Brave+New+World+DKMAHistory

Extra Credit: Read the following excerpt from Kenneth Davis' book Don't Know Much About History. Then, in your own words, answer the following questions:


 * 1) **Who really "discovered" America?**
 * 2) **If he wasn't interested in the Bahamas, what was Columbus looking for in the first place?**
 * 3) **Did Columbus's men bring syphilis back to Europe?**
 * 4) **So if Columbus didn't really discover America, who did?**
 * 5) **Okay, the Indians really discovered America. Who were they, and how did they get here?**
 * 6) **If Columbus was so important, how come we don't live in the United States of Columbus?**
 * 7) **What became of Christopher Columbus?**
 * 8) **Where were the first European settlements in the New World?**

Brave New World

Few eras in American history are shrouded in as much myth and mystery as the long period covering America's discovery and settlement. Perhaps this is because there were few objective observers on hand to record so many of these events. There was no "film at eleven" when primitive people crossed the land bridge from Asia into the future Alaska. No correspondents were on board when Columbus's ships reached land. Historians have been forced instead to rely on accounts written by participants in the events, witnesses whose views can politely be called prejudiced. When it comes to the tale of Pocahontas, for instance, much of what was taught and thought for a long time was based on Captain John Smith's colorful autobiography. What is worse, history teachers now have to contend with a generation of prepubescent Americans who have learned a new myth, courtesy of the Disney version of Pocahontas, in which a sultry, buxom Indian maiden goes wild for a John Smith who looks like a surfer dude with Mel Gibson's voice. Oh well.

This chapter covers some of the key events during several thousand years of history. However, the spotlight is on the development of what would become the United States, and the chapter ends with the thirteen original colonies in place. **Who really "discovered" America?** "In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." We all know that. But did he really discover America? The best answer is, "Not really. But sort of." A national holiday and two centuries of schoolbooks have left the impression of Christopher Columbus as the intrepid sailor and man of God (his given name means "Christ-bearer") who was the first to reach America, disproving the notion of a flat world while he was at it. Italian Americans who claim the sailor as their own treat Columbus Day as a special holiday, as do Hispanic Americans who celebrate EI Dia de la Raza as their discovery day. Love him or hate him-as many do in light of recent revisionist views of Columbus-it is impossible to downplay the importance of Columbus's voyage, or the incredible heroism and tenacity of character his quest demanded. Even the astronauts who flew to the moon had a pretty good idea of what to expect; Columbus was sailing, as Star Trek puts it, "where no man has gone before." However, rude facts do suggest a few different angles to his story.

After trying to sell his plan to the kings of Portugal, England, and France, Columbus doggedly returned to Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, who had already given Columbus the thumbs-down once. Convinced by one of their ministers that the risks were small and the potential return great, and fueled by an appetite for gold and fear of neighboring Portugal's growing lead in exploration, the Spanish monarchs later agreed. Contrary to myth, Queen Isabella did not have to pawn any of the crown jewels to finance the trip.

Columbus set sail on August 3, 1492, from Palos, Spain, aboard three ships, Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, the last being his flagship. Columbus (christened Cristoforo Colombo) had been promised a percent share of profits, governorship of newfound lands, and an impressive title-Admiral of the Ocean Sea. On October 12 at 2 A.M., just as his crews were threatening to mutiny and force a return to Spain, a lookout named Rodrigo de Triana aboard the Pinta sighted moonlight shimmering on some cliffs or sand. Having promised a large reward to the first man to spot land, Columbus claimed that he had seen the light the night before, and kept the reward for himself. Columbus named the landfall-Guanahani to the natives-San Salvador. While it was long held that Columbus's San Salvador was Watling Island in the Bahamas, recent computer-assisted theories point to Samana Cay. Later on that first voyage, Columbus reached Cuba and a large island he called Hispaniola (presently Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Although he found some naked natives whom he christened indios in the mistaken belief that he had reached the so-called Indies or Indonesian Islands, the only gold he found was in the earrings worn by the Indians. As for spices, he did find a local plant called tobacos, which was rolled into cigars and smoked by the local Arawak. It was not long before all Europe was savoring pipefuls of the evil weed. Tobacco was brought to Spain for the first time in 1555. Three years later, the Portuguese introduced Europe to the habit of taking snuff. The economic importance of tobacco to the early history of America cannot be ignored. While we like to think about the importance of documents and decisions, tobacco became the cash crop that kept the English colonies going-where it literally kept the settlers alive. In other words, there is nothing new about powerful tobacco lobbies. They have influenced government practically since the first European settlers arrived.

