Transcriber's Note:

For handheld devices, sidenotes are highlighted and in bold; those that fall within the text of the paragraph may appear set apart by pipes (|). Additional notes are at the end of the book.

EPOCH MAP I

PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BASED UPON GOVERNMENT MAPS
Dark buff represents 2,000 ft. and over.

Epochs of American History

THE COLONIES
1492-1750

BY

REUBEN GOLD THWAITES, LL.D.

EDITOR OF "JESUIT RELATIONS," "EARLY WESTERN TRAVELS,"
"ORIGINAL JOURNALS OF THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITIONS,"
ETC. AUTHOR OF "FRANCE IN AMERICA," "FATHER
MARQUETTE," "DANIEL BOONE," "ROCKY
MOUNTAIN EXPLORATION," "HISTORIC
WATERWAYS," "WISCONSIN," ETC.

WITH FOUR MAPS AND
NUMEROUS BIBLIOGRAPHIES

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

Copyright, 1890,
By Charles J. Mills.

Copyright, 1897,
By Longmans, Green, and Co.

Copyright, 1910,
By Longmans, Green, and Co.

All rights reserved.

First Edition, December, 1890.

Reprinted, September, 1891, February, 1892, (Revised), January and August, 1893, December, 1893, (Revised), August, 1894, October, 1895, July, 1896, August, 1897, (Revised), November, 1897, July, 1898, July, 1899, April, 1900, January, 1901, October, 1901, August, 1902, November, 1902, October, 1904, September, 1906, May, 1908, June, 1910, (Revised), October, 1911.

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

In offering to the public a new History of the United States,—for such the three volumes of the Epochs of American History, taken together, are designed to form,—the aim is not to assemble all the important facts, or to discuss all the important questions that have arisen. There seems to be a place for a series of brief works which shall show the main causes for the foundation of the colonies, for the formation of the Union, and for the triumph of that Union over disintegrating tendencies. To make clear the development of ideas and institutions from epoch to epoch,—this is the aim of the authors and the editor.

Detail has therefore been sacrificed to a more thorough treatment of the broad outlines: events are considered as evidences of tendencies and principles. Recognizing the fact that many readers will wish to go more carefully into narrative and social history, each chapter throughout the Series will be provided with a bibliography, intended to lead, first to the more common and easily accessible books, afterward, through the lists of bibliographies by other hands, to special works and monographs. The reader or teacher will find a select list of books in the Suggestions a few pages below.

The historical geography of the United States has been a much-neglected subject. In this Series, therefore, both physical and political geography will receive special attention. I have prepared four maps for the first volume, and a like number will appear in each subsequent volume. Colonial grants were confused and uncertain; the principle adopted has been to accept the later interpretation of the grants by the English government as settling earlier questions.

To my colleague, Professor Edward Channing, I beg to offer especial thanks for many generous suggestions, both as to the scope of the work and as to details.

ALBERT BUSHNELL HART.

Cambridge, December 1, 1890.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

Upon no epoch of American history has so much been written, from every point of view, as upon the Thirteen Colonies. There has, nevertheless, been lacking a book devoted especially to it, compact in form, yet sufficiently comprehensive in scope at once to serve as a text-book for class use and for general reading and reference. The present work is intended to meet that want.

In this book American colonization is considered in the light of general colonization as a phase of history. Englishmen in planting colonies in America brought with them the institutions with which they had been familiar at home: it is shown what these institutions were, and how, in adapting themselves to new conditions of growth, they differed from English models. As prominent among the changed conditions, the physical geography of America and its aboriginal inhabitants receive somewhat extended treatment; and it is sought to explain the important effect these had upon the character of the settlers and the development of the country. The social and economic condition of the people is described, and attention is paid to the political characteristics of the several colonies both in the conduct of their local affairs and in their relations with each other and the mother-country. It is shown that the causes of the Revolution were deep-seated in colonial history. Attention is also called to the fact, generally overlooked, that the thirteen mainland colonies which revolted in 1776 were not all of the English colonial establishments in America.

From Dr. Frederick J. Turner, of the University of Wisconsin, I have had much advice and assistance throughout the prosecution of the work; Dr. Edward Channing, of Harvard College, has kindly revised the proof-sheets and made many valuable suggestions; while Dr. Samuel A. Green, librarian of the Massachusetts Historical Society, has generously done similar service on the chapters referring to New England. To all of these gentlemen, each professionally expert in certain branches of the subject, I tender most cordial thanks.

REUBEN GOLD THWAITES.

Madison, Wis., December 1, 1890.

PREFACE TO TWENTY-SECOND EDITION.

From time to time there have been several revisions of the text, so that it has been kept fairly abreast of current investigation. The bibliographies, however, have remained untouched since the tenth edition (August, 1897). The principal change in the present, therefore, consists in the introduction of new and carefully prepared references, which will render the book of greater service to the student than it has been at any time within the past ten years. In this revision, I have had the valuable assistance of Miss Annie A. Nunns.

R. G. THWAITES.

Madison, Wis., June 1, 1910.

SUGGESTIONS.

While this volume is intended to be complete in itself, compression has been necessary in order to make it conform to the series in which it appears. It really is but an outline of the subject, a centre from which to start upon a study of the American colonies. The reader, especially the teacher, who would acquire a fairly complete knowledge of this interesting period of our history, will need to examine many other volumes; from them gaining not only further information, but the point of view of other authors than the present—only in this manner may an historical perspective be obtained. The classified bibliographies, given by the author at the head of each chapter, have been prepared with much care. While perhaps few will desire to follow the topics to the lengths there suggested, it is urged that as many of the other volumes as possible be consulted, particularly those containing source material.

Following is a list of books which, even for a brief study, would be desirable for reference and comparison, or for the preparation of topics:

1-5. John Andrew Doyle: English Colonies in America. 5 vols. New York: H. Holt & Co., 1882-1907.—An analytical study, in much detail, by an English author.

6-13. John Fiske: Beginnings of New England; The Discovery of America, 2 vols.; Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America, 2 vols.; New France and New England; Old Virginia and her Neighbours, 2 vols. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1897-1902.—The best popular accounts; but while eminently readable and inspiring, not sufficiently thorough at all points, to serve as authoritative studies.

14. Henry Cabot Lodge: Short History of the English Colonies in America. New York: Harper Brothers Co., 1881.—Concise and readable.

15-17. Herbert Levi Osgood: American Colonies in the 17th Century. 3 vols. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1904-1907.—The most elaborate treatment of this period, from the American point of view.

If a detailed study is intended, the following volumes should be added to the foregoing:

A. Bibliography.

1. Edward Channing and Albert Bushnell Hart: A Guide to the Study of American History. Boston: Ginn & Co., 1896.—A well-arranged manual for both students and general readers.

2. Josephus Nelson Larned: Literature of American History. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1902.—More detailed than the foregoing. Contains critical estimates of many of the works cited, by experts in the several subjects.

B. General.

3-5. Elroy Mckendree Avery: A History of the United States and its People from their Earliest Records to the Present Time. 15 vols. Cleveland: Burrows Brothers Co., 1904+.—Volumes I.-III. cover the colonial period. Especially notable for its illustrations—for the most part, reproductions of contemporary views, maps, portraits, and articles of historical interest. The bibliographies are quite full.

6, 7. Edward Channing: A History of the United States. 8 vols. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1905+.—A calm, philosophical treatise, written with care and erudition.

8-13. Albert Bushnell Hart, Editor: The American Nation. New York: Harper Brothers Co., 1904-1907.—The latest co-operative history of the United States. Each volume is by an author who specializes in the topic treated. vols. II.-VII. are concerned with the colonial period. The bibliographical chapters are very useful.

14, 15. Woodrow Wilson: A History of the American People. 5 vols. New York: Harper Brothers Co., 1902.—Popular and readable, often brilliant. Only vols. I. and II. cover the colonial period.

16-20. Justin Winsor: Narrative and Critical History of America. 8 vols. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1889.—A co-operative enterprise, the chapters being by different hands, for the most part specialists. There is a wealth of illustrations, notes, and bibliographical references. But much of the work has been superseded by later publications. vols. I.-V. cover the colonial period.

C. Special Histories.

21, 22. Philip Alexander Bruce: Economic History of Virginia in the 17th Century. 2 vols. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1896.—A careful, detailed study.

23. Philip Alexander Bruce: Social Life of Virginia in the 17th Century. Richmond: Whittet & Shepperson, 1907.—Thorough and clear.

24, 25. Sydney George Fisher: Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times. 2 vols. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1898.—A readable and useful survey.

26. Frederick Webb Hodge: Handbook of American Indians north of Mexico. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1907.—The author, a member of the Ethnological Bureau, is an authority on this subject.

27-38. Francis Parkman: France and England in North America. 12 vols. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1851-1892. The titles of volumes comprising this series are: Pioneers of France in the New World; The Jesuits in North America; La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West; The Old Régime in Canada; Count Frontenac and New France; A Half-Century of Conflict, 2 vols.; Montcalm and Wolfe, 2 vols.; The Conspiracy of Pontiac, 2 vols.—In spite of its age, this work remains the principal authority for the thrilling story of New France. A first-hand study, written in fascinating style.

39. Ellen Churchill Semple: American History and its Geographic Conditions. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1903.—Of first importance in understanding the causes and effects of the movements of population.

40. Cyrus Thomas: The Indians of North America in Historic Times. Philadelphia: G. Barrie & Sons, 1903.—The latest compendious treatment; somewhat repellent in style, but useful for reference. The author is a well-known authority.

41, 42. William Babcock Weeden: Economic and Social History of New England, 1620-1789. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1890.—An admirably executed work.

D. Sources.

43, 44. Albert Bushnell Hart, Editor: American History Told by Contemporaries. 4 vols. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1897, 1898.—Very useful for purposes of illustration. vols. I., II., are devoted to colonial material.

45-64. John Franklin Jameson, Editor: Original Narratives of Early American History. 20 vols. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906+.—Carefully edited, and indispensable for first-hand study.

65. William MacDonald, Editor: Documentary Source Book of American History, 1606-1898. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1908.—Useful reprints of material otherwise difficult to obtain.

In addition to the above, the publications of colonial and town record commissions and state and local historical and antiquarian societies contain material of the utmost value in the study of our colonial history. Among them may especially be mentioned the volumes issued by the Prince Society, Gorges Society, American Antiquarian Society, and the state historical societies of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia; also the colonial records of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina.

CONTENTS.

EPOCHS OF AMERICAN HISTORY

THE COLONIES.

1492-1750.

CHAPTER I.

THE LAND AND THE NATIVE RACES.

1. References.

Bibliographies.—L. Farrand, Basis of American History, ch. xviii.; J. Larned, Literature of American History, 21-50; J. Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, I., II.; Channing and Hart, Guide, §§ 21, 77-80; C. Lummis, Reading List on Indians.

Historical Maps.—No. 1, this volume (Epoch Maps, No. [1]); T. MacCoun, Historical Geography of United States; school histories of Channing, Elson, Gordy, James and Sanford, Mace, McLaughlin, McMaster, and Montgomery.

General Accounts.—Historical significance of geography of the United States: H. Mill, International Geography, ch. xxxix.; F. Ratzel, Vereinigte Staaten, I. ch. ii.; B. Hinsdale, How to Study and Teach History, ch. xiv.; E. Bogart, Economic History of United States, introduction; E. Semple, American History and its Geographic Conditions; A. Brigham, Geographic Influences in American History; W. Scaife, America: its Geographical History.—Topographical descriptions of the country: J. Whitney, United States, I. pt. i.; N. Shaler, United States, I., and Nature and Man in America; Mill, as above; E. Reclus, North America, III.; Hinsdale, as above, ch. xv.—Prehistoric Man in America: L. Morgan, Ancient Society; J. Nadaillac, Prehistoric America; J. Foster, Prehistoric Races; Winsor, as above, I. ch. vi.; E. Avery, United States and its People, I. chs. i., ii.; Farrand, as above, ch. v.—The Indians (or Amerinds): D. Brinton, American Race; C. Thomas, Indians in Historic Times; F. Hodge, Handbook of American Indians; Farrand, as above, chs. vi.-xviii.; Avery, as above, I. ch. xxii.; F. Dellenbaugh, North Americans of Yesterday; S. Drake, Aboriginal Races of America; G. Ellis, Red Man and White Man in North America; G. Grinnell, Story of the Indian. The introduction to F. Parkman, Jesuits in North America, and his Conspiracy of Pontiac, I. ch. i., are admirable general surveys. Briefer, also excellent, is J. Fiske's Discovery of America, I. ch. i. The mound-builders have now been identified as Indians. L. Carr, Mounds of the Mississippi Valley Historically Considered is the best exposition of this subject. C. Thomas, Catalogue of Prehistoric Works East of the Rocky Mountains is useful.

