Young folks' history of America

Front matter

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Preface

The editor has sought the best materials in the preparation of this History of America, and is indebted to McKenzie's admirable History of the United States, a work published abroad some ten years ago, for the larger part of the text, and especially for the fine moral analyses in the parts having reference to the Puritans, to Slavery, and to the War for the Union. The opening chapter and the chapters prior to and inclusive of the period terminating with the assassination of President Garfield, are, for the most part, original; the text from Mc- Kenzie has been enlarged, revised, and edited ; stories have been interpolated, and the illustrations have been selected from the best sources by the most competent editors.

H. BUTTERWORTH.

[The story of the nation, for the further period commencing with the year 1881 up to the present time, has been constructed upon data gleaned from recognized authorities and from the official records of cotemporary history.]

Contents

Chapter Page

I. The Mysterious Races 13

II. The Great Discovery, A D. 1492 29

Chapter I. The Mysterious Races

It is highly probable that the American continent wa? known to the ancients, though in a somewhat imperfect way. Plato, four hundred years before our Saviour's tmit, gives a particular account of the great island of Atlantis, " an island that was larger than Libya (Africa) and Asia." Stiabo and Pliny both mention a like mysterious island. We are told that this great territory was inhabited by a powerful people, who became so wicked that they were drowned by the judgment of heaven, and that the island itself, that was larger than Africa and Asia, sunk in the sea. For mciiiy years it was deemed dangerous for navigators to sail westward on account of the ruins of this mysterious island which, it was believed, strewed the waters and impeded the way.

Atlantis may have been a fabulous land, but the Phoenicians or Canaanites had a knowledge of a country beyond the sea. Phoenicia, like England, once ruled the waves. Take the map of Asia and glance over the narrow strip of territory lying between the hills of Palestine and the sea. Here are the sites of Tyre and Sidon, the ancient London and Liverpool of the Mediterranean, into whose gay bazaars, glittering te.mples, and spacious palaces once flowed the lux-

Young Folks' History of America.

uries of the world. The ships of Phoenicia gathered the treasures of the Mediten-anean, the Euxine, and the Adriatic, the vine-clad hills of Ionia and Xtaly^ and the shores of So-uthern Europe and Northern Africa. The Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) were for a long period believed to be the end of the world.

The Phcenician sailors began to strike out beyond the Pillars of Hercules. They visited the British Islands for tin,

PHOENICIAN VESSEL.

and the shores of the Baltic for amber. We are told that certain of these navigators were once driven on to a wonderfully fertile island in the Western Ocean, and that it was their purpose to keep this discovery a secret.

THE WRITING ROCK AND SKELETON IN ARMOR.

Among the most marked evidences that the coast of New England was visited by old-time mariners long before the coming of the Spanish voyagers and the Pilgrims, are the well-preserved relics known as the Writing Rock, at Dighton,

The Writin£C Rock.

Massachusetts, the Skeleton \\\ Armor found at Fall River, and that ancient landmark, the Old Stone Tower, at Newport.

The celebrated Writing Rock at Dighton is situated on the Taunton River, a stream associated with many Indian traditions and events of colonial history. It is otten visited by antiquaries, and its inscriptions are well preserved. It consists of a solitary mass of fine-grained granite, lying on the sands of the river, a few feet above low-water mark, but covered with water at each rising of the tide. On the water side it presents an inclined plane, the face of which, eleven feet

DIGHTON ROCK.

by five feet, seems to have been originally covered with sculptures and hieroglyphic inscriptions. The face of tlie rock is extremely hard, and, however old the inscriptions may be, those that rise above the low-water mark can have undergone but litde change from the action of the elements.

The rock was noticed by the Pilgrims, but received little attention from historians and antiquaries until the years 1834-35, when a most extraordinary relic was found a few miles distant, in the town of Fall River. In digging down a hill near the town, a mass of earth slid off, uncovering a human skull, which was found to belong to a skeleton buried i6

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in a sitting posture, enveloped in a covering of bark. This envelope was removed, when the astonished workman saw that the trunk of this skeleton was encased in a breastplate of brass. The breastplate, which was similar to that which Homer describes as having been worn by Hector, was thirteen inches long, six inches broad at the upper end and about

five inches at the lower.

