Old Times in the Colonies. Charles Carleton Coffin
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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 on, and the French vessels were wrecked; but Melendez reached the harbor at St. Augustine. Fort Carolina was defenceless, and he marched overland, entered it without opposition, and massacred men, women, and children, old and young, sick and helpless, alike. A few men only escaped on two little vessels. Upon the smoldering ruins of the fort, amidst the ghastly forms of mangled corpses, Melendez reared a cross, with this inscription:
“NOT AS TO FRENCHMEN, BUT AS LUTHERANS.”
The Jesuit priests chanted a Te Deum, and, laden with the spoil, the army returned to St. Augustine.
The shipwrecked sailors of the French fleet, living on roots, frogs, and alligators, gave themselves up as prisoners. Their hands were tied behind them, and then the work of death began. Those who were Catholics were spared to become slaves; the others were inhumanly butchered.
Beneath the palmettos, on the banks where the alligators lay basking in the sun of the St. John’s, and on the beach of the St. Augustine, lay the mangled bodies of nine hundred men, women, and children, murdered through bigotry and hate; while over the gloomy scene priestly hands held the cross, emblem of love and peace, amidst the chantings of a Gloria to Almighty God.
The work of death done, the work of colonization began. Forts were built at St. Augustine, a town laid out, a chapel and houses erected. It was the first permanent settlement within the present boundaries of the United States, begun in 1565.
Intelligence of the horrible massacre reached the ears of Dominic de Gourges in France. He was a Huguenot and wealthy, but of what value was wealth with so terrible a crime unavenged? He sold his estates, purchased ships, enlisted one hundred and fifty men, sailed secretly, captured the garrison in a fort on the St. John’s, hung the captives upon the widespreading branches of the surrounding trees, with this inscription above them:
“NOT AS UNTO SPANIARDS, BUT AS TO MURDERERS.”
He was too weak to attack St. Augustine, and sailed for France, having only in part accomplished his purpose.
Sir Francis Drake, with three ships, had passed through the Straits of Magellan to wage war upon the Spaniards in Peru. One of his ships had been wrecked; the others had sailed he knew not where; but in the Pelican he carried havoc to the Spanish towns. In June, 1579, he was so far north off the coast of Oregon that his crew complained of the coll. In a spacious harbor — possibly in the Bay of San Francisco — he refitted his ships, made a map of the coast, and gave the name of New Albion to the country. From thence he sailed west across the Pacific, returning to England by the Cape of Good Hope.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed from England in 1583, with five small vessels, on a voyage of discovery. On the 3d of August he dropped anchor in the harbor of St. John’s, Newfoundland,