The story of America, containing the romantic incidents of history, from the discovery of America to the present time

Front matter

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DE SOTO ON THE MARCH.

Table Of Contents

Chapter.

I. Mastodons and Mystery.

Earliest Inhabitants — The Mound-Builders — The American Indians.

Chapter I. Earliest Inhabitants — The Mound-builders— The American

INDIANS.

jHE plans of God are ven- wide. No nation may have the right to say, "We \^p are the people, and wisdom shall die with us." Traces are left of so many great and perished nations, that we are constantly reminded that a thousand years is but as a day in His sight, and that the work and progress we are so proud of may disappear and leave but little hint of us by which the coming race may guess what we were like.

In the skeletons of the huge animals called the Mastodons and Mammoths, which once roved this countr}', and which have ceased to exist for so many thousand years, there are found flint arrow-heads, which must have been made by men who lived in that time, and by which these wild and terrible creatures were slain. Besides the many animals which belonged entirely to that age, and which there is nothing like now, there were many then upon this continent which we read of now only in foreign countries. The monkey was here in what we call United States, and the camel and rhinoceros. What the character was of the people who lived at that time it is impossible to guess.

The first race which has left any distinct traces of itself was the Mound-builders, and it hardly seems as if they could have lived at the time of the Mastodon, for they made pictures of all the things about them, and among those pictures there is nothing which resembles these huge animals. This race of men was not savage, in one sense of the word. They worked hard, a thing which the savage seldom does. They had skill, and loved the beautiful. They are called the Mound-builders, because they have left behind them thousands of immense mounds; some curved, some square, some in the shape of a snake. Sometimes these earthworks have from fourteen to sixteen miles of embankment. Some look as if they may have been the dwelling-places of their kings. Others seem as if they may have protected temples or altars where they worshiped.

This people understood the smelting of ores, and mining. Their potter}' was far from rude, and their implements of warfare very ser\aceable. They buried their great men under huge pyramids of dirt, but the common people, to judge from the great stack of bones which had been found in parts of the country, were doubtless thrown together and left in the open air. At the time they lived, this country' must have been thickly populated. It must have taken millions of men to do what they did. No one can guess what became of them, or why they left the possessions upon which they had spent so much time and labor. They disappeared many years before the American Indians roamed through our forests.

The American Indians, as the European discoverers of this country found them, were not the race that we know. They were said to be well formed, winning, gentle and trustful. They were gracious in their speech and friendly in their manner, with soft, brown bodies, and delicate movements. They had little strength for work, but great endurance in running. Here they lived, free as birds, without need of much work, with no cares, no sorrows except natural ones, until the civilized warriors drove them west, and ever west, setting an example of treachery and cruelty which the Indians were not slow to follow.

FOR FURTHER READING.

History— Squire and Davis' "Ancient Monuments."

Baldwin'.s "Ancient America."

Foster's "Prehistoric Races of America."

Drake's "Aboriginal Races of North America."

Jones' "Mound Huilders of Tennessee."

Shaler's "Time of the Mammoths."

"American Naturalist," iv: 14S.

Fiction— Matthew's 'Behemoth; A Legend of the Mound-Bnilders."

Chapter II

THE FIRST DISCOVERERS OF AMERICA — MYTHS, LEGENDS AND TRADI- TIONS — ^JOURNEY OF THE NORSEMEN.

TTlvE children, standing on the shores of Europe and looking toward the west, could make no guess at what lay beyond the water. They were told it was the "dark water," from which all the spirits and goblins came, things unknown and unnamable. The winds seemed always to blow toward the west. Even the mariners believed that it did so. If, by any chance, a sailor drifted out of his course toward the west, he was filled with alarm. It seemed possible to him that the waters might run off, somewhere, into a terrible nothingness. It is hard to tell which of the nations first found men courageous enough to cross these unknown waters. There are traditions that the Chinese did so, and that these Buddhists wandered down to the California shore, and went deep into the country' that we now know as Mexico. There are traditions, too, that the Breton fishermen cast their lines upon the Newfoundland coast. It is certainly true that North American Indians have been met with whose languages were mixed with French. The Welshmen also claim that a number of their countr>'men came to North America and settled there. The traditions concerning this are peculiarly romantic. Two brothers, David and Medoc, quarreled for the throne of Wales. The younger gave up his right, and, fitting out a ship, sailed west. The next year he returned, and said that he had found a fruitful country. He called upon his friends to follow him, and filled ten ships with men, women and children. They sailed away, and were never heard of again. Five times in American writings there are references to them. They are described as a race of white Indians, using many Welsh words, and having a manuscript copy of the Bible, in the Welsh language, with them. The last reference to them speaks of their living among the upper courses of the ^Missouri.