Special Histories.—Larned, History for Ready Reference, I. 83-115, gives brief account and bibliographies of tribes; Farrand, as above, 279-286, does the same by geographical groups. Especially notable are L. Morgan, League of the Iroquois, and C. Colden, Five Indian Nations. For detailed treatment of the aborigines of that section, consult H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific Coast, II., and Mexico, I.; J. Palfrey, New England, I. chs. i., ii., describes the Indians in that region; T. Roosevelt, Winning of the West, I. chs. iii., iv., the Southern tribes; and Parkman, Pontiac, the old Northwest tribes. There are numerous biographies of chiefs, and a considerable literature on border warfare.

2. Physical Characteristics of North America.

Origin of the native races,

Whence came the native races of America? Doubtless the chain of Aleutian islands served as stepping-stones for straggling bands of Asiatics to cross over into continental Alaska many centuries ago; others may have traversed the ice-bridge of Bering's Strait; possibly prehistoric vessels from China, Japan, or the Malay peninsula were blown upon our shores by westerly hurricanes, or drifted hither upon the ocean currents of the Pacific. There are striking similarities between the flora on each shore of the North Pacific; and the Eskimos of North America, like the West-Slope Indians of South America, have been thought to exhibit physical resemblances to the Mongols and Malays. |a mere matter of conjecture. | On the other hand, some archæologists hold that men as far advanced as the present Eskimos followed the retreating ice-cap of the last glacial epoch. In the absence of positive historical evidence, the origin of the native peoples of America is a mere matter of conjecture.

Difficulties of colonization from the west.

North America could not, in a primitive stage of the mechanic arts, have been developed by colonization on any considerable scale from the west, except in the face of difficulties almost insuperable. The Pacific coast of the country is dangerous to approach; steep precipices frequently come down to the shore, and the land everywhere rises rapidly from the sea, until not far inland the broad and mighty wall of the Cordilleran mountain system extends from north to south. That formidable barrier was not scaled by civilized men until modern times, when European settlement had already reached the Mississippi from the east, and science had stepped in to assist the explorers. At San Diego and San Francisco are the only natural harbors, although Puget Sound can be entered from the extreme north, and skilful improvements have in our day made a good harbor at the mouth of Columbia River. The rivers of the Pacific Slope for the most part come noisily tumbling down to the sea over great cliffs and through deep chasms, and cannot be utilized for progress far into the interior.

The Atlantic seaboard the natural approach to North America.

The Atlantic seaboard, upon the other hand, is broad and inviting. The Appalachian range lies for the most part nearly a hundred miles inland. The gently sloping coast abounds in indentations,—safe harbors and generous land-locked bays, into which flow numerous rivers of considerable breadth and depth, by means of which the land can be explored for long distances from tide-water. By ascending the St. Lawrence and the chain of the Great Lakes, the interior of the continent is readily reached. Dragging his craft over any one of a half-dozen easy portages in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio, the canoe traveller can emerge into the Mississippi basin, by means of whose far-stretching waters he is enabled to explore the heart of the New World, from the Alleghanies to the Rockies, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. |The river system.| A carrying trail, at the headwaters of the Missouri, will lead him over to tributaries of the Columbia, whereby he gains access to the Pacific slope; while by another portage of a few miles in length, from Pigeon River to Rainy River, he is given command of the vast basin of Hudson Bay,—a labyrinth of waterways extending northward to the Arctic Ocean, and connected by still other portages with the Pacific. The Hudson River and Lakes George and Champlain form a natural highway from the St. Lawrence southward to the ocean. By the Mohawk and a short carrying-place, the Hudson was from early times connected with the Great Lakes. The Potomac, the Susquehanna, the Roanoke, and other Southern rivers can be traced northwestward to their sources in the mountains; and hard by are the headwaters of west-flowing feeders of the Mississippi. |The Appalachian valley system.| The Appalachian mountains run for the most part in parallel ridges northeast and southwest; and their valley system, opening out through the Cumberland Gap upon the Kentucky prairies and the valleys of the Ohio basin, also affords a comparatively easy highway from the Atlantic sea-coast to the interior.

Thus with the entrance of North America facing the east, and with Europe lying but little more than one half the distance from Boston that Asia lies from San Francisco, it was in the order of things that from the east should have come the people who were to settle and civilize the New World. Colonists could on this side of the continent found new commonwealths, yet at the same time easily maintain their connection with the fatherland. |An inviting field for Aryan colonization.| The march of Aryan emigration has ever been on lines little diverging from due east or west. It is fortunate that the geographical conditions of North America were such as to make her an inviting field for the further migration of the race.

Geographical characteristics of New England;

The Atlantic border may be considered as the threshold of the continent. It was among its dense, gloomy forests of hard wood and pine that European nations planted their colonies; here those colonies grew into States, which were the nucleus of the American Union. The Appalachians are not high enough seriously to affect the climate or landscape of the region. Their flanks slope gradually down to the sea, furrowed by rivers which from the first gave character to the colonies.In New England, where there is an abundance of good harbors, the coast is narrow and the streams are short and rapid, with stretches of navigable water between the waterfalls which turn the wheels of industry for a busy, ingenious, and thrifty people. |and of the South.| The long, broad rivers of the South, flowing lazily through a wide base-plain, the coast of which furnishes but little safe anchorage, served as avenues of traffic for the large, isolated colonial estates strung along their banks; the autocratic planters taking pleasure in having ports of entry at their doors. |Three grand natural divisions of the Atlantic slope.| The Hudson and the Potomac lead far inland,—paths to the water ways of the interior,—and divide the Atlantic slope into three grand natural divisions, the New England, the Middle, and the Southern, in which grew up distinct groups of colonies, having quite a different origin, and for a time but few interests in common. |Extractive industries.| The Appalachian mountains and their foot-hills abound in many places in iron and coal; works for the smelting of the former were erected near Jamestown, Virginia, as early as 1620, and early in the eighteenth century the industry began to be of considerable importance in parts of New England, New York, and New Jersey; but the mining of anthracite coal was not commenced until 1820. |Soil.| The soil of the Atlantic border varies greatly, being much less fertile in the North than in the South; but nearly everywhere it yields good returns for a proper expenditure of labor. |Climate.| The climate is subject to frequent and extreme changes. At about 30° latitude the mean temperature is similar to that on the opposite side of the Atlantic; but farther north the American climate, owing to the divergence of the Gulf Stream and the influence of the great continent to the west, is much colder than at corresponding points in Europe. The rainfall along the coast is everywhere sufficient.

The Mississippi basin.

Beyond the Appalachian mountain wall, the once heavily forested land dips gently to the Mississippi; then the land rises again, in a long, treeless swell, up to the foot of the giant and picturesque Cordilleras. The isothermal lines in this great central basin are nearly identical with those of the Atlantic coast. The soil east of the 105th meridian west from Greenwich is generally rich, sometimes extremely fertile; and it is now agreed that nearly all the vast arid plains to the west of that meridian, formerly set down as desert, needs only irrigation to blossom as the rose. |The Pacific slope.| The Pacific slope, narrow and abrupt, abounds in fertile, pent-up valleys, with some of the finest scenery on the continent and a climate everywhere nearly equal at the same elevation; the isothermal lines here run north and south, the lofty mountain range materially influencing both climate and vegetation.

Summary.

There is no fairer land for the building of a great nation. The region occupied by the United States is particularly available for such a purpose. It offers a wide range of diversity in climate and products, yet is traversed by noble rivers which intimately connect the North with the South, and have been made to bind the East with the West. It possesses in the Mississippi basin vast plains unsurpassed for health, fertility, and the capacity to support an enormous population, yet easily defended; for the great outlying mountain ranges, while readily penetrated by bands of adventurous pioneers, and though climbed by railway trains, might easily be made serious obstacles to invading armies. The natural resources of North America are apparently exhaustless; we command nearly every North American seaport on both oceans, and withal are so isolated that there appears to be no necessity for "entangling alliances" with transatlantic powers. The United States seems permitted by Nature to work out her own destiny unhampered by foreign influence, secure in her position, rich in capabilities. Her land is doubtless destined to become the greatest stronghold of the Aryan race.

3. The Native Races.

The aborigines.

When Europeans first set foot upon the shores of America it was found not only that a New World had been discovered, but that it was peopled by a race of men theretofore unknown to civilized experience. The various branches of the race differed greatly from each other in general appearance and in degrees of civilization, and to some extent were settled in latitudinal strata; thus the reports concerning them made by early navigators who touched at different points along the coast, led to much confusion in European estimates of the aborigines. |Divisible into two divisions.| We now know that but one race occupied the land from Hudson Bay to Patagonia. Leaving out of account the Carib race of the West Indies, the portion resident in North and Central America may be roughly grouped into two grand divisions:—

Mexicans, Peruvians, Pueblos, Cliff-Dwellers, and Indians of the lower Mississippi valley.

I. The semi-civilized peoples represented by the sun-worshipping Mexicans and Peruvians, who had attained particular efficiency in architecture, road-making, and fortification, acquired some knowledge of astronomy, were facile if not elegant in sculpture, practised many handicrafts, but appear to have exhibited little capacity for further progress. Their government was paternal to a degree nowhere else observed, and the people, exercising neither political power nor individual judgment in the conduct of many of the common affairs of life, were helpless when deprived of their native rulers by the Spanish conquerors, Cortez and Pizarro. Closely upon the border of this division, both geographically and in point of mental status, were the Pueblos and Cliff-Dwellers of New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California,—the occupants of the country around the headwaters of the Rio Grande and Gila rivers, and of the foot-hills of the Desert Range. These people, like the Mexicans, lived in great communal dwellings of stone or sun-dried brick, and were also sun-worshippers. They made crude cloth and pottery, and irrigated and cultivated large tracts of arid land, but were inferior as fighters, and occupied a mental plane considerably below the Mexicans. Allied in race and similar in acquirements were the tribes inhabiting the lower Mississippi valley, the Natchez and perhaps other tribes lying farther to the east.

The Red Indians of North America.

II. The natives of North America, called Red Indians,—a name which perpetuates the geographical error of Columbus, and has given rise to an erroneous opinion as to their color—occupied a still lower plane of civilization. Yet one must be cautious in accepting any hard-and-fast classification. The North Americans presented a considerable variety of types, ranging from the Southern Indians, some of whose tribes were rather above the Caribs in material advancement, and quite superior to them in mental calibre, down to the Diggers, the savage root-eaters of the Cordilleran region.

The migrations of some of the Red Indian tribes were frequent, and they occupied overlapping territories, so that it is impossible to fix the tribal boundaries with any degree of exactness. Again, the tribes were so merged by intermarriage, by affiliation, by consolidation, by the fact that there were numerous polyglot villages of renegades, by similarities in manner, habits, and appearance, that it is difficult even to separate the savages into families. |Philological divisions of Red Indian tribes.| It is only on philological grounds that these divisions can be made at all. In a general way we may say that between the Atlantic and the Rockies, Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, there were four Indian languages in vogue, with great varieties of local dialect.

The Algonquians.

I. The Algonquians were the most numerous, holding the greater portion of the country from the unoccupied "debatable land" of Kentucky northward to Hudson Bay, and from the Atlantic westward to the Mississippi. Among their tribes were the Narragansetts and Mohicans. These savages were rude in life and manners, were intensely warlike, depended for subsistence chiefly on hunting and fishing, lived in rude wigwams covered with bark, skins, or matted reeds, practised agriculture in a crude fashion, and were less stable in their habitations than the Southern Indians. They have made a larger figure in our history than any other family, because through their lands came the heaviest and most aggressive movement of white population. Estimates of early Indian populations necessarily differ, in the absence of accurate knowledge, but it is now known that the numbers were never so great as was at first estimated. The colonists on the Atlantic seaboard found a native population much larger than elsewhere existed, for the Indians had a superstitious, almost a romantic, attachment to the seaside; and fish-food abounded there. Back from the waterfalls on the Atlantic slope,—in the mountains and beyond,—there were large areas destitute of inhabitants; and even in the nominally occupied territory the villages were generally small and far apart. A careful modern estimate is that the Algonkins at no time numbered over ninety thousand souls, and possibly not over fifty thousand.

The Iroquois.

II. In the heart of this Algonquian land was planted an ethnic group called the Iroquois, with its several distinct branches, often at war with each other. The craftiest, most daring, and most intelligent of Red Indians, yet still in the savage hunter state, the Iroquois were the terror of every native band east of the Mississippi, and eventually pitted themselves against their white neighbors. The five principal tribes of this family—Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, all stationed in pallisaded villages south and east of Lakes Erie and Ontario—formed a loose confederacy, styled by themselves "The Long House," and by the whites "The Five Nations," which firmly held the waterways connecting the Hudson River and the Great Lakes. The population of the entire group was not over seventeen thousand,—a remarkably small number, considering the active part they played in American history, and the control which they exercised over wide tracts of Algonquian territory. Later they were joined by the Tuscaroras from North Carolina, and the confederacy was thereafter known as "The Six Nations."