Still believing that he had reached some island outposts of China, Columbus left some volunteers on Hispaniola in a fort called Natividad, built of timbers from the wrecked Santa Marla, and returned to Spain. While Columbus never reached the mainland of the present United States of America on any of his three subsequent voyages, his arrival in the Caribbean signaled the dawn of an astonishing and unequaled era of discovery, conquest, and colonization in the Americas. Although his bravery, persistence, and seamanship have rightfully earned Columbus a place in history, what the schoolbooks gloss over is that Columbus's arrival also marked the beginning of one of the cruelest episodes in human history.

Driven by an obsessive quest for gold, Columbus quickly enslaved the local population. Under Columbus and other Spanish adventurers, as well as later European colonizers, an era of genocide was opened that ravaged the native American population through warfare, forced labor, draconian punishments, and European diseases to which the Indians had no natural immunities. **AMERICAN VOICES** CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, October 12,1492, on encountering the Arawak, from his diary (as quoted by Bartolome de las Casas): They must be good servants and very intelligent, because I see that they repeat very quickly what I told them, and it is my conviction that they would easily become Christians, for they seem not to have any sect. If it please our Lord, I will take six of them that they may learn to speak. The people are totally unacquainted with arms, as your Highnesses will see by observing the seven which I have caused to be taken in. With fifty men all can be kept in subjection, and made to do whatever you desire.

**If he wasn't interested in the Bahamas, what was Columbus looking for in the first place?** The arrival of the three ships at their Caribbean landfall marks what is probably the biggest and luckiest blooper in the history of the world. Rather than a new world, Columbus was actually searching for a direct sea route to China and the Indies. Ever since Marco Polo had journeyed back from the Orient loaded with spices, gold, and fantastic tales of the strange and mysterious East, Europeans had lusted after the riches of Polo's Cathay (China). This appetite grew ravenous when the returning Crusaders opened up overland trade routes between Europe and the Orient. However, when Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, it meant an end to the spice route that served as the economic lifeline for Mediterranean Europe.

Emerging from the Middle Ages, Europe was quickly shifting from an agrarian, barter economy to a new age of capitalism in which gold was the coin of the realm. The medieval Yeppies (Young European Princes) acquired a taste for the finer things such as gold and precious jewels, as well as the new taste sensations called spices, and these were literally worth their weight in gold. After a few centuries of home cooked venison, there was an enormous clamor for the new Oriental takeout spices: cinnamon from Ceylon, pepper from India and Indonesia, nutmeg from Celebes, and cloves from the Moluccas. The new merchant princes had also acquired a taste for Japanese silks and Indian cottons, dyes, and precious stones.

Led by Prince Henry the Navigator, founder of a great scholarly seaport on the coast of Portugal, Portuguese sea captains like Bartholomeu Dias (who reached the Cape of Good Hope in 1488) and Vasco da Gama (who sailed all the way to India in 1495) had taken the lead in exploiting Africa and navigating a sea route to the Indies. Like others of his day, Columbus believed that a direct westward passage to the Orient was not only possible, but would be faster and easier. In Brave New World spite of what Columbus's public relations people later said, the flat earth idea was pretty much finished by the time Chris sailed. In fact, an accepted theory of a round earth had been held as far back as the days of the ancient Greeks. In the year Columbus sailed, a Nuremberg geographer constructed the first globe. The physical proof of the Earth's roundness came when eighteen survivors of Magellan's crew of 266 completed a circumnavigation in 1522.

Columbus believed a course due west along latitude twenty-eight degrees north would take him to Marco Polo's fabled Cipangu (Japan). Knowing that no one was crazy enough to sponsor a voyage of more than 3,000 miles, Columbus based his guess of the distance on ancient Greek theories, some highly speculative maps drawn after Marco Polo's return, and some figure fudging of his own. He arrived at the convenient estimate of 2,400 miles.

In fact, the distance Columbus was planning to cover was 10,600 miles by air!