It was evidently cast in a furnace, and was about one-eighth of an inch in thickness.

But what is most remarkable about this armor is, that it seems to have no association with the armorial customs of Northern or Eastern Europe, nor with any recent historical date.

Below the breastplate, and entirely encircling the body, was a belt composed of brass tubes, each four and a half inches in length and three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter. The tubes were cast upon hollow reeds, and were so prepared as to protect the vulnerable parts of the body below the breastplate.

Who were these mysterious and unknown mariners f The poet Longfellow, in his "Skeleton in Armor," associates this nameless hero with the builders of the round arch tower at Newport, which the Danes claim as the work of their ancestors. Out of the materials thus supplied the poet weaves a fanciful story, which is familiar to many of my readers : - -

" Speak, speak, thou fearful guest, Who with thy hollow breast, Still in rude armor drest, Comest to daunt me I

THE SKELETON IN ARMOR.

To which the skeleton in armor is supposed to begin his story thus : —

" Far in the Northern land, By the wild Baltic strand, I, with my childish hand, Tamed the ger-falcon."

The researches of travellers and antiquaries have, however, thrown discredit upon the romantic narrative that follows these lines. Both the skeleton and the inscription on the Writing Rock seem to be of Asiatic origin. Several careful writers on the subject believe the Writing Rock to contain a representation of the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar), and that the mail-clad hero was one of the crew of a Phoenician vessel who passed the Pillars of Hercules and crossed the Atlantic. The armor is the same as appears in drawings taken from the sculptures found at Palenque, Mexico, which has led to the supposition that an Asiatic race transiently setded in North America, and afterwards went to Mexico and founded those rock-walled cities, in exploring the ruins of which such astonishing evidences of Asiatic civilization have been discovered. A portion of the North American Indians and certain tribes of the Aztecs in Mexico had distinct traditions of the flood.

THE MOUND- BUILDERS.

Of all the vanished races of antiquity the Mound-builders are among the most mysterious and interesting. Their mounds are to be found principally in the West, and are numerous in the Mississippi Valley. A mound until recendy was to be seen on the plain of Cahokia, Illinois, nearly opposite the city of St. Louis, Missouri, that was seven hundred feet long, five hundred feet broad, ninety feet high, and that covered more than eight acres of ground. Some of these

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mounds in Wisconsin and Iowa are in the shape of huge animals ; and there is one near Brush Creek, Adams County,

MOUNDS NEAR NEWARK, OHIO.

Ohio, that is in the form of a serpent, and that is more than one thousand feet in length. The mouth of this strange figure is open, as in the act of swallowing or ejecting an oval

The Mound- Builders.

substance, which is also curiously made of earth-works. This oval mound is thought to represent an egg.

At Marietta, Ohio, are ancient works that cover an area about three-fourths of a mile long, and half a mile broad. " There are two irregular squares, one containing fifty acres, and the other twenty-seven acres, together with the crowning work standing apart, which is a mound thirty feet high, elliptical in form, and enclosed by a circular embankment."

But the most intricate, and perhaps the most extensive, of the works of the Mound-builders are those in the Licking Valley, near Newark, Ohio, extending over an area of two square miles. Why they were built we may not even conjecture, but that they were constructed with almost infinite toil by a superior race of people, under skilled direction and for some definite purpose, no one can deny who examines them.

Many of these mounds have been found to contain skeletons ; and the appearance of the bones would seem to point to an antiquity of two thousand or more years. Curious pottery, known as the " coil-made," has been found in the mounds and caves, and at the ruined pueblos in Utah. Vessels of various forms and sizes were made, without the potter's wheel, by coiling bands of clay upon themselves. On the outside the projecting edges of these coils often formed bands or ridges, which were cut into diamond-shaped figures, marked with the thumb-nail, or otherwise ornamented, as shown in the engraving of the coil-made jar.

