[Transcriber's Notes]

The appearance of the Word format closely approximates the original text, except that sentence fragments are rejoined across page and illustration boundaries. The HTML and TXT formats discard page boundaries but retain the year references in square brackets. Thus [1492-1495] indicate the following text covers this period, until the next such appearance.

Where useful comparisons can be made, a few pictures and contemporary maps from Google Earth (TM) have been inserted.

Several books on Columbus are available at Gutenberg.org, including "The Life of Columbus" by Arthur Helps.

A pound sterling in 1600 is worth about 135 pounds or 235 Dollars US in 2006.

Here are some unfamiliar (to me) terms.

camlets Rich cloth of Asian origin, made of camel's hair and silk and later made of goat's hair and silk or other combinations. A garment made from this cloth.

contumacy Stubborn perverseness or rebelliousness; obstinate resistance to authority.

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

escheated Reversion of property to the state in the absence of legal heirs or claimants.

fee simple An estate of inheritance in land, either absolute and without limitation to any particular class of heirs (fee simple) or limited to a particular class of heirs (fee tail).

glebe Plot of land yielding profit to an English parish church or an ecclesiastical office.

Pascua Florida Feast of flowers; Easter.

quit rent A land tax imposed on freehold or leased land by a landowning authority, freeing the tenant of a holding from other obligations.

New Style (dates) Describing dates after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. Various nations adopted the Gregorian calendar between 1582 and 1752.

Old Style (dates) Describing dates before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.

pompion Pumpkin.

sedulous Diligent in application or attention; persevering.

settle Long wooden bench with a high back, often including storage space beneath the seat.

[End Transcriber's Notes.]



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

Columbus After a Portrait by Herrer.



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FROM THE EARLIEST DISCOVERY OF AMERICA TO THE PRESENT TIME

BY E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

With 650 Illustrations and Maps

VOLUME I.

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1912

COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS



TO MY WIFE



PREFACE

Notwithstanding the number of United States histories already in existence, and the excellence of many of them, I venture to think that no apology is needed for bringing forward another.

1. The work now presented to the public is believed to utilize, more than any of its predecessors, the many valuable researches of recent years into the rich archives of this and other nations.

2. Most of the briefer treatments of the subject are manuals, intended for pupils in schools, the conspicuous articulation so necessary for this purpose greatly lessening their interest for the general reader. The following narrative will be found continuous as well as of moderate compass.

3. I have sought to make more prominent than popular histories have usually done, at the same time the political evolution of our country on the one hand, and the social culture, habits, and life of the people on the other.

4. The work strives to observe scrupulous proportion in treating the different parts and phases of our national career, neglecting none and over-emphasizing none. Also, while pronouncedly national and patriotic, it is careful to be perfectly fair and kind to the people of all sections.

5. Effort has been made to present the matter in the most natural periods and divisions, and to give such a title to each of these as to render the table of contents a truthful and instructive epitome of our national past.

6. With the same aim the Fore-history is exhibited in sharp separation from the United States history proper, calling due attention to what is too commonly missed, the truly epochal character of the adoption of our present Constitution, in 1789.

7. Copious illustration has been employed, with diligent study to make it for every reader in the highest degree an instrument of instruction, delight, and cultivation in art.

8. No pains has been spared to secure perfect accuracy in all references to dates, persons, and places, so that the volumes may be used with confidence as a work of reference. I am persuaded that much success in this has been attained, despite the uncertainty still attaching to many matters of this sort in United States history, especially to dates.

BROWN UNIVERSITY, September 15. 1894.



PUBLISHERS' NOTE

The last edition of President Andrews's History was issued in 1905, in five volumes, and brought the narrative down to the inauguration of President Roosevelt in March of that year. In preparing the extension of the work by the addition of a sixth volume, entrusted to the competent hands of Professor James Alton James of Northwestern University, it has been thought desirable to begin this final volume with the chapters entitled "The Rise of Roosevelt" and "Mr. Roosevelt's Presidency." This has involved some expansion and revision of these chapters as well as the continuance of the History from 1905 to the present time. The Appendices, which include public documents of fundamental importance and the significant results in various fields of the Census of 1910, are an additional feature of the new edition.



CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS

Age and Origin of Man in America. Primordial Americans unlike Present Asiatics. Resemblances between their Various Branches. Two Great Types. The Mound-builders' Age. Design of the Mounds. Different Forms. Towns and Cities. Proofs of Culture. Arts. Fate of the Mound-builders. The Indians. Their Number. Degree of Civilization. Power of Endurance. Religion. The Various Nations. Original Brute Inhabitants of North America. Plants, Fruits, and Trees. Indian Agriculture.



Part First

THE FORE-HISTORY

PERIOD I

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT

1492-1660

CHAPTER 1. COLUMBUS.

Bretons and Normans in the New World. The Northmen Question. Marco Polo's Travels. His Pictures of Eastern Asia. Influence on Columbus. Early Life of Columbus. His Cruises and Studies. Asia to be Reached by Sailing West. Appeals for Aid. Rebuffs. Success. Sails from Palos. The Voyage. America Discovered. Columbus's Later Voyages and Discoveries. Illusion Respecting the New Land. Amerigo Vespucci. Rise of the Name "America."



CHAPTER II. EARLY SPANISH AMERICA.

Portugal and Spain Divide the Newly Discovered World. Spain gets most of America. Voyage of de Solis. Balboa Discovers the Pacific. Ponce de Leon on the Florida Coast. Explorations by Grijalva. Cortez Invades Mexico. Subjugates the Country. De Ayllon's Cruise. Magellan Circumnavigates the Globe. Narvaez's Expedition into Florida. Its Sad Fate. De Soto. His March. Hardships. Discovers the Mississippi. His Death. End of his Expedition. French Settlement in Florida. St. Augustine. French-Spanish Hostilities. Reasons for Spain's Failure to Colonize far North. Her Treatment of the Natives. Tyranny over her own Colonies.



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

Verrazano. "New France." Cartier Discovers St. Lawrence Gulf and River. Second Voyage.-Montreal.-Third.-De Monts. Champlain. Founds Quebec. Westward Explorations. John Cabot, Discoverer of the North American Main. Frobisher. Tries for a Northwest Passage. Second Expedition for Gold. Third. Eskimo Tradition of Frobisher's Visits. Drake Sails round the World. Cavendish Follows. Raleigh's Scheme. Colony at Roanoke Island. "Virginia." Second Colony. Its Fate.



CHAPTER IV. THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA

The Old Virginia Charter. Jamestown Settled. Company and Colony. Character of Early Virginia Population. Progress. Products. Slavery. Agriculture the Dominant Industry. No Town Life. Hardships and Dissensions. John Smith. New Charter. Delaware Governor. The "Starving Time." Severe Rule of Dale and Argall. The Change of 1612. Pocahontas. Indian Hostilities. First American Legislature. Sir Thomas Wyatt. Self Government. Virginia Reflects English Political Progress. Dissolution of the Company. Charles I. and Virginia. Harvey, Wyatt. Berkeley. Virginia under Cromwell.



CHAPTER V. PILGRIM AND PURITAN AT THE NORTH

The first "Independents." John Smyth's Church at Gainsborough. The Scrooby Church. Plymouth Colony. Settles Plymouth. Hardships. Growth. Cape Ann Settlement. Massachusetts Bay. Size. Polity. Roger Williams. His Views. His Exile. Anne Hutchinson. Rhode Island Founded. Settlement of Hartford, Windsor, Wethersfield. Saybrook. New Haven. New Hampshire. Maine. New England Confederation. Its Function. Its Failure.



CHAPTER VI. BALTIMORE AND HIS MARYLAND

Sir George Calvert Plants at Newfoundland. Is Ennobled. Sails for Virginia. Grant of Maryland. Lord Baltimore Dies. Succeeded by Cecil. Government of Maryland. Conflict with Virginia. Baltimore comes to Maryland. Religious Freedom in the Colony. Clayborne's Rebellion. First Maryland Assembly. Anarchy. Romanism Established. Baltimore and Roger Williams. Maryland during the Civil War in England. Death of Baltimore. Character. Maryland under the Long Parliament. Puritan Immigration. Founds Annapolis. Rebellion. Clayborne again. Maryland and the Commonwealth. Deposition of Governor Stone. Anti-Catholic Laws. Baltimore Defied. Sustained by Cromwell. Fendall's Rebellion. Fails. Maryland at the Restoration.



CHAPTER VII. NEW NETHERLAND

Henry Hudson and his Explorations. Enters Hudson River. His Subsequent Career. And his Fate. Dutch Trade on the Hudson. "New Netherland." Dutch West India Company. Albany Begun. New Amsterdam. Relations with Plymouth. De Vries on the Delaware. Dutch Fort at Hartford. Conflict of Dutch with English. Gustavus Adolphus. Swedish Beginnings at Wilmington, Delaware. Advent of Kieft. Maltreats Indians. New Netherland in 1647. Stuyvesant's Excellent Rule. Conquers New Sweden. And the Indians. Conquest of Dutch America by England. "New York." Persistence of Dutch Influence and Traits.



CHAPTER VIII. THE FIRST INDIAN WARS

Beginning of Indian Hostility. Of Pequot War. Mason's Strategy. And Tactics. Capture of Pequot Fort. Back to Saybrook. Extermination of Pequot Tribe. Peace. Miantonomoh and Uncas. Dutch War with Indians. Caused by Kieft's Impolicy. Liquor. Underhill Comes. Mrs. Hutchinson's Fate. Deborah Moody. New Haven Refuses Aid. Appeal to Holland. Underhill's Exploits. Kieft Removed. Sad Plight of New Netherland. Subsequent Hostilities and Final Peace.



PERIOD II

ENGLISH AMERICA TILL THE END OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

1660—1763

CHAPTER I. NEW ENGLAND UNDER THE LAST STUARTS.

Charles II. and Massachusetts. Massachusetts about 1660. Its View of its Political Rights. The King's View. And Commands. Commission of 1664. Why Vengeance was Delayed. Boldness of the Colony. It Buys Maine. Fails to get New Hampshire. The King's Rage. The Charter Vacated. Charles II. and Connecticut. Prosperity of this Colony. Rhode Island. Boundary Disputes of Connecticut. Of Rhode Island. George Fox and Roger Williams. James II. King. Andros Governor. Andros and Southern New England. In Massachusetts. Revolution of 1688. New Charter for Massachusetts. Defects and Merits.



