History of the United States, Volume 1

by Elisha Benjamin Andrews

Indians devoured by dogs. From an old print.
[1570]
Moreover, the Spaniards found their first American conquests too easy,
and the rewards of these too great. This prevented all thought of
developing the country through industry, concentrating expectation
solely upon waiting fortunes, to be had from the natives by the sword or
through forced labor in mines, Their treatment of the aborigines was
nothing short of diabolical. Well has it been said: "The Spaniards had
sown desolation, havoc, and misery in and around their track. They had
depopulated some of the best peopled of the islands and renewed them
with victims deported from others. They had inflicted upon hundreds of
thousands of the natives all the forms and agonies of fiendish cruelty,
driving them to self-starvation and suicide, as a way of mercy and
release from an utterly wretched existence. They had come to be viewed
by their victims as fiends of hate, malignity, and all dark and cruel
desperation and mercilessness in passion. The hell which they denounced
upon their victims was shorn of its worst terror by the assurance that
these tormentors were not to be there. Las Casas, the noble missionary,
the true soldier of the cross, and the few priests and monks who
sympathized with him, in vain protested against these cruelties."
To all these causes we must add the narrow colonial policy of Spain.
Imitating Venice and ancient Carthage instead of Greece, she held her
dependencies under the straitest servitude to herself as conquered
provinces, repressing all political or commercial independence. A
similar restrictive policy, indeed, hampered the colonies of other
nations, but it was nowhere else so irrational or blighting as in
Spanish America.
CHAPTER III.
EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION BY THE FRENCH AND THE ENGLISH
[1534]
How the French fought for foothold in Florida and were routed by the
Spaniards has just been related. So early as 1504, and possibly much
earlier, before Cabot or Columbus, French sailors were familiar with the
fisheries of Newfoundland. To the Isle of Cape Breton they gave its name
in remembrance of their own Brittany. The attention of the French
Government was thus early directed toward America, and it at length
determined to share in the new discoveries along with the Spanish and
the English.
In 1524 Verrazano, a Florentine navigator, was sent by Francis I. on a
voyage of discovery to the New World. Sighting the shores of America
near the present Wilmington, North Carolina, he explored the coast of
New Jersey, touched land near New York Bay, and anchored a few days in
the harbor of Newport. In this vicinity he came upon an island, which
was probably Block Island. Sailing from here along the coast as far
north as Newfoundland, he named this vast territory New France.

Verrazano, the Florentine Navigator.

Jacques Cartier. From an old print.
[1540]
In 1534 Cartier, a noted voyager of St. Malo, coasted along the north of
Newfoundland, passed through the Straits of Belle Isle into the water
now known as St. Lawrence Gulf, and into the mouth of the St. Lawrence
River. Erecting a cross, he took possession of the shores in the name of
the king of France.
In the following year he made a second voyage, going up as far as the
mouth of a small river which the year before he had named St. John's. He
called the waters the Bay of St. Lawrence. Ascending this, he came to a
settlement of the natives near a certain hill, which he called Mont
Royal, now modified into "Montreal." Cartier returned to France in 1536,
only a few of his men having survived the winter.
In 1540 Lord Roberval fitted out a fleet, with Cartier as subordinate.
Cartier sailed at once--his third voyage--Roberval following the next
year. A fort was built near the present site of Quebec. Roberval and
Cartier disagreed and returned to France, leaving the real foundation of
Quebec to be laid by Champlain, much later.
In 1604 De Monts arrived on the coast of Nova Scotia and erected a fort
at the mouth of the St. Croix, New Brunswick. He also made a settlement
on the shore of the present harbor of Annapolis, naming it Port Royal,
and the country around it Acadia. De Monts is famous largely because
under him the Sieur de Champlain, the real father of French colonization
in America, began his illustrious career. He had entered the St.
Lawrence in 1603. In 1608 he founded Quebec, the first permanent colony
of New France. The next year he explored the lake which perpetuates his
name. In 1615 he saw Lake Huron, Le Caron, the Franciscan, preceding him
in this only by a few days. Fired with ardor for discovery, Champlain
joined the Hurons in an attack upon the Iroquois. This led him into what
is now New York State, but whether the Indian camp first attacked by him
was on Onondaga or on Canandaigua Lake is still in debate. These were
but the beginning of Champlain's travels, by which many other Frenchmen,
some as missionaries, some as traders, were inspired to press far out
into the then unknown West. We shall resume the narrative in Chapter VII
of the next period. Champlain died at Quebec in 1635.
Turn back now to Columbus's time. England, destined to dominate the
continent of North America, was also practically the discoverer of the
same. On St. John's day, June 24, 1497, thirteen months and a week
before Columbus saw South America, John Cabot, a Venetian in the service
of King Henry VII., from the deck of the good ship Matthew, of Bristol,
descried land somewhere on the coast either of Labrador or of Nova
Scotia. Cabot, of course, supposed this prima vista of his to belong to
Asia, and expected to reach Cipango next voyage. So late as 1543 Jean
Allefonsce, on reaching New England, took it for the border of Tartary.
Andre Thevet, in 1515, in a pretended voyage to Maine, places Cape
Breton on the west coast of Asia. This confusion probably explains the
tradition of Norumbega as a great city, and of other populous and
wealthy cities in the newly found land. Men transferred ideas of Eastern
Asia to this American shore.
[1516]