FRAGMENT OF ANCIENT PUEBLO POTTERY

22 YotiJig Folks History of America.

The ancient Mexican pyramids, teocailis, or temples of the sun, were still more remarkable. Two of the most ancient of these, near the city of Mexico, were each nearly two hundred feet high, and the larger of these two covers an area of eleven acres, which is nearly equal to that of the Pyramid of Cheops, in Egypt. The ancient city of Mexico contained nearly two thousand temples and structures, and it is believed that there were some forty thousand in the whole empire.

Who built these mounds m the Mississippi Valley, and these pyramids in Mexico ? Not the Indians who were found in America when the country was discovered. They are the productions of greater skill and culture than these tribes possessed. They are doubtless the monuments of a vanished people, whose coming and going and splendid history must ever remain to a great extent a mystery.

Antiquaries have furnished many theories to answer this question which arises in the mind of every student of history. Some have maintained that the Mound-builders and the mysterious people who preceded the Aztecs in Mexico were the descendants of crews from Japan, whose ships had been accidentally driven across the Pacific.

A more reasonable solution is that these people migrated from Asia.

Take your map : look at the Isthmus of Suez ; cross Central Asia to Siberia ; carefully examine Behring Strait ; run your eye down the western coast and the Mississippi Valley, thence to Mexico, thence across the Isthmus of Panama to Peru. You have now passed over the supposed track of an Asiatic race, possibly the Shepherd Kings.

Who were the Shepherd Kings ?

They came down to Egypt from Central India, driving their flocks before them, about the time of the building of the Tower of Babel. They conquered Egypt, built the pyramids, but were at last overcome by the ancient inhabitants, and

TOLTEC RUINS, YUCATAN.

driven away from the Nile. They wandered back into Central Asia. In Siberia, it would seem, they erected mounds like those in the Mississippi Valley. They are then supposed to have journeyed north, crossed Behring Strait, which was then very narrow, passed through Alaska to the temperate zone, and pushed south to Mexico, Central America, and Peru.

THE SIBERIAN ELEPHANT AND MASTODON RESTORED.

We do not say that this theory is proven to be true : it has many things to support it. It is so interesting and it makes the ancient Egyptians seem so neighborly, we could wish it to be true.

That access from Asia to America was easy centuries ago, possibly by land connection, is evident from the discovery in Siberia and on the Pacific coast, in Alaska, of the remains 0/ the Siberian elephant.

THE INDIANS.

The Indians do not' seem to have sprung from the Mound-builders or the founders of the ancient Mexican Empire. They may have been the descendants of Mongolian emigrants who crossed at different times the Strait of Behring.

Nearly all the Indian tribes that inhabited the continent at the time of its discovery are gone. They have vanished, like the forests they inhabited, and the beasts of prey they hunted. New England was once the home of the Narragansetts, the Pequots, the Mohegans, but nothing but the names of these tribes remain ; the Iroquois dwelt by the great lakes of Erie and Huron, and the Algonquin nations inhabited the centre of the continent. Beyond the Algonquin territory lived the Dacotahs, on the prairies of the west, while on the south were the Tuscaroras, the Catawbas, the Creeks, and the Seminoles. ^\^ith the exception of the Seminoles and the Dacotahs, hardly a remnant of these tribes remains ; the church-spires rise and the school-bells ring where their wigwams clustered, and the locomotives roll through the fair valleys where they once smoked the pipe of peace, and under the pine-plumed hills against which their war-cry was raised.

They were a race of tall, powerful men — copper-colored, with hazel eye, high cheek-bone, and coarse black hair. In manner they were grave, and not without a measure of dignity. They had courage, but it was of that kind which is greater in suffering than in doing. They were true to their friends, but to their enemies they were cunning, treacherous, and cruel. Civilization could lay no hold upon them. They quickly learned to use the white man's musket. They never learned tc use the tools of the white man's industry. They developed a love for intoxicating drink, passionate and irresistible beyond all example. The first settlers of New Eng-

The Indians.

land intended to treat them as Christian men should. They took no land from them. What land they required they bought and paid for. Nearly all of New England's soil was

INDIANS IN COUNCIL.

come by with scrupulous honesty. The friendship of the Indians was anxiously cultivated, — sometimes from fear, oftener from pity. But nothing could stay their progress towards extinction. Inordinate drunkenness and the gradual

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limitation of their hunting-grounds told fatally on their numbers. And occasionally the English were forced to march against some tribe which refused to be at peace, and to inflict a defeat which left few survivors.