**Did Columbus's men bring syphilis back to Europe?**

One of the most persistent legends surrounding Columbus probably didn't get into your high school history book. It is an idea that got its start in Europe when the return of Columbus and his men coincided with a massive outbreak of syphilis in Europe. Syphilis in epidemic proportions first appeared during a war being fought in Naples in 1494. The army of the French king, Charles VIII, withdrew from Naples, and the disease was soon spreading throughout Europe. Later, Portuguese sailors during the Age of Discovery carried the malady to Africa, India, and Asia, where it apparently had not been seen before. By around 1539, according to William H. McNeill, "Contemporaries thought it was a new disease against which Eurasian populations had no established immunities. The timing of the first outbreak of syphilis in Europe and the place where it occurred certainly seems to fit what one would expect of the disease had it been imported from America by Columbus's returning sailors. This theory ... became almost universally accepted ... until very recently."

Over the centuries, this "urban legend" acquired a sort of mystique as an unintended form of "revenge" unwittingly exacted by the Indians for what Columbus and the arrival of Europeans had done to them. One of the earliest documented signs of syphilis in humans dates to about 2,000 years ago, in remains found in North America.

In fact, other culprits have been blamed for the scourge of syphilis. The word itself was coined in 1530 by Girolamo Fracastoro, an Italian physician and poet. He published a poem called "Syphilis, sive Morbus Gallieus," which translates as "Syphilis, or the French Disease." In the poem, a shepherd named Syphilus is supposed to have been the first victim of the disease, which in the fifteenth century was far more deadly and virulent than the form of syphilis commonly known today. Of course, this was also a long time before the advent of antibiotics. The original source of the name Syphilus is uncertain but may have come from the poetry of Ovid. In other words, the Italians blamed the French for syphilis. And in Spain, the disease was blamed on the Jews, who had been forced out of Spain, also in that memorable year of 1492.

According to McNeill, many modern researchers reject the so called Columbian Exchange version of syphilis. There is simply too much evidence of pre-Columbian syphilis in the Old World. For example, pre-Columbian skeletons recently unearthed in England show distinctive signs of syphilis. So while a definitive answer to the origin of the scourge of Venus remains a mystery, the American Indian as the original source of Europe's plague of syphilis seems far less likely than it once did.

**So if Columbus didn't really discover America, who did?**

Like the argument about syphilis, the debate over who reached the Americas before Columbus goes back almost as far as Columbus's voyage. Enough books have been written on the subject of earlier "discoverers" to fill a small library. There is plenty of evidence to bolster the claims made on behalf of a number of voyagers who may have reached the Americas, either by accident or design, well before Columbus reached the Bahamas.

Among these, the one best supported by archaeological evidence is the credit given to Norse sailors, led by Norse captain Leif Eriksson, who not only reached North America but established a colony in present-day Newfoundland around A.D. 1000, five hundred years before Columbus. The site of a Norse village has been uncovered at L'Anse Aux Meadows, near present day St. Anthony, and was named the first World Heritage site by UNESCO, an educational and cultural arm of the United Nations. While archaeology has answered some questions, many others remain about the sojourn of the Norse in the Americas.

Most of what is guessed about the Norse colony in North America is derived from two Icelandic epics called The Vinland Sagas. There are three locations -Stoneland, probably the barren coast of Labrador, Woodland, possibly Maine; and Vinland-which the Norse visited. While Leif the Lucky gets the credit in history and the roads and festivals named after him, it was another Norseman, Bjarni Herjolfsson, who was the first European to sight North America, in 985 or 986. But it was Leif who supposedly built some huts and spent one winter in this land where wild grapes -more likely berries since there are no grapes in any of these places-grew before returning to Greenland. A few years later, another Greenlander named Thorfinn Karlsefni set up housekeeping in Eriksson's spot, passing two years there. Among the problems they faced were unfriendly local tribes, whom the Norsemen called skrelings (a contemptuous term translated as "wretch" or "dwarf"). During one attack, a pregnant Norse woman frightened the skrelings off by slapping a sword against her bare breast. Terrified at this sight, the skrelings fled back to their boats. In his fascinating book Cod, Mark Kurlansky asks, "What did these Norsemen eat on the five expeditions to America between 986 and 1011 that have been recorded in the Icelandic sagas? They were able to travel to all these distant, barren shores because they had learned to preserve codfish by hanging it in the frosty winter air until it lost four-fifths of its weight and became a durable woodlike plank. They could break off pieces and chew them ... "

There are those who hold out for earlier discoverers. For many years, there were tales of earlier Irish voyagers, led by a mythical St. Brendan, who supposedly reached America in the ninth or tenth century, sailing in small boats called curraghs. However, no archaeological or other evidence supports this. Another popular myth, completely unfounded, regards a Welshman named Modoc who established a colony and taught the local Indians to speak Welsh. A more recent theory provides an interesting twist on the "Europeans sailing to Asia" notion. A British navigation expert has studied ancient Chinese maps and believes that a Chinese admiral may have circumnavigated the globe and reached America 100 years before Columbus. Convincing proof of such a voyage would be a stunning revision of history, but to date it is the equivalent of the philosopher's tree falling in the forest: If the Chinese got there first but nobody "heard" it, did they really get there first?