The Southern Indians.

III. The Southern Indians occupied the country between the Tennessee River and the Gulf, the Appalachian ranges and the Mississippi. They were divided into five lax confederacies,—the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. Of a milder disposition than their Northern cousins, they were rather in a barbarous than a savage state. The Creeks, in particular, had good intellects, were fair agriculturists, and quickly adopted many mechanic and rural arts from their white neighbors; so that by the time of the Revolution they were not far behind the small white proprietors in industrial or domestic methods. In the Indian Territory of to-day the descendants of some of these Southern Indians are good farmers and herdsmen, with a capacity for self-government and shrewd business dealing. It is not thought that the Southern tribes ever numbered above fifty thousand persons.

The Dakotahs.

IV. The Dakotah, or Sioux, family occupied for the most part the country beyond the Mississippi. They were and are a fierce, high-strung people, are genuine nomads, and war appears to have been their chief occupation. Before the advent of the Spaniards they were foot-wanderers; but runaway horses came to them from Mexico and from the exploring expeditions of Narvaez, Coronado, and De Soto, and very early in the historic period the Indians of the far western plains became expert horsemen, attaining a degree of equestrian skill equal to that of the desert-dwelling Arabs. Outlying bands of the Dakotahs once occupied the greater part of Wisconsin and northern Illinois, and were, it is believed by competent investigators, one of the various tribes of mound-builders. Upon withdrawing to the west of the Mississippi, they left behind them one of their tribes,—the Winnebagoes,—whom Nicolet found (1634) resident on and about Green Bay of Lake Michigan, at peace and in confederacy with the Algonquians, who hedged them about. Other trans-Mississippi nations there are, but they are neither as large nor of such historical importance as the Dakotahs.

The above enumeration, covering the territory south of Hudson Bay and east of the Rocky Mountains, embraces those savage nations with which the white colonists of North America have longest been in contact. |Other tribes.| North and west of these limits were and are other aboriginal tribes of the same race, but materially differing from those to whom allusion has been made, as well as from each other, in speech, stature, feature, and custom. These, too, lie, generally speaking, in ethnological zones. North of British Columbia are the fish-eating and filthy Hyperboreans, including the Eskimos and the tribes of Alaska and the British Northwest. South of these dwell the Columbians,—the aborigines of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia,—a somewhat higher type than the Hyperboreans, but much degenerated from contact with whites. The Californians are settled not only in what is now termed California, but stretch back irregularly into the mountains of Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah.

4. Characteristics of the Indian.

But of all the North American tribes, our interest in this book is with the traditional Red Indian,—the savage of eastern North America, the crafty forest warrior whom our fathers met on landing, and whose presence so materially shaped the fortunes of the colonies.

The Indian as a hunter and fisher.

First of all, the Indian was a hunter and fisherman. As such, his life was a struggle for existence. Enemies were to be driven from the tribe's hunting-grounds, but the game-preserves of other tribes were invaded when convenient, and this led to endless feuds. War was not only a pastime, but a necessity in the competition for food. Villages were as a consequence almost invariably built at vantage points,—at inlets of the sea, at waterfalls, on commanding banks of lakes and rivers, on portage paths between the headwaters of streams, and at river junctions. Hence we find that many, if not most, of the early white towns, built before railways were introduced, are on sites originally occupied by Indian villages.

Political organization.

The political organization of the Indians was weak. The villages were little democracies, where one warrior held himself as good as another, except for the deference naturally due to headmen of the several clans, or to those of reputed wisdom or oratorical ability. There was a sachem, or peace-chief, hereditary in the female line, whose authority was but slight, unless aided by natural gifts which commanded respect. In times of war the fighting men ranged themselves as volunteers under some popular leader,—perhaps a permanent chief; sometimes a warrior without titular distinction. Much which appears in the early writings about the power and authority of "nobles," "kings," and "emperors" among the red men was fanciful, the authors falling into the error of judging Indian institutions by Old World standards. Around the village council-fires all warriors had a right to be heard; but the talking was chiefly done by the privileged classes of headmen, old men, wise men, and orators, who were also selected as the representatives of villages in the occasional deliberative assemblies of the tribe or confederacy. The judgment of such a council could not bind the entire village, tribe, or confederacy; any one might refuse to obey if it pleased him. It was seldom that an entire tribe united in an important enterprise, still more unusual for several tribes to stand by each other in adversity. It was this weakness in organization,—inherent in a pure democracy,—combined with their lack of self-control and steadfastness of purpose, and with the ever-prevailing tribal jealousies, which caused Indians to yield before the whites, who better understood the value of adherence in the face of a common foe. Here and there in our history we shall note some formidable Indian conspiracies for entirely dispossessing the whites,—such as the Virginia scheme (1622), King Philip's uprising (1675), and the Pontiac War (1763). They were the work of native men of genius who had the gift of organization highly developed, but who could not find material equal to their skill; hence these uprisings were short-lived.

The Indian as a fighter.

The strength of the Indian as a fighter lay in his capacity for stratagem, in his ability to thread the tangled thicket as silently and easily as he would an open plain, in his powers of secrecy, and in his habit of making rapid, unexpected sallies for robbery and murder, and then gliding back into the dark and almost impenetrable forest. The child of impulse, he soon tired of protracted military operations; and in a siege or in the open usually yielded to stoutly sustained resistance on the part of an enemy inferior in numbers. But the colonists were obliged to learn and adopt the Indian's skulking method of warfare before they could successfully cope with him in the forest.

Social characteristics.

The Indian was lord of his own wigwam and of the squaws, whom he purchased of their fathers, kept as his slaves, and could divorce at his caprice. Families were not large, chiefly owing to the lack of food and to heavy infant mortality. The wigwams, or huts,—each tribe having peculiarities in its domestic architecture,—were foully kept, and the bodies of their dirty inhabitants swarmed with vermin. Kind and hospitable to friends and unsuspected strangers, the Indian was merciless to his enemies, no cruelty being too severe for a captive. Yet prisoners were often snatched from the stake or the hands of a vindictive captor to be adopted into the family of the rescuer, taking the place of some one slaughtered by the enemy. In council and when among strangers, the Indian was dignified and reserved, too proud to exhibit curiosity or emotion; but around his own fire he was often a jolly clown, much given to verbosity, and fond of comic tales of doubtful morality. Improvidence was one of his besetting sins.

Dress.

The summer dress of the men was generally a short apron made of the pelt of a wild animal, the women being clothed in skins from neck to knees; in winter both sexes wrapped themselves in large robes of similar material. Indian oratory was highly ornate; it abounded in metaphors drawn from a minute observance of nature and from a picturesque mythology. |Religion.| A belief in the efficacy of religious observances was deep seated. Long fastings, penances, and sacrifices were frequent. The elements were peopled with spirits good and bad. Every animal, every plant, had its manitou, or incarnate spirit. Fancy ran riot in superstition. Even the dances practised by the aborigines had a certain religious significance, being pantomimes, and in some features resembling the mediæval miracle-plays of Europe. |Medicine.| The art of healing was tinctured with necromancy, although there was considerable virtue in their decoctions of barks, roots, and herbs, and their vapor-baths, which came in time to be borrowed from them by the whites.

Intellectual status.

In intellectual activity the red man did not occupy so low a scale as has often been assigned him. He was barbarous in his habits, but was so from choice: it suited his wild, untrammelled nature. He understood the arts of politeness when he chose to exercise them. He could plan, he was an incomparable tactician and a fair strategist; he was a natural logician; his tools and implements were admirably adapted to the purpose designed; he fashioned boats that have not been surpassed in their kind; he was remarkably quick in learning the use of firearms, and soon equalled the best white hunters as a marksman. A rude sense of honor was highly developed in the Indian; he had a nice perception of public propriety; he bowed his will to the force of custom,—these characteristics doing much to counteract the anarchical tendency of his extreme democracy. He understood the value of form and color, as witness his rock-carvings, his rude paintings, the decorations on his finely tanned leather, and his often graceful body markings. It was because the savage saw little in civilized ideas to attract him, that he either remained obdurate in the face of missionary endeavors, or simulated an interest he could not feel.

5. Relations of the Indians and Colonists.

The Indians and the colonists.

The colonists from Europe met the Red Indian in a threefold capacity,—as a neighbor, as a customer and trader, and as a foe opposed to encroachments upon his hunting grounds. At first the whites were regarded by the aborigines as of supernatural origin, and hospitality, veneration, and confidence were displayed toward the new-comers. But the morality of the Europeans was soon made painfully evident to them. |Indians as foes.| When the early Spaniards, and afterwards the English, kidnapped tribesmen to sell them into slavery or to use them as captive guides for future expeditions, or even murdered the natives on slight provocation, distrust and hatred naturally succeeded the sentiment of awe. Like many savage races, like the earlier Romans, the Indian looked upon the member of every tribe with which he had not made a formal peace as a public enemy; hence he felt justified in wreaking his vengeance on the race whenever he failed to find individual offenders. He was exceptionally cruel, his mode of warfare was skulking, he could not easily be got at in the forest fastnesses which he alone knew well, and his strokes fell heaviest on women and children; so that whites came to fear and unspeakably to loathe the savage, and often added greatly to the bitterness of the struggle by retaliation in kind. The white borderers themselves were frequently brutal, reckless, and lawless; and under such conditions clashing was inevitable.

The fur-trade, and inter-tribal barter.

But the love of trade was strong among the Indians, and caused them to some extent to overcome or to conceal their antipathies. There had always existed a system of inter-tribal barter, so widespread that the first whites landing on the Atlantic coast saw Indians with copper ornaments and tools which came from the Lake Superior mines; and by the middle of the seventeenth century many articles of European make had passed inland, by means of these forest exchanges, as far as the Mississippi, in advance of the earliest white explorers. The trade with the Indians was one of the incentives to colonization. The introduction of European blankets at once revolutionized the dress of the coast tribes; and it is surprising how quickly the art of using firearms was acquired among them, and barbaric implements and utensils abandoned for those of civilized make. So rapid was this change that it was not long before the Indians became dependent on the whites for nearly every article of dress and ornament, and for tools and weapons. The white traders, who travelled through the woods visiting the tribes, exchanging these goods for furs, often cheated and robbed the Indian, taught him the use of intoxicants, bullied and browbeat him, appropriated his women, and in general introduced serious demoralization into the native camps. Trouble frequently grew out of this wretched condition of affairs. The bulk of the whites doubtless intended to treat the Indian honorably; but the forest traders were beyond the pale of law, and news of the details of their transactions seldom reached the coast settlements.

The Indian as a neighbor.

As a neighbor the Indian was difficult to deal with, whether in the negotiation of treaties of amity, or in the purchase of lands. Having but a loose system of government, there was no really responsible head, and no compact was secure from the interference of malcontents who would not be bound by treaties made by the chiefs. The English felt that the red-men were not putting the land to its full use, that much of the territory was growing up as a waste, that they were best entitled to it who could make it the most productive. On the other hand, the earlier cessions of land were made under a total misconception: the Indians supposed that the new-comers would, after a few years of occupancy, pass on and leave the tract again to the natives. There was no compromise possible between races with precisely opposite views of property in land. |The inevitable struggle for mastery.| The struggle was inevitable,—civilization against savagery. No sentimental notions could prevent it. It was in the nature of things that the weaker must give way. For a long time it was not certain that a combined effort might not drive the whites into the sea and undo the work of colonization; but in the end the savage went to the wall.

Good effect of Indian opposition on the colonists.

Taking a general view of the growth of the American nation, it is now easy to see that it was fortunate that Englishmen met in the Indian so formidable an antagonist: such fierce and untamed savages could never be held long as slaves; and thus were the American colonists of the North—the bone and sinew of the nation—saved from the temptations and the moral danger which come from contact with a numerous servile race. Again, every step of progress into the wilderness being stubbornly contested, the spirit of hardihood and bravery—so essential an element in nation-building—was fostered among the borderers; and as settlement moved westward slowly, only so fast as the pressure of population on the seaboard impelled it, the Americans were prevented from planting scattered colonies in the interior, and thus were able to present a solid front to the mother-country when, in due course of time, fostering care changed to a spirit of commercial control, and commercial control to jealous interference and menace.

CHAPTER II.

DISCOVERIES AND EARLY SETTLEMENTS. (1492-1606.)

6. References.

Bibliographies.—Winsor, Columbus, and Narrative and Critical History, I. xix-xxxvii, 33-58, 76-132, 369-444, II. 153-179, 205, III. 7-58, 78-84, 97-104, 121, 126, 184-218; Larned, Literature of American History, 50-68, and History for Ready Reference, I. 54-79; Avery, United States, I. 376-403; Channing and Hart, Guide, §§ 81-96; also bibliographical chapters in Bourne, Cheney, and Tyler, below.