CHAPTER II. KING PHILIP'S WAR.

Whites' Treatment of Red Men. Indian Hatred. Causes. Alexander's Death. Philip King. Scope of his Conspiracy. Murders Sausaman. War Begun. Nipmucks take Part. War in Connecticut Valley. Bloody Brook. The Swamp Fight at South Kingston, R. I. Central Massachusetts Aflame. The Rowlandson History. Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island again. Connecticut Valley once more Invaded. Turner's Falls. Philip's Death. Horrors of the War. Philip's Character. Fate of his Family.



CHAPTER III. THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT

New England Home Life. Religion its Centre. The Farmhouse. Morning Devotions. Farm Work. Tools. Diet. Neighborliness. New England Superstitions. Not Peculiar to New England. Sunday Laws. Public Worship. First Case of Sorcery. The Witch Executed. Cotton Mather. His Experiments. His Book. The Parris Children Bewitched. The Manifestations. The Trial. Executions. George Burroughs. Rebecca Nurse. Reaction. Forwardness of Clergy. "Devil's Authority." The End.



CHAPTER IV. THE MIDDLE COLONIES

English Conquest of New Netherland. Duke of York's Government. Andros. Revolution of 1688. Leisler. Problems which Teased Royal Governors. New Jersey. Its Political Vicissitudes. William Penn. Character. Liberality of Pennsylvania Charter. Penn and James II. Penn's Services for his Colony. Prosperity of the Latter. Fletcher's Rule. Gabriel Thomas's History of Pennsylvania. Penn's Trials. And Victory. Delaware.



CHAPTER V. MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA

Maryland after the Stuart Restoration. Navigation Act. Boundary Disputes. Liberality of Religion. Agitation to Establish Anglicanism. Maryland under William and Mary. English Church Established. Not Oppressive. Fate of Virginia after the Restoration. Virginia's Spirit, Numbers, Resources. Causes of Bacon's Rebellion. Evil of the Navigation Acts. Worthless Officials. Course of the Rebellion. Result. Dulness of the Subsequent History. William and Mary College. Governor Spotswood. Blackbeard. Carolina. Its Constitution. Conflict of Parties. Georgia.



CHAPTER VI. GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE COLONIES.

Origin of American Political Institutions. Local Self-Government. Representation. Relation of Colonies to England. Classification of Colonies. Changes. Conflict of Legal Views. Colonists' Contentions. Taxation.



CHAPTER VII. SOCIAL CULTURE IN COLONIAL TIMES.

Population of the Colonies at Different Dates. Differences according to Sections. Intellectual Ability. Free Thought. Political Bent. English Church in the Colonies. Its Clergy. In New York. The New England Establishment. Hatred to Episcopacy. Counter-hatred. Colleges and Schools. Newspapers. Libraries. Postal System. Learned Professions. Epidemics. Scholars and Artists. Travelling. Manufactures and Commerce. Houses. Food and Dress. Wigs. Opposition to Them. Social Cleavage. Redemptioners. Penal Legislation. Philadelphia Leads in Social Science.



CHAPTER VIII. ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA

The French in the Heart of the Continent. Groseilliers, Radisson, La Salle. Joliet and Marquette Reach the Mississippi. Baudin and Du Lhut. La Salle Descends to the Gulf. "Chicago." The Portages. La Salle's Expedition from France to the Mississippi. Its Fate. French, Indians, and English. France's Advantage. Numbers of each Race in America. Causes of England's Colonial Strength. King William's War. The Schenectady Massacre. Other Atrocities. Anne's War. Deerfield. Plans for Striking Back. Second Capture of Port Royal. Rasle's Settlement Raided. George's War. Capture of Louisburg. Saratoga Destroyed. Scheme to Retaliate. Failure. French Vigilance and Aggression.



CHAPTER IX. THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

Struggle Inevitable. George Washington. Fights at Great Meadows. War Begun. English Plans of Campaign. Braddock's March. Defeat and Death. Prophecy Regarding Washington. The "Evangeline" History. Loudon's Incompetence. Pitt at the Head of Affairs. Will Take Canada. Louisburg Recaptured. "Pittsburgh." Triple Movement upon Canada. The Plains of Abraham. Quebec Capitulates. Peace of Paris. Conspiracy of Pontiac.



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

COLUMBUS. (After a portrait by Herrera) Frontispiece TEMPLE MOUND IN MEXICO BIG ELEPHANT MOUND, WISCONSIN DIGHTON ROCK THE OLD STONE MILL AT NEWPORT, R. I. PRINCE HENRY OF PORTUGAL—"THE NAVIGATOR." (From an old print) QUEEN ISABELLA OF SPAIN. COLUMBUS BEGGING AT THE FRANCISCAN CONVENT EMBARKATION OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AT PALOS. (From an old print) AMERIGO VESPUCCI. (Fac-simile of an old print) VASCO DA GAMA. (From an old print) BALBOA DISCOVERING THE PACIFIC OCEAN PONCE DE LEON HERNANDO CORTES, (From an old print) MONTEZUMA MORTALLY WOUNDED BY HIS OWN SUBJECTS DEATH OF MAGELLAN FERDINAND DE SOTO A PALISADED INDIAN TOWN IN ALABAMA BURIAL OF DE SOTO IN THE MISSISSIPPI AT NIGHT FORT CAROLINA ON THE RIVER OF MAY PEDRO MELENDEZ INDIANS DEVOURED BY DOGS. (From an old print) VERRAZANO, THE FLORENTINE NAVIGATOR JACQUES CARTIER, (From an old print) SEBASTIAN CABOT, (From an old print) AN INDIAN VILLAGE AT THE ROANOKE SETTLEMENT SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT SIR WALTER RALEIGH QUEEN ELIZABETH KING JAMES I. (From Mr. Henry Irving's Collection) TOBACCO PLANT. CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. POCAHONTAS SAVING CAPTAIN SMITH'S LIFE. (From Smith's "General History ") THE COUNCIL OF POWHATAN. (From Smith's "General History ") POCAHONTAS. SIGNATURE OF BERKELEY. PLYMOUTH HARBOR, ENGLAND. HARBOR OF PROVINCETOWN, CAPE COD, WHERE THE PILGRIMS LANDED. THE LIFE OF THE COLONY AT CAPE COD. SIGNATURES TO PLYMOUTH PATENT. SITE OF FIRST CHURCH AND GOVERNOR BRADFORD'S HOUSE AT PLYMOUTH. GOVERNOR WINTHROP. FIRST CHURCH IN SALEM. SEAL OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY COMPANY. ROGER WILLIAMS' HOUSE AT SALEM. EDWARD WINSLOW. MARYLAND SHILLING. HENRIETTA MARIA. SUPPOSED PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM CLAYBORNE. CLAYBORNE'S TRADING POST ON KENT ISLAND. FIGHT BETWEEN CLAYBORNE AND THE ST. MARY'S SHIP. OLIVER CROMWELL. SEAL OF NEW AMSTERDAM. PETER STUYVESANT. SEAL OF NEW NETHERLAND. EARLIEST PICTURE OF NEW AMSTERDAM. DE VRIES. COSTUMES OF SWEDES. THE OLD STADT HUYS AT NEW AMSTERDAM. NEW AMSTERDAM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. THE DUKE OF YORK, AFTERWARDS JAMES II. THE TOMB OF STUYVESANT. ATTACK ON THE FORT OF THE PEQUOTS ON THE MYSTIC RIVER. ATTACK ON THE PEQUOT FORT. SIGNATURE OF MIANTONOMOH. THE GRAVE OF MIANTONOMOH. TOTEM OR TRIBE MARK OF THE FIVE NATIONS. KING CHARLES II. JOHN WINTHROP THE YOUNGER. SIR EDMOND ANDROS. THE CHARTER OAK AT HARTFORD. BOX IN WHICH THE CONNECTICUT CHARTER WAS KEPT. THE MONUMENT AT BLOODY BROOK. GOFFE AT HADLEY. INCREASE MATHER. COTTON MATHER. OLD TITUBA THE INDIAN. LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR STOUGHTON. FAC-SIMILE OF SHERIFF'S RETURN OF AN EXECUTION. SLOUGHTER SIGNING LEISLER'S DEATH WARRANT. SEAL OF THE CARTERETS. SEAL OF EAST JERSEY. WAMPUM RECEIVED BY PENN IN COMMEMORATION OF THE INDIAN TREATY. WILLIAM PENN. THE TREATY MONUMENT, KENSINGTON. THE PENN MANSION IN PHILADELPHIA. CHARLES, SECOND LORD BALTIMORE. REV, DR. BLAIR, FIRST PRESIDENT OF WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE. GEORGE MONK, DUKE OF ALBEMARLE. LORD SHAFTESBURY. SEAL OF THE PROPRIETORS OF CAROLINA. JOHN LOCKE. SAVANNAH. (From a print of 1741) JAMES OGLETHORPE. COSTUMES ABOUT THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. JAMES LOGAN. KING WILLIAM. QUEEN MARY CHIEF JUSTICE SEWALL. THE PILLORY. SIGNATURE OF JOLLIET. (old spelling) TOTEM OF THE SIOUX. A SIOUX CHIEF. TOTEM OF THE ILLINOIS. THE RECEPTION OF JOLIET AND MARQUETTE BY THE ILLINOIS. LOUIS XIV. COINS STRUCK IN FRANCE FOR THE COLONIES. ASSASSINATION OF LA SALLE. NEW ORLEANS IN 1719. SIGNATURE OF D'IBERVILLE. THE ATTACK ON SCHENECTADY. HANNAH DUSTIN'S ESCAPE. QUEEN ANNE. GOVERNOR SHIRLEY. SIR WILLIAM PEPPERRELL THE AMBUSCADE THE DEATH OF BRADDOCK. MONTCALM. WILLIAM PITT. GENERAL WOLFE. LANDING OF WOLFE. QUEBEC IN 1730. (From an old print) BOUQUET'S REDOUBT AT PITTSBURGH.



