An American history

Front matter

Class.

Book.

Gop}TightN°_

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE PROLOGUE TO AMERICAN HISTORY i

1. Primitive America

Chapter I

I. PRIMITIVE AMERICA

1. The First Americans. No one knows how America was first peopled, and yet almost everywhere in the United States we find traces of an ancient people that have left httle behind them except their graves. Who were they ? Where did they come from ? We call them the mound builders because their burial places are earthen mounds. In these mounds have been found pottery, tools, and weapons ; also the bones of men. But we have not yet found any writing. The tools and weapons are so rudely made that it is plain they are the work of savages.

There were other native races in ancient America. Three of them that did remarkable things were the Peruvians, the Mexicans, and the people of Yucatan.

Like the mound builders, who may have been their kinsmen, these people have left no books for us to read. But they had a sort of picture writing much hke the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt. Many of their hieroglyphics, carved in stone, may still be seen, especially in Yucatan and Peru. There are also ruins of temples, palaces, and gigantic fortifications.

2. An Ancient American Fortress. In Peru, near the city of Cuzco, stand the ruins of a vast fortress of the ancient Americans. Some of the stones in its walls are so huge that we cannot see how they could have been set in place without the use of engines. In metal working as well as in masonry the Peruvians were highly skilled. Very early they discovered the rich mines of the Andes ; and Cuzco, their capital, became in large part a city of silver and gold. Its cliief temple, dedicated to the sun, was called " the place of gold." Still more remarkable than either the fortress or the temple was the summer palace of the Peruvian monarchs in a lovely valley among the Andes. Surrounding the palace were artificial

TEMPLE PYRAMID AT PAPAUTLA, MEXICO

gardens in which the plants and flowers were all of the precious metals. Tall stalks of corn stood high in the bright mountain air, but the stalks were of silver and the ears and tassels of the corn were gold.

3. Yucatan. Passing from Peru to Yucatan we find there the empty city of Uxmal. The people have been destroyed. Their treasures were long ago carried off by Spanish conquerors. The city, left desolate, has been taken possession of by the tropical forest. In this forest, the modern explorer of Uxmal finds himself among stone pyramids on which seeds have lodged and grown into trees. Among the trunks, on the walls of shattered temples, appear strange carvings. The twilight of the forest is filled with these ancient images which were once the gods of Yucatan.

4. Mexico. More splendid, probably, than either Cuzco or Uxmal was the capital of a strange and terrible people that inhabited the mountain country known to-day as Mexico. Built upon a group of islands, the ancient capital of the Mexicans was the American Venice. Like Cuzco it was barbarically rich in gold and silver. Like Uxmal it had its pyramid temples. In the midst of its blue lake, surrounded by mountains that were crowned by perpetual snow, the Mexican city glittered like an enormous jewel.

However, we cannot think of ancient Peruvians and ancient Mexicans as civilized peoples in the sense in which we think of ancient Greeks and Romans. In the science of government they never advanced beyond comparatively primitive stages. In religion, the Mexicans, at least, were still upon the lowest level, worshiping hideous gods with human sacrifices.

5. The Indians. The red Indians of our own country are still to be accounted for. Were they related to the Mexicans ? Perhaps, but we are not quite sure. All we can assert positively is that the central part of North America was once occupied by a tall, well-built race, with straight black hair and copper-colored skins. They were bold, could endure much pain, and were able warriors, but they had Httle of what we mean by " civilization." That is, they did not build cities ; they supported themselves largely by hunting ; they knew Httle about the use of metal ; and they could not write.

How long the Indians have lived in America it is impossible to say. Very Hkely their remote ancestors came from Asia, but if that is the case, the migration took place so long ago that the Indians themselves have lost all knowledge of it. Nor is the memory of it preserved in Asiatic tradition. Nevertheless, the Aleutian Islands, strung along between Alaska and Siberia, may well have been the stepping-stones by means of which some old Asiatic people, thousands of years ago, passed from Asia to America. Possibly the forefathers of our Indians were driven northward out of middle Asia by some younger, more powerful people into the snow and ice of Siberia. Expelled from habitable Asia, they were left to live or die apart in a land which no one visited. If in the course of time they found their way eastward and southward and at last reached a better country, no one in Asia either knew or cared. So, for many centuries, all Asia bcheved that the Pacific Ocean was the end of things. Looking out across it, Asiatics thought, '' Beyond this there is nothing."