A significant discovery belongs to another of Columbus's countrymen, Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), who was sailing for the British. In 1496, Cabot (and his son, Sebastian) received a commission from England's King Henry VII to find a new trade route to Asia. Sailing out of Bristol aboard the Matthew, Cabot reached a vast rocky coastline near a sea teeming with cod. Cabot reported the vast wealth of this place he called New Found Land, which he claimed for Henry VII, staking a claim that would eventually provide the English with their foothold in the New World. Sailing with five ships on a second voyage in 1498, Cabot ran into bad weather. One of the vessels returned to an Irish port, but Cabot disappeared with the four other ships.

But Cabot and others were not sailing into completely unknown waters. Fishermen in search of cod had been frequenting the waters off North America for many years. Basque fishing boats frequented the waters. Clearly, though, they had decided it was a nice fishing spot but not a place to stay for good. And they were slow to catch on that the coastal land they were fishing near was not Asia. Even in the sixteenth century, according to Mark Kurlansky in Cod, Newfoundland was charted as an island off China. So even though cod fishermen were the Europeans who discovered "America," they-like generations of anglers who keep their best spots to themselves -wanted to keep their fishing grounds secret, and the distinction of being the first European to set foot on what would become United States soil usually goes to Juan Ponce de Leon, the Spanish adventurer who conquered Puerto Rico. Investigating rumors of a large island north of Cuba that contained a "fountain of youth" whose waters could restore youth and vigor, Ponce de Leon found and named Florida in 1513 and "discovered" Mexico on that same trip.

Finally, there is the 1524 voyage of still another Italian, Giovanni de Verrazano, who sailed in the employ of the French Crown with the financial backing of silk merchants eager for Asian trade. Verrazano was searching for a strait through the New World that would take him westward to the Orient. He reached land at Cape Fear in present day North Carolina, and sailed up the Atlantic coast until he reached Newfoundland and then returned to France. Along the way, he failed to stop in either Chesapeake or Delaware Bay. But Verrazano reached New York Bay (where he went only as far as the narrows and the site of the bridge that both bear his name) and Narragansett Bay, as well as an arm-shaped hook of land he named Pallavisino in honor of an Italian general. Still frustrated in the search for a passage to the east, Verrazano returned to France but insisted that the "7000 leagues of coastline" he had found constituted a New World. Seventy years later, Englishman Bartholomew Gosnold was still looking for a route to Asia, which he did not find, of course. However, he did find a great many cod, in shallow waters, and renamed Verrazano's Pallavisino Cape Cod in 1602. But the English sailors who attempted to settle the area -near what is Bristol, Maine-found this new world "over-cold."

But all these European cod fishermen and lost sailors seeking Asia were no more than Johnny-come-latelies in the Americas. In fact, America had been "discovered" long before any of these voyages. The true "discoverers" of America were the people whose culture and societies were well established here while Europe was still in the Dark Ages, the so-called Indians, who, rather ironically, had walked to the New World from Asia. Must Read: Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky.

**Okay, the Indians really discovered America. Who were they, and how did they get here?**

Until fairly recently, it was generally believed that humans first lived in the Americas approximately 12,000 years ago, arriving on foot from Asia. However, new evidence suggests that the people who would eventually come to be called Indians may have arrived in America some 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal found in southern Chile and the 1997 discovery of a skeleton in present-day Washington State have not only bolstered the argument that humans lived in America much earlier than had been widely accepted, but also shaken the foundations of who they were and how they got here.

