A Brief History of the United States. John Bach McMaster
went on his way; but sent back a ship to the king of Portugal with the news that the new-found land lay east of the Line of Demarcation. The king dispatched (1501) an expedition which explored the coast southward nearly as far as the mouth of the Plata River.
SOME RESULTS OF THESE VOYAGES.—The results of these voyages were many and important. They furnished a better knowledge of the coast; they proved the existence of a great mass of land called the New World, but still supposed to be a part of Asia; they secured Brazil for Portugal, and led to the naming of our continent.
WHY THE NEW WORLD WAS CALLED AMERICA.—In the party sent by the king of Portugal to explore the coast of Brazil, was an Italian named Amerigo Vespucci (ah-ma'ree-go ves-poot'chee), or Americus Vespucius, who had twice before visited the coast of South America. Of these three voyages and of a fourth Vespucius wrote accounts, They were widely read, led to the belief that he had discovered a new or fourth part of the world, and caused a German professor of geography to suggest that this fourth part should be called America. The name was applied first to what is now Brazil, then to all South America, and finally also to North America, when it was found, long afterward, that North America was part of the new continent and not part of Asia.
[Illustration: THE FIRST PRINTED SUGGESTION OF THE NAME AMERICA. [5] Part of a page from Waldseemüller's book Cosmographie Introductio, printed in 1507, now in the Lenox Library, New York.]
BALBOA DISCOVERS THE PACIFIC.—The man who led the way to the discovery that America was not part of Asia was Balbo'a. [6] He came to the eastern border of Panama (1510) with a band of Spaniards seeking gold. There they founded the town of Darien and in time made Balboa their commander. He married the daughter of a chief, made friends with the Indians, and heard from them of a great body of water across the mountains. This he determined to see, and in 1513, with Indian guides and a party of Spaniards, made his way through dense and tangled forests and from the summit of a mountain looked down on the Pacific Ocean, which he called the South Sea. Four days later, standing on the shore, he waited till the rising tide came rolling in, and then rushing into the water, sword in hand, he took possession of the ocean in the name of Spain. [7]
[Illustration: SPANISH HELMET AND SHIRT OF MAIL FOUND IN MEXICO.
Now in Essex Hall, Salem, Mass.]
THE PACIFIC CROSSED; THE PHILIPPINES DISCOVERED.—The Portuguese meantime, by sailing around Africa, had reached the Spice Islands. So far beyond India were these islands that the Portuguese sailor Ferdinand Magellan took up the old idea of Columbus, and maintained that they could be most easily reached by sailing west. To this proposition the king of Portugal would not listen; so Magellan persuaded the king of Spain to let him try; and in 1519 set sail with five small ships. He crossed the Atlantic to the mouth of the Plata, and went south till storms and cold drove him into winter quarters. [8] In August, 1520 (early spring in the southern hemisphere), he went on his way and entered the strait which now bears his name. One of the ships had been wrecked. In the strait another stole away and went home. The three remaining vessels passed safely through, and out into an ocean so quiet compared with the stormy Atlantic that Magellan called it the Pacific. Across this the explorers sailed for five months before they came to a group of islands which Magellan called the Ladrones (Spanish for robbers) because the natives were so thievish. [9] Ten days later they reached another group, afterward named the Philippines. [10]
On one of these islands Magellan and many of his men were slain. [11] Two of the ships then went southward to the Spice Islands, where they loaded with spices. One now started for Panama, but was forced to return. The other sailed around Africa, and in 1522 reached Spain in safety. It had sailed around the world. The surviving captain was greatly honored. The king ennobled him, and on his coat of arms was a globe with the motto "You first sailed around me."
[Illustration: MAGELLAN'S SHIP THAT SAILED AROUND THE WORLD.]