LIST OF MAPS

GLOBUS MARTINI BEHAIM NARINBERGENSIS, 1492 EUROPEAN PROVINCES IN 1655. MARQUETTE'S MAP. PLAN OF PORT ROYAL, NOVA SCOTIA. MAP SHOWING POSITION OF FRENCH AND ENGLISH FORTS AND SETTLEMENTS. BRADDOCK'S ROUTE. MAP OF BRADDOCK'S FIELD.



INTRODUCTION

AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS

Man made his appearance on the western continent unnumbered ages ago, not unlikely before the close of the glacial period. It is possible that human life began in Asia and western North America sooner than on either shore of the Atlantic. Nothing wholly forbids the belief that America was even the cradle of the race, or one of several cradles, though most scientific writers prefer the view that our species came hither from Asia. De Nadaillac judges it probable that the ocean was thus crossed not at Behring Strait alone, but along a belt of equatorial islands as well. We may think of successive waves of such immigration—perhaps the easiest way to account for certain differences among American races.

It is, at any rate, an error to speak of the primordial Americans as derived from any Asiatic stock at present existing or known to history. The old Americans had scarcely an Asiatic feature. Their habits and customs were emphatically peculiar to themselves. Those in which they agreed with the trans-Pacific populations, such as fashion of weapons and of fortifications, elements of folk-lore, religious ideas, traditions of a flood, belief in the destruction of the world by fire, and so on, are nearly all found the world over, the spontaneous creations of our common human intelligence.

The original American peoples, various and unlike as they were, agreed in four traits, three of them physical, one mental, which mark them off as in all likelihood primarily of one stock after all, and as different from any Old World men: (1) They had low, retreating foreheads. (2) Their hair was black. (3) It was also of a peculiar texture, lank, and cylindrical in section, never wavy. And (4) their languages were polysynthetic, forming a class apart from all others in the world. The peoples of America, if from Asia, must date back to a time when speech itself was in its infancy.



The numerous varieties of ancient Americans reduce to two distinct types —the Dolicocephalous or long-skulled, and the Brachycephalous or short-skulled. Morton names these types respectively the Toltecan and the American proper. The Toltecan type was represented by the primitive inhabitants of Mexico and by the Mound-builders of our Mississippi Valley; the American proper, by the Indians. The Toltecans made far the closer approach to civilization, though the others possessed a much greater susceptibility therefor than the modern Indians of our prairies would indicate.

Of the Mound-builders painfully little is known. Many of their mounds still remain, not less mysterious or interesting than the pyramids of Egypt, perhaps almost equally ancient. The skeletons exhumed from them often fly into dust as soon as exposed to air, a rare occurrence with the oldest bones found in Europe. On the parapet-crest of the Old Fort at Newark, 0., trees certainly five hundred years old have been cut, and they could not have begun their growth till long after the earth-works had been deserted. In some mounds, equally aged trees root in the decayed trunks of a still anterior growth.

Much uncertainty continues to shroud the design of these mounds. Some were for military defence, others for burial places, others for lookout stations, others apparently for religious uses. Still others, it is supposed, formed parts of human dwellings. That they proceeded from intelligence and reflection is clear. Usually, whether they are squares or circles, their construction betrays nice, mathematical exactness, unattainable save by the use of instruments. Many constitute effigies—of birds, fishes, quadrupeds, men. In Wisconsin is a mound 135 feet long and well proportioned, much resembling an elephant; in Adams County, 0., a gracefully curved serpent, 1,000 feet long, with jaws agape as if to swallow an egg-shaped figure in front; in Granville, in the same State, one in the form of a huge crocodile; in Greenup County, Ky., an image of a bear, which seems leaning forward in an attitude of observation, measuring 53 feet from the top of the back to the end of the foreleg, and 105-1/2 feet from the tip of the nose to the rear of the hind foot.



The sites of towns and cities were artfully selected, near navigable rivers and their confluences, as at Marietta, Cincinnati, and in Kentucky opposite the old mouth of the Scioto. Points for defence were chosen and fortified with scientific precision. The labor expended upon these multitudinous structures must have been enormous, implying a vast population and extensive social, economic, and civil organization. The Cahokia mound, opposite St. Louis, is 90 feet high and 900 feet long.

The Mound-builders made elegant pottery, of various design and accurate shapes, worked bone and all sorts of stones, and even forged copper. There are signs that they understood smelting this metal. They certainly mined it in large quantities, and carried it down the Mississippi hundreds of miles from its source on Lake Superior. They must have been masters of river navigation, but their mode of conveying vast burdens overland, destitute of efficient draft animals as they apparently were, we can hardly even conjecture.

The Mound-builders, as we have said, were related to the antique populations of Mexico and Central America, and the most probable explanation of their departure from their Northern seats is that in face of pestilence, or of some overpowering human foe, they retreated to the Southwest, there to lay, under better auspices, the foundations of new states, and to develop that higher civilization whose relics, too little known, astound the student of the past, as greatly as do the stupendous pillars of Carnac or the grotesque animal figures of Khorsabad and Nimrud.

So much has been written about the American Indians that we need not discuss them at length. They were misnamed Indians by Columbus, who supposed the land he had discovered to be India. At the time of his arrival not more than two hundred thousand of them lived east of the Mississippi, though they were doubtless far more numerous West and South. Whence they came, or whether, if this was a human deed at all, they or another race now extinct drove out the Mound-builders, none can tell.

Of arts the red man had but the rudest. He made wigwams, canoes, bone fish-hooks with lines of hide or twisted bark, stone tomahawks, arrow-heads and spears, clothing of skins, wooden bows, arrows, and clubs. He loved fighting, finery, gambling, and the chase. He domesticated no animals but the dog and possibly the hog. Sometimes brave, he was oftener treacherous, cruel, revengeful. His power of endurance on the trail or the warpath was incredible, and if captured, he let himself be tortured to death without a quiver or a cry. Though superstitious, he believed in a Great Spirit to be worshipped without idols, and in a future life of happy hunting and feasting.

Whether, at the time of which we now speak, the Indians were an old race, already beginning to decline, or a fresh race, which contact with the whites balked of its development, it is difficult to say. Their career since best accords with the former supposition. In either case we may assume that their national groupings and habitats were nearly the same in 1500 as later, when these became accurately known. In the eighteenth century the Algonquins occupied all the East from Nova Scotia to North Carolina, and stretched west to the Mississippi. At one time they numbered ninety thousand. The Iroquois or Five Nations had their seat in Central and Western New York. North and west of them lived the Hurons or Wyandots. The Appalachians, embracing Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles and a number of lesser tribes, occupied all the southeastern portion of what is now the United States. West of the Mississippi were the Dakotas or Sioux.

Since the white man's arrival upon these shores, very few changes have occurred among the brute inhabitants of North America. A few species, as the Labrador duck and the great auk, have perished. America then possessed but four animals which had appreciable economic value; the dog, the reindeer at the north, which the Mound-builders used as a draft animal but the Indians did not, and the llama and the paco south of the equator. Every one of our present domestic animals originated beyond the Atlantic, being imported hither by our ancestors. The Indians of the lower Mississippi Valley, when De Soto came, had dogs, and also what the Spaniards called hogs, perhaps peccaries, but neither brute was of any breed now bred in the country. A certain kind of dogs were native also to the Juan Fernandez and the Falkland Islands.

Mr. Edward John Payne is doubtless correct in maintaining, in his "History of the New World called America," that the backwardness of the American aborigines was largely due to their lack of animals suitable for draft or travel or producing milk or flesh good for food. From the remotest antiquity Asiatics had the horse, ass, ox and cow, camel and goat—netting ten times the outfit in useful animals which the Peruvians, Mexicans, or Indians enjoyed.

The vegetable kingdom of Old America was equally restricted, which also helps explain its low civilization. At the advent of the Europeans the continent was covered with forests. Then, though a few varieties may have since given out and some imported ones run wild, the undomesticated plants and trees were much as now. Not so the cultivated kinds. The Indians were wretched husbandmen, nor had the Mound-builders at all the diversity of agricultural products so familiar to us. Tobacco, Indian corn, cocoa, sweet potatoes, potatoes, the custard apple, the Jerusalem artichoke, the guava, the pumpkin and squash, the papaw and the pineapple, indigenous to North America, had been under cultivation here before Columbus came, the first four from most ancient times. The manioc or tapioca-plant, the red-pepper plant, the marmalade plum, and the tomato were raised in South America before 1500. The persimmon, the cinchona tree, millet, the Virginia and the Chili strawberry are natives of this continent, but have been brought under cultivation only within the last three centuries.

The four great cereals, wheat, rye, oats, and rice, constituting all our main food crops but corn, have come to us from Europe. So have cherries, quinces, and pears, also hops, currants, chestnuts, and mushrooms. The banana, regarded by von Humboldt as an original American fruit, modern botanists derive from Asia. With reference to apples there may be some question. Apples of a certain kind flourished in New England so early after the landing of the Pilgrims that it is difficult to suppose the fruit not to have been indigenous to this continent. Champlain, in 1605 or 1606, found the Indians about the present sites of Portland, Boston, and Plymouth in considerable agricultural prosperity, with fields of corn and tobacco, gardens rich in melons, squashes, pumpkins, and beans, the culture of none of which had they apparently learned from white men. Mr. Payne's generalization, that superior food-supply occasioned the Old World's primacy in civilization, and also that of the Mexicans and Peruvians here, seems too sweeping, yet it evidently contains large truth.



PART FIRST

THE FORE-HISTORY

PERIOD I.

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT

1492-1660

CHAPTER I.

COLUMBUS

[1000]

There is no end to the accounts of alleged discoveries of America before Columbus. Most of these are fables. It is, indeed, nearly certain that hardy Basque, Breton, and Norman fishermen, adventuring first far north, then west, had sighted Greenland and Labrador and become well acquainted with the rich fishing-grounds about Newfoundland and the Saint Lawrence Gulf. Many early charts of these regions, without dates and hitherto referred to Portuguese navigators of a time so late as 1500, are now thought to be the work of these earlier voyagers. They found the New World, but considered it a part of the Old.