6. Europe and America. The Europeans at the other end of the world had a similar delusion. In those far-off days, when the earth was supposed to be fiat, they looked westward over the Atlantic Ocean and said, " There is nothing beyond."

And all the while, without ever suspecting it, the Europeans and the Asiatics were looking in each other's direction, round the curve of the earth's ball. Between them all the while lay the unknown land, America, with its savage, red-skinned warriors, its bestial human sacrifices, and its golden temple of the sun.

n. THE SEARCH FOR AMERICA

7. First Link with Europe. The earliest known events which connect the Old World with the New took place toward the end of the ninth century. To the far western island of Iceland, in 874, came the Vikings from Norway.

All the west coast of Norway is cut into by the sea. Long, narrow channels go deep into the land. The tide, as it rises, roars through these channels, and the waves crash upon the bases of lofty mountains. There, more than a thousand years ago, lived the Vikings— restless, piratical folk who issued from their bleak inlets to rove the seas in search of adventure. The most daring of sailors, they braved the worst storms in a type of boat which we should not consider seaworthy. A viking " ship " was but sixty or seventy feet long, with a single mast and one square sail, and oars on either side. In such boats the Norsemen went as far east as Constantinople ; while in the west they did what we shall now hear.

8. Settlement of Iceland and Greenland. In Iceland the Norsemen settled a new Norway, where the descendants of the Vikings live to this day.

A hundred years later, a famous sea rover, Eric the Red, made his way to Greenland. The news of his discovery caused great excitement in Iceland ; and in 985 Eric sailed for Greenland a second time at the head of a numerous party of emigrants.

Few spots on our continent appeal so powerfully to the imagination as does a ^^ _-^_^..ri.., little piece of a nur.e .hip meadow land, at

the head of an inlet on the west coast of Greenland. There Eric fixed his colony, the first European settlement in North America. The site of it is still marked by a group of ruins.

9. Vinland. It would seem that there was a considerable migration from Iceland to Greenland. Presently the Norse began to wonder what, if anything, lay to the south and west. There are different tales as to who was the first European to reach continental America, but that honor is generally accorded to Leif Ericson, one of the sons of Eric the Red. We may take it as settled that Leif reached the mainland of North America about the year 1000. He cruised along the coast, entered a great bay, found grapes growing wild, and therefore called the country Vinland.^

* It is not certainly known just what part of the coast Leif visited. Many students are convinced that his great bay was Boston harbor. There is a monument to Leif in the Fenway Park, Boston.

10. The Norsemen in Vinland. The Norsemen attempted to plant a colony in Vinland. We have record of at least one man who was born there, a certain Snorre, from whom many

persons in later years claimed descent. The very beginning of the struggle between the white and red races to possess America was a skirmish between Norsemen and Indians, in which the Norse leader was shot dead by an Indian arrow.

Soon afterward a fierce attack by Indians drove the Norsemen to their ships. That was the end of the colony, but the Greenlanders did not forget what Lcif had found, and long afterward they were still making voyages to Vinland for timber. In time even these ceased. During many generations there seem to have been no Europeans west of Greenland.

LEIF ERICSON STATUE, BOSTON

III. THE ITALT\N EXPLORERS

11. The Vinland Tradition. In the countries of the far North people continued to talk of Vinland. In Iceland the story of it was set down as part of Norse history. It was carried eastward to the Orkney Islands. Two Italians of noble birth, the brothers Nicola and Antonio Zeno, heard the story while visiting the Orkneys and resolved to explore the West. The narrative left us by the Zenos tells of a visit to a great island in the West ; of long wanderings in sea fog ; of a western country which has not been identified ; and of exploring the coasts of Greenland. That is all we know of the earliest visit of the Italians to North America.

