The magazine of history with notes and queries, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1905

by Various

THE PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER

I
THE VOYAGE OF VESPUCCI PAST THE MOUTHS OF THE MISSISSIPPI

According to the historical researches set forth in this first paper of a series on the discoveries and explorations of the Mississippi in various portions of its course, the river appears to have been earliest discovered and mapped at its mouth in a voyage of Pinzon and Solis, with Amerigo Vespucci as astronomer and cartographer, probably in March or April, 1498, less than six years from the first landfall of Columbus. Twenty-one years then passed before the Mississippi was next seen in the voyage of Pineda, in 1519, being reached by ascending a bayou from Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas. In 1528 one of the mouths of the Mississippi was seen in the forlorn last voyage of Narvaez; and in 1541 the river was crossed far above its mouth, by the ambitious but ill-fated expedition of De Soto, and after his death it was descended by the survivors in boats to the Gulf. Four times within a period of forty-three years, the Spaniards reached by sea and by land the lower part of the Mississippi. They sought gold or silver in vain, and the extreme disasters of the last two expeditions caused them to abandon their purpose of planting colonies and making this region a part of New Spain. The entire river, excepting its sources, was to be explored and owned by others, but much later, for acquiring wealth by commerce, and for extending the dominion of France.

More than a hundred years after De Soto, the Mississippi was re-discovered by Europeans, this time in its upper course, when Groseilliers and Radisson in 1655, with many Indian canoes, ascended it from near the Wisconsin river to Prairie Island, if I have rightly understood the narrative of Radisson; and they crossed it higher, at or near the site of Minneapolis, in 1660, when they went to visit the Prairie Sioux at the farthest limit of their second western expedition.

Halfway in time between De Soto and these men, a Spanish expedition under Oñate, coming from New Mexico in 1601, probably reached the Mississippi near the mouth of the Arkansas river; but we have only scanty records of this exploration, which some have ascribed to the year 1662, following a fictitious narrative that would make Peñalosa the leader.

Eighteen years after Groseilliers and Radisson’s first trip, Joliet and Marquette navigated the Mississippi for a long distance southward from the Wisconsin river, to the Arkansas; and again, after seven years more, in 1680, it was navigated between the Illinois and Rum rivers by Hennepin, and also, above the Wisconsin, by Du Luth. In 1682 La Salle led an expedition from the Illinois to the mouth of the Mississippi, and there proclaimed its vast drainage area to be the property of France. A few years later, about 1685–90, Le Sueur and his relative by marriage, Charleville, canoed from Lake Pepin far upward beyond the Falls of St. Anthony, probably to Sandy Lake; and in the last year of the seventeenth century, just forty-five years after Groseilliers superintended corn-raising by the Hurons on Prairie Island, Le Sueur and a large mining party navigated the whole extent of the Mississippi from near its mouth to the Minnesota river, and then advanced up that stream to the Blue Earth river.

Without seeking or suggestion by himself, the name of Amerigo Vespucci (also commonly known, in Latin, as Americus Vespucius) was bestowed upon the New World, of which, next after Columbus, he was the most notable discoverer in the sense of bringing to the knowledge of Europe what he saw in four voyages. Though not in command of these expeditions, Vespucci was a skilled geographer, and his services as astronomer and pilot were required to determine and chart their courses, with the newly discovered lands. His letters of description, written to friends without expectation of publication, were printed and proved to be of such popular interest that they passed through many editions and translations, leading to the adoption of the name America, after his death, on maps and globes. It was at first applied to Brazil, which Vespucci coasted on his second, third, and fourth voyages, and was later extended to both North and South America. In his first voyage, with four vessels, leaving Spain May 10, 1497, and returning October 15, 1498, he appears to have sailed along the shores of Honduras, Yucatan, the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, and our southeastern seaboard north to Pamlico Sound.