Important, too, is the story of supposed Norse sea-rovers hither, derived from certain Icelandic manuscripts of the fourteenth century. It is a pleasing narrative, that of Lief Ericson's sail in 1000-1001 to Helluland, Markland, and at last to Vineland, and of the subsequent tours by Thorwald Ericson in 1002, Thorfinn Karlsefne, 1007-1009, and of Helge and Finnborge in 1011, to points still farther away. Such voyages probably occurred. As is well known, Helluland has been interpreted to be Newfoundland; Markland, Nova Scotia; and Vineland, the country bordering Mount Hope Bay in Bristol, R. I. These identifications are possibly correct, and even if they are mistaken, Vineland may still have been somewhere upon the coast of what is now the United States.

In the present condition of the evidence, however, we have to doubt this. No scholar longer believes that the writing on Dighton Rock is Norse, or that the celebrated Skeleton in Armor found at Fall River was a Northman's, or that the old Stone Mill at Newport was constructed by men from Iceland. Even if the manuscripts, composed between three and four hundred years after the events which they are alleged to narrate, are genuine, and if the statements contained in them are true, the latter are far too indefinite to let us be sure that they are applicable to United States localities.



[l260]

But were we to go so far as to admit that the Northmen came here and began the settlements ascribed to them, they certainly neither appreciated nor published their exploits. Their colony, wherever it was, endured but for a day, and it, with its locality, speedily passed from knowledge in Scandinavia itself. America had not yet, in effect, been discovered.



[1300]

We must remember that long anterior to Columbus's day unbiassed and thoughtful men had come to believe the earth to be round. They also knew that Europe constituted but a small part of it. In the year 1260 the Venetian brothers Niccolo and Maffeo Polo made their way to China, the first men from Western Europe ever to travel so far. They returned in 1269, but in 1271 set out again, accompanied by Niccolo's son, a youth of seventeen. This son was the famous Marco Polo, whose work, "The Wonders of the World," reciting his extended journeys through China and the extreme east and southeast of Asia, and his eventful voyage home by sea, ending in 1295, has come down to our time, one of the most interesting volumes in the world. Friar Orderic's eastern travels in 1322-1330, as appropriated by Sir John Mandeville, were published before 1371.

Columbus knew these writings, and the reading and re-reading of them had made him an enthusiast. In Polo's book he had learned of Mangi and Far Cathay, with their thousands of gorgeous cities, the meanest finer than any then in Europe; of their abounding mines pouring forth infinite wealth, their noble rivers, happy populations, curious arts, and benign government. Polo had told him of Cambalu (Peking), winter residence of the Great Khan, Kublai—Cambalu with its palaces of marble, golden-roofed, its guard of ten thousand soldiers, its imperial stables containing five thousand elephants, its unnumbered army, navy, and merchant marine; of oxen huge as elephants; of richest spices, nuts large as melons, canes fifteen yards long, silks, cambrics, and the choicest furs; and of magic Cipango (Japan), island of pearls, whose streets were paved with gold.



[1456]

Columbus believed all this, and it cooperated with his intense and even bigoted religious faith to kindle in him an all-consuming ambition to reach this distant Eden by sea, that he might carry the Gospel to those opulent heathen and partake their unbounded temporal riches in return. Poor specimen of a saint as Columbus is now known to have been, he believed himself divinely called to this grand enterprise.

Christopher Columbus, or Christobal Colon, as he always signed himself after he entered the service of Spain, was born in Genoa about 1456. Little is certainly known of his early life. His father was a humble wool-carder. The youth possessed but a sorry education, spite of his few months at the University of Pavia. At the age of fourteen he became a sailor, knocking about the world in the roughest manner, half the time practically a pirate. In an all-day's sea fight, once, his ship took fire and he had to leap overboard; but being a strong swimmer he swam, aided by an oar, eight leagues to land.

[1470]

From 1470 to 1484 we find him in Portugal, the country most interested and engaged then in ocean-going and discovery. Here he must have known Martin Behem, author of the famous globe, finished in 1492, whereon Asia is exhibited as reaching far into the same hemisphere with Europe. Prince Henry of Portugal earnestly patronized all schemes for exploration and discovery, and the daughter, Philippa, of one of his captains, Perestrello, Columbus married. With her he lived at Porto Santo in the Madeiras, where he became familiar with Correo, her sister's husband, also a distinguished navigator. The islanders fully believed in the existence of lands in the western Atlantic. West winds had brought to them strange woods curiously carved, huge cane-brakes like those of India described by Ptolemy, peculiarly fashioned canoes, and corpses with skin of a hue unknown to Europe or Africa.



[1475-1484]

Reflecting on these things, studying Perestrello's and Correo's charts and accounts of their voyages, corresponding with Toscanelli and other savans, himself an adept in drawing maps and sea-charts, for a time his occupation in Lisbon, cruising here and there, once far northward to Iceland, and talking with navigators from every Atlantic port, Columbus became acquainted with the best geographical science of his time.

This had convinced him that India could be reached by sailing westward. The theoretical possibility of so doing was of course admitted by all who held the earth to be a sphere, but most regarded it practically impossible, in the then condition of navigation, to sail the necessary distance. Columbus considered the earth far smaller than was usually thought, a belief which we find hinted at so early as 1447, upon the famous mappe-Monde of the Pitti Palace in Florence, whereon Europe appears projected far round to the northwest. Columbus seems to have viewed this extension as a sort of yoke joining India to Scandinavia by the north. He judged that Asia, or at least Cipango, stretched two-thirds of the way to Europe, India being twice as near westward as eastward. Thirty or forty days he deemed sufficient for making it. Toscanelli and Behem as well as he held this belief; he dared boldly to act upon it.



But to do so required resources. There are indications that Columbus at some time, perhaps more than once, urged his scheme upon Genoa and Venice. If so it was in vain. Nor can we tell whether such an attempt, if made, was earlier or later than his plea before the court of Portugal, for this cannot be dated. The latter was probably in 1484. King John II. was impressed, and referred Columbus's scheme to a council of his wisest advisers, who denounced it as visionary. Hence in 1485 or 1486 Columbus proceeded to Spain to lay his project before Ferdinand and Isabella.

On the way he stopped at a Franciscan convent near Palos, begging bread for himself and son. The Superior, Marchena, became interested in him, and so did one of the Pinzons—famous navigators of Palos. The king and queen were at the time holding court at Cordova, and thither Columbus went, fortified with a recommendation from Marchena. The monarchs were engrossed in the final conquest of Granada, and Columbus had to wait through six weary and heart-sickening years before royal attention was turned to his cause. It must have been during this delay that he despatched his brother Bartholomew to England with an appeal to Henry VII. Christopher had brought Alexander Geraldinus, the scholar, and also the Archbishop of Toledo, to espouse his mission, and finally, at the latter's instance, Ferdinand, as John of Portugal had done, went so far as to convene, at Salamanca, a council of reputed scholars to pass judgment upon Columbus and his proposition. By these, as by the Portuguese, he was declared a misguided enthusiast. They were too much behind the age even to admit the spherical figure of the earth. According to Scripture, they said, the earth is flat, adding that it was contrary to reason for men to walk heads downward, or snow and rain to ascend, or trees to grow with their roots upward.



[1484-1492]

The war for Granada ended, Santangel and others of his converts at court secured Columbus an interview with Isabella, but his demands seeming to her arrogant, he was dismissed. Nothing daunted, the hero had started for France, there to plead as he had pleaded in Portugal and Spain already, when to his joy a messenger overtook him with orders to come once more before the queen.

Fuller thought and argument had convinced this eminent woman that the experiment urged by Columbus ought to be tried and a contract was soon concluded, by which, on condition that he should bear one-eighth the expense of the expedition, the public chest of Castile was to furnish the remainder. The story of the crown jewels having been pledged for this purpose is now discredited. If such pledging occurred, it was earlier, in prosecuting the war with the Moors. The whole sum needed for the voyage was about fifty thousand dollars. Columbus was made admiral, also viceroy of whatever lands should be discovered, and he was to have ten per cent of all the revenues from such lands. For his contribution to the outfit he was indebted to the Pinzons.

This arrangement was made in April or May, 1492, and on the third of the next August, after the utmost difficulty in shipping crews for this sail into the sea of darkness, Columbus put out from Palos with one hundred and twenty men, on three ships. These were the Santa Maria, the Nina, and the Pinta. The largest, the Santa Maria, was of not over one hundred tons, having a deck-length of sixty-three feet, a keel of fifty-one feet, a draft of ten feet six inches, and her mast-head sixty feet above sea-level. She probably had four anchors, with hemp cables.



From Palos they first bore southward to the Canary Islands, into the track of the prevalent east winds, then headed west, for Cipango, as Columbus supposed, but really toward the northern part of Florida. When a little beyond what he regarded the longitude of Cipango, noticing the flight of birds to the southwest, he was induced to follow these, which accident made his landfall occur at Guanahani (San Salvador), in the Bahamas, instead of the Florida coast.

Near midnight, between October 11th and 12th, Columbus, being on the watch, descried a light ahead. About two o'clock on the morning of the 12th the lookout on the Pinta distinctly saw land through the moonlight. When it was day they went on shore. The 12th of October, 1492, therefore, was the date on which for the first time, so far as history attests with assurance, a European foot pressed the soil of this continent. Adding nine days to this to translate it into New Style, we have October 21st as the day answering to that on which Columbus first became sure that his long toil and watching had not been in vain.

[1493-1500]

The admiral having failed to note its latitude and longitude, it is not known which of the Bahamas was the San Salvador of Columbus, whether Grand Turk Island, Cat (the present San Salvador), Watling, Mariguana, Acklin, or Samana, though the last named well corresponds with his description. Mr. Justin Winsor, however, and with him a majority of the latest critics, believes that Watling's Island was the place. Before returning to Spain, Columbus discovered Cuba, and also Hayti or Espagnola (Hispaniola), on the latter of which islands he built a fort.