COIL-MADE JAR FROM SOUTHERN UTAH.

Chapter II

THE GREAT DISCOVERY, A. D. 1492.

It was late in the history of the world before Europe and America became known to each other. During the first fif teen centuries of the Christian era Europe was unaware of the vast continent which lay beyond the sea. .

Men had been slow to establish completely their dominion over the sea. They learned very early to build ships. They availed themselves very early of the surprising power .which the helm exerts over the movements of a ship. But, during many ages, they found no surer guidance upon the pathless sea than that which the position of the sun and the stars afforded. When clouds intervened to deprive them of these uncertain guides, they were helpless. They were thus obliged to keep the land in view, and content themselves with creeping timidly along the coast.

At length there was discovered a stone whicli the wise Creator had endowed with strange properties. It was observed that a needle brought once into contact with that stone pointed ever afterwards steadfastly to the north. Men saw that with a needle thus influenced they could guide themselves at sea as surely as on land. The mariners' compass untied the bond which held sailors to the coast, and gave them liberty to push out upon the sea.

Just when sailors were slowly learning to put confidence in the mariners' compass, there arose in Europe a vehement desire for the discovery of unknown countries. A sudden interest sprang up in all that was distant and unexplored.

The strange fables told by travellers were greedily received. The human mind was beginning to cast off the torpor of the Middle Ages. As intelligence increased, men became increasingly eager to ascertain the form and extent of the world in which they dwelt, and to acquaint themselves with those unknown races who were their fellow-inhabitants.

Portugal and Spain, looking out upon the boundless sea, were powerfully stirred by the new impulse. The courts of Lisbon and Madrid swarmed with adventurers who had made discoveries, or who wished the means to make them. Conspicuous among these was an enthusiast, who during eighteen years had not ceased to importune incredulous monarchs for ships and men that he might open up the secrets of the sea. He was a tall man, of grave and gentle manners, and noble though saddened look. His eye was gray, '' apt to enkindle " when he spoke of those discoveries in the making of which he felt himself to be Heaven's chosen agent. He had known hardship and sorrow in his youth, and at thirty his hair was white. His name was Christopher Columbus. In him the universal passion for discovery rose to the dignity of an inspiration.

THE STORY OF COLUMBUS.

Christopher Columbus, or Columbo, was born at Genoa, Italy, about the year 1436 (Irving). He was of a humble family, and one of his early employments was feeding swine. But he had a high spirit and a resdess religious zeal, and he engaged in the life of a mariner at the age of fourteen. He thirsted for knowledge, and studied geometry, astronomy, geography, navigation, and the Latin language, at the University of Pavia. From this time he stored his mind with knowledge, and it was this studiousness that put it in his power to so interest a good Spanish prior in his schemes for exploration as to lead to his successful introduction to the court of Spain.

The Story of Columbus.

For, one day, hungry and weary and discouraged that no one would favor his enterprises, he stopped to rest in the shadow of an old Spanish convent. It was high noon, and he asked the prior for a cup of water. The monk brought him the draught, and stopped to talk with him while he rested. He was astonished at the schemes, visions, and learning of the weary Genoese, and he promised to use his influence in his behalf with the Spanish court ; and in that chance hour the destiny of the Western World, then unknown, was in effect changed, and a new continent was added to the diadems of Aragon and Castile. Had his mind been less stored with the acquirements of his well - spent youth, when he stopped to

rest in the shadow of the convent, the map of the world might have been different to-day. The incident affords a telling lesson to the young, and aptly illustrates the value of a well-stored mind.

