Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

Thus reënforced, the Connecticut settlers hunted the survivors of the original owners of the soil down like beasts of prey. Their chief, Sassacus, fled in his despair to the Mohawks, who betrayed his trust by murdering him, and sending his scalp to the English; and in July, 1637, five months after the beginning of the war, the last scene of the long tragedy took place in a swamp where stands the modern town of Fairfield. Three hundred Pequod warriors were there surrounded, and while many were slain and some few escaped, two hundred were taken prisoners alive. In spite of their eager entreaties for death, the unhappy men were sent, some of them to the Bermudas as slaves, and the remainder dispersed among the Mohegans and Narragansetts, to be to them “hewers of wood and drawers of water.”

While the Pequod war was still in progress, a fresh colony arrived at Boston from England, including John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, men of wealth and social station, whom the Massachusetts authorities would gladly have retained among them. There were, however, now no good lands to spare for new-comers near the old settlements, and it was absolutely necessary for them to seek some other home. At the close of the war, therefore, Eaton and Davenport led their little band into Connecticut, where a tract of land, south of the settlement of Saybrook, had been already purchased for them of the native chief for “twelve coats of English cloth, twelve alchemy spoons, twelve hatchets, twelve hoes, two dozen knives, twelve porringers, and four cases of French knives and scissors.”

Originally called Quinniack, or Quinnepaca, the new settlement shortly received the name of New Haven, and grew with a rapidity hitherto unknown in colonial annals. From among its wealthy members, one after another went forth to found new towns in its neighborhood, until, in a very short time, Connecticut was colonized all along the shore and far inland. This great movement was further supplemented by the constant arrival of new recruits, alike from the mother country and the elder colonies of Massachusetts, and we soon find the English pushing their outposts as far south as the Hudson, gradually displacing the Dutch, and again driving the Indians to desperation. In 1643, the settlements in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut formed that league, under the title of the United Colonies of New England, for mutual protection against the Dutch, French and Indians, which may be looked upon as the opening of the first chapter of the political history of the United States; but for the continuation of that history we must refer our readers to the many volumes on the subject already in existence. Our task being to trace the gradual opening up of new districts, we must leave the infant federation to fight out its battles, alike with its European neighbors, the schismatics within its own borders, and the true owners of the disputed territories, unwatched by us. We return once more to the South, to find the districts between Virginia and Florida occupied under the name of Carolina, so-called in honor of Charles IX. of France, by a few non-conformists from England and Virginia, who had gathered about the promontory aptly named Cape Fear (N. lat. 33° 48′) where they hoped to work out their own salvation, free from the temptation of the world they had renounced. Their expectations were, as a matter of course, disappointed. After the English Restoration, Charles II. re-asserted his claim to that part of America long known under the general name of South Virginia, and granted the fertile districts between Albemarle Sound (N. lat. 35° 59′), and the river St. John (N. lat. 30° 23′), to eight of his favorite noblemen, the terms of concession making them absolute sovereigns within the limits named.

The result of this arbitrary proceeding was a mighty influx of emigrants, from every part of Great Britain and its dependencies, to the fruitful lands which had long been claimed as their exclusive property by the Spaniards. The original proprietors were literally crowded out by “gay cavaliers” and rapacious planters, who soon made the very name of white man hateful in the ears of the unfortunate Indians. Under the governorship of the terrible Seth Sothel, a man whose name will live forever as that of the most infamous of many reckless rulers of Carolina, the natives were hunted down on every side, and sold as slaves to West Indian planters, while those among the emigrants who retained any reverence for the human or divine had their feelings outraged at every turn.

Not until the 18th century was considerably advanced did the Carolineans obtain any relief from this terrible state of things. Petition after petition was sent to the mother country by the unhappy sufferers, setting forth how the Indians were “assaulted, killed, destroyed, and taken” under the sanction of the law; how even the clergy openly led the most dissolute lives, etc., etc. The breaking out of an Indian war in 1715 seems to have been the first thing to arouse the home authorities to the dangers threatening their vast possessions in the West. The revolt was crushed with an iron hand, the survivors of the natives taking refuge in the swamps of Florida, and in 1721, George I. consented to take the government of Carolina into his own hands.

A few years later, the lands granted to the eight noblemen by Charles II. were bought up by the Crown for some £28,000; and from that time the colony grew rapidly in prosperity and importance, extending its settlements as far south as the Savannah river, across which went forth pioneers into the state afterward called Georgia, in honor of the English monarch, long before the first body of emigrants from the mother country landed on its shores. Thus, as New England and Virginia may be said to have been the parents of Carolina, the new-born colony became in its turn the founder of the infant community of Georgia. It was in 1732 that this, the youngest but one of the original thirteen states of the Union, was first settled by a colony from England, under the leadership of the now famous Oglethorpe, who, like John Eliot in the North, made it his chief object to conciliate the Indians.

Soon after the arrival of the emigrants from Europe, Oglethorpe succeeded in bringing about a congress between the so-called Creek Indians and the English, near the site of the modern Savannah, at which meeting peace was solemnly made between the dark warriors and their pale-faced guests. This treaty between the Creek Indians and the whites was succeeded by one with the Cherokees dwelling on the north of the new settlements, and as a policy of a similar kind was pursued with regard to religious refugees from other English settlements, Georgia shortly became a kind of harbor of refuge for all who were suffering in mind, body or estate. Its progress in worldly prosperity, though slow, was sure; and, when the treaty of 1763 concluded a war of triumph for the English, it had extended its limits far away to the South, the West, and the North-west, in spite of many a bloody contest, now with the Spanish, and now with the various Indian tribes in the West.

WILLIAM PENN.

We have now accounted for the first appearance of the white man in all the districts of North America bordering on the Atlantic seaboard, and are free to turn our steps inland, joining, as our first hero in this new field, the great Quaker, William Penn. He was the founder of the “Keystone State,” which forms the connecting link between the first French settlements on the Great Lakes and those of the Dutch and English in the United States.