Arthur Barlowe to scout out a suitable site for the new colony. The explorers returned to England in September with glowing reports of the coast along North Carolina, and in April of 1585, a group of 108 colonists set sail for America in a fleet of seven ships under the command of Raleigh1s cousin, Sir Richard Grenville. By mid-August a colony was established on Roanoke Island and Grenville returned to England for supplies. During his absence, and less than one year after the colony was first occupied, the settlers, threatened by famine and hostile Indians, sailed for England aboard Sir Frances Drake's fleet. When Grenville returned from England (just a few days later) with supplies and more colonists, he found Roanoke deserted. Only 15 of the new colonists stayed behind when Grenville sailed away.

Although greatly disappointed by the return of the first group of colonists, Raleigh dispatched John White and another company of 121 people, with orders to move the Roanoke settlement north to Virginia, onto the shores of Chesapeake Bay. The sailors refused to sail beyond Roanoke however, and the colonists were forced to remain there. When they landed on Roanoke Island in July of 1587, not one of the colonists left behind by Grenville the year before, was still alive. White sailed to England for supplies and when he finally returned to Roanoke in 1590, no trace of the colony remained. The fate of the Lost Colony is still a mystery, even to the present day.

Although his efforts ended in failure, Sir Walter Raleigh is best known for his long, costly, and persistent struggle to establish the first English colony in America. To his bitter disappointment, he never set foot on North American soil. As the queen's favorite, (most likely the reason for his having received the patent in the first place), he was required to attend her at her court, thus forcing him to remain in England.
Submitted by: Sandra Burke

1599-1608 Samuel de Champlain: Samuel de Champlain, the son of a naval officer, was born circa 1567 in Brouage, France. He made his first trip across the Atlantic ocean in 1599 while visiting New Spain. Here he made detailed drawings of plants and animals. Upon his return to Spain, the king was so impressed with his elaborate report that he granted Champlain a pension and a patent of nobility. From here he joined a French expedition that was traveling down the St. Lawrence River. Champlain noted the possibilities for colonization in this region. When he returned to France and his proposal for colonization was denied. However, he was commissioned to start a colony in New Brunswick. This colony eventually failed and Samuel began exploring the New England coast. In 1608, his wish for a colony in St. Lawrence was granted. While running the colony he also explored the surrounding territory and discovered a lake which would later be named Lake Champlain. Throughout these explorations of surrounding territories, Champlain once again maintained detailed descriptions and maps of the area. Champlain befriended the neighboring tribe called the Huron's and sided with them in their battle against the Iroquois. He was later signed a treaty with the Iroquois. When England and France were feuding, Champlain and his officials were seized by British freeboaters and brought back to England. The conflict was resolved, a treaty was signed and Champlain returned to the New World where he would spend the rest of his life. Samuel de Champlain died on Christmas Day 1635. All were saddened for he had no enemies. He is remembered as the "Father of Canada", founder of Quebec and the discoverer of Lake Champlain. He believed that white men and the natives should be friends and equals.
Submitted by Jim Nolan

1600's  The Iroquois Wars: It probably started early in the Seventeenth Century when Champlain (1567-1635) led a band of Hurons against their hereditary enemies, the Iroquois. Champlain shot and killed two Iroquois chieftains, and earned for the French and their allied native nations the enmity of these fiercest of eastern warriors. There was the further matter of the beaver trade. After the Iroquois depleted the beaver population in their own country, they looked beyond their traditional range for pelts. This led to what has been called the Beaver Wars. The need to find new sources of beaver pelts and the Iroquois' desire to be middlemen to the French sent Iroquois warriors off to the west and northwest

April 10, 1606  The First Virginia Charter

1606  John Smith: Captain John Smith was born in Willouby, Lincolnshire, England on Jan. 9 1580. He went through traditional schooling and started his adventures early. In the late 1590's he traveled throughout Europe as a soldier fighting the Spanish and Turkish. In Transylvania he was wounded and captured, but murdered his master and escaped. He returned to England in 1604 and got involved in the Virginia Company's plan for colonization. On Dec. 20, 1606 Smith, along with 104 other colonists sailed for America. On May 13, 1607 Jamestown was founded. The first couple years were rough and Smith was responsible for acquiring the only supplies of grain and game. The settlers did not know how to live in the wilderness and supply their own food. In the Indians eyes they were lazy. It was not long before Smith began exploring, and it was on one of these expeditions where he and his companions were captured by the Powhatan Indians. His companions were killed but he was kept alive. The story gets a little fuzzy here but, some how Pocahontas saves him. This part of Smith's life has been glamorized, exaggerated, and has lost most of its historical content. After returning he explored the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, along with the Chesapeake Bay. These explorations resulted in a useful map of Virginia. After being injured in an explosion he returned to England. In 1614 he crossed the Atlantic again, this time landing a little more north, Cape Cod. He named this area New England and drew up a useful map of its coast. He returned with stories of a plentiful land of fish and furs, and declared it a great place to colonize. As a result of these two journeys he wrote "The Generall Historie of Virginia" and "New England and the Summer Isles". These books were a little over exaggerated to make himself and the new lands a little more appealing. He died in London on June 21, 1631.
Submitted by Bill DeLuca