In a second voyage, from Cadiz, 1493-1496, the great explorer discovered the Lesser Antilles and Jamaica. In a third, 1498-1500, he came upon Trinidad and the mainland of South America, at the mouth of the Orinoco. This was later by thirteen months and a week than the Cabots' landfall at Labrador or Nova Scotia, though a year before Amerigo Vespucci saw the coast of Brazil. It was during this third absence that Columbus, hated as an Italian and for his undeniable greed, was superseded by Bobadilla, who sent him and his brother home in chains. Soon free again, he sets off in 1502 upon a fourth cruise, in which he reaches the coast of Honduras.

To the day of his death, however, the discoverer of America never suspected that he had brought to light a new continent. Even during this his last expedition he maintained that the coast he had touched was that of Mangi, contiguous to Cathay, and that nineteen days of travel overland would have taken him to the Ganges. He arrived in Spain on September 12, 1504, and died at Segovia on May 20th of the next year. His bones are believed to rest in the cathedral at Santo Domingo, transported thither in 1541, the Columbus-remains till recently at Havana being those of his son Diego. The latter, under the belief that they were the father's, were transferred to Genoa in 1887, and deposited there on July 2d of that year with the utmost ecclesiastical pomp.

[1500-1507]

As Columbus was ignorant of having found a new continent, so was he denied the honor of giving it a name, this falling by accident, design, or carelessness of truth, to Amerigo Vespucci, a native of Florence, whose active years were spent in Spain and Portugal. Vespucci made three voyages into the western seas. In the second, 1501, he visited the coast of Brazil, and pushed farther south than any navigator had yet done, probably so far as the island of South Georgia, in latitude 54 degrees. His account of this voyage found its way into print in 1504, at Augsburg, Germany, the first published narrative of any discovery of the mainland. Although, as above noted, it was not the earliest discovery of the main, it was widely regarded such, and caused Vespucci to be named for many years as the peer, if not the superior of Columbus. The publication ran through many editions. That of Strassburg, 1505, mentioned Vespucci on its title-page as having discovered a new "Southern Land." This is the earliest known utterance hinting at the continental nature of the new discovery, as separate from Asia, an idea which grew into a conviction only after Magellan's voyage, described in the next chapter. In 1507 appeared at St. Die, near Strassburg, a four-page pamphlet by one Lud, secretary to the Duke of Lorraine, describing Vespucci's voyages and speaking of the Indians as the "American race." This pamphlet came out the same year in another form, as part of a book entitled "Introduction to Cosmography," prepared by Martin Waldseemuller, under the nom de plume of "Hylacomylus." In this book the new "part of the world" is distinctly called "THE LAND OF AMERICUS, OR AMERICA," There is some evidence that Vespucci at least connived at the misapprehension which brought him his renown—as undeserved as it has become permanent—but this cannot be regarded as proved.



CHAPTER II.

EARLY SPANISH AMERICA

[1498]

As we have seen, Spain by no means deserves the entire credit of bringing the western continent to men's knowledge. Columbus himself was an Italian. So was Marco Polo, his inspirer, and also Toscanelli, his instructor, by whose chart he sailed his ever-memorable voyage. To Portugal as well Columbus was much indebted, despite his rebuff there. Portugal then led the world in the art of navigation and in enthusiasm for discovery. Nor, probably, would Columbus have asked her aid in vain, had she not previously committed herself to the enterprise of reaching India eastward, a purpose brilliantly fulfilled when, in 1498, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and sailed to Calicut, on the coast of Malabar. Already before this Spain and Portugal were rivals in the search for new lands, and Pope Alexander VI. had had to be appealed to, to fix their fields. By his bull of May 3, 4, 1493, he ordained as the separating line the meridian passing through a point one hundred leagues west of the Azores, where Columbus had observed the needle of his compass to point without deflection toward the north star. Portugal objecting to this boundary as excluding her from the longitude of the newly found Indies, by the treaty of Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, the two powers, with the Pope's assent, moved the line two hundred and seventy leagues still farther west. At this time neither party dreamed of the complications destined subsequently to arise in reference to the position of this meridian on the other side of the globe.



The meridian of the Tordesillas convention had been supposed still to give Spain all the American discoveries likely to be made, it being ascertained only later that by it Portugal had obtained a considerable part of the South American mainland Brazil, we know, was, till in 1822 it became independent, a Portuguese dependency. Spain, however, retained both groups of the Antilles with the entire main about the Gulf of Mexico, and became the earliest great principality in the western world.

[1506-1513]

Before the death of Columbus, Spain had taken firm possession of Cuba, Porto Rico, and St. Domingo, and she stood ready to seize any of the adjoining islands or lands so soon as gold, pearls, or aught else of value should be found there. Cruises of discovery were made in every direction, first, indeed, in Central and South America. In 1506 de Solis sailed along the eastern coast of Yucatan. In 1513 the governor of a colony on the Isthmus of Darien, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, from the top of a lofty mountain on the isthmus, saw what is now called the Pacific Ocean. He designated it the South Sea, a name which it habitually bore till far into the eighteenth century. From this time the exploration and settlement of the western coast, both up and down, went on with little interruption, but this history, somewhat foreign to our theme, we cannot detail.



The same year, 1513, Ponce de Leon, an old Spanish soldier in the wars with the Moors, a companion of Columbus in his second voyage, and till now governor of Porto Rico, began exploration to the northward. Leaving Porto Rico with three ships, he landed on the coast of an unknown country, where he thought to find not only infinite gold but also the much-talked-about fountain of perpetual youth. His landing occurred on Easter Sunday, or Pascua Florida, March 27, 1513, and so he named the country Florida. The place was a few miles north of the present town of St. Augustine. Exploring the coast around the southern extremity of the peninsula, he sailed among a group of islands, which he designated the Tortugas. Returning to Porto Rico, he was appointed governor of the new country. He made a second voyage, was attacked by the natives and mortally wounded, and returned to Cuba to die.

[1518-1520]

Juan de Grijalva explored the south coast of the Gulf of Mexico, from Yucatan toward the Panuco. Interest attaches to this enterprise mainly because the treasure which Grijalva collected aroused the envy and greed of the future conqueror of Mexico, Hernando Cortez.

In 1518, Velasquez, governor of Cuba, sends Cortez westward, with eleven ships and over six hundred men, for the purpose of exploration. He landed at Tabasco, thence proceeded to the Island of San Juan de Ulua, nearly opposite Vera Cruz, where he received messengers and gifts from the Emperor Montezuma. Ordered to leave the country, he destroyed his ships and marched directly upon the capital. He seized Montezuma and held him as a hostage for the peaceable conduct of his subjects. The Mexicans took up arms, only to be defeated again and again by the Spaniards. Montezuma became a vassal of the Spanish crown, and covenanted to pay annual tribute. Attempting to reconcile his people to this agreement he was himself assailed and wounded, and, refusing all nourishment, soon after died. With re-enforcements, Cortez completed the conquest of the country, and Mexico became a province of Spain.



Vasquez de Ayllon, one of the auditors of the Island of Santo Domingo, sent two ships from that island to the Bahamas for Indians to be sold as slaves. Driven from their course by the wind, they at length reached the shore of South Carolina, at the mouth of the Wateree River, which they named the Jordan, calling the country Chicora. Though kindly treated by the natives, the ruthless adventurers carried away some seventy of these. One ship was lost, and most of the captives on the others died during the voyage. Vasquez was, by the Emperor Charles V., King of Spain, made governor of this new province, and again set sail to take possession. But the natives, in revenge for the cruel treatment which they had previously received, made a furious attack upon the invaders. The few survivors of the slaughter returned to Santo Domingo, and the expedition was abandoned. These voyages were in 1520 and 1526.

In connection with the subject of Spanish voyages, a passing notice should be given to one, who, though not of Spanish birth, yet did much to further the progress of discovery on the part of his adopted country. Magellan was a Portuguese navigator who had been a child when Columbus came back in triumph from the West Indies. Refused consideration from King Emmanuel, of Portugal, for a wound received under his flag during the war against Morocco, he renounced his native land and offered his services to the sagacious Charles V., of Spain, who gladly accepted them, With a magnificent fleet, Magellan, in 1519, set sail from Seville, cherishing Columbus's bold purpose, which no one had yet realized, of reaching the East Indies by a westward voyage, After touching at the Canaries, he explored the coast of South America, passed through the strait now called by his name, discovered the Ladrone Islands, and christened the circumjacent ocean the Pacific.



The illustrious navigator now sailed for the Philippine Islands, so named from Philip, son of Charles V., who succeeded that monarch as Philip II. By the Tordesillas division above described, the islands were properly in the Portuguese hemisphere, but on the earliest maps, made by Spaniards, they were placed twenty-five degrees too far east, and this circumstance, whether accidental or designed, has preserved them to Spain even to the present time. At the Philippine Islands Magellan was killed in an affray with the natives. One of his ships, the Victoria, after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, arrived in Spain, having been the first to circumnavigate the globe. The voyage had taken three years and twenty-eight days.

[1528-1540]

The disastrous failure of the expedition of Vasquez de Ayllon to Florida did not discourage attempts on the part of others in the same direction. Velaspuez, governor of Cuba, jealous of the success of Cortez in Mexico, had sent Pamphilo de Narvaez to arrest him. In this attempt Narvaez had been defeated and taken prisoner. Undeterred by this failure he had solicited and received of Charles V. the position of governor over Florida, a territory at that time embracing the whole southern part of what is now the United States, and reaching from Cape Sable to the Panuco, or River of Palms, in Mexico. With three hundred men he, in 1528, landed near Appalachee Bay, and marched inland with the hope of opening a country rich and populous. Bitterly was he disappointed. Swamps and forests, wretched wigwams with their squalid inmates everywhere met his view, but no gold was to be found. Discouraged, he and his followers returned to the coast, where almost superhuman toil and skill enabled them to build five boats, in which they hoped to work westward to the Spanish settlements. Embarking, they stole cautiously along the coast for some distance, but were at last driven by a storm upon an island, perhaps Galveston, perhaps Santa Rosa, where Narvaez and most of his men perished. Four of his followers survived to cross Texas to the Gulf of California and reach the town of San Miguel on the west coast of Mexico. Here they found their countrymen, searching as usual for pearls, gold, and slaves, and by their help they made a speedy return to Spain, heroes of as remarkable an adventure as history records. These unfortunates were the first Europeans to visit New Mexico. Their narrative led to the exploration of that country by Coronado and others, and to the discoveries of Cortez in Lower California.