Between Vespucci and Columbus a cordial and mutual friendship existed, and the Florentine pilot had no wish nor thought of taking away from the Genoese admiral any part of the honor and gratitude due to him. Both sailed in the service of Spain, but Vespucci also made two voyages for Portugal. It was a Latin book by a German geographer, Waldseemüller, published in the little college town of St. Dié, in a valley of the Vosges mountains in northeastern France, April 25, 1507, which first proposed the name America for the region described by Vespucci south of the equator. There was at that time no intention to include under it the countries farther north discovered and explored by Columbus, Cabot, and other navigators. Winsor and Fiske have traced very instructively the growth of European knowledge of the New World, whereby it was finally learned that all the coasts explored from Labrador to the strait of Magellan are connected parts of one vast continent, on which Mercator bestowed the single name America in 1541, twenty-nine years after Vespucci’s death.

Succeeding generations long imputed blame to Vespucci for this supplanting of Columbus in the name of the new continent; but either would have scorned to wrong the other, or to falsify or exaggerate intentionally in the narrations of their voyages. The personal honor of Vespucci has been vindicated by the researches of Alexander Humboldt and the Brazilian historian, Varnhagen; and the latter, in 1865 and 1869, well ascertained that Vespucci’s first voyage, made in 1497–98, concerning which much doubt and misunderstanding remained because of the lack of many details in the narration, was the source of the first mapping of Yucatan, the Gulf of Mexico, and Florida. In Vespucci’s chart of that very early date the Mississippi river was unmistakably delineated, with a three-mouthed delta projecting into the Gulf.

Varnhagen’s luminous researches, published between thirty and forty years ago, were brought more fully to the attention of readers of our English language by Hubert Howe Bancroft in 1883 (Central America, vol. I, pp. 99–107), and especially by John Fiske’s work, The Discovery of America, published in 1892. No official reports nor chart of Vespucci’s first voyage, which was probably under the commandership of Pinzon and Solis, are preserved; but two very early maps, evidently drafted in part from the chart of that expedition, still exist, and were essentially reproduced ten years ago by Harrisse, Winsor, and Fiske, in their elaborate discussions of the Columbian and later discoveries.

One of these two maps was drafted in 1502 by some unknown Portuguese cartographer for Alberto Cantino, an Italian envoy at Lisbon, and hence is called the Cantino map. It delineated crudely the southeastern coast of the United States from the “Rio de los Palmas” (River of Palms)—thought by Fiske to be the Apalachicola river—eastward around Florida and onward north to Pamlico Sound, according to my identification. The coast bears many names of rivers, capes, etc.; and the end of the Florida peninsula is called “C. do fim do Abrill” (Cape of the end of April), whence it is inferred that the expedition in which Vespucci sailed on his first voyage, whose chart supplied this part of the Cantino map, passed through the strait separating Florida from Cuba at the end of April, 1498. The west edge of this map is at its River of Palms, so that it fails to give any information of the part of the Gulf of Mexico farther west.

Comparing the Cantino map with our southeastern coast line, to determine how far Vespucci saw it, I recognize, in their order from south to north, Jupiter Inlet or Indian River Inlet, Cape Canaveral, the St. John’s river (or, probably better, Cumberland Sound and St. Mary’s river, or St. Andrew’s Sound, or the Altamaha), then Warsaw and Tybee capes and the Savannah river, Cape Romain, the Santee river, Winyah Bay and the Pedee river, Cape Fear, New River Inlet, Cape Lookout, the Neuse and Pamlico rivers, and Long Shoal Point (or Sandy or Stumpy Point), extending into the north part of Pamlico Sound. The coast is represented as wholly trending to the north, instead of its curvature to the northeast. Entering Pamlico Sound by Ocracoke Inlet (or whatever passage existed near there four hundred years ago), the ships were probably repaired for the homeward voyage at some very favorable harbor among the many along the exceedingly irregular landward side of this sound, or at some distance up either of its large tributary rivers. The chart failed to note the long beach ridge of sand which forms Cape Hatteras and separates the sound (“mar vaano”) from the ocean.