Historical Maps.—No. 1, this volume (Epoch Maps, No. [1]); MacCoun; Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, I., II.; H. Harrisse, Discovery of North America, and Découverte et Evolution Cartographique de Terre-Neuve; E. L. Stevenson, Maps illustrating Early Discovery and Exploration in America; maps in American Nation series (Bourne, Cheney, and Tyler).

General Accounts.—On geographical knowledge of ancients, and pre-Columbian discoveries: Winsor, Narrative and Critical, I. chs. i., ii.,; W. Wilson, American People, I. ch. i.; Avery, I. chs. iii.-vi.; E. Cheney, European Background of American History, chs. i.-v.—On discovery and settlement, from Columbus to Jamestown: M. Creighton, Age of Elizabeth (Epochs of Modern History); R. Hildreth, United States, I. chs. i., iii.; G. Bancroft, United States, I. chs. i.-v.; Winsor, Narrative and Critical, II. chs. i.-vii., III. chs. i.-iv., and Columbus; Avery, I. chs. vii.-xxi.; E. Channing, United States, I. chs. i.-v.; J. Doyle, English Colonies in America, I. ch. iv.

Special Histories.—E. Bourne, Spain in America; Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, 28-233, 296-309; Winsor, Cartier to Frontenac, chs. i.-iii.; C. Baird, Huguenot Emigration to America; L. Tyler, England in America, chs. i., ii. For lives of explorers, consult bibliographies, above.

Contemporary Accounts.—Hakluyt, Voyages; Camden Society, Publications, lxxxvii.; Relation of Captain Gosnold's Voyage (1602); Breton, Brief and True Relation (1602); Pring, Voyage for Discovery of North Part of Virginia (1603); Rosier, True Relation (1605); Amerigo Vespuccius, Letters.—Reprints: Prince Society, Publications; American History told by Contemporaries, I. part ii.; J. Jameson, Original Narratives of Early American History; American History Leaflets, 1, 3, 9, 13.

7. Pre-Columbian Discoveries.

The Basques, Normans, Welsh, Irish, and Scandinavians are the principal claimants for the honor of discovering America before Columbus; and there are also believers in early African migrations to the western continent, chiefly influenced by supposed ethnological and botanical evidences found in South America. |The Scandinavian claim.| The Scandinavians make out the strongest case. Iceland, so tradition runs, was first conquered by the Britons in the sixth century. Then followed a succession of Danish and Irish settlements. But the Celts were driven out by Ingolf, who led a colony of Norwegians thither in 875 and founded Reikjavik.

The ancient Norse sagas—oral traditions, none of which were fixed in writing until the twelfth century, and most of them not until the fourteenth—mention voyages to the west from Iceland, and the discovery of new lands in that quarter as early as 876. In 985 Eric the Red is said to have led colonies to this western land,—by this time called Greenland. The following year (986) Bjarni Herjulfson claimed to have been driven by contrary winds to a strange shore nine days' sail southwest from Greenland,—"to a land flat and covered with trees." Then comes the familiar story, that in the year 1000 Leif, son of Eric the Red, having come from Norway and introduced Christianity into both Iceland and Greenland, sailed away to the southwest with thirty-five companions, intent on visiting the country which Bjarni had discovered before him. They wintered, so the saga reads, "at a place where a river flowed out from a lake," called the region Vinland because of wild grapes growing there, "erected large buildings," and then set out for Greenland with a cargo of timber,—a commodity much needed in the fishing colonies of the less-favored North. It is related that other explorations succeeded this, and that in 1007 a temporary settlement was formed in sunny Vinland, where the colonists, nearly one hundred in number, "had all the good things of the country, both of grapes and of all sorts of game and other things." Trading voyages to the new country now became frequent, say the sagas, and considerable shipments of timber were made from Vinland to Greenland. Eric Upsi, a Greenland bishop, is alleged, on doubtful authority, to have gone to Vinland in 1121; and in 1347 there is mention of a Greenland ship sailing out there for a cargo of timber,—but this is the very last reference to Vinland by the Norwegian bards.

An enormous mass of literature has been the outgrowth of these geographical puzzles in the sagas, and many writers have ventured to identify every headland and other natural object mentioned in them. |It is shadowy, but not improbable.| The common theory among the advocates of the Scandinavian claim is, that Vinland was somewhere on the coast south of Labrador; but as to the exact locality, there is much diversity of opinion. There may easily have been early voyages to the American mainland south of Davis Straits by the hardy Norse seamen colonized in Iceland and Greenland, and it is probable that there were numerous adventures of that sort.

The sagas, like the Homeric tales, were oral narrations for centuries before they were committed to writing, and as such were subject to distortion and patriotic and romantic embellishment. It is now difficult to separate in them the true from the false; yet we have other contemporaneous evidence (Adam of Bremen, 1076) that the Danes regarded Vinland as a reality. Pretended monuments of the early visits of Northmen to our shores have been exhibited,—notably the old mill at Newport and the Dighton Rock; but modern scholarship has determined that these are not relics of the vikings, and had a much less romantic origin. It is now safe to say that nowhere in America, south of undisputed traces in Greenland, are there any convincing archæological proofs of these alleged centuries of Norse occupation in America.

8. Early European Discoveries (1492-1512).

But even granting the possibility, and indeed the probability, of pre-Columbian discoveries, they bore no lasting fruit, and are merely the antiquarian puzzles and curiosities of American history. |American development begun with Columbus.| The development of the New World began with the landing (Oct. 12, 1492) on an island in the Bahamas, of Christopher Columbus, the agent of Spain. It was an age of daring maritime adventure. India, whence Europe obtained her gold and silks, her spices, perfumes, and precious stones, was the common goal. For many centuries the great trade route had been by caravans from India overland through Central Asia and the Balkan peninsula to Italy, the Rhine country, the Netherlands, and beyond; but the raids of the fierce desert tribes and the capture of Constantinople (1453) had closed this path, and now the trade passed through Egypt. |The race for India.| With improvements in the art of navigation there arose a general desire to reach India by sea. Three centuries before Christ, Aristotle had taught that the earth was a sphere, and that the waters which laved Europe on the west washed the eastern shores of Asia. Here and there through the centuries others advanced the same opinion, and the map which the great Italian astronomer Toscanelli sent to Columbus (1474) showed China to be but fifty-two degrees west of Europe. |The idea of sailing westward to reach India not original with Columbus.| The idea that by sailing west India could be reached, was therefore quite familiar to the contemporaries of Columbus, although he stands in the front as the one man who put his faith to the test. The mistake lay in the current calculations regarding the size of the earth. Instead of being only three thousand miles to the west, Asia was twelve thousand, and the continent of America blocked the way. It is probable that Columbus went to his grave still firm in the belief that he had reached the confines of India,—indeed, the names he gave to the islands and to the strange people who inhabited them stand as enduring evidence of his geographical error.

The Portuguese, on the other hand, sought India by the southeast passage, around the continent of Africa, and had been creeping southward along the African coast for several years before Spain sent Columbus to reach Asia by the west. Thus in the race for India and the discovery of intermediate lands, the Portuguese and the Spanish had adopted opposite routes. |Pope Alexander's bull.| Pope Alexander VI. now issued his famous bull (May 4, 1493), partitioning the un-Christian world into two parts,—Spain to have lands west of an imaginary meridian 100 leagues west of Cape de Verde islands, and Portugal those to the east—a simple arrangement, on paper. Next year, by agreement, the line was moved to 270 leagues westward, but it was still supposed to be in mid-ocean. By this change, however, the eastern part of what is now Brazil fell to Portugal.

England, although still Catholic, was not disposed to allow Spain and Portugal to monopolize between them those portions of the earth which Europeans had not yet seen; and we are told that there was grievous disappointment at the court of London because Spain had been the path-breaker to the west. |England sends out John Cabot.| In 1497 John Cabot set sail from England armed with a trading charter, to endeavor to reach Asia by way of the northwest. He had knowledge of the exploit of Columbus, and may well have heard of the Scandinavian discovery of Vinland. Early in the morning of the 24th of June he sighted the gloomy headlands of Cape Breton,—the first known European to make this important discovery. It is on record that "great honors" were heaped upon the adventurous mariner upon his return to England, and that the generous king gave "£10 to him that found the new isle"—the equivalent of $700 or $800 of our money.

Portugal reaches India by the southeast.

The year 1498 was one of the most notable in the long and splendid history of maritime discoveryYoung Vasco da Gama, of Portugal, turned the Cape of Good Hope, and gayly sailed his little fleet into the harbor of Calicut (May 20). At last India had been discovered by the southeast passage: Portugal had first reached the goal. In May, also, Columbus set forth upon his third voyage, during which he first discovered the mainland of South America; |Sebastian Cabot's voyage.| and in the same month John Cabot's second son, Sebastian, left Bristol in the hope of finding the northwest passage, which his father had failed to reach, and which was undiscovered until our own times (1850). Icebergs turned Sebastian southward, and he explored the American shores down to the vicinity of Chesapeake Bay. From this voyage sprang the claim under which the English colonies in North America were founded.

Three years later (1501) a Portuguese mariner, Gaspar Cortereal, explored the American coast south of the Gulf of St. Lawrence for a long distance. |Newfoundland as a colonial nucleus.| By 1504 we know that fishermen from Brittany and Normandy were at Newfoundland, and from that time forward there appear to have been more or less permanent colonies of fishermen there,—French, Portuguese, Spanish, and English,—with their little huts and drying scaffolds clustered along the shores. Newfoundland proved valuable as a supply and repair station for future explorers and colonizers. It was the nucleus of both French and English settlement in America. By 1578 there were no less than one hundred and fifty French vessels alone employed in the Newfoundland fisheries, and a good trade with the Indians had been established.

Searching for a short cut through America.

The idea that America was but a projection of Asia possessed all the early explorers; and indeed it was a century and a half later (1728) before Bering sailed from the Pacific Ocean to the Arctic and proved that America was insulated. There was another geographical error, which took even a longer time to explode,—the notion that a waterway somewhere extended through the American continent, uniting the Atlantic and the Pacific. John Smith and other English colonists thought that by ascending the James, the York, the Potomac, the Roanoke, or the Hudson, they could emerge with ease upon waters flowing to the ocean of the west. Champlain sent (1634) the fur-trader Nicolet up the Ottawa River and the Great Lakes into Wisconsin, which he thought to be Asia; and Jolliet and Marquette (1673) imagined they had found the highway thither when their birch-bark canoes glided into the upper Mississippi at Prairie du Chien.

One hundred and seven years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Balboa scaled the continental backbone at Darien (1513), and in the name of Spain claimed dominion over the waters of the Pacific. With undaunted zeal did Spanish explorers then beat up and down the western shore of the Gulf of Mexico, vainly seeking for a passage through by water. A great stimulus had now been given to the general desire to reach India by sea; for the Turks were overrunning Egypt (1512-1520) and despoiling the caravans from the East, so that the manufactures and trade of western Europe were sadly crippled. But thus far Portugal alone held the key to the sea-route to India.

9. Spanish Exploration of the Interior (1513-1542).

This same year (1513) was notable also for the first visit made by Spaniards to the mainland of North America. |Ponce de Leon in Florida.| Ponce de Leon, a valiant soldier worn out in long service, and who had been serving as governor of Porto Rico, went to the Florida mainland, where a popular legend said there was a fountain giving forth waters capable of recuperating life. The country was ablaze with brilliant flowers, but the elixir of life was not there, and he returned disappointed.

In 1519 Pineda, another Spaniard, explored the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico. |Vasquez in South Carolina.| The following year (1520) a slave-hunting expedition, under Vasquez, visited the coast of South Carolina, which the commander styled Chicora. The brilliant conquest of Mexico by Cortez (1519-1521) had made that hardy adventurer the hero of Christendom; and in the hope of rivalling his splendid achievement, Vasquez returned to Chicora in 1525, commissioned by Charles V. as governor of the country. But Chicora was not Mexico, and the Red Indians were of a different temper from the Aztecs. The expedition met with disaster. While Vasquez was fighting the embittered savages in South Carolina, Gomez, also in behalf of Spain, was ranging along the Atlantic coast from Newfoundland to New Jersey, and instituting a successful trade with the natives.

Narvaez in the Florida wilds.

In April, 1528, Narvaez, with three hundred enthusiastic young nobles and gentlemen from Spain, landed at Tampa Bay and renewed his sovereign's claim to Florida and its supposed wealth of mines and precious stones. Led by the fables of the wily native guides, who were careful to tell what their Spanish tormentors wished most to hear, they floundered hither and thither through the great swamps and forests, continually wasted by fatigue, famine, disease, and frequent assaults of savages. At last, after many distressing adventures, but four men were left out of this brilliant company,—Cabeza de Vaca, treasurer of the expedition, and three companions. For eight years did these four bruised and ragged Spaniards wearily roam through the region now divided into Texas, Indian Territory, New Mexico, and Arizona,—through entangled forests, across broad rivers and desert stretches beset with wild beasts and wilder men, but ever spurred on by vague reports of a colony of their countrymen in the far southwest. At last (May, 1536), the miserable wanderers reached Culiacan, on the Gulf of California, whence they were borne in triumph to the city of Mexico as the guests of the province.