The version of events generally accepted and long supported by archaeological finds and highly accurate carbon testing is that the prehistoric people who populated the Americas were hunters following the great herds of woolly mammoths. During an ice age, when sea levels were substantially lower because so much water was locked up in ice, these early arrivals into the Americas walked from Siberia across a land bridge into modern day Alaska. While "land bridge" suggests a narrow strip between the seas, the "bridge" was probably a thousand miles across. Once here, they began heading south toward warmer climates, slaughtering the mammoth as they went. Eventually, as the glaciers melted, the oceans rose and covered this land bridge, creating the present-day Bering Strait, separating Alaska from Russia. The earliest known artifacts left by these people were discovered at Clovis, New Mexico, and have been dated to 11,500 years ago.

But a growing body of evidence suggests several more complex and surprising possibilities:

**The Pacific coastal route**: According to this theory, people from northern Asia migrated along the western coast of America on foot and by skin-covered boat before the Bering land bridge existed. This theory is based partly on artifacts found in coastal Peru and Chile, dated as far back as 12,500 years ago, that provide early evidence of maritime-based people in the Americas. In Monte Verde, Chile, the artifacts include wooden tools, animal bone, and a human footprint.

The discovery of the so-called Kennewick man in Washington State further clouded the issue. Dated between 8,000 and 9,300 years old, these remains raised the question of whether this early American was from Asia at all.

**North Atlantic route**: The discovery of several sites on the North American east coast have suggested a very different sea route. Artifacts at these sites in present-day Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina are dated between 10,000 and 16,000 years old, well before the Clovis artifacts. In theory, early Europeans in boats followed the ice surrounding modern Iceland and Greenland down to North America.

**Australian route**: Another, more controversial, generally less accepted theory is a modification of the theory propounded by the late Thor Heyerdahl in his book Kon Tiki. Heyerdahl contended that the Americas could have been settled by people from southeast Asia who crossed the Pacific to South America. While many scientists consider this farfetched, a skeleton found in Brazil gives some support to the idea, but some scientists think it more likely that the skeleton belonged to some branch of southeast Asian people who moved north along the coast of Asia and then across the Bering Strait.

Of course, it is also possible that any or all of these theories might be correct and more than one group of people migrated into the New World. Some of them might have become extinct, replaced by later groups, or they may have undergone significant physical changes over the many thousands of years since their arrival.

What is far more certain is that, by the time Columbus arrived, there were tens of millions of what might be called First Americans or Amerindians occupying the two continents of the Americas. These were divided into hundreds of tribal societies, the most advanced of which were the Mayas, and later the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas of Peru, all of whom became fodder for the Spanish under the reign of terror wrought by the conquistadores. Many history books once presented these American Indians as a collection of nearly savage civilizations. A newer romanticized version presents groups of people living in harmony with themselves and nature. Neither view is realistic.

There were, first of all, many cultures spread over the two Americas, from the Eskimo and Inuit of the North down to the advanced Mexican and South American societies. While none of these developed along the lines of the European world, substantial achievements were made in agriculture, architecture, mathematics, and other fields. On the other hand, some important developments were lacking. Few of these societies had devised a written language. Nor were some of these Indians free from savagery, as best witnessed by the Aztec human sacrifice that claimed as many as 1,000 victims a day in Tenochtitlan (near the site of present-day Mexico City) or the practices of the Iroquois, who had raised torture of captured opponents to a sophisticated but ghastly art.

During the past few decades, estimates of the Indian population at the time of Columbus's arrival have undergone a radical revision, especially in the wave of new scholarship that attended the 1992 marking of five hundred years since Columbus' first voyage. Once it was believed that the Indian population ranged from 8 million to 16 million people, spread over two continents. That number has been significantly revised upward to as many as 100 million or higher, spread across the two continents. Although Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe was a calculated, methodical genocidal plan, the European destruction of the Indians was no less ruthlessly efficient, killing off perhaps 90 percent of the native population it found, all in the name of progress, civilization, and Christianity.

While Europeans were technically more advanced in many respects than the natives they encountered, what really led to the conquest of the Americas was not military might or a superior culture. The largest single factor in the destruction of the native populations in the Americas was the introduction of epidemic diseases to which the natives had no natural immunity. **AMERICAN VOICES** AMERIGO VESPUCCI, in a letter to Lorenzo Medici, 1504: In days past, I gave your excellency a full account of my return, and if I remember aright, wrote you a description of all those parts of the New World which I had visited in the vessels of his serene highness the king of Portugal. Carefully considered, they appear truly to form another world, and therefore we have, not without reason, called it the New World. Not one of all the ancients had any knowledge of it, and the things which have been lately ascertained by us transcend all their ideas.