May 23, 1609  The Second Virginia Charter

March 12, 1612  The Third Virginia Charter

1620  The Mayflower Compact:
"In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the Grace of God, of England, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, e&.

Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord, King James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620."

1629  The Charter Of Massachusetts Bay

1629  John Winthrop: In 1587, John Winthrop was born in Edwardstone, Suffolk, England. He was the only child of Adam Winthrop, Lord of Groton Manor. John grew up on his father's estate and as a youth was both educated by a private tutor and an apprentice for a cloth worker. At age 14 he went to Trinity College for two years and then onto Cambridge University where he studied law. After, he returned to his father's estate to learn the operations of an estate. John met and married his first wife, Mary Worth in 1605. Within ten years John and Mary produced six children. Mary died quite suddenly and six months later Winthrop married Thomasine Clopton. Less than a year later she also died. One year later Winthrop married for a third time to Margret Tyndal. She was said to be " one of the most appealing women in all of American history". The two shared a passion for the religious faith of Puritanism.

In 1629 John Winthrop, as a puritan minister, made the decision to move his family to the New World in order to escape religious persecution. He was appointed the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and with them he boarded the Arbella set for the New World. Aboard this ship Winthrop kept a journal which hundreds of years later would serve as a historical document. He also wrote his famous sermon " A Model of Christian Charity" which outlined god's purposes for New England. He explained how success in the New World was dependent upon how dedicated to the ideal of selfless community the people were. Winthrop also went on to express his vision of Boston as the "City upon a Hill".

After two months of travelling the settlers arrived in Salem, Massachusetts which at the time was nothing more than wilderness with a few huts and clearings. They were horrified and wondered how they could begin to raise the needed crops to supply themselves for the winter. Rather than giving orders John Winthrop at once became productive and began the task of building shelters. The others quickly followed b example.

Two hundred of the one thousand settlers died that first winter and in the spring two hundred more left to go back to England. He soon moved the colony from Salem to what is now called Boston Harbor. In the first year Winthrop almost single handedly provided food for the colonists through the sale of his estate. During this time Winthrop lost three of his children, but he never wavered in faith. He thanked god for the safety of his remaining family.

Twenty thousand settlers poured into Massachusetts within the next ten years. Winthrop continued to govern them with expertise of a true leader. He expected that the colonists treat the Indians with dignity and respect in hopes that they may be won over to Christ. The very existence of Massachusetts can be credited to the kindness, wisdom and leadership that were characteristic of John Winthrop. His death in 1649 marked the passing of one of early New England's great leaders.
Submitted by Sunshine Fisk

1629 William Wood: His birth date and date of death are unknown. He wrote what has been called the earliest comprehensive record of New England's natural resources and inhabitants prior to European colonization. Wood arrived in Massachusetts sometime in 1629. He is thought to have been part of John Endecott's scouting party that settled in Salem a year before the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His desire to promote the colony may have lead him to idealize the environment. He wrote such descriptions as: ON TREES " The timber of this country grows straight and tall, some trees being 20-30 feet high." and ON FIRE " ..consumes all the underwood and rubbish which otherwise would overgrow the country, making it impassable, and spoil their much affected hunting." and ON INDIANS " The Indians who are too lazy to catch fish, plant corn 8 or 10 years in one place without it, having very good crops." Wood was driven insane at how lazy he perceived the Indians to be. He mocked them because he saw them enjoying the land and never, "improving" the land according to British standards. His book, "New England's Prospect," favorably compares the geography, climate, soil, and crop production with that of England's'. He speaks of wolves, frogs, insects, and snakes as the evils that affected plantations. His book advertisement read," A true, lively, and experimental description of that part of America commonly known as New England; discovering the state of that country, both as it stands to our new coming English planters; and to the old native inhabitants". He wrote on American topics from an English point of view.
Submitted by Paul Knight

1634  The Winnebago Campaign: In or about 1634, the Illinois tribe fought a major battle with the Winnebago. The Illini had sent a relief expedition to aid the Winnebago who had fallen upon hard times, but as matters turned out, the Winnebagos were not grateful...