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

Sebastian Cabot. From an old print.
[1576]
Like those before him, Martin Frobisher was in earnest to find the
northwest passage, in whose existence all navigators then fully
believed. Like Columbus, he vainly sought friends to aid him. At last,
after he had waited fifteen years in vain, Dudley, the Earl of Warwick,
helped him to an outfit. His little fleet embraced the Gabriel, of
thirty-five tons, the Michael of thirty, and a pinnace of ten. As it
swept to sea past Greenwich, the Queen waved her hand in token of
good-will. Sailing northward near the Shetland Isles, Frobisher passed
the southern shore of Greenland and came in sight of Labrador, 1576.
He effected a landing at Hall's Island, at the mouth of the bay now
called by his name, but which he thought to be a strait, his discovery
thus strengthening his belief in the possibility of reaching Asia by
this westward course. He sailed up the bay as far as Butcher's Island,
where five of his men were taken prisoners by the natives. All effort to
rescue them was made, but to no purpose. Among the curiosities which he
brought home was a piece of stone, or black ore, which gave rise to the
belief that gold was to be found in this new country.
[1577]
A second and larger expedition sailed in 1577. The Queen gave 1,000
pounds and lent the royal ship Aid, of two hundred tons. The Gabriel and
the Michael of the former year were again made ready, besides smaller
craft. This voyage was to seek gold rather than to discover the
northwest passage. The fleet set sail May 27th, and on July 18th arrived
off North Foreland, or Hall's Island, so named for the man who had
brought away the piece of black earth. Search was made for this metal,
supposed to be so valuable, and large quantities were found. The fleet
sailed back to England with a heavy cargo of it.
In 1578 a third and the last voyage was made to this region, to which
the name meta incognita was given. Two large ships were furnished by the
Queen, and these were accompanied by thirteen smaller ones.
[1578-1580]
It was now the purpose to found a colony. The expedition set sail May
31st, going through the English Channel, and reaching the coast of
Greenland June 21st. Frobisher and a few of his sailors landed where,
perhaps, white men had never trodden before. As he came near the bay he
was driven south by stormy weather, and entered, not knowing his
whereabouts, the waters of Hudson's Straits, which he traversed a
distance of sixty miles. He succeeded at length in retracing his course,
and anchored on the southern shore of Frobisher's Bay, in the Countess
of Warwick's Sound. But the desire for gold, the bleak winds, barren
shores, and drifting icebergs, all combined to dispel the hopes of
making a successful settlement, and the adventurers turned their faces
homeward, carrying once more a cargo of ore, which proved, like the
first, to be of no value whatever.
Almost three hundred years later Captain Hall, the American explorer,
visited the Countess's Island and Sound. Among the Eskimos, from 1860 to
1862, he learned the tradition of Frobisher's visits, which had been
preserved and handed down. They knew the number of ships; they spoke of
the three times that white men had come; how five of these strangers had
been taken captive, and how, after remaining through the winter, they
had been allowed to build a boat, and to launch themselves upon the icy
seas, never to be heard of more. Captain Hall was shown many relics of
Frobisher's voyages, some of which he sent to the Royal Geographical
Society of London, a part to the Smithsonian Institute at Washington.
The small English house of lime and stone on this island was still
standing in good condition, and there was also a trench where they had
built their ill-fated boat.

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