Spaniards reaching northward from Mexico.

Their coming revived the shadowy native tales of gold mines and wealthy cities to the north, which had for some years been exciting the cupidity of the conquerors of Mexico. In response to these rumors there had been frequent reachings out northward. In 1528 Cortez had despatched Maldonado up along the Pacific coast for three hundred miles. Two years later (1530) Guzman penetrated to the mouth of the Gulf of California and established the town of Culiacan. Cortez again had vessels on the Pacific in 1532, and by 1535 his lieutenants were claiming for him the Lower California peninsula. It is possible that Spanish vessels coasted northward beyond the Columbia; but no news of their discoveries reached the geographers in Europe.

It was in 1530 that specific reports first came, through native slaves, of seven great cities of stone-built houses a few hundred miles north of the capital of the Aztecs, where the inhabitants had such a profusion of gold and silver that their household utensils were made of those metals. |The "Seven Cities of Cibola."| The search for "the seven cities of Cibola," as these alleged communities came to be called by the Spaniards, was at once begun. Guzman, just then at the head of affairs in New Spain, led northward a considerable expedition of Spanish soldiers and Indians, which suffered great hardships, but failed to discover Cibola.

Cabeza de Vaca and his fellow-adventurers claimed, upon their arrival, to have themselves seen the seven cities; and they enlarged on the previous stories. |Coronado's march.| Coronado, governor of the northern province of New Gallicia, was accordingly sent to conquer this wonderful country which Guzman had failed to find. Early in 1540 he set out with a well-equipped following of three hundred Spaniards and eight hundred Indians. The Cibola cities were found to be but pueblos in Arizona or New Mexico, like the communal dwellings of the Hopis and Zuñis, with the aspect of which we are so familiar to-day; while the mild inhabitants destitute of wealth, peacefully practising their crude industries and tilling their irrigated fields, were foemen hardly worthy of Castilian steel. Disappointed, but still hoping to find the country of gold, Coronado's gallant little army, frequently thinned by death and desertion, beat for three years up and down the southwestern wilderness,—now thirsting in the deserts, now penned up in gloomy cañons, now crawling over pathless mountains, suffering the horrors of starvation and of despair, but following this will-o'-the-wisp with a melancholy perseverance seldom seen in man save when searching for some mysterious treasure. Coronado apparently crossed the State of Kansas twice; "through mighty plains and sandy heaths, smooth and wearisome and bare of wood.... All that way the plains are as full of crookback oxen as the mountain Serena in Spain is of sheep.... They were a great succor for the hunger and want of bread which our people stood in. One day it rained in that plain a great shower of hail as big as oranges, which caused many tears, weaknesses, and vows." The wanderer ventured as far as the Missouri, and would have gone still farther eastward but for his inability to cross the swollen river. Co-operating parties explored the upper valleys of the Rio Grande and Gila, ascended the Colorado for two hundred and forty miles above its mouth, and visited the Grand Cañon of the same river. Coronado at last returned, satisfied that he had been made the victim of travellers' idle tales. He was rewarded with contumely and lost his place as governor of New Gallicia; but his romantic march stands in history as one of the most remarkable exploring expeditions of modern times.

De Soto follows Narvaez.

Early in the summer of 1539 Hernando de Soto, the favorite of Pizarro in the conquest of Peru (1532), anchored his fleet in the bay of Espiritu Santo, Florida, determined to gain independent renown as the conqueror of the North American wilds. His was a much larger and better-equipped party than had subjugated either Mexico or Peru. But he met the fate of Narvaez. False Indian guides led him hither and thither through the swamps and moss-grown jungles of the Gulf region, and the survivors formed a sorry company indeed when the Mississippi River was reached (April, 1541),—probably at the lowest Chickasaw Bluff,—after two years of fruitless wandering. The next winter, still betrayed by his savage guides and harassed by attacks from other natives, he spent upon the Washita, but despairing of reaching Mexico by land, he returned to the Mississippi, where he died of swamp-fever (May 21, 1542). The great river he had discovered was his tomb. His wretched followers, by this time much reduced in numbers, descended the stream, and after great hardships finally reached the Mexican coast-settlements in September.

10. Spanish Colonies (1492-1687).

A half century had now passed since the advent of Columbus in the Bahamas; yet upon the mainland to the north, Spain as yet held neither harbor, fort, nor settlement. In the southwest, the proximity of Mexico and the milder character of the natives made it easier to maintain a settlement in what is now United States territory. |Spanish friars in the southwest.| In 1582, forty years after Coronado's march, Franciscan friars opened missions in the valleys of the Rio Grande and the Gila,—the Cibola of old. Sixteen years later (1598) Santa Fé was established as the seat of Spanish power in the north; by 1630 this power was at its highest in New Mexico and Arizona, fifty missions administering religious instruction to ninety Pueblo towns. In 1687 the chain of missions had reached the Gulf of California, and then slowly extended northward along the Pacific coast till San Francisco, with its system of Indian vassalage, was established in 1776. In Florida, after the extermination of the French Huguenot colony in 1564, Spain made wholesale claims to all that region; but De Gourgues dealt her settlements a staggering blow, and she seemed thereafter incapable of further colonizing the province. |Spain's American possessions at close of sixteenth century.| At the close of the sixteenth century Spain held but few points in what is now the United States,—Santa Fé in New Mexico, a few scattering missions along the Gila and Rio Grande, and St. Augustine in Florida.

11. The French in North America (1524-1550).

The French enter the field.

The French were not far behind the Spanish in their attempts to colonize North America. In 1524 John Verrazano, a Florentine in the employ of Francis I., while seeking the supposed water passage through America to China, explored the coast from about Wilmington, N. C., to Newfoundland. Ten years later (1534) Jacques Cartier, a St. Malo seaman, sailed up the north shore of the estuary of the St. Lawrence "until land could be seen on either side." |Cartier at Montreal;| The next year he was back again, and ascended to the first rapids at La Chine, naming the island mountain there, Mont-Réal. Having spent the winter in this inhospitable region, his reports were such as to discourage for a time further attempts at colonization in America by the French, who were just now engaged at home in serious difficulties with Spain.

A truce being at last declared between France and Spain, Cartier was made captain-general and chief pilot of an American colonizing expedition which Francis allowed the lord of Roberval to undertake. But this conflict of authority was distasteful to both Cartier and Roberval, and the former started off before his chief in May, 1541. |and Quebec.| He built a fort near Quebec, but a year later returned to France, just before Roberval arrived with reinforcements for the colony. The latter remained for a year in America before returning home, and it is thought that he visited Massachusetts Bay in his voyages alongshore. France was now ablaze with civil war, and the Huguenots, with their independent notions, were engaging all the resources of the royal power, so that further American discoveries were for the time postponed. The Newfoundland industry, however, grew apace, for the Church prescribed a fish diet on certain days and at certain seasons, and the consumption of salted fish in Europe had grown to be enormous. Breton vessels were from the first prominent in the traffic.

12. French Attempts to colonize Florida (1562-1568).

Coligny's colony at Port Royal.

Admiral Coligny, the great Huguenot leader, was ambitious to establish a colony of French Protestants in America which should be a refuge for his persecuted countrymen whenever it became desirable for them to seek new seats. Jean Ribaut went out under his auspices in 1562, discovered St. John's River in Florida, went up Broad River, named the country Carolina, after the boy-king, Charles IX., and left twenty-six colonists at Port Royal, on Lemon Island. But the settlers soon tired of their enterprise, and the following year set out for home. An English cruiser captured the party on the high sea when it was reduced to the last extremity for want of food. The more exhausted of the company were landed in France; the rest were taken to England.

Laudonnière in Florida.

The succeeding season (1564), another colonizing expedition, made up of Protestants, headed by René Goulaine de Laudonnière, and aided by the king, sought Carolina. Avoiding Port Royal as ill-omened, they established themselves on St. John's River. The emigrants were a dissolute set, as emigrants were apt to be in an age when the sweepings of European jails and gutters were thought to furnish good colonizing material for America. Laudonnière hung some of his followers for piracy against Spanish vessels; others were captured in the act by the Spaniards, and sold into slavery in the West Indies. What remained of the colony soon lost, through dishonesty and severity, the respect of the Indians, who had at first received the intruders kindly. When, in August, 1565, Sir John Hawkins, the noted slaver and navigator, appeared with his fleet, he was able to render the now half-starved settlers most needed help. Ribaut soon came also, with recruits, provisions, seeds, domestic animals, and farming implements, greatly to the joy of the little colony.

But this happiness was not of long duration. The attention of Philip II. of Spain was at length called to this colony of French heretics which was gaining a foothold upon his domain of Florida. |The Spanish massacre.| In August, 1565, his agent, Pedro Melendez de Aviles, appeared on the scene and announced his purpose to "gibbet and behead all the Protestants in these regions." Melendez established St. Augustine, which is thus the oldest town in the United States east of the Mississippi, and then with blood-thirsty deliberateness proceeded to wipe the French settlement out of existence. French writers claim that nine hundred persons were cruelly massacred; and the Spanish estimate is not far below that number.

A Gascon soldier, Dominic de Gourgues, soon came over (1567) to avenge the wrong done his fellow-Huguenots. |The Huguenots avenged.| He captured all the Spanish establishments left by Melendez, except St. Augustine. When he found, the following year, that he could not hold his prizes, he hung the Spanish prisoners to trees and hastened back to France. His king, however, being under the influence of Spain, disavowed this act of reprisal, and relinquished all further claim to Florida.

13. The French in Canada (1589-1608).

The colonial policy of Henri IV. (1589-1610) was more progressive and enlightened than that of his immediate predecessors on the throne of France. But he had not yet learned what succeeding generations were to discover to their cost,—that criminals and paupers do not make good colonists. |De la Roche's ill-fated venture.| In 1598 the familiar error was repeated, when the Marquis de la Roche took out a company of forty jail-birds, liberated for the purpose, and landed them on the dreary, storm-washed Isle of Sable, off the Nova Scotia coast, where, eighty years earlier (1518), the Baron de Léry had made a vain attempt to start a colony. La Roche, beggared on his return home, was unable to succor his colonists, who on their inhospitable sands lived more like beasts than men. Five years later the twelve skin-clad survivors were picked up by a chance vessel and taken back to France, to tell a tale of almost matchless horror.

Champlain's first voyage.

It was an age of licensed commercial monopolies, as well as of other economic experiments. In the year 1600 Chauvin obtained the exclusive right to prosecute the fur-trade in the New Land to the west, and united with him a St. Malo merchant, Pontgravé. They made two lucrative voyages, but established no settlement. Samuel de Champlain, in Pontgravé's company, went out in 1603, ascending the St. Lawrence as far as Montreal. |De Monts' colony.| Later (this same year) De Monts, a Calvinist, was given the viceroyalty and the fur-trade monopoly of Acadia,—between the fortieth and sixtieth degrees of latitude,—and religious freedom was granted there for Huguenots, though the Indians were to be instructed in the Romish faith. De Monts and his strangely assorted party of vagabonds and gentlemen first settled on an island, near the present boundary between Maine and New Brunswick, in the fall of 1604, but the following spring moved to Port Royal,—now Annapolis, Nova Scotia. This, the first French agricultural colony yet planted in America, suffered disaster after disaster; but although Port Royal was abandoned in 1607, the germ of colonization lived. |Quebec established.| In 1608, Champlain—who had, four years before, while in the employ of De Monts, explored the coast as far south as Cape Cod—set up a permanent French post upon the gloomy cliff at Quebec. Soon the Jesuits came; and by the time the "Mayflower" had reached New England, New France was established beyond a doubt, and French influence was penetrating inland. Wandering savages from the Upper Lakes, nearly a thousand miles in the interior, had at last seen the white man and begun to feel his power.

14. English Exploration (1498-1584).

English interests at Newfoundland.

England would have followed up Cabot's discovery of North America with more vigor had not Henry VII., being a Catholic prince, hesitated to set aside the Pope's bull giving the new continent to Spain. His subjects, however, made large hauls of fish along the foggy shores of Newfoundland, and in 1502 some American savages were exhibited to him in London. Henry VIII. was at first similarly scrupulous; but when, in 1533, he got rid of his queen, Catharine of Aragon, he was free from Spanish entanglements, and aspired to make England a maritime nation. Among many other enterprises the northwest passage allured him, although nothing came of his ventures in that direction. With the accession of Edward VI. (1547) a progressive era opened. The Newfoundland fisheries were now so effectively encouraged that by 1574, under Elizabeth, from thirty to fifty English ships were making annual trips to the Grand Banks.

Elizabeth's courtiers looking towards America.