But the journeys of the Northmen to America are well known. These Northmen were splendid seamen, and splendid fighters. They had been all over the known world. They had frightened even the great emperor, Charlemagne, in France, and had put their horses in his palace. Wherever they went they seemed to conquer, until at last they were driven from Scotland. Then, on the melancholy island of Iceland, they made their republic. Two-thirds of the year they lived in twilight. Books were their consolation, the sea their play-ground. It was no wonder that they went this way and that, wherever their fancy prompted, and wherever they felt they could fight with weaker

men. They discovered Greenland, and settled a village there; then in strange, strong, if not fleet ships, went coasting further south. It was Bjarne Herjulfsen, with his crew, who first coasted — driven by adverse winds — along the coast of Nar-

A VIKING BOAT, FOUND IN DENMARK. *^

ragansett Bay, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. He went back to Iceland with the tales of what he had seen. "What," cried Erik the Red, a wild Norseman, who had been banished from his native country for murder, "you saw a new countr}' like that, with green fields and trees, and never put a foot on it?" He talked so much, and so long and loud on the subject, that his son, Leif Erikson, made up his mind to find out what kind of lands these were which were so much talked about. He bought Bjarue's ship from him, took thirty-five good seamen, and went far away to the southwest. They landed in Newfoundland, which they called Helluland, and in Nova Scotia, which they tenned Markland. They looked about these countries a little, gave them names, and sailed away, and were two days at sea before they saw land again. Then they sailed into a sound. It was a beautiful place. There were larger salmon there than they had ever seen, and grass, which looked wonderful to these men from a barren country. They found luscious grapes growing wild, grapes from which wine could be made with wonderful ease, and a German among them named it Vinland. We have changed the name very little. We call it Martha's Vinyard now. This was in the year looo.

THE LEGENDARY CENTURY. 9

When Leif Erikson reached home, his brother made the complaint that he had brought home much too little news. ' 'You may go in my ship, brother, to Vinland, if you like," said Leif, and thus Thorbald, in 1002, went to Vinland, and stayed there three years. It is thought that the skeleton in armor, found near Fall River, in Massachusetts, in 1 83 1, was that of Thorbald, who was killed by a poisoned arrow from Indians. Skraellings, the Norsemen called the Indians, because they were so scrawny, compared to themselves; and, indeed, there are traditions, among the eastern Indians, of the great, fair giants, who had come to the eastern shore, which shows that there must have been a great difference in the stature of the Norsemen and the red men. In 1005, the last son of Erik the Red started to Vinland, to try and fetch the body of his brother Thorbald. His ship was blown out of its course, and he never reached his destination. Then came Thorfinn Karlsfenn, with his handsome wife, Gudrid, and with them one hundred and fifty-one men and seven women. For three years they lived at Vinland, and, perhaps, built the tower that still stands in Newport, and wrote the inscriptions on the blocks near the Taunton river. The constant fights with the Indians decided them at last to leave their beautiful bay and go back to Iceland. They carried with them little Snorre, the first child of European blood born in America. Snorre was three years old when they took him back to Iceland, a little blue-eyed boy with golden hair. There are stories of other journeys by the Norsemen, in the years loii and 11 21, and accounts of their going as far south, along the Atlantic coast, as to what we now call Florida. It is believed that the Welshmen came later than this, in 1 1 70. The tower which stands at Newport, which is the only substantial monument that the Norsemen left of their visits, is low and round. It has two windows and a fire-place, and the cement with which the stones are put together is still strong, and but for the fact that the roof is gone, it could hardly be called a ruin. It is covered with ivy now, and serves the purpose of amusing the chance tourist. I/Ongfellow has made this tower the subject of his poem, "The Skeleton in Armor." Perhaps it was Thorfinn Karlsfenn who was his hero, and the ' 'viking wild. ' '

FOR FURTHER READING.

History— Leland's "Fusang, Discovery of America by Chinese." "America not Discovered by Columbus."

Bowen's "America Discovered by the Welsh."

Anderson's "Discovery of America by Norsemen." Beal's "Buddhist Records of the Western World." Fiction — Ballantyne's "Norsemen of the West." Poetry — Whittier's "Norsemen."

Longfellow's "Skeleton in Armor."

Montgomery's "Vinland."