12. The Renaissance and Exploration. However, the time had come when ItaHans were to outdo all other peoples in making voyages and discoveries. Italy was then in the midst of that great awakening which we call the Renaissance. After a long neglect of thought, Europe rediscovered the dehght of it, chiefly through rediscovering the classic writers of Greece and Rome. One of the signs of the time was a passion for knowledge; another was the spirit of adventure. Thus

Region of the Norse Discoveries ( Southern Europeans, probably had no knowledge o£it,')^

THE KNOWN WORLD IN 1492

arose the Italian enthusiasm for travel, which the Zenos were by no means the first to feel. Long before, Marco Polo had set his countrymen a famous example. Lured eastward by the tales of Arab traders, he made his way through Persia, across India, to China. His reports of the wonders of those countries — the silks, the spices, the gold and precious stones, the temples and palaces — opened to his countrymen a vision of magnificence which captivated their imagination.

13. The Problem of India. Trade between Italy and India had long been carried on by the Arabs over caravan routes through western Asia. In the fifteenth century, however.

the Turks, rude soldiers who despised commerce, conquered most of the Arabian world. They even entered Europe and in 1453 fixed their capital at Constantinople. By these Turkish conquests overland trade between Europe and India was practically abolished. Thereupon, throughout Italy the question was eagerly discussed : How can trade with India be recovered ?

At this juncture the scientists of Italy came to the assistance of the traders. They had long since convinced themselves that the earth is not flat and stationary, as their fathers had supposed, but a great ball whirling on a vast orbit around the sun. At Florence, in 1470, the famed astronomer, Toscanelli, calculated the circumference of the earth and got it almost right. Thus was revealed the fact that any spot on the earth may be reached round the earth's circle, either by going east or by going west.

14. Columbus. Who first suggested that India might be reached by going west we do not know. Perhaps it was Toscanelli. Perhaps it was a still more celebrated Italian, a sailor of Genoa, Christopher Columbus. Perhaps it was some one whose name has been forgotten. At any rate, in the year 1474 the king of Portugal was consulting Toscanelli — " taking expert advice," as we should say to-day — for a full statement of his views on the subject. The great Columbus was then in the employ of Portugal. It is not unlikely, therefore, that it was Columbus who suggested to the king to write to Toscanelli, and that the astronomer merely passed judgment on the scheme of the sailor. But it is certain that he approved. Letters passed between him and Columbus, and the astronomer sent the sailor a map, together with calculations of the probable position of India on the globe of the earth.

What did we say about the European and the Asiatic looking in each other's direction round the earth's ball, and never suspecting the unknown land, America, in between? Of course neither Columbus nor Toscanelli dreamed of such a place. Their information as to the distance overland through Asia to India was vague. The best they could do was to take the circumference of the earth as calculated by Toscanelli, subtract from it what they beheved to be the distance eastward to India, and conclude that the remainder was the distance westward. This they did. The result persuaded both men that the most advantageous commercial route to India lay directly west across the Atlantic Ocean.

THE TOSCANELLI MAP

The outline of the Western Continent is in black dots, showing its actual position. The black line shows the voyage of Columbus.

15. The African Route. But there was a rival opinion. Others held that if they could find a way southeastward round Africa, it would prove to be much shorter than the westward way advocated by Columbus and Toscanelli. After wavering some time, the king of Portugal turned against Columbus and adopted the opposite view. Columbus, in disgust, left the country and went to Spain. There, in 1487, he had news that troubled him. Until then many people had believed that Africa extended to the South Pole. The news which startled Columbus was the discovery by Bartholomew lo AMERICAN HISTORY

Diaz, a Portuguese, of the Cape of Good Hope. This meant that Africa did not extend to the Pole, that to the south of it was an open sea road to India.