RESULTS OF THE VOYAGE.—Of all the voyages ever made by man up to that time, this of Magellan and his men was the greatest. It gave positive proof that the earth is a sphere. It revealed the vast width of the Pacific. It showed that America was probably not a part of Asia, and changed the geographical ideas of the time. [12]
THE COAST OF FLORIDA EXPLORED.—What meantime had happened along the coast of North America? In 1513 Ponce de Leon [13] (pon'tha da la-on'), a Spaniard, sailed northwest from Porto Rico in search of an island which the Indians told him contained gold, and in which he believed was a fountain or stream whose waters would restore youth to the old. In the season of Easter, or Pascua Florida, he came upon a land which he called Florida. Ponce supposed he had found an island, and following the coast southward went round the peninsula and far up the west coast before going back to Porto Rico. [14]
[Illustration: SPANISH EXPLORATIONS IN NORTH AMERICA TO 1600.]
THE GULF COAST EXPLORED.—In 1519 another Spaniard, Pineda (pe-na'da), sailed along the Gulf coast from Florida to Mexico. On the way he entered the mouth of a broad river which he named River of the Holy Spirit. It was long supposed that this river was the Mississippi; but it is now claimed to have been the Mobile. Whatever it was, Pineda spent six weeks in its waters, saw many Indian towns on its banks, traded with the natives, and noticed that they wore gold ornaments.
THE EXPEDITION OF NARVAEZ.—Pineda's story of Indians with gold ornaments so excited Narvaez (nar-vah'eth) that he obtained leave to conquer the country, and sailed from Cuba with four hundred men. Landing on the west coast of Florida, he made a raid inland. When he returned to the coast the ships which were sailing about watching for him were nowhere to be seen. After marching westward for a month the Spaniards built five small boats, put to sea, and sailing near the shore came presently to where the waters of the Mississippi rush into the Gulf. Two boats were upset by the surging waters. The others reached the coast beyond, where all save four of the Spaniards perished.
FOUR SPANIARDS CROSS THE CONTINENT.—After suffering great hardships and meeting with all sorts of adventures among the Indians, the four survivors, led by Cabeza de Vaca (ca-ba'tha da vah'ca), walked across what is now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico to a little Spanish town near the Pacific coast. They had crossed the continent. [15]
NEW MEXICO EXPLORED.—Cabeza de Vaca had wonderful tales to relate of "hunchback cows," as he called the buffalo, and of cities in the interior where gold and silver were plentiful and where the doorways were studded with precious stones. [16] Excited by these tales, the Spanish viceroy of Mexico sent Fray Marcos to gather further information. [17] Aided by the Indians, Marcos made his way over the desert and came at last to the "cities," which were only the pueblos of the Zuńi (zoo'nyee) Indians in New Mexico. The pueblos were houses several stories high, built of stone or of sun-dried brick, and each large enough for several hundred Indians to live in. But Marcos merely saw them at a distance, for one of his followers who went in advance was killed by the Zuńi, whereupon Marcos fled back to Mexico.
[Illustration: PUEBLO, WOODEN PLOW, AND OX CART.]
THE SPANIARDS REACH KANSAS.—Marcos's reports about the seven cities of Cibola (see'bo-la), as he called them, aroused great interest, and Corona'do was sent with an army to conquer them. Marching up the east coast of the Gulf of California and across Arizona, Coronado came at last to the pueblos and captured them one by one. He found no gold, but did see doorways studded with the green stones of the Rocky Mountains. Much disappointed, he pushed on eastward, and during two years wandered about over the plains of our great Southwest and probably reached the center of what is now Kansas. [18]
DE SOTO ON THE MISSISSIPPI.—As Coronado was making his way home, an Indian woman escaped from his army, and while wandering about fell in with a band of Spaniards belonging to the army of De Soto. [19]
De Soto, as governor of Cuba, had been authorized to conquer and hold all the territory that had been discovered by Narvaez. He set out accordingly in 1539, landed an army at Tampa Bay, and spent three years in wandering over Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. In the spring of 1542 he crossed the Mississippi River and entered Arkansas, and it was there that one of his bands met the Indian woman who escaped from Coronado's army. In Arkansas De Soto died of fever, and was buried in the Mississippi River. His followers then built a few boats, floated down the river to the Gulf,