The most popular ventures among the nobles of Elizabeth's court were the northwest passage, American colonization, and freebooting voyages. Writers of voyages and travels and cartographers sprang up on every hand, the most noteworthy being Richard Eden, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Richard Hakluyt, and Martin Frobisher. Patronized by the powerful Earl of Warwick, Frobisher in three successive voyages (1576-1578) vainly sought gold in Labrador. Francis Drake, on his famous buccaneering tour around the world, explored the Pacific coast of the United States as far north as Cape Blanco (1579), unsuccessfully searching for a short cut by water through the continent.

Gilbert's voyage.

Gilbert saw that Newfoundland must thereafter be considered as the nucleus of English settlement in America; and in 1579 Sir Humphrey, himself a soldier and a member of Parliament, accompanied by his step-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, went out to lead the way. Storms and other disasters drove them back, and it was 1583 before another squadron could be equipped. Raleigh remained in England; but Gilbert landed at St. John's, where he found that four hundred vessels of various nationalities, mainly Spanish and Portuguese, were annually engaged in the fisheries. He took possession of the island for the queen, examined the neighboring mainland, and freighted his ships with glistening rock, ignorantly declared by an unskilful expert accompanying the expedition to contain silver. Upon the return voyage the vessel carrying Gilbert was lost, the companion ship, with its worthless cargo, reaching Falmouth safely.

15. English Attempts to colonize (1584-1606).

Amadas and Barlowe.

Under Raleigh's auspices two vessels set out in 1584, commanded by Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe. They landed at the island of Roanoke, the southernmost of the reefs enclosing Albemarle Sound, in North Carolina; but although charmed with the country, which they declared to be "the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful, and wholesome of all the world," and well treated by the Indians,—"people most gentle, loving, and faithful,"—they made no settlement, and returned to England. Raleigh, however, was pleased by the reports brought back; he was knighted, his claim was confirmed, he named the country Virginia, in token of his virgin queen, and he entertained visions of establishing a considerable province there, and of enjoying a comfortable rent-roll.

Raleigh's first colony.

In 1585, aided by the queen, he sent out seven vessels and one hundred and eight colonists, the fleet being commanded by Sir Richard Grenville, and the intending settlers by Ralph Lane, a soldier of much merit. Few maritime enterprises were sent out by England in the Elizabethan age that did not include in their orders a project for preying on Spanish commerce by the way; for our ancestors were as yet not far removed in this regard from the spirit of the old Norse pirates. Grenville therefore sailed around by the Canaries, picked up Spanish prizes partly to meet the cost of the undertaking, and in due time anchored at Wocoken, whence he proceeded to Roanoke island.

With the colonists was Manteo, a native who had gone to England with some former expedition; and the good-natured fellow secured for his new friends a warm reception on the part of the aborigines. But Grenville before his return treated them harshly, leaving to them and the colonists a legacy of mutual distrust and grievances. In March, 1586, Lane ascended the Roanoke River, hoping to find rich ores and pearls in the upper country; for the deceitful savages, wishing to divide the white men's forces, had told him that the stream had its source near the western ocean, in a country abounding with these articles, and encouraged his expedition with promises of assistance. The enterprise proved full of hardship and peril, and the governor returned just in time to check a conspiracy to attack the garrison.

Lane had employed his men in frequent explorations, their journeyings reaching on the north to Chesapeake Bay and Elizabeth River, on the south to the Secotan. But the situation became irksome. The spirit of adventure and wealth-seeking prevailed among the colonists; it was not a community calculated for the uneventful and toilsome prosecution of agriculture; and before long the fretful disease of homesickness prevailed on the island of Roanoke.

In June, 1586, Sir Francis Drake appeared with twenty-three vessels. He had made a rich haul from Spanish treasure-ships in the West Indies, and had turned aside on his return trip, curious to see how his friend Raleigh's colony fared. Yielding to the importunities of the settlers, he took them aboard his fleet and carried them back to England. |The enterprise abandoned.| They had been gone from Roanoke but a few days, when a ship, bringing supplies sent out by Raleigh, sailed into the inlet, only to find the place deserted. In another fortnight, Grenville appeared with three well-furnished ships, and left fifteen men on the island to renew the colonizing experiment.

Raleigh displayed most remarkable persistence. He was undismayed by this long chapter of disasters. |Raleigh's second attempt.| Men on whose judgment he relied brought back good reports from the site of the ill-fated colony, and again he fitted out an expedition,—this time entirely at his own charge, for Elizabeth had had enough of the experiment. It was in July, 1587, when John White arrived with Raleigh's new colonists off the shores of North Carolina. At Roanoke, deer were quietly grazing in a field fertilized by the bones of Grenville's contingent of the year before, and the fort was in ruins. Governor White re-established the settlement.

Birth of Virginia Dare.

The 18th of August the daughter of White, Eleanor Dare, gave birth to a daughter, called Virginia, after the country,—the first child of English parents born on the soil of the United States. A few days later, White left for England,—ostensibly for recruits and supplies, the colony which he left behind being composed of eighty-nine men, seventeen women, and two children. But England was now threatened with invasion from Spain; the energy and resources of the island were being mustered in its defence; Raleigh, Drake, Grenville, Frobisher, Hawkins, and the rest were engaged in preparing to resist the enemy. It was no time for colonization schemes. The Armada scattered, the father of English colonization in America found himself ruined, having spent £40,000 in his several fruitless ventures. Still hopeful, he next adopted a scheme of making large grants in Virginia to merchants and adventurers, and in this manner obtained some aid.

Wreck of the colony.

In 1591 White returned to Roanoke, to find it again deserted, with no traces of his daughter or of the other colonists. They had probably been overcome by the Indians, and those whose lives were spared adopted into the neighboring tribes. In spite of the many costly attempts, the sixteenth century closed with no English settlement on the shores of America.

Causes of English failures thus far.

Among the principal causes of this early failure in Virginia were the improper character and spirit of the emigrants, who, instead of looking to the soil as the chief source of supplies, expected to find rich mines, or tribes possessing gold, and relied upon England for the necessaries of life; they had not enough occupation to keep them from brooding over their isolation, and by their harshness they turned the Indians into harassing enemies.

Gosnold's voyages.

Bartholomew Gosnold has had the reputation of being the first mariner who set out for America on a direct voyage from England, thus avoiding the West Indies and the Spanish, and saving nearly a thousand miles; but others before him had taken the direct course,—notably Verrazano (1524). |Pring in Maine, and Weymouth at Cape Cod.| In 1602, while trading with the Indians, Gosnold explored the coast from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, to the Elizabeth Islands, on his way landing upon and naming Cape Cod. The following year Martin Pring discovered many harbors and rivers in Maine. In 1605 George Weymouth, sent by the Earl of Southampton and Lord Arundel, explored from Cape Cod northward. He carried back with him several kidnapped natives, three of whom he gave to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, governor of the English port of Plymouth. |Gorges becomes interested.| Gorges was particularly struck with the reported abundance of good harbors in the north, compared with the scarcity of such in Virginia and Carolina, and became at once strongly interested in New England exploration.

Public attention in England had by this time become strongly attracted to the northern region as probably the most desirable for future experiments in colonization; it was pointed out with much force that the lack of good anchorage was one of the reasons why the southern attempts had failed. Conditions in England, too, had at last so changed as to make it possible to undertake colonization with better assurances of success. But New England was not destined to be the site of the first permanent plantation. That honor was reserved for what is now Virginia.

16. The Experience of the Sixteenth Century (1492-1606).

Sixteenth century notable for interest in discovery and settlement.

In reviewing the period from 1492 to 1606,—practically the sixteenth century,—we see that it was notable for the extraordinary interest displayed in discovery and settlement. Attention has been called to the part played by the general desire of Europeans to secure the trade of India. But we must not forget as well that, as a feature of the great Renaissance and Reformation movement, the spirit of investigation was abroad, in religion, philosophy, and the arts; there had grown up great commercial and trading cities, in which the successful foreign merchant became a part of a powerful aristocracy; popular imagination had been fired by traders' stories of India, China, and Japan; there was an eagerness to reach out into the regions of mystery, to enlarge the horizon of human knowledge. The effect was greatly to increase skill in navigation, to build up a merchant marine, and—it being an age of universal freebooting—to cultivate an experience in naval warfare which was a preparation for the great sea-fights of the eighteenth century.

Of the three nations which, in the sixteenth century, attempted to colonize America north of the Gulf of Mexico, all had practically failed. Spain had with comparative ease conquered the unwarlike natives of Mexico and Peru upon their cultivated plains. |Causes of failure in North American colonization.| That very ease took away the disposition, even had her people been capable of the effort, slowly and painfully to subdue the tangled forests and savage warriors of Florida, with no other promise of reward than the possession of unredeemed soil. Not suited to the task, she utterly wasted alike the resources of the home government applicable to colonization, and those of the established colonies. France had failed because of dissensions at home, inferior powers of organization, the want of the proper colonizing temper, and the severity of the climate in that portion of the New World which she had seized upon as the seat of her colonies. English colonization thus far had been unproductive because there was a want of understanding of the difficulties, because of the selection of colonists who lacked experience in agriculture, because poor harbors were generally chosen, because there was difficulty in keeping up communications with the mother-land, because the resident leaders lacked courage and had not the staying qualities which were in after years the salvation of the Plymouth Pilgrims. But the effect of these early English efforts was important in giving the people needed training in navigation and colonization, and a knowledge of the country.

European claims in America, 1600.

Taking a general view of America at the close of the sixteenth century, we find Spain in undisputed possession of Peru, Central America, the country west and northwest of the Gulf of Mexico, the greater part of the West Indies, and the coast of what is now Florida; while they claimed all of the southern third of the present United States and the greater part of South America, except Guiana and Brazil. The French laid claim to the basin of the St. Lawrence and to the coast northward and southward, but their colonies were not as yet permanently planted; the attempts to make Huguenot settlements in Brazil (1555) and Florida had been unsuccessful, and French claims there had been abandoned under Spanish influence. It was not until 1609, when Hudson sailed up the river named for him, that the Dutch laid any claims to American soil. Cabral discovered Brazil for the Portuguese in 1500; but when Portugal, eighty years later, became the dependency of Spain (a condition lasting sixty years), her South American colonies were harried by the Dutch, though she did not relinquish control of them. The English claimed all the North American coast from Newfoundland to Florida, and of course through to the Pacific, no one then entertaining the belief that the continent was many hundred miles in width; but as yet none of their colonizing efforts had been successful. The Bermudas, Bahamas, and Barbados were neither claimed nor settled by Englishmen until the seventeenth century. The great Mississippi basin had been visited by a few Spanish overland wanderers, but as yet was practically forgotten and unclaimed, except so far as it was included in the undefined Spanish and English transcontinental zones; the Hudson Bay country, Oregon, and Alaska were also undiscovered lands. A few thousand miles of American coast-line were now familiar to European explorers; but of the interior of the continent scarcely more was known than might be seen over the tree-tops from the mast-head of a caravel.

CHAPTER III.

COLONIZATION AND THE COLONISTS.

17. References.

Bibliographies.—C. Lucas, Introduction to Historical Geography of British Colonies, vii., viii.; Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, III., V.; Larned, Literature of American History, 67-76; Avery, United States, II. 409-411; E. Greene, Provincial America, ch. xix.; Channing and Hart, Guide, §§ 92, 104, 110.

Historical Maps.—No. 2, this volume (Epoch Maps, No. [2]); MacCoun, Winsor, and Avery.

General Accounts.—Colonization: Lucas, as above (colonial policies of the European states); J. Seeley, Expansion of England, chs. iii., iv.; A. Smith, Wealth of Nations, chapter "Of Colonies"; H. Morris, History of Colonization; A. Snow, Administration of Dependencies, chs. i.-v.—English movement: G. Beer, Origin of British Colonial System; H. Merivale, Colonization and the Colonies; H. Egerton, Short History of British Colonial Policy, and Origin and Growth of English Colonies; W. Woodward, Expansion of British Empire; C. Dilke, Greater Britain, and Problems of Greater Britain; E. Creasy, Imperial and Colonial Constitutions; Mill, Colonial Constitutions; J. Toner, Colonies of North America; J. Marsden, Early Puritans.—Free institutions imported by American colonists, and colonial government generally: Greene, Provincial Governor; E. Eggleston, Transit of Civilization, and Beginners of a Nation; A. Low, American People; Wilson, The State, §§ 832-864; E. Freeman, English People in its Three Homes, lecture vi.; H. Taylor, English Constitution, 15-48; Channing, Town and County Government; C. Bishop, History of Elections in the Colonies.

Contemporary Accounts.—Published records (chiefly by historical societies) of the several American colonies. See also Hakluyt, Voyages; Holinshed, Chronicles.—Reprints: E. Arber, Pilgrim Colonists; A. Brown, Genesis of United States; W. Macdonald, Documentary Source Book of American History; American History told by Contemporaries, I. part iii.

