The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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the ships, when he treacherously seized them, hoisted his sails, and carried them away. But it was to little profit; for, knowing nothing of the Gulf Stream, one of his vessels was borne upon rocks by the current, and wrecked, while upon the other the captives sickened and died. D’Ayllon made his second appearance in St. Helen’s Sound in 1525, where one of his vessels was wrecked. The Indians attacked him, and drove him on board his ships, mortally wounding him. Instead of conquering them, and establishing the Spanish language and the Catholic religion in Carolina, as Cortez was doing in Mexico he returned to Cuba to die.
Francis I. was King of France. He had desired to be Emperor of Germany, but his rival, Charles V. of Spain, had been elected instead; besides this, the Pope had given the whole Western Continent to Spain.
“I should like to be shown the clause in the will of Adam which disinherits me in the New World!” he bitterly exclaimed.
Francis despatched John Verrazano on a voyage of discovery in the ship Dolphin from Dieppe, January 24th, 1524. He reached South Carolina in March, and sailed northward along the coast, entering Narragansett Bay and the harbor of Newport, R. I., passing around Cape Cod to the coast of Maine. He landed in many places, and had interviews with the Indians.
In January, 1525, Stephen Gomez sailed from Corunna, in Spain, entered the Hudson River on St. Anthony’s day, June 13th, named it St. Anthony. He seized some of the Indians, taking them to Spain and selling them. The country was cold, and he reported that Spaniards could not live there.
Hunger for gold, desire for conquest, zeal for the establishment of religion, thirst for adventure — are there any stronger motives than these to lead men to brave danger or endure hardships? Moved by such motives, Pamphilio Narvaez, Cabez de Vaca, and several hundred young men from the rich and noble families of Spain, sailed from the Guadalquiver for America, landing in Tampa Bay, on the west coast of Florida, April 14th, 1528, taking possession of the country for the King of Spain. The Indians that flocked around them were in possession of gold ornaments. When asked where they obtained them, they pointed to the north.
Narvaez marched in that direction. There were three hundred in the party, with horses and small cannon. Never before had the eyes of the adventurers beheld such gloomy solitudes — dense forests of pine, dark groves of cypress, wide-spreading oaks with long trails of gray moss drooping from the branches, magnolias filling the air with their overpowering fragrance. They toiled through swamps; bays, inlets, and rivers impeded their progress, and their way was blocked by decaying trees torn up by whirlwinds and blasted by lightning. They saw strange animals — the opossum, that carried its young in a pocket; panthers prowled around them, and bears. At every stream they were compelled to construct rafts. They had little to eat. They expected to find rich and populous Indian towns, but only beheld clusters of wigwams.
In August they were at St. Mark’s, on Appolodree Bay; but their ships had not arrived, nor did they ever see them again. They began the construction of boats, making their swords into saws and axes, their stirrups and the bits of their bridles into nails. They plundered the Indian corn-fields to obtain food, and ate their horses. They twisted the film of the palmetto and the hair of their horses’ manes and tails into ropes; calked the seams of the boats with grass, and smeared them with pitch; sewed their shirts together for sails; made water-bottles of the skins of their horses; and on the 2d of September embarked, two hundred and fifty in number, in five frail vessels, so deeply loaded that the gunwales were hardly six inches above the water. They seized some Indian canoes, split them in pieces, and built up the sides of their boats. Slowly they crept along the shore westward. On the 30th of October they reached the Mississippi, and tried to enter it, but the current swept them back. On the 5th of November two of their boats were wrecked not far from Galveston, and the others were driven out to sea. Of the company all but four — De Vasca, Dorantes, Castillo, and Estevarrico — perished. They made themselves at home among the Indians, learned their language, passed from tribe to tribe, travelled northward through Texas to the Canadian River and westward to the Rio Grande, and from thence to San Miguel, in Sonora, which they reached in 1536, where they found some of the soldiers of Cortez, who conducted them to the city of Mexico.