1639  Fundamental Orders of Connecticut

1662  Connecticut Colony Charter

June 20, 1676  The First Thanksgiving Proclamation: "The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst of his judgements he hath remembered mercy, having remembered his Footstool in the day of his sore displeasure against us for our sins, with many singular Intimations of his Fatherly Compassion, and regard; reserving many of our Towns from Desolation Threatened, and attempted by the Enemy, and giving us especially of late with many of our Confederates many signal Advantages against them, without such Disadvantage to ourselves as formerly we have been sensible of, if it be the Lord's mercy that we are not consumed, It certainly bespeaks our positive Thankfulness, when our Enemies are in any measure disappointed or destroyed; and fearing the Lord should take notice under so many Intimations of his returning mercy, we should be found an Insensible people, as not standing before Him with Thanksgiving, as well as lading him with our Complaints in the time of pressing Afflictions:

The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his Goodness and Favour, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced, but we doubt not those who are sensible of God's Afflictions, have been as diligent to espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as a People offering Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council doth commend it to the Respective Ministers, Elders and people of this Jurisdiction; Solemnly and seriously to keep the same Beseeching that being perswaded by the mercies of God we may all, even this whole people offer up our bodies and soulds as a living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus Christ."

1678 John Banister: John Banister was a botanist who lived from 1650 to 1692. He visited the West Indies, presumably as a church of England Missionary. By 1678 he settled in Charles City County, Virginia. He devoted himself to the scientific pursuits. During his residence in Virginia he studied minutely the plant life of the region. He worked at a "Natural History of Virginia" were he furnished with specimens or drawings of local fauna and flora. He published botanical and entomological articles. Banister's peer labeled him as a "very learned and sagacious naturalist"(Ray). Subsequently he patented land on the Appomattox river and officiated as minister for what was later called Bristol Parish. Linnaeus's genus 573, a tropical plant of Malpighia family is named after him. He died on a botanical expedition along the Roanoke river. His papers were transmitted to Bishop Compton. His herbarium was left to Sir Hans Slaone, whose collection would make up the nucleus of the British Museum.
Submitted by Nick Panarella

1691 Salem, Massachusetts exorcises its "witches." Ergot poisoning implicated in the bizarre behavior.

1705 John Clayton (1686-1773): He was a Botanist and collector who emigrated to Virginain 1705. His Herberium was one of the earliest from North America.
Submitted by David Means

1710 Mark Catesby: Mr. Catesby was born, most likely in London circa 1679. In his early years as a young adult, he studied natural science, and was considered one of London's finest naturalists. His travels to the New world began in 1710, he spent the next nine years traveling extensively throughout the land. He returned to England in 1719, bringing with him some of the most perfect specimens of plants ever. This caught the attention of Sir Hans Sloane, who was the proprietor of a museum in London. Subsequently, Catesby spent some time naming and displaying his specimens for the museum. With the assistance of Sir Sloane, in 1722 Catesby was able to return to the New World, specifically, Carolina. He spent the next four years exploring the districts from Carolina to Florida extensively. Then, upon his return once again, to England, Catesby started to create his best known work, 'Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, with Observations on the Soil, Air, and Water'. Along with this book, a map accompanied it. The first volume was published 1731 and the second in 1743. The drawings of plants were exclusively constructed by Catesby himself. In 1733, Mr. Catesby was admitted a fellow of the royal society. In 1737, Catesby produced, 'Hortus Britanno-Americanus, or a collection a collection of 85 curious Trees and Shrubs, the production of North America, adapted to the Climate and Soil of Great Britain'. Mr. Catesby is credited for introducing a considerable amount of American plants. In fact, a genus of shrubs of the order of Cinchonacer was named Catesbaea, after the naturalists. In 1747, Mr. Catesby read a paper before the Royal Society 'On the Migration of Birds', which revealed new ideas previously not known. Catesby lived most of the remainder of his life in the Isle of Providence, until his returned to London, in 1749, where he died, at age 70.
Submitted by Dale McCarthy

1725 to 1735 John Peter Zenger acquitted in famous freedom-of-the-press trial.

• Stephen Gray discovers that electricity can be transmitted.
• Charles Dufay splits electricity into two kinds: vitreous and resinous.

1745 British and American colonials fight the French in King George's War.

1750 to 1754 America and Great Britain adopt the Gregorian calendar. French and Indian War begins. Benjamin Franklin files a kite in a thunderstorm to prove the equivalency of electricity and lighting.

Still working on it. . .

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