Ferdinand de Soto, eager to rival the exploits of Cortez in Mexico, and of his former commander, Pizarro, in Peru, offered to conquer Florida at his own expense. Appointed governor-general of Florida and of Cuba, he sailed with seven large and three small vessels. From Espiritu Santo Bay he, in 1539, marched with six hundred men into the country of the Appalachians and discovered the harbor of Pensacola. After wintering at Appalachee he set out into the interior, said to abound in gold and silver. Penetrating northeasterly as far as the Savannah, he found only copper and mica. From here he marched first northwest into northern central Georgia, then southwest into Alabama. A battle was fought with the natives at Mavila, or Mobile, in which the Spaniards suffered serious loss. Ships that he had ordered arrived at Pensacola, but de Soto determined not to embark until success should have crowned his efforts. He turned back into the interior, into the country of the Chickasaws, marched diagonally over the present State of Mississippi to its northwest corner, and crossed the Mississippi River near the lowest Chickasaw Bluff. From this point the general direction of the Spanish progress was southwest, through what is now Arkansas, past the site of Little Rock, till at last a river which seems to have been the Washita was reached. Down this stream de Soto and his decimated force floated—two hundred and fifty of his men had succumbed to the hardships and perils of his march—arriving at the junction of the Red with the Mississippi River on Sunday, April 17, 1542. At this point de Soto sickened and died, turning over the command to Luis de Moscoso. Burying their late leader's corpse at night deep in the bosom of the great river, and constructing themselves boats, the survivors of this ill-fated expedition, now reduced to three hundred and seventy-two persons, made the best of their way down the Mississippi to the Gulf, and along its coast, finally reaching the Spanish town near the mouth of the Panuco in Mexico.



[1562]

Thus no settlement had as yet been made in Florida by the Spanish. The first occupation destined to be permanent was brought about through religious jealousy inspired by the establishment of a French Protestant (Huguenot) colony in the territory. Ribault, a French captain commissioned by Charles IX., was put in command of an expedition by that famous Huguenot, Admiral Coligny, and landed on the coast of Florida, at the mouth of the St. John's, which he called the River of May. This was in 1562. The name Carolina, which that section still bears, was given to a fort at Port Royal, or St. Helena. Ribault returned to France, where civil war was then raging between the Catholics and the Protestants or Huguenots. His colony, waiting for promised aid and foolishly making no attempt to cultivate the soil, soon languished. Dissensions arose, and an effort was made to return home. Famine having carried off the greater number, the colony came to an end. In 1564 Coligny sent out Laudonniere, who built another fort, also named Carolina, on the River of May. Again misfortunes gathered thickly about the settlers, when Ribault arrived bringing supplies.



[1565]



But Spain claimed this territory, and Pedro Melendez a Spanish soldier, was in 1565 sent by Philip II. to conquer it from the French, doubly detested as Protestants. He landed in the harbor and at the mouth of the river, to both of which he gave the name St. Augustine. Melendez lost no time in attacking Fort Carolina, which he surprised, putting the garrison mercilessly to the sword. The destruction of the French colony was soon after avenged by Dominic de Gourgues, who sailed from France to punish the enemies of his country. Having accomplished his purpose by the slaughter of the Spanish garrison he returned home, but the French Protestants made no further effort to colonize Florida.

Spain claimed the land by right of discovery, but, although maintaining the feeble settlement at St. Augustine, did next to nothing after this to explore or civilize this portion of America. The nation that had sent out Columbus was not destined to be permanently the great power of the New World. The hap of first landing upon the Antilles, and also the warm climate and the peaceable nature of the aborigines, led Spain to fix her settlements in latitudes that were too low for the best health and the greatest energy. Most of the settlers were of a wretched class, criminals and adventurers, and they soon mixed largely with the natives. Spain herself greatly lacked in vigor, partly from national causes, partly from those obscure general causes which even to this day keep Latin Europe, in military power and political accomplishments, inferior to Teutonic or Germanic Europe.



[1570]

Moreover, the Spaniards found their first American conquests too easy, and the rewards of these too great. This prevented all thought of developing the country through industry, concentrating expectation solely upon waiting fortunes, to be had from the natives by the sword or through forced labor in mines, Their treatment of the aborigines was nothing short of diabolical. Well has it been said: "The Spaniards had sown desolation, havoc, and misery in and around their track. They had depopulated some of the best peopled of the islands and renewed them with victims deported from others. They had inflicted upon hundreds of thousands of the natives all the forms and agonies of fiendish cruelty, driving them to self-starvation and suicide, as a way of mercy and release from an utterly wretched existence. They had come to be viewed by their victims as fiends of hate, malignity, and all dark and cruel desperation and mercilessness in passion. The hell which they denounced upon their victims was shorn of its worst terror by the assurance that these tormentors were not to be there. Las Casas, the noble missionary, the true soldier of the cross, and the few priests and monks who sympathized with him, in vain protested against these cruelties."

To all these causes we must add the narrow colonial policy of Spain. Imitating Venice and ancient Carthage instead of Greece, she held her dependencies under the straitest servitude to herself as conquered provinces, repressing all political or commercial independence. A similar restrictive policy, indeed, hampered the colonies of other nations, but it was nowhere else so irrational or blighting as in Spanish America.



CHAPTER III.

EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION BY THE FRENCH AND THE ENGLISH

[1534]

How the French fought for foothold in Florida and were routed by the Spaniards has just been related. So early as 1504, and possibly much earlier, before Cabot or Columbus, French sailors were familiar with the fisheries of Newfoundland. To the Isle of Cape Breton they gave its name in remembrance of their own Brittany. The attention of the French Government was thus early directed toward America, and it at length determined to share in the new discoveries along with the Spanish and the English.

In 1524 Verrazano, a Florentine navigator, was sent by Francis I. on a voyage of discovery to the New World. Sighting the shores of America near the present Wilmington, North Carolina, he explored the coast of New Jersey, touched land near New York Bay, and anchored a few days in the harbor of Newport. In this vicinity he came upon an island, which was probably Block Island. Sailing from here along the coast as far north as Newfoundland, he named this vast territory New France.



[1540]

In 1534 Cartier, a noted voyager of St. Malo, coasted along the north of Newfoundland, passed through the Straits of Belle Isle into the water now known as St. Lawrence Gulf, and into the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. Erecting a cross, he took possession of the shores in the name of the king of France.

In the following year he made a second voyage, going up as far as the mouth of a small river which the year before he had named St. John's. He called the waters the Bay of St. Lawrence. Ascending this, he came to a settlement of the natives near a certain hill, which he called Mont Royal, now modified into "Montreal." Cartier returned to France in 1536, only a few of his men having survived the winter.

In 1540 Lord Roberval fitted out a fleet, with Cartier as subordinate. Cartier sailed at once—his third voyage—Roberval following the next year. A fort was built near the present site of Quebec. Roberval and Cartier disagreed and returned to France, leaving the real foundation of Quebec to be laid by Champlain, much later.

In 1604 De Monts arrived on the coast of Nova Scotia and erected a fort at the mouth of the St. Croix, New Brunswick. He also made a settlement on the shore of the present harbor of Annapolis, naming it Port Royal, and the country around it Acadia. De Monts is famous largely because under him the Sieur de Champlain, the real father of French colonization in America, began his illustrious career. He had entered the St. Lawrence in 1603. In 1608 he founded Quebec, the first permanent colony of New France. The next year he explored the lake which perpetuates his name. In 1615 he saw Lake Huron, Le Caron, the Franciscan, preceding him in this only by a few days. Fired with ardor for discovery, Champlain joined the Hurons in an attack upon the Iroquois. This led him into what is now New York State, but whether the Indian camp first attacked by him was on Onondaga or on Canandaigua Lake is still in debate. These were but the beginning of Champlain's travels, by which many other Frenchmen, some as missionaries, some as traders, were inspired to press far out into the then unknown West. We shall resume the narrative in Chapter VII of the next period. Champlain died at Quebec in 1635.

Turn back now to Columbus's time. England, destined to dominate the continent of North America, was also practically the discoverer of the same. On St. John's day, June 24, 1497, thirteen months and a week before Columbus saw South America, John Cabot, a Venetian in the service of King Henry VII., from the deck of the good ship Matthew, of Bristol, descried land somewhere on the coast either of Labrador or of Nova Scotia. Cabot, of course, supposed this prima vista of his to belong to Asia, and expected to reach Cipango next voyage. So late as 1543 Jean Allefonsce, on reaching New England, took it for the border of Tartary. Andre Thevet, in 1515, in a pretended voyage to Maine, places Cape Breton on the west coast of Asia. This confusion probably explains the tradition of Norumbega as a great city, and of other populous and wealthy cities in the newly found land. Men transferred ideas of Eastern Asia to this American shore.

[1516]

The subsequent year Cabot made a second voyage, inspecting the American coast northward till icebergs were met, southward to the vicinity of Albemarle Sound. Possibly in his first expedition, probably in the second, John Cabot was accompanied by his more famous son, Sebastian. For many years after the Cabots, England made little effort to explore the New World. Henry VII. was a Catholic. He therefore submitted to the Pope's bull which gave America to Spain. Henry VIII. had married Catherine of Aragon. He allowed Ferdinand, her father, to employ the skill and daring of Sebastian Cabot in behalf of Spain. It was reserved for the splendid reign of Elizabeth to show what English courage and endurance could accomplish in extending England's power.



[1576]

Like those before him, Martin Frobisher was in earnest to find the northwest passage, in whose existence all navigators then fully believed. Like Columbus, he vainly sought friends to aid him. At last, after he had waited fifteen years in vain, Dudley, the Earl of Warwick, helped him to an outfit. His little fleet embraced the Gabriel, of thirty-five tons, the Michael of thirty, and a pinnace of ten. As it swept to sea past Greenwich, the Queen waved her hand in token of good-will. Sailing northward near the Shetland Isles, Frobisher passed the southern shore of Greenland and came in sight of Labrador, 1576.