**If Columbus was so important, how come we don't live in the United States of Columbus?**

The naming of America was one of the cruel tricks of history and about as accurate as calling Indians "Indians." Amerigo Vespucci was another Italian who found his way to Spain and, as a ship chandler, actually helped outfit Columbus's voyages. In 1499, he sailed to South America with Alonso de Hojeda, one of Columbus's captains, reaching the mouth of the Amazon. He made three more voyages along the coast of Brazil. In 1504, letters supposedly written by Vespucci appeared in Italy in which he claimed to be captain of the four voyages and in which the words Mundus Novus, or New World, were first used to describe the lands that had been found. Vespucci's travels became more famous in his day than those of Columbus. Some years later, in a new edition of Ptolemy, this new land, still believed to be attached to Asia, was labeled America in Vespucci's honor.

**What became of Christopher Columbus?**

Following the first voyage, Columbus arrived in Spain in March 1493 after a troubled return trip. He was given a grand reception by Ferdinand and Isabella, even though he had little to show except some trinkets and the Taino Indians who had survived the voyage back to Spain. But the Spanish monarchs decided to press on and appealed to the pope to allow them claim to the lands, ostensibly so they could preach the Christian faith. The pope agreed, but the Portuguese immediately protested, and the two countries began to negotiate a division of the spoils of the New World. They eventually agreed on a line of demarcation that enabled Portugal to claim Brazil-which is why Brazilians speak Portuguese and the rest of South and Central America and Mexico are principally Spanish-speaking countries.

Columbus was then given seventeen ships for a second voyage, with about 1,500 men who had volunteered in the hopes of finding vast riches. When he returned to Hispaniola, Columbus discovered that the men he had left behind at a fort were gone, probably killed by the Taino. Columbus established a second fort, but it was clear that this was not the land of gold and riches that the Spaniards expected. He sailed on to Cuba, still believing that he was on the Asian mainland, and then landed on Jamaica. Returning to Hispaniola, Columbus then began to set the Taino to look for gold-with harsh quotas established and harsher punishments for failing to meet those quotas. The lucky ones lost a hand. The unlucky were crucified in rows of thirteen-one for Jesus and each of the disciples.

Soon the Indians also began to drop from the infectious diseases brought over by Columbus and the Spanish. Reports of the disastrous situation in the colony reached Spain, and Columbus had to return to defend himself. His reputation sank but he was given a third voyage. On May 30, 1498, he left Spain with six ships and fewer enthusiastic recruits. Prisoners were pardoned to fill out the crews. He sailed south and reached the coast of present-day Venezuela.

Following a rebellion on Hispaniola, there were now so many complaints about Columbus that he was brought back to Spain in shackles. Although the king and queen ordered his release, his pardon came with conditions, and Columbus lost most of his titles and governorship of the islands. But he was given one more chance at a voyage, which he called the High Voyage.

In 1502, he left Spain with four ships and his fourteen-year-old son, Ferdinand, who would record events during the trip. Although Columbus reached the Isthmus of Panama and was told that a large body of water (the Pacific Ocean) lay a few days' march away, Columbus failed to pursue the possibility. He abandoned the quest for Asia, exhausted, and suffering from malaria, sailed to Jamaica. Starving and sick, Columbus here supposedly tricked the locals into giving him food by predicting an eclipse of the moon. After being marooned for a year, Columbus left Jamaica, reaching Spain in November 1504. Isabella had died, and Ferdinand tried to convince Columbus to retire. He spent his last days in a modest home in Valladoid, and died on May 20, 1506. He was not impoverished at the time of his death, as legend had it. His remains were moved to Seville and later to Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic). Some believe his bones were then taken to Cuba; others believe his final resting place is on Santo Domingo. (Scientists are attempting to get permission to do DNA tests on the buried bones.)

**Where were the first European settlements in the New World?**

While we make a great fuss over the Pilgrims and Jamestown, the Spanish had roamed over much of the Americas by the time the English arrived. In fact, if the Spanish Armada launched to assault Queen Elizabeth's England hadn't been blown to bits by storms and the English "sea dogs" in 1588, this might be Los Estados Unidos, and we'd be eating tacos at bullfights.