Waldseemüller, the geographer at St. Dié, drafted the second of these maps, at some date probably after 1504 and certainly not later than 1508. It was published at Strasburg in an edition of Ptolemy in 1513, and was entitled “Tabula Terre Nove.” From its reference to a “former Admiral,” probably Columbus, it has been often called “the Admiral’s map.” This bears testimony that the expedition described by Vespucci as his first voyage passed the Mississippi and charted its mouths; for west of the Atlantic coast and Florida, where the shores and names are closely like the Cantino map, Waldseemüller gave a distorted outline of the Gulf of Mexico, with a large river emptying into it by three mouths, pushing its delta far into the gulf, in which respect the Mississippi surpasses any other river, this being indeed the most remarkable feature of its embouchure. I cannot doubt, therefore, that Vespucci sailed past the Mississippi delta early in the year 1498, surveying the mouths of the river from the masthead, or very likely entering the river and spending some time there.

The original “Letter of Amerigo Vespucci upon the Isles newly found in his Four Voyages” was published in facsimile pages, with English translation, under the editorship of George Young, in Philadelphia in 1893, forming a book entitled “The Columbus Memorial,” its earlier half being occupied by facsimiles, translations, and notes of letters by Columbus. Only a very scanty statement was given by Vespucci concerning the voyage from some port on the west coast of the Gulf of Mexico, probably that of Tampico, at the mouth of the Panuco river, to “a harbour the best in the world,” which appears to have been on Pamlico Sound or river, whence, after repairing their vessels, the expedition returned to Spain. Vespucci wrote of the voyage between these ports: “We navigated along the coast, always in sight of land, until we had run 870 leagues of it, still going in the direction of the maestrale [northwest], making in our course many halts, and holding intercourse with many peoples; and in several places we obtained gold by barter, but not much in quantity, for we had done enough in discovering the land and learning that they had gold.”

According to Varnhagen and Fiske, the direction of their sailing, noted as northwestward, referred only to the first start from the port in Mexico, after which they continued along the irregular coast line 870 leagues. It seems to me also noteworthy that they came to this Mexican port by a northwestward course, and so perhaps Vespucci meant only that they went directly onward along the coast, which in that part curves very gradually to a nearly north course. From his statements of time, with the date indicated by the maps for passing the south end of Florida, it is probable that the expedition was at the Mississippi river late in March or early in April, 1498. Our history of this river, as known to Europeans, thus extends through four centuries.

As my study of the limit of this voyage of Vespucci on the coast of the United States, regarded thus to be at Pamlico Sound, differs somewhat from the conclusions of either Varnhagen or Fiske, it should be remarked further that the Pamlico region had a considerable Indian population, with many little villages, when it was described ninety years later by Thomas Hariot (or Harriott), a member of the unfortunate colony founded there in 1585 on Roanoke island, under the patronage of Sir Walter Raleigh. The Indians at first were very friendly to these colonists, as their forbears had been (if my identification of the locality is true) to Vespucci and his companions. The translation of this part of Vespucci’s narrative, given by Young, is as follows:

“We found an immense number of people, who received us with much friendliness ... the land’s people gave us very great assistance, and continually furnished us with their victuals, so that in this port we tasted very little of our own, which suited our game well, for the stock of provisions which we had for our return passage was little and of sorry kind. Where [i. e. there] we remained 37 days, and went many times to their villages, where they paid us the greatest honour: and [now] desiring to depart upon our voyage, they made complaint to us how at certain times of the year there came from over the sea to this their land, a race of people very cruel, and enemies of theirs, and by means of treachery or of violence slew many of them, and ate them; and some they made captives, and carried them away to their houses or country; and how they could scarcely contrive to defend themselves from them, making signs to us that [those] were an island people and lived out in the sea about a hundred leagues away.