Columbus was convinced by his studies that the world must be spherical in form, and that there was probably land on the western side to counterbalance that on the east. He thought this land would prove to be a continuance of Asia. Lisbon was famous for the exploits of her mariners. Columbus went to Lisbon, and there married the daughter of a famous navigator, whose charts and

SPANISH PRIOR.

journals filled his mind with an unquenchable desire for discovery.

He applied to the senate of his native city for ships, but in vain. He next sought the patronage of the king of Portugal, but was disappointed. In 1484 he turned to Spain, and procured an interview with Ferdinand, king of Aragon. The cautious monarch heard his story, and referred his theory to the learned men of the University of Salamanca. Some of these wise men concluded that if there were indeed land on the other side of the globe the people there must be obliged to walk about with heads downward, as their feet would be pointed upward ; and as this would not be an agreeable country to explore, they dismissed the subject.

But, at last, Columbus obtained a hearing of a more susceptible auditor at the Spanish court. Queen Isabella heard his story and favored his cause. She is said to have parted with some of her jewels to procure ships for the enthusiastic adventurer. To one woman, his wife, Columbus owed the fostering of his inspiration, and to another, the Spanish queen, the means of carrying forward his plans and fulfilling his dreams.

No sailor of our time would cross the Atlantic in such ships as were given to Columbus. In size they resembled the smaller of our river and coasting vessels. Only one of them was decked. The others were open, save at the prow and stern, where cabins were built for the crew. The sailors went unwillingly and in much fear, compelled by an order from the king.

And now the feeble squadron of three ships is on the sea, and the prows are turned toward the waste of waters, in whose mysterious distances the sun seemed to set. It is Friday, Aug. 3, 1492. On Sunday, September 9, the timid crews passed the farthest known island. Out on the unknown sea, the mariners' compass no longer pointed directly north,

COLUMBUS WATCHING FOR LAND.

1492- The Story of Cohnnbus. 35

and awe and terror seized the sailors, as the distance between them and the land grew wider and wider.

The ships moved on under serene skies. Trade winds blew from east to west. The air at last gi-ew balmy, and fields of sea-weed began to appear. Land birds lit upon the spars.

One evening, just at sunset, — it was September 25, — Martin Alonzo Pinzon mounted the stern of the Pinta, and peered into the far distance. A reward had been offered to the person who should first discover land. Pinzon descried a shadowy appearance far over the western sea, and cried out in great excitement, —

" Land ! land ! I claim the promised reward, Sefior. Land ! "

Columbus threw himself upon his knees and led the crews in singing Gloria in excelsis.

In the morning after the supposed discovery nothing but the wide waters appeared. The supposed island was but a cloud.

For a fortnight more the ships drifted on over the quiet waters. The seamen lost heart again and again in this awful unexplored space. They mutinied, but the lofty spirit of their leader disarmed them. At last, birds came singing again ; a branch of thorn with berries floated by the ships. A vesper hymn to the Virgin was sung in the evening that these ■'ndications of land were discovered.

" We shall see land in the morning," said Columbus.

He stood upon the deck all that night peering into the dim starlit spaces. At midnight he beheld a light. The morning came. Beautifully wooded shores rose in view. Birds of gorgeous plumage hovered around them. The crews set off from the ships in small boats. Columbus first stepped upon the shore.

The crews knelt on the strand and kissed the earth. They wept and chanted hymns of praise.

Then Columbus unfurled the banner of Spain, and claimed the land in the name of the Spanish sovereigns. The triumph was a realization of all the navigator's visions and dreams.

Columbus knew not the magnitude of his discovery. He died in the belief that he had merely discovered a shorter route to India. He never enjoyed that which would have been the best recompense for all his toil, — the knowledge that he had added a vast continent to the possessions of civilized men.

The revelation by Columbus of the amazing fact that there were lands beyond the great ocean, inhabited by strange races of human beings, roused to a passionate eagerness the thirst for fresh discoveries. The splendors of the newly found world were indeed difficult to be resisted. Wealth beyond the wildest dreams of avarice could be had, it was said, for the gathering. The sands of every river sparkled with gold. The very color of the ground showed that gold was profusely abundant. The meanest of the Indians ornamented himself with gold and jewels. The walls of the houses glittered with pearls. There was a fountain, if one might but find it, whose waters bestowed perpetual youth upon the bather. The wildest romances were greedily received, and the Old World, with its familiar and painful realities, seemed mean and hateful beside the fabled glories of the New.