He effected a landing at Hall's Island, at the mouth of the bay now called by his name, but which he thought to be a strait, his discovery thus strengthening his belief in the possibility of reaching Asia by this westward course. He sailed up the bay as far as Butcher's Island, where five of his men were taken prisoners by the natives. All effort to rescue them was made, but to no purpose. Among the curiosities which he brought home was a piece of stone, or black ore, which gave rise to the belief that gold was to be found in this new country.

[1577]

A second and larger expedition sailed in 1577. The Queen gave 1,000 pounds and lent the royal ship Aid, of two hundred tons. The Gabriel and the Michael of the former year were again made ready, besides smaller craft. This voyage was to seek gold rather than to discover the northwest passage. The fleet set sail May 27th, and on July 18th arrived off North Foreland, or Hall's Island, so named for the man who had brought away the piece of black earth. Search was made for this metal, supposed to be so valuable, and large quantities were found. The fleet sailed back to England with a heavy cargo of it.

In 1578 a third and the last voyage was made to this region, to which the name meta incognita was given. Two large ships were furnished by the Queen, and these were accompanied by thirteen smaller ones.

[1578-1580]

It was now the purpose to found a colony. The expedition set sail May 31st, going through the English Channel, and reaching the coast of Greenland June 21st. Frobisher and a few of his sailors landed where, perhaps, white men had never trodden before. As he came near the bay he was driven south by stormy weather, and entered, not knowing his whereabouts, the waters of Hudson's Straits, which he traversed a distance of sixty miles. He succeeded at length in retracing his course, and anchored on the southern shore of Frobisher's Bay, in the Countess of Warwick's Sound. But the desire for gold, the bleak winds, barren shores, and drifting icebergs, all combined to dispel the hopes of making a successful settlement, and the adventurers turned their faces homeward, carrying once more a cargo of ore, which proved, like the first, to be of no value whatever.

Almost three hundred years later Captain Hall, the American explorer, visited the Countess's Island and Sound. Among the Eskimos, from 1860 to 1862, he learned the tradition of Frobisher's visits, which had been preserved and handed down. They knew the number of ships; they spoke of the three times that white men had come; how five of these strangers had been taken captive, and how, after remaining through the winter, they had been allowed to build a boat, and to launch themselves upon the icy seas, never to be heard of more. Captain Hall was shown many relics of Frobisher's voyages, some of which he sent to the Royal Geographical Society of London, a part to the Smithsonian Institute at Washington. The small English house of lime and stone on this island was still standing in good condition, and there was also a trench where they had built their ill-fated boat.



A contemporary of Frobisher, Sir Francis Drake, also entertained the idea of making the northwest passage. While engaged in privateering or piratical expeditions against the Spanish, Drake landed on the Isthmus of Panama, saw the Pacific for the first time, and determined to enter it by the Straits of Magellan. In 1577 he made his way through the straits, plundered the Spanish along the coast of Chili and Peru, and sailed as far north as the 48th parallel, or Oregon, calling the country New Albion. Steering homeward by the Cape of Good Hope, he arrived at Plymouth, his starting-point, in 1580, having been absent about two years and ten months.



Thomas Cavendish had been with Grenville in the voyage of 1585 to Virginia. Frobisher's attempts inspired him with the ambition of the age. In 1586 he, too, sailed through the Straits of Magellan, burning and plundering Spanish ships, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and reached Plymouth in 1588, having been gone about two years and fifty days.



[1584]

These half-piratical attempts against Spain led continually into American waters, till the notion of forming a permanent outpost here as base for such adventures suggested to Sir Humphrey Gilbert the plan, which he failed to realize, of founding an American settlement. Gilbert visited our shores in 1579, and again in 1583, but was lost on his return from the latter voyage.

In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh sent two captains, Amidas and Barlow, to inspect the coast off what is now North Carolina. They reported so favorably that he began, next year, a colony on Roanoke Island. England was now a Protestant land, and no longer heeded Spanish claims to the transatlantic continent, save so far as actual settlements had been made.

[1586]

Sir Richard Grenville commanded this expedition, but was to return on seeing the one hundred and eight colonists who accompanied him well established. Queen Elizabeth gave the name VIRGINIA to the new country. Drake, tending homeward from one of his raids on the Spanish coast, in 1586, offered the settlers supplies, but finding them wholly discouraged, he carried them back to England.



[1587]

Determined to plant an agricultural community, Raleigh next time, l587, sent men with their families. A daughter to one of these, named Dare, was the first child of English parents born in America. Becoming destitute, the colony despatched its governor home for supplies. He returned to find the settlement deserted, and no tidings as to the fate of the poor colonists have ever been heard from that day to our own. The Jamestown settlers mentioned in the next chapter found among their Indian neighbors a boy whose whitish complexion and wavy hair induced the interesting suspicion that he was descended from some one of these lost colonists of Roanoke.

Thus Sir Walter's enterprise had to be abandoned. In the 40,000 pounds spent upon it his means were exhausted. Besides, England was now at war with Spain, and the entire energies of the nation were in requisition for the overthrow of the Spanish Armada.



CHAPTER IV.

THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA

[1606]

We have now arrived at the seventeenth century. In 1606 King James I. issued the first English colonial charter. It created a first and a second Virginia Company, the one having its centre in London, and coming to be known as the London Company; the other made up of Bristol, Exeter, and Plymouth men, and gradually taking the title of the Plymouth Company. This latter company, the second, or Plymouth Company, authorized to plant between 38 degrees and 45 degrees north, effected a settlement in 1607 at the mouth of the Kennebec River. Little came of it but suffering, the colonists, after a severe winter, returning to England.



[1607]

A colony of one hundred and five planters sent out by the first or London Company, proceeded, also in 1607, to Chesapeake Bay, entering James River, to which they indeed gave this name, and planted upon its banks Jamestown, the first permanent English colony on the continent. This London Company consisted of a council in England, appointed by the king, having the power to name the members of a local council which was to govern the colony, the colonists themselves having no voice.

It is well known that the very earliest population of the Old Dominion was not of the highest, but predominantly idle and thriftless. Vagabonds and homeless children picked up in the streets of London, as well as some convicts, were sent to the colony from England to be indented as servants, permanently, or for a term of years. Persons of the better class, to be sure, came as well, and the quality of the population, on the whole, improved year by year. Settlement here followed a centrifugal tendency, except as this was repressed by fear of the Indians. In 1616 the departments of Virginia were Henrico, up the James above the Appomattox mouth, West and Shirley Hundreds, Jamestown, Kiquoton, and King's Gift on the coast near Cape Charles—a wide reach of territory to be covered by a total population of only three hundred and fifty.

[1608]

A little exporting was immediately begun. So early as May 20, 1608, Jamestown sent to England a ship laden with iron ore, sassafras, cedar posts, and walnut boards. Another followed on June 2d, with a cargo all of cedar wood. This year or the next, small quantities of pitch, tar, and glass were sent. From 1619 tobacco was so common as to be the currency. About 1650 it was largely exported, a million and a half pounds, on the average, yearly. The figure had risen to twelve million pounds by 1670. At the middle of the century, corn, wheat, rice, hemp, flax, and fifteen varieties of fruit, as well as excellent wine were produced. A wind-mill was set up about 1620, the first in America. It stood at Falling Creek on the James River. The pioneer iron works on the continent were in this colony, hailing from about the date last named. Community of property prevailed at Jamestown in all the earliest years, as it did at Plymouth. After the event noted by John Rolfe: "about the last of August [1619] came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty Negars," slavery was a continual and increasing curse, as is attested by the laws concerning slaves. It encouraged indolence and savagery of habit and nature. Virginian slaves, however, were better treated than those farther south. They were tolerably clothed, fed, and housed.



There was in Virginia little of that healthful social and political contact which did so much to develop civilization at the North. Of town life there was practically nothing. Even so late as 1716 Jamestown had only a sorry half-dozen structures, two of which were church and court-house. Fifteen years later Fredericksburg had, besides the manor house of Colonel Willis and its belongings, only a store, a tailor shop, a blacksmith shop, a tavern or "ordinary," and a coffeehouse. Richmond and Petersburg still existed only on paper, and if we come down to the middle of the eighteenth century, Williamsburg, the capital of the province, was nothing but a straggling village of two hundred houses, without a single paved street. Only the College and the governor's "palace" were of brick. The county-seats were mostly mere glades in the woods, containing each its court-house, prison, whipping-post, pillory, and ducking-stool, besides the wretched tavern where court and attendants put up, and possibly a church. Hardships and dissensions marked the whole early history of this infant state. At one time only forty settlers remained alive, at another meal and water were the sole diet. Hoping for instant riches in gold, poor gentlemen and vagabonds had come, too much to the exclusion of mechanics and laborers. For relief from the turbulence and external dangers of this period, the colony owed much to Captain John Smith, who, after all allowance for his boasting, certainly displayed great courage and energy in emergencies. He, too, it was who did most to explore the country up the James and upon Chesapeake Bay.



[1609-1610]

A new charter was granted in 1609, the council in England being now appointed by the stockholders instead of the king, and the governor of the colony being named by this council. Lord Delaware was made Governor and Captain-General of Virginia, and many more colonists sent out. By a wreck of two of the vessels there was delay in the arrival of the newly chosen officers. Smith, then Percy, meantime continued to exercise authority. This, again, was a critical period. Indians were troublesome. Tillage having been neglected from the first, provisions became exhausted, and a crisis long referred to as "the starving time" ensued. The colony had actually abandoned Jamestown and shipped for England, when met in James River by Lord Delaware, coming with relief. They at once returned, and an era of hope dawned. This was in June, 1610. One hundred and fifty new settlers accompanied Delaware. Planting was vigorously prosecuted, the Indians placated, and still further accessions of people and cattle secured from England.

[1612]

Delaware's brief, mild sway was always a benediction, in pleasing contrast with the severities of Dale and Argall, who successively governed after his departure. Under Dale, death was the penalty for slaughtering cattle, even one's own, except with the Governor's leave, also of exporting goods without permission. A baker giving short weight was to lose his ears, and on second repetition to suffer death. A laundress purloining linen was to be flogged. Martial law alone prevailed; even capital punishment was ordained without jury. Such arbitrary rule was perhaps necessary, so lawless were the mass of the population. It at any rate had the excellent effect of rousing the Virginians to political thought and to the assertion of their rights. In 1612 a change took place in the Company's methods of governing its colony. The superior council was abolished, its authority transferred to the corporation as a whole, which met as an assembly to elect officers and enact laws for the colony. The government thus became more democratic in form and spirit.