Chapter III. Columbus And His Voyages — Amerigo Vespucci — The Cabots

EAVING cloth or combing wool patiently in Genoa, there lived in the fifteenth century an Italian by the name of Columbo. In the year 1435 his son was born, whom he named Cristoforo. Perhaps the comber of wool in his dull shop used to dream of the sea, and the delights and freedom of it. There could have been little other reason for his sending the little Columbus to school, at ten, to study navigation. At fourteen, this restless Italian boy went to sea, and from that time till he died, he never left it, unless, indeed, it was to draw charts for other seamen. He loved books, too, and read much. He read the books of great scholars, and it is more than possible that some of these planted in his mind the idea that the world was round — an idea which was to double Christian civilization. Christopher went on numerous voyages with the celebrated admiral of his time, who bore the same family name, Columbo, and it is thought he ma)- have traveled with a certain wild corsair, named Colon. The years between 1470 and 14S4 Christopher spent in Portugal. Ever}'one was talking about the discover}' of new lands. The Portuguese seamen were going down the African coast. Prince Henry was making presents of islands to his navigators, and he gave the island of Porto Santo, of the Madeira group, to a man named Prestrello. Columbus married the daughter of this man, and on the island of Porto Santo was born Columbus' son, Diego.

It was not the children alone who wondered about the great, dark water. The Spanish seamen were vastly curious. It seemed to them that the earth was a flat surface, with this ojeat river of water running

THE DREAMER OF GENOA.

II around the land. Like the children, they were terrified by the thought' of what might be on the other side. A few scholars thought that it might be a sphere, but they never dreamed that it could be large enouo-h for more than one continent; so it seemed quite simple to them, that if it was a sphere, it would be possible, by sailing westward, to reach Asia — the land from which the luxurious merchants of Spain and Portugal brought their richest wares; the land from which the spices came, the silks and the inlaid work, the gold and jewels.

COLUMBUS.

The Yanez portrait, Madrid Library.

Certain of these learned men, among them Toscanelli, the Italian, corresponded with Columbus. They drew up charts with his help, and laid out the plan by which one might cross into India, and Tartary, and Cathay. Columbus was a great dreamer, and these plans filled him with wild visions. He thought of nothing and talked of nothing else. He talked with sailors who had found pine trees washed upon the Madeira coast, where no pine trees grew, and those who had seen tropical cane

THE STORY OF AMERICA.

stalks Upon the European beaches. He was restless and excited ; he could never keep still. He even went to Iceland, and it is possible that he talked there with the descendants of the men who had been at Vineland. Gudrid, too, had been at Rome, and it ma}' be that she left traditions there of the three years which she had spent in the beautiful country across the water. Though Cohnnbus could interest many people with

AMERIGO VESPUCCI.

tales of all he fancied, and all he hoped, it was difficult to win the hearing of those who could give him help. It is said that he went, or sent, to King Henry VII, of England, with the hope of gaining his assistance. It is almost certain that he tried to get the help of the King of Portugal, and it is possible that he sought the aid of

COLUMBUS AND HIS SOX BEGGING.

Designed aiul l-ii -raved expressly for Tin-: Story of America.

THE DREAMER OF GENOA. 1 3

some of the cities of his own country, Italy. At last his wife died. He took his boy, Diego, and seems to have wandered about, in a desolate way, for a year. One day he went with Diego to the Franciscan convent of Santa Maria de la Rabida, asking for bread. He interested the prior, and the prior in turn interested a gentleman of importance, Martin Alonzo Pinzon, and he carried letters of credit with him from these persons to Cordova, where the king and queen were. But King Ferdinand was busy, and it was a long time before he could listen to Columbus. For seven years, or at the very least five, Columbus hung around the Spanish court. The courtiers laughed at him, and Isabella and Ferdinand seemed to have little confidence in his plans. At last, a day came when Columbus was treated with such contempt that he burst into a sudden fit of rage, flung himself out of the court, and, taking to his horse, rode toward France. Isabella, fearing both that the kingdom might have lost a good thing, and that Columbus' feelings were severely hurt, sent after him. He was brought back, and in three months an expedition was ready to sail, part of which was fitted out at the credit of Isabella's own kingdom, Castile. It was not very strange that the sailors were afraid to go. How could they tell what they were running into ? They had to be driven to their task by force ; but at last Columbus left with three ships — the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina. The Santa Maria was ninety-six feet long and carried sixty-six seamen. It was decked all over, and had four masts — two with square sails and two with lateen sails. The other vessels were smaller and without decks. They all carried provisions for a year, and Columbus had with him an agreement signed by Ferdinand and Isabella, by which he was made High Admiral and Viceroy in these lands, and given one-eighth of the possible profits in return for the eighth of the costs which he advanced. Columbus hardly knew how to show his happiness. He vowed that if there were any profits, they should be used to free the Holy Sepulchre from the Moslems; so, with much hope, and many prayers, he left with his discontented sailors, leaving his son in care of the royal household.