Jacques Cartier, a Frenchman, entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1534, and set up a cross at Gaspe, claiming the country for France. The next year he made a second voyage up the St. Lawrence, beheld the gloomy gorges of the Saguenay, and dropped anchor in the Bay of Orleans. Upon the northern shore, under a rocky cliff, was a cluster of wigwams; the Indians called the place Stadacone. Little did Cartier think that on the plateau behind the town the last decisive battle between France and England for supremacy in America would be fought; that upon the site of the wigwams would rise the city of Quebec. Cartier sailed up the river in a boat, to a town which the Indians called Hochelaga. A hill which overlooked the town and all the surrounding country he named Mont Royal — which time has changed to Montreal. The ice closed around Cartier’s ship before he could get away, and he spent the long winter at Stadacone, returning to France in the spring.
Cabeza de Vaca, who had experienced such hardships in his journey from Florida through Texas to Mexico, reached Cuba. His accounts of what he had seen fired the ardor of Ferdinand de Soto, Governor of the island, who had been with Pizarro in Peru. He resolved to conquer Florida, and landed on its western coast, near Hillsborough River, with six hundred men; marched north through Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, crossing the Mississippi near the boundary of Tennessee, exploring the country north to New Madrid, in Missouri, and west to the western boundary of Arkansas. At the mouth of the Rod River, De Soto died, and was buried beneath the waters of the Mississippi. The survivors of the party wandered in Louisiana till July, 1543, when they constructed boats, descended the Mississippi, reached the Gulf, and made their way west to the Spanish settlements in Mexico.
Cabeza de Vaca and his companions, while in Texas and Mexico, heard of a country still farther north which the Indians called Cibola. The Governor of Western Mexico, Coronado, resolved to conquer it. He despatched two vessels up the Gulf of California, which ascended the Colorado River about eighty-five miles beyond the present boundary between Mexico and the United States. Coronado himself with an army marched to Central Arizona, and eastward to Santa Fe, on the Rio Grande, claiming the country for the King of Spain.
While Coronado was marching through Arizona, Francis de la Roque and Cartier were planning the colonization of Canada. They made a settlement at Quebec, but the winter was cold, the emigrants pined for home, and they went back to France.
The Dominican priests in Cuba and Spain had set their hearts on converting the Indians of Florida, and, in 1549, Louis Cancella and several other priests endeavored to establish a mission. The Indians had not forgotten the cruelties of D’Ayllon, Narvaez, and De Soto, and in revenge killed several of the priests, and compelled the others to leave the country.
The Huguenots of France were heretics, and the Catholics were hunting them down. John Ribault, of Dieppe, turned his eyes to America as a place of refuge for himself and friends. He sailed to Carolina, and left twenty-six men to begin a settlement at Port Royal. When he returned to France civil war was raging, and he could send no supplies. The men at Port Royal were homesick. Their provisions failed. They built a small vessel and set sail. Some died, but the others were picked up by an English vessel and saved. Two years passed. There was a lull in the strife between Catholics and Protestants in France, and Ribault began another settlement, on the St. John’s River, in Florida. Several hundred Huguenots, with their families, weary of the strife in France, emigrated to Florida.
The news reached Spain. French heretics on Spanish soil! What an outrage! They were Frenchmen, and must be driven out: heretics — and must be exterminated. A heretic — one who did not recognize the Pope as head of the Church — must be put to the sword, as an enemy of God and man.
Philip Melendez, fired with zeal for the Church, stimulated by the preaching of the Jesuit priests and bishops, quickly gathered an army. The high-born sons of Spain enlisted under his banner to wipe out the insult to Spain and to the holy Catholic Church. A great company of priests joined in the enterprise. With twenty-five hundred men he made his appearance on the coast of Florida. It was St. Augustine’s day, and he discovered a beautiful harbor to which he gave the name of the saint. He approached Fort Carolina. Ribault’s vessels went out to meet him. A storm came