16. The Appeals of Columbus. Columbus saw that he must be up and doing. Presently, if he did not contrive to prove his own theory, all Europe would be sending ships southeastward round the Cape to India, and no one would be willing to risk the cost of an expedition due west. He now set to work to canvass the states of Europe for financial backing. For four years he sought it in vain. Portugal, Spain, France, England, were all too busy to give heed to him. In 1492 for the second time Columbus appealed to Spain. Some great men in Spain who had become interested in Columbus en- Usted on his behalf the sympathies of the queen, Isabella of Castile. His scheme was presented to her as the means to a great campaign of foreign missions. As such the good queen became interested in it. Finally, she agreed to supply Columbus with the ships and men for which he asked.

17. The Voyage of Columbus. On the third of August, 1492, from Palos in Spain Columbus set sail. He had three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. They were no bigger than fishing smacks of to-day, and on board them all were but ninety men.

From Palos they sailed to the Canary Islands, the most westerly land then known to Europeans. Five weeks after their departure from Palos, they left the Canaries and stood boldly forth upon an unknown sea. For thirty-three days they were out of sight of land. The sailors became mutinous and Columbus had great difficulty in keeping them from turning back. At length, on the morning of Friday, October 12, 1492, land was sighted.

Columbus, writing of his discovery, says, " I gave (it) the name of San Salvador, in commemoration of his Divine Majesty who has wonderfully granted all this. The Indians call it Guanaham."

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THE PROLOGUE TO AMERICAN HISTORY n

IV. THE RUSH TO THE NEW WORLD

18. The Indies. Though Columbus had found a new world he had no comprehension of what he had done. In his own eyes he had merely visited islands off the coast of India. He therefore named his discoveries, " the Indies." We know to-day that he had visited the Bahama Islands and cruised along the shores of Cuba and Hayti. Curiously enough,

THE LENOX GLOBE (1510) SHOWING THE NEW WORLD AS AN ISLAND OFF THE COAST OF ASIA

it is not known with certainty which island it was that he saw first and named San Salvador. Probably it was what we now call Watling Island.

19. America and the Fortune Hunters. The news brought home by Columbus made an immense sensation. At once bold adventurers turned westward to make their fortunes. Every needy gentleman of Spain began to dream of golden cities waiting to be plundered by Europeans. There followed a succession of exploits, so daring that they take away one's breath, and so fruitful in plunder that the Spaniards passed, at one step, from the poorest to the richest of European peoples.

Columbus himself did not share in this vast but ill-gotten wealth. Though he made three more voyages, he never found the way to the rich parts of America. He died in 1506, poor and disappointed, unaware that his " Indies " were not a part of Asia.

Soon, however, the Spaniards began to find what they sought. Hernando Cortez made his way into the heart of the Mexican dominions, fought a terrible battle among the canals of the capital, and established there the authority of the king of Spain. Peru was found and conquered by Francisco Pizarro. Many others, scarcely less audacious, followed the lead of these two. Before long all the temples and palaces of Mexico, Yucatan, and Peru had been stripped of their gold and silver by the Spaniards. The native Americans, overawed by the steel-clad Europeans, were driven to work their own mines for the benefit of the strangers. So hard were they driven that they died in great numbers, and negro slaves were brought from Africa to take their places. Meanwhile, from Mexico, Central America, Peru, year after year, ships laden with gold and silver went across the sea to the king of Spain. The riches they bore were too vast for us to form any just estimate of them.

20. Significance of the New World. From the day Columbus returned to Palos, America has been a prime factor in European politics. From the very start it was looked upon by Europe as a vast reservoir of wealth. Before long the most vigorous European races were competing with each other for the control of America. Spain and Portugal instantly became rivals in this new field of speculation ; but soon France, England, and, a little later, Holland boldly demanded a share in the New World. During the hundred years following the voyage of Coumbus there was no more \4tal issue before the world than this : Shall Spain be allowed to keep the whole of America, or shall other nations be allowed a share of the immense treasure contained in the New World ?