“And so piteously did they tell us this that we believed them, and promised to avenge them of so much wrong, and they remained overjoyed herewith; and many of them offered to come along with us, but we did not wish to take them for many reasons, save that we took seven of them on condition that they should come [i. e. return home] afterwards in canoes, because we did not desire to be obliged to take them back to their country: and they were contented, and so we departed from those people, leaving them very friendly towards us: and having repaired our ships, and sailing for seven days out to sea between northeast and east, at the end of the seven days we came upon the islands, which were many, some [of them] inhabited, and others deserted: and we anchored at one of them, where we saw a numerous people who call it Iti: and having manned our boats with strong crews, and [taken] three guns in each, we made for land, where we found [assembled] about 400 men and women, and all naked like the former [peoples].”

Hard fighting ensued. Many of the natives of the islands were killed, and at last the Spaniards put them to flight and returned to their ships. The next day the natives came again to renew the contest, for which the Spaniards landed.

“After a long battle,” wrote Vespucci, describing this second day, “[in which] many of them [were] slain, we put them [again] to flight, and pursued them to a village, having made about 250 of them prisoners; and we burnt the village, and returned to our ships with victory and 250 prisoners, leaving many of them dead and wounded; and of ours there were no more than one killed, and 22 wounded, who all escaped [i. e. recovered], God be thanked.

“We arranged our departure, and the seven men, of whom five were wounded, took an island canoe, and with seven prisoners that we gave them,—four women and three men,—returned to their [own] country full of gladness, wondering at our strength: and we thereupon made sail for Spain, with 222 captive slaves, and reached the port of Cadiz on the 15 day of October, 1498, where we were well received and sold our slaves.”

Varnhagen, in his discussion of Vespucci’s voyages, presented arguments to show that the Bermudas were the group of islands thus occupied by a warlike and cannibal people, whom he supposed to have been soon afterwards exterminated by slavers, before the discovery of these islands by Bermudez about the year 1522, when they were uninhabited. Bancroft and Fiske inclined to the same view. It seems to me more probable, however, that the Bermudas, distant fully six hundred miles from any other land, had never been peopled until they were found by Europeans. The extreme isolation and comparatively small extent of the Bermuda group, far out in the sea, would make it practically impossible for the savages, with any means of navigation that they possessed, to pass back and forth in frequent war expeditions.

Instead, I believe that the islands visited by Vespucci on the return voyage were the northern part of the Bahama group. Without going so far from the coast and its inlets as to incur much danger of storms, or to completely lose the course and the reckoning in cloudy weather, canoe expeditions from the Bahamas could come frequently, as the narrative says, to attack the Indians in the region of Pamlico Sound. These Indians, too, sometimes pursuing their enemies homeward, might learn the situation of their islands, and would thus be able to pilot the way for Vespucci’s ships. According to this view, they sailed south from Pamlico Sound to the Bahamas. The direction of east-northeast, given in the narrative, must be a mistake, being applicable instead for the course taken from the Bahamas to Spain. The larger islands of this very extensive group had many inhabitants when discovered by Columbus; but they were afterward wholly depopulated by the unspeakable cruelties of slave-traders.

The journal and letters of Columbus show that the native people of the Bahamas suffered much from the attacks of the man-eating Caribs, whom they greatly feared but often doubtless bravely repelled. We have also evidence from Vespucci that the Caribs advanced much farther north for war and rapine, boldly navigating the sea in their great canoes, to Pamlico Sound. Whether they had a permanent settlement on the northwestern islands of the Bahama group, can probably never be known; but I believe that either they or the more peaceable Bahama islanders there were attacked, defeated, and many of them captured and sold into slavery, by this Spanish expedition.

This discussion or explanation, though not directly relating to the discovery of the Mississippi river, seems to me needful to set forth my reasons for thinking that Vespucci’s narrative of his first voyage is a true account, excepting mistakes of his memory or writing or of later copying.

WARREN UPHAM.

ST. PAUL, MINN.

(To be continued.)