Following Columbus's bold lead, the Spanish (and, to a lesser extent, the Portuguese) began a century of exploration, colonization, and subjugation, with the primary aim of providing more gold for the Spanish Crown. The Spanish explorers, the conquistadores, amassed enormous wealth for themselves and the Spanish Crown, while also decimating the native populations they encountered. Many of them died as they lived-violently, at the hands of either Indians they battled or their fellow Spaniards eager to amass gold and power. Among the highlights of Spanish exploration:

**1499** Amerigo Vespucci and Alonso de Hojeda (or Ojeda) sail for South America and reach mouth of Amazon River.

**1502** Vespucci, after second voyage, concludes South America is not part of India and names it Mundus Novus. **1505** Juan Bermudez discovers the island that bears his name, Bermuda.

**1513** After a twenty-five-day trek through the dense rain forests of Central America, Vasco Nunez de Balboa crosses the Isthmus of Panama and sights the Pacific Ocean for the first time. He names it Mar del Sur (Southern Sea) and believes it to be part of the Indian Ocean. Political rivals later accuse Balboa of treason, and he is beheaded in a public square along with four of his followers. Their remains are thrown to the vultures.

**1513** Juan Ponce de Leon begins searching for a legendary "fountain of youth," a spring with restorative powers. Ponce de Leon, who had been on Columbus's second voyage and had conquered Boriquen (Puerto Rico), making a fortune in gold and slaves, reaches and names Florida, claiming it for Spain. (Ponce de Leon dies after suffering arrow wounds during a fight with Indians.)

**1519** Hernan Cortes enters Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). Thought to be the returning Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, Cortes captures Emperor Montezuma, beginning the conquest of the Aztec Empire in Mexico. His triumph leads to 300 years of Spanish domination of Mexico and Central America.

Domenico de Pineda explores the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Vera Cruz.

**1522** Pascual de Andagoya discovers Peru.

**1523** A Spanish base on Jamaica is founded. (Arawak Indians, who were the first people to live in Jamaica, named the island Xaymaca, which means land of wood and water.)

**1531** Francisco Pizarro, an illiterate orphan and one of Balboa's lieutenants, invades Peru, kills thousands of natives, and conquers the Incan Empire, the largest, most powerful native empire in South America. The Inca, already devastated by civil war, were decimated by smallpox brought by the Spanish. Pizarro captures and executes the Inca ruler Atahualpa. (In the late 1530s, a dispute between Pizarro and another Spaniard, Almagro, over who was to rule the area around Cusco led to war. Pizarro's forces won the conflict in 1538 and executed Almagro. In 1541, followers of Almagro's son killed Pizarro.)

**1535** Lima (Peru) founded by Pizarro.

**1536** Buenos Aires (Argentina) founded by Spanish settlers, but they leave the area five years later because of Indian attacks. A group of settlers from Paraguay, led by a Spanish soldier named Juan de Garay, reestablishes Buenos Aires in 1580.

**1538** Bogota (Colombia) founded by Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, a Spanish military leader who conquered the area's Chibcha Indians.

**1539** Hernando De Soto, a veteran of the war against the Inca in Peru, explores Florida. He is authorized to conquer and colonize the region that is now the southeastern United States.

**1539** First printing press in New World set up in Mexico City. **1540** Grand Canyon discovered.

**1541** De Soto discovers Mississippi River; Coronado explores from New Mexico across Texas, Oklahoma, and eastern Kansas. On May 21, 1542, de Soto dies from a fever by the banks of the Mississippi River. The remains of his army, led by Luis de Moscoso, reaches New Spain (now Mexico) the next year.

**1549** Jesuit missionaries arrive in South America.

**1551** Universities founded in Lima and Mexico City.

**1565** St. Augustine, the oldest permanent settlement established by Europeans in the United States, is founded by explorer Pedro Menendez de Aviles. (French Protestants, or Huguenots, had established a colony in South Carolina but abandoned it in 1563.) The city is razed by Francis Drake in 1586. Spain ruled St. Augustine until 1763, when the British gained control of it. Spain again ruled the settlement from 1783 until 1821, when Florida became a territory of the United States.

**1567** Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) is founded.

**1605** (date in dispute; some say 1609) Santa Fe, New Mexico, founded as the capital of the Spanish colony of New Mexico. Santa Fe has been a seat of government longer than any other state capital. (Proud New Mexicans now argue that the first Thanksgiving in America actually took place in Santa Fe.)

Davis, Kenneth C. Don't Know Much about History: Everything You Need to Know about American History but Never Learned. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. 3- 21