21. Spain and Portugal. A contest between the Spaniards and Portugese in America was prevented by Pope Alexander VI, who decreed that the whole world, for purposes of colonization, should be divided into two hemispheres separated by a north and south line through the Atlantic Ocean. Spain was to colonize the western hemisphere ; Portugal, the eastern. Later ^ it was decided that the line should run " from pole to pole, three hundred and seventy leagues west from the Cape Verde Islands." Brazil was afterward allotted to Portugal because it was found to extend east of the dividing line.

22. England follows Spain. The success of Spain in America roused the English king, Henry VII. In 1497 he sent out John Cabot, a Venetian, " to discover any heathen regions which up to this time have remained unknown to Christians." Cabot came home the next year and reported that he had reached the "territory of the Grand Chan" and that it was seven hundred leagues west of England. He doubtless touched North America, and, like Columbus, thought he had reached Asia. His son, Sebastian, is supposed to have made a second voyage westward and to have explored the American coast as far south as Virginia ; but of this second voyage of the Cabots we know little with certainty. Whatever the Cabots discovered, England was not yet ready to take possession of it, and therefore their discoveries were not followed up.

23. France enters the New World. France also made a prompt attempt to compete with Spain. Her first explorer was an Italian, Verrazano, who probably sailed along the same coast explored by the Cabots. It is generally thought that he entered New York harbor. But the first great achievement of the French in the West was the discovery of the St. Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1535.

^ By the Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal, 1494.

24. The Struggle among the Nations. The inevitable warfare among the nations over America began in 1565. A party of Frenchmen had formed a settlement on the St. Johns River in Florida. Almost at the same time the conquest of Florida was undertaken by a Spaniard, Pedro Menendcz, who in 1565 founded the city of St. Augustine.^ Thence he marched against the French on the St. Johns. Taking them

SPANISH FORT, ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA

by surprise, Menendez killed every man and boy over fifteen years of age, except a few who escaped to the surrounding forest. That was the end of French settlement in the South. 25. The Fury of the Conquest. That savage butchery near St. Augustine struck the keynote of the struggle among the nations for the New World. It was war to the knife.

' St. Augustine, Florida, is the oldest city within the limits of the present United States, but a number of places, now part of our country, were visited by Spaniards during the sixteenth century. As early as 1513 Ponce de Leon visited Florida. The Gulf coast was explored by Pineda in 1519. The Mississippi was partially ex[ilorcd by Ferdinand de Soto in 1541. The town of Santa Fe was founded as early as 1605, possibly much earlier. There were also expeditions along the coast of California and as far north as Puget Sound.

EARLY VOYAGES

TO AMERICA

SCALE OF MILES

2Zeno

SColumbus's 1st Voyage 1492

5 Cabots li97-98

6 Vespucius for Spain 1199

7 Columbus-s 3rd Voyage 1498 00

8 Cabral 1500

9 Vespucius for Portugal 1501-02

10 Columbuss 4th Voyage 1602-04

11 Pineda 1519

13 Verrazano 1524

11 Cartier'8 First Voyage 1634-35 15 •• Second •• 1535-36

IS

Never was Europe more fiercely divided than in the latter part of the sixteenth century ; never have the nations struggled more cruelly to destroy each other. And never have men been animated by such vehement and contradictory motives. It was an age of religious wars, when faith, patriotism, speculation, Hcentiousness, all clashed, sometimes in the same individual, with terrible results. Our present standards of right and wrong seem hardly to apply to the sixteenth century. Through all that turmoil of desperate competition emerged the ruthless warfare of two great nations to possess America.

26. France loses her Chance. It might be expected, from what has been said of Florida, that the chief rivals for America would be France and Spain. But such was not the case. France, at a crisis in her career when an American empire was within her grasp, was rendered impotent by civil war, long, desperate, and exhausting. The people who now rushed into the field for a duel to the death with Spain were the English.