18. Colonial Policy of European States.

The time had now come for making the first permanent English settlement in America. Before we proceed to the story of that famous enterprise, however, it will be well hastily to summarize the colonial policies of those European States which have at various times established plantations in the New World. It will be well also to know what sort of people were the seed of English colonization, and what institutions they brought with them as the foundations of American commonwealths.

Motives of colonization.

Four motives, working either singly or conjointly, lead to colonization,—the spirit of adventurous enterprise, the desire for wealth, economic or political discontent, and religious sentiment. For instance, Columbus was quite as much a religious enthusiast desirous of spreading the gospel in new lands as he was an adventurer; the southern group of English colonies in America was in the main the outgrowth of a trading spirit working in conjunction with economic distress in England; and the Puritan migration to New England was impelled by economic and political causes, as well as by religious.

Colonization is the expansion of the parent State, though early viewed as a source of revenue to it.

In a large sense the planting of a colony means merely the expansion of the parent State. But this was not the view formerly taken by European governments. For a long time colonies were treated as dependencies of the mother-country, existing chiefly to furnish revenue to the latter, either directly in taxes or indirectly in increased trade. It was because the English colonists in America, taking a broad view of their relationship to Great Britain, wished to be treated as free Englishmen in Greater Britain, and not merely as revenue-producing subjects, that they revolted in 1776. Colonial history is nearly everywhere the history of this obtuseness of vision on the part of the home government, and it is full of most painful details.

19. Spanish and Portuguese Policy.

Spain.

It chanced that the American discoveries made by Spain were in the region of rich and physically weak nations. Consequently she won her vast dominions on this continent by sweeping conquest rather than by commercial growth. This was in sharp contrast with the slow, steady planting of New England, where the settlers were obliged to conquer a sterile soil and brave a rigid climate, where they were hemmed about with savage neighbors who disputed their establishment, and where they met as well the sharp opposition, first of the Dutch, and then of the French,—the latter, in their desire for the Mississippi valley, jealously endeavoring to restrict Englishmen to the Atlantic slope. The Spaniards were brave, and they could rule with severity. But they thirsted for adventure, conquest, and wealth, for which their appetite was early encouraged; their progress in Mexico, Peru, and the West Indies had been too rapid and brilliant for them to be satisfied with the dull life and patient development of an agricultural colony. Had they known in advance the conditions of success on the North American mainland, it is probable that we should never have been obliged to chronicle the splendid but disastrous expeditions of Narvaez and De Soto. They would doubtless have made no attempt to subdue a land which offered nothing for such appetites as theirs. Their aims were sordid, their State was loosely knit, their commercial policy was rigidly exclusive, their morals were lax, and their treatment of the savages was cruel, despite the tendency of the colonists to amalgamate with the latter, and thus to descend in the scale of civilization. The effect of the specie so easily acquired in Mexico and Peru was to make Spain rapidly rich without manufactures; but her people were thereby demoralized and unfitted for the ordinary channels of employment, and her rulers were corrupted and enfeebled; in the end the country was impoverished, declining as rapidly as it had risen. Spain's glory was fast waning both in the New and the Old World at the close of the sixteenth century, and France was ready, in the march of events, to succeed to her place as the leading nation of Europe. France was to be supplanted a century later by England, which was not known as a great power until the dispersion of the Armada. We have seen that in this historical progress Spain unwittingly helped England by driving the French out from Florida and Carolina; nevertheless the decline of Spain left France the most formidable rival of the English.

Portugal.

The Portuguese, though impelled by a similar passion for conquest, were more eager for trade than their powerful and often domineering Spanish neighbors. They oppressed their colonies, were greedy in their commercial strivings, maltreated the weak natives of Brazil and the West Indies, lacked administrative ability and the spirit of progress, and suffered from want of a well-balanced colonial system. The Portuguese colonies in America had much the same history as the Spanish, their situation being similar. Brazil was of no great importance until the early years of the nineteenth century, and made herself independent in 1822,—thus following the lead of Mexico, which set up an independent government the previous year.

20. French Policy.

France.

France had no permanent colonies in America before the seventeenth century. Port Royal was planted in 1604, and Quebec not until four years later. The French were good fighters, enterprising, and while not eager to colonize, were capable of adapting themselves to new conditions; they had the capacity to carry their ideas with them across the seas, and they readily assimilated with the aborigines. While freely intermarrying with the natives, unlike the Spaniards they rather improved the savage stock than were degraded by it. They had the faculty of making the red barbarian a boon companion, and of inducing him to serve them and fight for them; indeed, since their colonizing enterprises were based on the fur-trade, their opposition to the advance of English agricultural possession was, like that of the Indians, fundamental. The French and the savages were therefore united in a common cause against a common foe.

The Breton and Norman merchant-seamen who went out to Newfoundland and carried on fisheries and the fur-trade paved the way for the future throng of emigrants. As colonizers the French worked quietly and persistently, and would have succeeded, had not their enterprises been ruined by their unfortunate political and ecclesiastical policy and the mismanagement of their rulers. Louis XIV. was capricious and extravagant. His court was a nest of intrigue, corruption, peculation, jealousies, and dissensions. The Huguenots, who represented the industrial classes, began the French colonization of America; but we have seen how sadly their government neglected them in Florida. Finally, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) resulted in driving them from home, and they were eager to join their lot with that of their countrymen in Canada, priest-rule prescribed their deliberate exclusion from the colonies,—which they could have made a New France in fact,—and thus forced them to contribute their strength to the rival English settlements farther down the coast. The government was in some respects over-liberal to its North American colonies,—it aided them financially to an extent unknown elsewhere; but they were not self-governed, and the king continually interfered with the commercial companies, which in a large measure controlled the colonies, so that a favor granted through corrupt influences to-day might to-morrow be revoked by counter-influences equally corrupt. Paternalism, centralization, bureaucratic government, official rottenness, instability of system, religious exclusiveness, and a vicious system of land-tenure were the prime causes of the ruin of New France; although we must not forget that the centre of its power had been planted in an inhospitable climate, and that its far-reaching water-system tempted the inhabitants into the forests and cultivated the fur-trade at the expense of agriculture, thereby placing the province at a disadvantage from the start.

21. Dutch and Swedish Policy.

Holland.

The burden of over-population with which Spain, France, and Portugal were troubled, and to relieve the pressure of which was one of the motives of their colonizing efforts, was not felt by Holland; for despite the fact that she sustained a more dense population than any other European State, her citizens were prosperous. They were not stirred, like neighboring peoples, by the impulse of emigration. Preeminently a trading nation, Holland sought commerce rather than extension of empire. Long the chief carrier of Europe before striking into a broader field, she followed in the steps of the Portuguese, and by the opening of the seventeenth century took rank as a colonizing power. Her most fruitful labors were in the East rather than in the West. It was in the attempt to find the northwest passage to India that Hudson discovered the river which bears his name. With the Dutch, though religious reformers, religion was secondary to trade. So long as trade was good, they were patient under insult and outrage. Individually they made but little impress upon the community. Commerce was chiefly conducted through large chartered companies, minutely managed in Holland. Dutch colonies declined because their commercial system was non-progressive and unsound; they appear to have been unable to rise out of the trader state. Yet we must not forget that Holland was of small size and had overbearing, jealous neighbors; her long and heroic struggle with Spain tended greatly to delay her efforts to trade in and colonize the New World.

Sweden.

The Swedish colony on the Delaware was planned by authority of Gustavus Adolphus on broad, liberal principles; he hoped it would become "the jewel of his kingdom." But while it throve for a time and gave much promise of endurance, the Dutch soon overpowered it. Had the Swedish monarch lived to carry out the design, doubtless he would have proved that Scandinavians could successfully maintain an independent province in the New World. Like the Germans, however, they have in later years been in the main content to colonize as the subjects of foreign governments.

22. English Policy.

England.

England remains the only country which planted populous colonies within the present United States and retained them long after they were planted. Her insular position and fine harbors have given her a race of sailors; her climate has proved favorable for rearing a hardy people, who, secure in their boundaries and not necessarily entangled in Continental affairs, have been left free to develop and to push independent enterprises. As regards American exploration, the fact that England is the westernmost State in Europe had at first much to do with her pre-eminence. Until the close of the sixteenth century England's resources were slender, and her government was not desirous of incurring the hostility of stronger European neighbors by poaching too freely on their colonial preserves. Cabot went out at his own cost. Drake's operations, while adding to the glory of England, and directly favored by Queen Elizabeth, were continually endangering her with Spain. But in the face of all discouragements, the sixteenth century was a notable training period for English sea-rovers. The records of the age are aglow with the deeds of the Cabots, Frobisher, Davis, Drake, Cavendish, Gilbert, Raleigh, Grenville, and their like, who, while invariably failing in their persistent efforts at colonization, were charting the American coast-line, making the New World familiar to their countrymen, and striking out shorter paths across the Atlantic. At first outstripped by other European nations, England was becoming one of the principal maritime powers when the seventeenth century began. Spain, weakened by the defection of the Netherlands, and still further humiliated by the defeat of the Armada (1588), was by this time showing evidences of decay, and France was the growing rival in the West.

English occupation in North America, like the French, began with the fishermen who, following in Cabot's wake, early sought the banks of Newfoundland. |The English trading spirit.| They were courageous, businesslike men, who soon supplemented their calling as fishermen with a profitable native trade in peltries. The trading spirit has always been deeply implanted in the Teutonic races; when England had gathered sufficient strength to make it discreet to assert herself, we find that her reachings out for wider territory took the shape of commercial enterprise. The romantic adventurers of the age of Elizabeth, as much freebooters as explorers, were now succeeded by prosaic trading companies, which undertook to plant colonies along the Atlantic coast. In doing this they were impelled in part by a desire to relieve England from some of her surplus population; but in the main the colonies were to serve as trading and supply stations.

Scanty State aid.

In aiding these corporations, which succeeded after a fashion in planting colonies, but failed for the most part in reaping profits, the State expected increased revenue rather than the spread of European civilization. In England, State assistance to such undertakings was always slight and uncertain; the strength of the early colonies lay in the wealth and persistence of their promoters.

23. Character of English Emigrants.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were full of trouble for the English people. |English impulse to emigration.| Religious restlessness was succeeded by revolution and civil war, while crude and oppressive economic conditions induced lawless disturbance and disaster. Colonizing schemes were readily taken up in such times of unrest. At first the notion prevailed that the colonies might profitably be utilized for clearing the mother-country of jail-birds and paupers, although with these went out many who were worthy pioneers. It remained for the Plymouth planting to demonstrate that only the honest and thrifty can work out the salvation of a wilderness. America attracted the attention alike of traders and settlers because its soil was supposed to be rich, because the climate was temperate and not unlike that of England, because there was plenty of room, and because the unknown land attracted the adventurous.

Englishmen as colonists.

Englishmen were soon found to be the best colonizers in the world. An intelligent, large, well-built, and handsome race, active in a high degree and passionately fond of out-door life and manly sports, they are brave and enterprising, will fight for supremacy, are tenacious of purpose, and carry with them in their migrations their ideas, their customs, and their laws. |Their characteristics,| They do not assimilate with other races,—in fact, there is inbred in them a strong disdain of foreigners, and still more of inferior races; but they rule with vigor, and make a lasting impress of their characteristics upon the communities they establish. Although Englishmen in the seventeenth century, when they colonized America, lacked many of the refinements of civilization, were coarse in their tastes and sentiments, and much given to dissipation and petty vices, a fibre of robust morality ran through the national life. The leaders were educated, they were ambitious for their race, and there was a healthy tone to their patriotic aspirations. Simple and reserved in manner, they prided themselves on repressing the utterance of their feelings, entering upon the serious business of rearing a nation in the wilds with most becoming gravity. Their conduct was often bad, but they were schooled in piety and reverence, and were steadfast in high aims.

They had been trained in self-government, and were sticklers for healthy political precedents. They were the heirs of grim and sturdy Teutonic ancestors who knew no rule but that imposed by "the armed assembly of the whole people." The germs of modern English free and representative institutions are to be plainly traced in the forest councils of the Germanic tribes. In the succeeding ages these institutions had grown irregularly, but it was a growth founded on the irresistible will of the people; |and their free institutions.| they had descended to the men of the seventeenth century as the sacred heirlooms of generations which had freely spent blood and treasure for the rights of all Englishmen to come. The principle and habit of self-government were deep rooted in the heart of every English commoner; it was a part of his nature. And this principle, this habit, he brought with him to America. English institutions were merely transplanted to the New World, where they developed with perhaps greater rapidity than at home,—certainly on somewhat different and characteristic lines; but they were and still are English institutions.