The men of the nations of Europe whose trade was fighting turned gladly to the world where boundless wealth was to be wrung from the grasp of unwarlike barbarians. England and France had missed the splendid pri^e which Columbus had won for Spain. They hastened now to secure what they could.

A merchant of Bristol, John Cabot, obtained permission from the king of England to make discoveries in the northern parts of America. Cabot was to bear all expenses, and the king was to receive one-fifth of the gains of the adventure. Taking with him his son Sebastian, John Cabot sailed straight

Voyage of JoJin Cabot.

westward across the x\tlantic. He reached the North American continent, of which he was the undoubted discoverer (1497). The result to him was disappointing. He landed on the coast of Labrador. Being in the same latitude as England, he reasoned that he should find the same genial climate. To his astonishment he came upon a region of intolerable cold, dreary with ice and snow. John Cabot had not heard of the Gulf Stream and its marvellous influences. He did not know that the western shores of Northern Europe are rescued from perpetual winter, and warmed up to the enjoyable temperature which they possess, by an enormous river of warm water flowing between banks of cold water eastward from the Gulf of Mexico. The Cabots made many voyages afterwards, and explored the American coast from extreme north to extreme south.

The French turned their attention to the northern parts of the New World. The rich fisheries of Newfoundland attracted them. A Frenchman sailed up the great St. Lawrence River. After some failures a French settlement was established there, and for a century and a half the French peopled Canada.

Spanish adventurers never rested from their eager search after the treasures of the new continent. An aged warrior

DREARY WITH ICE AND SNOW."

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called Ponce de Leon fitted out an expedition at his own cost. He had heard of the marvellous fountain whose waters would restore to him the years of his wasted youth. He searched in vain. The fountain would not reveal itself to the foolish old man, and he had to bear without relief the burden of his profitless years. But he found a country hitherto unseen by

PONCE DE LEON IN THE ST. JOHN'S RIVER.

Europeans, which was clothed with magnificent forests, and seemed to bloom with perpetual flowers. He called it Florida. He attempted to found a colony in the paradise he had discovered. But the natives attacked him, slew many of his men, and drove the rest to their ships, carrying with them their chief, wounded by the poisoned arrow of an Indian.

1539- De Sotds Expedition. 41

Ferdinand de Soto had been with Pizarro, who had made an expedition to Peru, and returned to Spain enriched with plunder. He did not doubt that in the north were cities as rich and barbarians as confiding. An expedition to discover new regions, and plunder their inhabitants, was fitted out under his command. No one doubted that success equal to that of Cortes and Pizarro would attend this new adventure. The youth of Spain were eager to be permitted to go, and they sold their houses and lands to buy the needful equipment. Six hundred men, in the prime of life, were chosen from the crowd of applicants, and the expedition sailed, high in courage, splendid in aspect, boundless in expectation. They landed on the coast of Florida, and began their march into the wilderness. They had fetters for the Indians whom they meant to take captive. They had bloodhounds, lest these captives should escape. The camp swarmed with priests, and as they marched the festivals and processions enjoined by the Church were devoutly observed.

From the outset it was a toilsome and perilous enterprise ; but to the Spaniard of that time danger was a joy. The Indians were warlike, and generally hostile. De Soto had pitched battles to fight and heavy losses to bear. Always he was victorious, but he could ill afford the cost of many such victories. The captive Indians amused him with tales of regions where gold abounded. They had learned that ignorance on that subject was very hazardous. De Soto had stimulated their knowledge by burning to death some who denied the existence of gold in that country. The Spaniards wandered slowly northwards. They looked eagerly for some great city, the plunder of whose palaces and temples would enrich them all. They found nothing better than occasionally an Indian town, composed of a few miserable huts. It was all they could do to get needful food. At length they came to a magnificent river. European eyes had seen no