[1614-1619]

The year 1614 was distinguished by the marriage of Pocahontas, daughter of the native chief Powhatan, to the English colonist Rolfe. With him she visited England, dying there a few years later. The alliance secured the valuable friendship of Powhatan and his subjects—only till Powhatan's death, however. Thenceforth savage hostilities occurred at frequent intervals. In 1622 they were peculiarly severe, over three hundred settlers losing their lives through them. Another outbreak took place about 1650, this time more quickly suppressed. We shall see in a later chapter how Bacon's Rebellion was occasioned by Indian troubles.

As James I. broke with Parliament, a majority of the Virginia shareholders proved Liberals, and they wrought with signal purpose and effect to realize their ideas in their colony. To this political complexion of the Virginia Company not only Virginia itself, but, in a way, all America is indebted for a start toward free institutions. During the governorship of George Yeardley, was summoned an assembly of burgesses, consisting of two representatives, elected by the inhabitants, from each of the eleven boroughs or districts which the colony had by this time come to embrace. It met on June 10, 1619, the earliest legislative body in the New World. This was the dawn of another new era in the colony's history.



[1622-1625]

In 1622 arrived Sir Thomas Wyatt, bringing a written constitution from the Company, which confirmed to the colony representative government and trial by jury. The assembly was given authority to make laws, subject only to the Governor's veto. This enlargement of political rights was due to the growth of the sentiment of popular liberty in England. In the meetings of the London Company debates were frequent and spirited between the court faction and the supporters of the political rights of the colonists. James I., dissatisfied with the authority which he had himself granted, appointed a commission to inquire into the Company's management, and also into the circumstances of the colony. A change was recommended, the courts decided as the king wished, and the Company was dissolved, The colony, while still allowed to govern itself by means of its popular assembly, was thus brought directly under the supervision of the Crown. Charles I., coming to the throne in 1625, gave heed to the affairs of the colony only so far as necessary to secure for himself the profits of the tobacco trade, It was doubtless owing to his indifference that the colony continued to enjoy civil freedom. He again appointed Yeardley Governor, a choice agreeable to the people; and in 1628, by asking that the assembly be called in order to vote him a monopoly of the coveted trade, he explicitly recognized the legitimacy and authority of that body.

[1642]

Yeardley was succeeded by Harvey, who rendered himself unpopular by defending in all land disputes the claims arising under royal grant against those based upon occupancy. Difficulties of this sort pervaded all colonial history.

In 1639 Wyatt held the office, succeeded in 1642 by Berkeley, during whose administration the colony attained its highest prosperity. Virginians now possessed constitutional rights and privileges in even a higher degree than Englishmen in the northern colonies. The colonists were most loyal to the king, and were let alone. They were also attached to the Church of England, ever manifesting toward those of a different faith the spirit of intolerance characteristic of the age.

[1650]

During the civil war in England, Virginia, of course, sided with the king. When Cromwell had assumed the reins of government he sent an expedition to require the submission of the colony. An agreement was made by which the authority of Parliament was acknowledged, while the colony in return was left unmolested in the management of its own affairs.



CHAPTER V.

PILGRIM AND PURITAN AT THE NORTH

[1612]

The Pilgrims who settled New England were Independents, peculiar in their ecclesiastical tenet that the single congregation of godly persons, however few or humble, regularly organized for Christ's work, is of right, by divine appointment, the highest ecclesiastical authority on earth. A church of this order existed in London by 1568; another, possibly more than one, the "Brownists," by 1580. Barrowe and Greenwood began a third in 1588, which, its founders being executed, went exiled to Amsterdam in 1593, subsequently uniting with the Presbyterians there. These churches, though independent, were not strictly democratic, like those next to be named.

Soon after 1600 John Smyth gathered a church at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, England, which persecution likewise drove to Amsterdam. Here Smyth seceded and founded a Baptist church, which, returning to London in 1611 or 1612, became the first church of its kind known to have existed in England. From Smyth's church at Gainsborough sprang one at Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire, and this, too, exiled like its parent, crossed to Holland, finding home in Leyden in 1607 and 1608. Of this church John Robinson was pastor, and from its bosom came the Plymouth Colony to New England.



[1620]

This little band set out for America with a patent from the Virginia Company, according to James I.'s charter of 1606, but actually began here as labor-share holders in a sub-corporation of a new organization, the Plymouth Company, chartered in 1620. Launching in the Mayflower from Plymouth, where they had paused in their way hither from Holland, they arrived off the coast of Cape Cod in 1620, December 11th Old Style, December 21st New Style, and began a settlement, to which they gave the name Plymouth. Before landing they had formed themselves into a political body, a government of the people with "just and equal laws."



They based their civil authority upon this Mayflower compact, practically ignoring England. Carver was the first governor, Bradford the second. The colony was named Plymouth in memory of hospitalities which its members had received at Plymouth, England, the name having no connection with the "Plymouth" of the Plymouth Company. The members of the Plymouth Company had none but a mercantile interest in the adventure, merely fitting out the colonists and bearing the expense of the passage for all but the first. On the other hand, the stock was not all retained in England. Shares were allotted to the Pilgrims as well, one to each emigrant with or without means, and one for every 10 pounds invested.

Plymouth early made a treaty with Massasoit, the chief of the neighboring Wampanoags, the peace lasting with benign effects to both parties for fifty years, or till the outbreak of Philip's War, discussed in a later chapter. The first winter in Plymouth was one of dreadful hardships, of famine, disease and death, which spring relieved but in part. Yet Plymouth grew, surely if slowly. It acquired rights on the Kennebec, on the Connecticut, at Cape Ann. It was at first a pure democracy, its laws all made in mass-meetings of the entire body of male inhabitants; nor was it till 1639 that increase of numbers forced resort to the principle of representation. In 1643 the population was about three thousand.



[1626-1630]

Between 1620 and 1630 there were isolated settlers along the whole New England coast. White, a minister from Dorchester, England, founded a colony near Cape Ann, which removed to Salem in 1626. The Plymouth Company granted them a patent, which Endicott, in charge of more emigrants, brought over in 1628. It gave title to all land between the Merrimac and Charles Rivers, also to all within three miles beyond each. These men formed the nucleus of the colony to which in 1629 Charles I. granted a royal charter, styling the proprietors "the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." Boston was made the capital. Soon more emigrants came, and Charlestown was settled.



It was a momentous step when the government of this colony was transferred to New England. Winthrop was chosen Governor, others of the Company elected to minor offices, and they, with no fewer than one thousand new colonists, sailed for this side the Atlantic. In Massachusetts, therefore, a trading company did not beget, as elsewhere, but literally became a political state. Many of the Massachusetts men, in contrast with those of Plymouth, had enjoyed high consideration at home. Yet democracy prevailed here too. The Governor and his eighteen assistants were chosen by the freemen, and were both legislature and court. As population increased and scattered in towns, these chose deputies to represent them, and a lower house element was added to the General Court, though assistants and deputies did not sit separately till 1644.



[1631]

At this time Massachusetts had a population of about 15,000. To all New England 21,200 emigrants came between 1628 and 1643, the total white population at the latter date being about 24,000.



So early as 1631 this colony decreed to admit none as freemen who were not also church members. Thus Church and State were made one, the government a theocracy. The Massachusetts settlers, though in many things less extreme than the Pilgrims, were decided Puritans, sincere but formal, precise, narrow, and very superstitious. They did not, however, on coming hither, affect or wish to separate from the Church of England, earnestly as they deprecated retaining the sign of the cross in baptism, the surplice, marriage with ring, and kneeling at communion. Yet soon they in effect became Separatists as well as Puritans, building independent churches, like those at Plymouth, and repudiating episcopacy utterly.



[1635]

Much as these Puritans professed and tried to exalt reason in certain matters, in civil and religious affairs, where they took the Old Testament as affording literal and minute directions for all sorts of human actions for all time, they could allow little liberty of opinion. This was apparent when into this theocratic state came Roger Williams, afterward the founder of Rhode Island. Born in London, England, about 1607, of good family, he was placed by his patron, Coke, at the Charter House School. From there he went to Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1631 he arrived in Boston. Somewhat finical in his political, moral, and religious ideas, he found it impossible, having separated from the Church of England, in which he had been reared, to harmonize here with those still favoring that communion. At Salem he was invited by a little company of Separatists to become their teacher. His views soon offended the authorities. He declared that the king's patent could confer no title to lands possessed by Indians. He denied the right of magistrates to punish heresy, or to enforce attendance upon religious services. "The magistrate's power," he said, "extends only to the bodies, goods, and outward state of men."

Alarmed at his bold utterances, the General Court of Massachusetts, September 2, 1635, decreed his banishment for "new and dangerous opinions, against the authority of magistrates." His fate was not, therefore, merely because of his religious views. The exile sought refuge at Seekonk, but this being within the Plymouth jurisdiction, he, on Governor Winslow's admonition, moved farther into the wilderness, settling at Providence. He purchased land of the natives, and, joined by others, set up a pure democracy, instituting as a part thereof the "lively experiment," for which ages had waited, of perfect liberty in matters of religious belief. Not for the first time in history, but more clearly, earnestly, and consistently than it had ever been done before, he maintained for every man the right of absolute freedom in matters of conscience, for all forms of faith equal toleration.



[1638]



Some friends of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson established a colony on Aquidneck, the Indian name for Rhode Island. Williams went to England and secured from Parliament a patent which united that plantation with his in one government. Charles II.'s charter of 1663 added Warwick to the first two settlements, renewing and enlarging the patent, and giving freest scope for government according to Williams' ideas. Mrs. Hutchinson, a woman of rare intellect and eloquence, who maintained the right of private judgment and pretended to an infallible inner light of revelation, was, like Williams, a victim of Puritan intolerance. She and her followers were banished, and some of them, returning, put to death, 1659-60. She came to Providence, then went to Aquidneck, where her husband died in 1642. She next settled near Hurl Gate, within the Dutch limits, where herself and almost her entire family were butchered by the Indians in 1643.