24. Local Government in the Colonies.

The English town

The primary local body in the England which these first colonists to America knew, was the parish, or town, which had both an ecclesiastical and a temporal jurisdiction. Next above the parishes was the territorial division known as the county, with an independent magistracy and a judicial and military organization adapted to the needs of a large rural area. In making independent settlements on the American coast, the English commercial companies and proprietors were not establishing states; what they planted were but the germs of states. |and county.| Each detached colony had a distinct life, and it was natural that, despite the general rules of government established by the companies, the people should proceed at once to govern themselves in their local affairs upon either the town or the county plan, according to circumstances. The flexibility of English representative institutions has never elsewhere been so well illustrated as in the different forms they took on in the American colonies, without once departing from the integrity of historic models.

The county the political unit in the Southern colonies;

In the Southern colonies the country was traversed by deep, broad river highways, leading far inland; the climate was genial, the savages proved comparatively friendly, and the introduction of slavery tended to foster an aristocratic class of landed proprietors,—large plantations, therefore, were the rule. There were a few small trading villages, but the bulk of the people were isolated, and township governments were impracticable. The settlers therefore adopted a primary government akin to the English rural county, having jurisdiction over a wide tract of country, with a commander of militia, appointed by the governor and styled a lieutenant, whose duties and authority were similar to those of the lords-lieutenant at home; judicial powers being exercised by eight or more gentlemen, also appointed by the governor, serving as a county court. It should be remembered that the Southern county was not, as in England, a group of towns,—it was itself the primary organization. The parish was sometimes, in newly settled portions, co-extensive with the county; but more often the latter was, for religious purposes, divided into parishes, the vestries of which had authority in some civil matters. Again, for the purposes of tax levy and collection, the county was divided into precincts; and in some districts conditions were such—among them the hostility of the savages—that the people of each plantation or small neighborhood assembled for worship by themselves, and thus became recognized as a separate community, in some matters self-governed. These differences in local organization account for the terms "plantation," "congregation," and "hundred," often met with in early Southern records. The tendency of the Southern political and social system was to concentrate power in the hands of a few men, in sharp distinction to the New England plan, where the people governed themselves in small primary assemblies, only delegating the conduct of details to their agents, the town officers.

and the town in New England.

In New England, the narrowness of the Atlantic slope, the shortness of the rivers, the severe climate, the hostility of the savages, the neighborhood of the French, the density of the forests, and the fact that each community was an organized religious congregation,—people belonging to one church, who had "resolved to live together,"—led to the establishment of more or less compact communities, called towns; and these were the political and ecclesiastical units. Since the conditions were changed, some features of the English parish were modified to suit the more primitive necessities of life in the wilderness. |Unconscious reversion to older Teutonic forms.| Thus we find that here and there in New England was a reversion to older Teutonic forms, although of this significant fact the colonists themselves were unaware; for the now familiar truth that the ancestry of our institutions reaches back to the beginnings of the race, had not then been discovered. Not only was the English town government practically reproduced on American soil, with such changes as were adapted to the new environment, but the titles of the town officials were, in many cases, borrowed from the mother-land. When the first town meeting was held, English local government had been successfully grafted upon the New World.

The mixed system in the middle colonies.

In the middle colonies, which partook of the climatic characteristics of both their Northern and Southern neighbors, and had a population made up of various nationalities, there were compact trading towns as well as large agricultural regions; and there we find a mixed system, of both townships and counties.

Differences only in form.

With all these differences in form, the principle at work was the same. From the beginning the American colonists were hampered in the work of their general assemblies, at first by commercial companies, and then by royal and proprietary interference; nevertheless, in the conduct of their purely local affairs they often exercised a greater degree of freedom than their brethren in England. It is the purpose of this and succeeding volumes to show how, amid many shiftings, unions, and divisions, these isolated, self-governing English colonies, planted independently here and there in the American wilds, unconscious of the great future before them, were, by an orderly, logical progression of events, the trend of which was often not noticeable to the men of the time, successfully merged, at first into states, and finally into a nation.

25. Colonial Governments.

Social distinctions.

The colonists were accustomed in England to specific ranks and orders of society. In America, while there were from the first sharp social distinctions, the fact that the great body of the settlers began life in the wilderness side by side, on an equal basis, was favorable to a democratic sentiment. Nobility was connected, in English minds, with great landed estates, of which there were few in America outside of Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, and New York. Under Locke's constitution it was attempted by the proprietaries formally to divide Carolina society into groups, with hereditary titles; but the project could not be carried out. Nevertheless, Southern society was in the main as distinctly stratified, after the introduction of slavery, as though titles had existed. New England life was calculated strongly to foster the spirit of independence; and the slave class was not large enough materially to affect social conditions. Still, there was an acknowledged and respected aristocracy, founded on ancestry, education, commercial success, and individual merit, but lacking staying qualities; for it had neither large estates nor primogeniture to back it. The scheme of Lord Brooke, Lord Say and Sele, and others, to introduce hereditary rank in Massachusetts (1636) fortunately failed to receive popular approval.

Colonial governors.

Used as they were to the exercise of the royal prerogative, the colonists accepted the free exercise by the governors of the privileges of appointment and veto, whether those officials were selected by the Crown or by proprietaries. In addition to these privileges, the governor of a royal colony was the bearer of royal instructions and the medium of royal directions; he was the executive officer, the granter of pardons (except in capital cases), the commander of the military and naval forces, the head of the established church, and the chief of the judiciary; and he could summon, prorogue, and dissolve the assembly. The assembly held the purse-strings, however, and the actual power of the governor was consequently in a great degree curtailed. The record of colonial politics is largely made up of disputes between the representatives and the executive, in which the assembly usually won by withholding supplies until the governor came to its terms.

The judiciary.

The judiciary system was alike in no two colonies, but there were certain resemblances in all. There were commonly local justices of the peace, with jurisdiction limited to petty civil cases; sometimes these were elected by the freeholders of the district, but generally they were appointed by the governor. Then came the county courts, the members of which were appointees of the governor, except in New Jersey, where they were elected. These county judges were representative gentlemen, and not trained in the law. They had criminal jurisdiction except in capital cases, and final jurisdiction in civil cases not involving large amounts; the limit was £20 in Virginia and £2 in Maryland, and elsewhere between these extremes. Next was the provincial, supreme, or general court: ordinarily this was composed of the governor, as chancellor, and the members of his council; but in several colonies this colonial court was a separate body, appointed by the governor, who, with his council, constituted a still higher court of appeals and chancery. From the highest courts a suitor could, in important cases, carry his appeal to the king in council. The common and statute law of England prevailed when provincial law was silent on the subject. Sometimes questions arose upon the validity of provincial statutes: when the courts found that they were not in accordance with the charter, they declared them void; but the matter could be carried to the English Privy Council for ultimate decision. This was the germ of the power of the United States Supreme Court to decide on the constitutionality of a law.

Charters.

At first American territory was granted to chartered commercial companies,—notably the Virginia Company and the Council for New England,—which sought to control their colonies from England, under the supervision of the Crown. The Virginia colony was early deprived of its charter by the Crown (1624); but members of the Massachusetts Company boldly emigrated to America, and taking advantage of the confusion in England, kept up a practically independent state for two generations; though at last (1692) the people were obliged to accept a new charter establishing a royal governor. The colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut obtained charters direct from England, with privileges of self-government, and lived under them till long after they had become States. New Hampshire, after having been governed by Massachusetts, became a royal province without having passed through the charter or proprietary stage. The other colonies were proprietary, but all finally reverted to the Crown. Maryland and Pennsylvania and Delaware were still proprietary at the outbreak of the Revolution, having been restored to the proprietors after reversion.

Two houses.

The two houses of Parliament had made the colonists accustomed to the bicameral system. In Virginia under company management the corporation council in England served in a measure as the upper house, with powers of general direction. In Massachusetts (where the company was technically resident in the colony), and in the proprietary and royal colonies as well, there was for a long time but one house. Finally, often as the result of dissensions between the deputies and the officials, the former came to sit apart,—the colonies thus in most cases returning to the English system of two houses; but the council was small, and had administrative functions which made it very different from the House of Lords. These colonial assemblies were schools for the cultivation of the spirit of independence. Burke said the colonists "had formed within themselves, either by royal instruction or royal charter, assemblies so exceedingly resembling a parliament in all their forms, functions, and powers that it was impossible they should not imbibe some opinion of a similar authority."

26. Privileges of the Colonists.

The suffrage.

Electoral qualifications varied greatly. In the consideration of this, as well as of other institutions, Massachusetts and Virginia must be taken as types of opposite systems, the other colonies departing more or less from them, according to proximity. Originally in Massachusetts, "any person inhabiting within the town" could vote at town-meetings; later, with the arrival of objectionable immigrants, this privilege was restricted (1634) to freemen,—practically all the members of the church,—and still later (1691), to "the possessors of an estate of freehold in land to the value of 40s. per annum, or other estate to the value of £40." In Virginia, at the start, all freemen were allowed to vote. But it was afterwards decided (1670) that the "usuall way of chuseing burgesses by the votes of all persons who, haveing served their time, are freemen of this country," was detrimental to the colony; and the principle was laid down that "a voyce in such election" should be given "only to such as by their estates, real or personall, have interest enough to tye them to the endeavour of the publique good." By the beginning of the eighteenth century a freehold test obtained in most, if not in all, the colonies. In 1746 Parliament added a further qualification, in the guise of a general naturalization law, providing that a voter must have resided seven years in his colony, taken the oath of allegiance, and professed the "Protestant Christian faith."

Representation.

The principle of representation, by which a few are charged with acting and speaking for the many in the conduct of public affairs, has been familiar to Englishmen since the time when a parliament was convoked during the contest between John and the barons (1213). The practice was adopted early in the history of the colonies,—the first house of burgesses of Virginia meeting in 1619; while in Massachusetts, the refusal of Watertown (1632) to be taxed without representation caused the adoption of the plan of sending deputies to the General Court. The American colonial assemblies were more truly representative of the great body of the people than the English Parliament of the period; to-day, male suffrage is nearly universal in England, and entirely so in all the British dependencies, with the exception of the Crown colonies.

Rights of the colonists.

In the American colonies the execution of the laws was as a rule comparatively an easy task. The English colonists had been trained in the political art of self-control; they had an abounding regard for just laws and the courts; they respected precedent, and stoutly stood for the common law, or recognized customs of their race. They were restive under statutes which conflicted with the customary rights of Englishmen, which had come down to them from the earliest times, and had been confirmed by Magna Charta. These rights had not been strictly observed by the Tudor sovereigns, and many of the earlier settlers had in the mother-country assisted in agitation for their renewal. Now that they were transplanted to America, the struggle was continued at long range with the Stuarts, thus developing in the colonists a habit of resistance which was to stand them in good stead in the troublous period leading up to the American Revolution.

CHAPTER IV.

THE COLONIZATION OF THE SOUTH. (1606-1700.)

27. References.

Bibliographies.—S. Kingsbury, Introduction to Records of Virginia Company, 207-214; P. Bruce, Economic History of Virginia, I. xv.-xix.; N. Mereness, Maryland, 521-524; E. Whitney, Government of South Carolina, footnotes; Avery, United States, II. 411-417, 434-438, III. 407-410, 412, 413; Larned, Literature of American History, 100-106; Winsor, III. 153-166, 553-562, V. 335-356; C. Andrews, Colonial Self-Government, 351-354; Channing and Hart, Guide, §§ 97-102.

Historical Maps.—Nos. 2 and 3, this volume (Epoch Maps, Nos. [2], [3]); Doyle, English Colonies, I.; MacCoun, Winsor, and school histories cited in our ch. i.

General Accounts.—Lodge, English Colonies, chs. i., iii., v., vii.; Doyle, as above, I.; H. Osgood, American Colonies in Seventeenth Century; Avery, as above, II. chs. ix., x., III. chs. i.-iii.; Channing, United States, I. chs. v.-ix.; Andrews, as above, chs. ix., xiii.-xv.; Greene, Provincial America, chs. i.-v.; Winsor, as above, III. chs. v., xiii., V. ch. v.

Special Histories.—Virginia: Brown, First Republic in America, and English Politics in Early Virginia History; Bruce, as above; Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors; J. Cooke (Commonwealths); L. Tyler, Cradle of the Republic, and Williamsburg; R. Pryor, Birth of the Nation; J. Wayland, German Element in Shenandoah Valley.—Maryland: Browne (Commonwealths), Scharf, Bozman, Mereness, as above; C. Hall, Lords Baltimore; B. Steiner, Beginnings of Maryland.—Carolinas: J. Moore, I. chs. i.-iii.; C. Raper; E. McCrady, South Carolina under Proprietary Government; S. Ashe, North Carolina, I. Lives of Smith by Bradley, Roberts, and Smith.

Contemporary Accounts.—Reprints of Smith's True Relation, and other early documents: Force, Tracts; publications of historical societies and commissions of the several states; Carroll, Historical Collections; Brown, Genesis of United States; Kingsbury and Osgood, Records of Virginia Company; Jameson, Original Narratives of Early American History; American History told by Contemporaries, I. part iv; American History Leaflets, No. 27.

28. Reasons for Final English Colonization.