It was on the third of August, 1492, that Columbus and his men sailed from Palos. In a month they had reached the Canary Islands. After that they passed many desolate days on the water, with the sailors discontented at day and weeping at night. It took all of the tact that Columbus had at his command to quiet them. Once the sailors plotted to throw Columbus overboard, but he was keen and watchful, and, above all, a man of prayer, and his stern dignity of character held them in check. At length, however, he was obliged to tell them that he would turn back if they saw no land within three days. The anxiety which he felt can be imagined. Was it possible that he would be forced to give up his long-nursed hopes and forego the glory of discovery, and all because of a handful of fearful and ignorant sailors ? But the outcome was as strange as a miracle. In the morning of the third day, a sailor, standing aloft with his seaman's glass, espied land. The joy-guns were fired, to let the men upon the other vessels know of this wondrous fact. They sailed all day toward land. Anchor was cast over night, and the following morning they rowed Columbus to the shore, with music and waving banners, and, highest of all, the great flag of Spain, all red and gold. With him came his captains, with green flags, which bore the cross upon them. The island he called Guanahani. It is thought it may have been the island we call San Salvador, but this is not certain. It was a flat island, with a shallow lake in the centre, and not especially inviting, so the men sailed on and visited Cuba, Hayti and other of the West India islands. He did not doubt but that he had found the eastern extremity of Cathay.

He was not a little proud when he went back to Spain, and the reason that he stopped at Portugal may have been to let the king know all that he had lost, in not giving him a chance to find these new dominions for him. In Spain, he was received with much honor, and, when he started back for the new land, he had seventeen vessels and 1,500 men. On this journey he discovered the Windward Islands, part of Jamaica and Porto Rico, and founded his colony in Hayti. Hayti he called Little Spain, or Hispanola. In the winter of 1497-98, Amerigo Vespucci, a friend of Columbus, succeeded in some manner in obtaining ships, by which he reached the mainland of the new continent. Everyone was going to the "New Spain" who could possibly get there. All of the men who had laughed at Columbus before, seemed now to be trying to get as much of his territory and honor away from him as possible. Those who had sneered, "Look at the Admiral of Mosquitoland," and who had made light of Columbus' discovery because he brought home so little treasure, were, nevertheless, glad to start out to find what they could. If Amerigo made this voyage, as he said he did, he touched upon the mainland before any other Spaniard. In the same year John Cabot, a merchant, born at Venice, but living in England, also went to America, and touched upon the coast of Labrador. Sebastian Cabot, a son of John, a year later (1498) sailed with two ships and three hundred men. In his second voyage, he became persuaded

THE DREAMER OF GENOA. 1 5

that the land which they had found was not Asia. He discovered Hudson's Bay upon his third voyage. He loved the sea always, and lived upon it as long as he had strength. Meanwhile, Columbus, his mind still filled with visions, and believing that he was inspired of God, went upon his third journey. With his six ships, he reached the mainland of South America. Touching at his colony of Hispanola, he found his people quarrelling bitterly, and much dissatisfied with his government as admiral. He was arrested by Bobadilla, a Spanish commissioner, and carried on board ship in chains. These he wore till he reached Spain, although his captors would willingly have taken them off. The chains had the effect which he had expected; the monarchs were ashamed, the people horrified. He was released. He wished then to keep his vow, to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the infidels, but Ferdinand and Isabella would not permit him to do so. Then he asked to go once more to America. He was given four vessels, and took with him his brother, and his younger son, Fernando. By the time they had reached the American coast, Columbus was ill. He lay upon the deck, and watched the land as the ship sailed around by Honduras, for they had passed beyond the islands. He tried several times to found a colony, but the Indians were shy and crafty, and very naturally resented the invasion of their land. Two of his ships were lost. His crew mutinied, and no one would send him any relief. At last he went back to Spain, only to find his friend, Isabella, dead. He died on May 20, 1506, with the chains he had worn upon his return to Spain hung by his bed-side. They were put in his cofl5n, and he was buried with the monument : ' 'To Castile and Leon, Columbus gave a new world. ' ' About two centuries after that his remains were carried to the cathedral of Havana, that they might lie in the soil of the new world which he had found.

It was better for his peace of mind that he never knew that the land he reached after so much suffering of mind and body, was to bear the name of another man. But, after all, justice will always be done in the Lord's good time, and, in the minds of everyone, America is the monument of Columbus, and not of Amerigo Vespucci.

FOR FURTHER READING: History — Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico."

Biography — W. Irving's "Columbus."

W. Irving's "Companions of Columbus."

Dexter's "Letters of Columbus and Vespucci."

Travels— Hakluyt's "Voyages."

Kohl's "Discoverers of the East Coast of America." Fiction— Bird's "Calavar" and "Infidel."

Wallace's "Fair God."

Poetry— Barlow's "Colombiad."

Ivowell's "Columbus."

Rogers' "Columbus."

Sir Aubrey De Vere's "Sonnets on Columbus."