V. SPAIN AND ENGLAND

27. England enters the Field. The English took up the matter in earnest in 1566. A charter was granted by Parliament to Sir Humphrey Gilbert and others, who were to form a company to trade with India. The aim of Gilbert was to find a "northwest passage " round America through the Arctic Sea. By this time people had formed fairly correct ideas about the geography of the New World. ^ As early as 15 13 Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and discovered the Pacific Ocean. Somewhat later the famous navigator Magellan set out on a voyage which ended in the first complete circumnavigation of the globe. The old notion that

^ The name "America" was adopted graduallj'. It is derived from Americus Vespucius, a Venetian geographer, who made several voyages in the service of Spain and Portugal between the years 1499 and 1507. His writings made an impression, and in 1507 an Alsatian geographer coined the word "Amerige," that is, the land of Americus, or America. At first the word was applied only to the eastern part of South America. Gradually it came to have the significance it has to-day

America was part of Asia was now done away with. Therefore the English dreamed of finding the " northwest passage " to India. For a while, however, nothing came of the plans of Gilbert.

28. Sir John Hawkins. A typical Englishman of that day was Sir John Hawkins. In him the strange contradictions of his time were incarnate. Though he doubtless considered himself a good Christian, he combined in one business slavetrading, smuggling, and piracy. The slaves he kidnaped in Africa. But the only market for slaves was in the West

Facsimile of part of the page in Martin Waldseemiiller's CosmographicB Iniroductio, 1507, which contains the first printed suggestion of the name America.

Indies, whence English ships were excluded by Spanish law. To get rid of his slaves Hawkins boldly sailed into Spanish ports and sold them to whomever would buy. Naturally Hawkins was sought after by Spanish ships of war. However, the English had learned how to build better ships than the Spanish, — ships that could sail faster and were quicker in all their movements. England teemed with such men as Hawkins, men who delighted to take their lives in their hands and run great risks on the chance of enormous gain. With a good English ship and a reckless English crew, Hawkins proved too much for any Spanish force he ever met, except on one dreadful occasion. In 1568, while in the harbor of Vera Cruz, Hawkins with five English ships was surrounded by thirteen ships of Spain. The battle which followed, considered merely as gallant fighting, is one of the brilliant things in history. Though so fearfully outnumbered, the i8

English were not quite beaten. A great part of their force, it is true, were killed or taken prisoner, but the commander with two ships fought his way through the Spanish fleet and escaped.

29. The Feeling between England and Spain. Even before then hatred had been engendered between England and Spain, due partly to conflicting principles in poHtics and reHgion, partly to commercial jealousy. Subsequent to 1568

their hatred became intense.

The English accused the Spaniards of having deceived Hawkins previous to the battle at Vera Cruz by a solemn promise that he should not be molested there. They also circulated horrible stories of the tortures of the English prisoners in Spain.

To all this Spain made the simple answer : These men were pirates, defying the laws of Spain within the Spanish empire. And Queen Elizabeth, much as she s^Tnpathized with her own people, could not deny that Hawkins in Mexico was a trespasser.

30. The Policy of Elizabeth. Although Elizabeth could not openly take sides with Hawkins, she secretly encouraged him. Other Englishmen followed his example, and the queen, in spite of numerous protests from Spain, refused to treat them as pirates. Her motive was twofold. Being a farsighted statesman, she saw that America was the key to the future, that whoever controlled the treasures of America would play a leading part in Europe. Furthermore, England, once a first-class power, ^ had sunk to a secondary position. It was

' During the Middle Ages England rose to the high position of chief power in the west of Europe. Henry V, called "the Napoleon of the Middle Ages," was the mightiest sovereign of his time. Under him England was at the head of a passion with Elizabeth and all her people to restore England to its old importance. But if they did that, Spanish ascendancy in Europe ^ would be threatened. They judged correctly that Spain would make every effort to prevent the return of England to a place among the great powers. Therefore they concentrated their energies in a fixed determination to undermine the strength of Spain.

31. The Revolt of the Netherlands. They had a great chance in 1576. In that year the Netherlands (see footnote below) seceded and formed a separate government. Relentless war was the result. The Dutch appealed to England. But Elizabeth was not quite ready for open war with Spain. She refused to become the confessed ally of the Netherlands, although in secret she ser^t them both money- and soldiers.