Читать книгу A School History of the United States - John Bach McMaster - Страница 8

%11. The Spaniards explore the Southwest.%—Now it must be noticed that up to 1513 no European had explored the interior of either North or South America. They had merely touched the shores. In 1513 the work of exploration began. Balboa then crossed the Isthmus of Panama. In 1519 Cortes (cor'-tez) landed on the coast of Mexico with a body of men, and marched boldly into the heart of the country to the city where lived the great Indian chief or king, Montezuma. Cortes took the city and made himself master of Mexico. This was most important; for the conquest of Mexico turned the attention of the Spaniards from our country for many years, and finally led to the exploration of the Southwest. But the first explorers of what is now the United States came from Cuba in 1528.

[Illustration: Map of 1530, Sloane MS.[1]]

[Footnote 1: Notice that the two continents begin to take shape, and that as the result of Magellan's voyage is not generally known, North America is placed very near to Java.]

In that year Narvaez (nar-vah-eth), excited by Pineda's accounts of the Mississippi Indians and their golden ornaments, set forth with 400 men to conquer the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico. At Apalachee Bay he landed, and made a raid inland. On returning to the shore, he missed his ships, and after traveling westward on foot for a month, built five rude vessels, and once more put to sea. For six weeks the little fleet hugged the shore, till it came to the mouth of the Mississippi, where two of the boats were upset and Narvaez was drowned. The rest reached the coast of Texas in safety. But famine and the tomahawk soon reduced the number of the survivors to four. These were captured by bands of wandering Indians, were carried over eastern Texas and western Louisiana, till, after many strange adventures and vicissitudes, they met beyond the Sabine River.[1] Protected by the fame they had won for sorcery, and led by one Cabeza de Vaca, they now wandered westward to the Rio Grande[2] (ree'-o grahn'-da) and on by Chihuahua (chee-wah'-wah) and Sonora to the Gulf of California, and by this to Culiacan, a town near the west coast of Mexico, which they reached in 1536. They had crossed the continent.

[Footnote 1: Now the western boundary of Louisiana.]

[Footnote 2: Rio Grande del Norte—Great River of the North.]

%12. "The Seven Cities of Cibola."%—The story these men told of the strange country through which they had passed, aroused a strong desire in the Spaniards to explore it, for somewhere in that direction they believed were the Seven Cities. According to an ancient legend, when the Arabs invaded the Spanish peninsula, a bishop of Lisbon with many followers fled to a group of islands in the Sea of Darkness, and on them founded seven cities. As one of the Indian tribes had preserved a story of Seven Caves in which their ancestors had once lived, the credulous and romantic Spaniards easily confounded the two legends. Firmly believing that the seven cities must exist in the north country traversed by Vaca, Mendoza, the Spanish governor of Mexico, selected Fray Marcos, a monk of great ability, and sent him forth with a few followers to search for them. Directed by the Indians through whose villages he passed, he came at last in sight of the seven Zuñi (zoo'-nyee) pueblos (pweb'-loz) of New Mexico, all of which were inhabited in his time. But he came no nearer than just within sight of them. For one of the party, who went on in advance, having been killed by the Zuñi, Fray Marcos hurried back to Culiacan. Understanding the name of the city he had seen to be Cibola (see'-bo-la), he called the pueblos the "Seven Cities of Cibola," and against them the next year (1540) Coronado marched with 1100 men. Finding the pueblos were not the rich cities for which he sought, Coronado pushed on eastward, and for two years wandered to and fro over the plains and mountains of the West, crossing the state of Kansas twice.[1]

[Footnote 1: Do not fail to read a delightful little book called The Spanish Pioneers, by Charles F. Lummis. In it the story of these great journeys is told on pp. 77–88, 101–143.]

[Illustration: The kind of cities found by Marcos and Coronado in the

Rio Grande valley.]

[Illustration: CORONADO'S EXPEDITION 1540]

%13. The Spaniards on the Mississippi.%—In 1537 De Soto was appointed governor of Cuba, with instructions to conquer and hold all the country discovered by Narvaez. On this mission he set out in May, 1539, and landed at Tampa Bay, on the west coast of our state of Florida. He wandered over the swamps and marshes, the moss-grown jungles, and the forests of the Gulf states, and spent the winter of 1541 near the Yazoo River. Crossing the Mississippi in the spring of 1542 at the Chickasaw Bluffs, he wandered about eastern Arkansas, till he died of fever, and was buried in the Mississippi. His followers then built rude boats, floated down the river to the Gulf, steered along the coast of Texas, and in September, 1543, reached Tampico, in Mexico.

More than half a century had now gone by since the first voyage of Columbus. Yet not a settlement, great or small, had been established by Spain within our boundary. Between 1546 and 1561 missionaries twice attempted to found missions and convert the Indians in Florida, and twice were driven away. In 1582 others entered the valleys of the Gila and the Rio Grande, took possession of the pueblos, established missions, preached the Gospel to the Indians, and brought them under the dominion of Spain. But when Santa Fé (sahn'-tah fa') was founded, in 1582, the only colony of Spain in the United States, besides the missions in Arizona and New Mexico, was St. Augustine in Florida.

[Illustration: A Spanish mission]

%14. St. Augustine.%—St. Augustine was founded by the Spaniards in order to keep out the French, who made two attempts to occupy the south Atlantic coast. The first was that of John Ribault (ree-bo'). He led a colony of Frenchmen, in 1562, to what is now South Carolina, built a small fort on a spot which he called Port Royal, and left it in charge of thirty men while he went back to France for more colonists. The men were a shiftless set, depended on the Indians till the Indians would feed them no longer, and when famine set in, they mutinied, slew their commander, built a crazy ship and went to sea, where an English vessel found them in a starving condition, and took them to London.

In 1564 a second party, under Laudonnière (lo-do-ne-ar'), landed at the St. Johns River in Florida, and built a fort called Fort Caroline in honor of Charles IX. of France. But the King of Spain, hearing that the French were trespassing, sent an expedition under Menendez (ma-nen'-deth), who founded St. Augustine in 1565. There Ribault, who had returned and joined Laudonnière, attempted to attack the Spaniards. But a hurricane scattered his ships, and while it was still raging, Menendez fell suddenly on Fort Caroline and massacred men, women, and children. A few days later, falling in with Ribault and his men, who had been driven ashore south of St. Augustine, Menendez massacred 150 more.[1] For this foul deed a Frenchman named Gourgues (goorg) exacted a fearful penalty. With three small ships and 200 men, he sailed to the St. Johns River, took and destroyed the fort which the Spaniards had built on the site of Fort Caroline, and put to death every human being within it.

[Footnote 1: The story of the French in Florida is finely told in Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World; also J. Sparks's Life of Ribault; Baird's Huguenot Emigration.]

[Illustration: Gateway at St. Augustine[2]]

[Footnote 2: Remaining from the Spanish occupation of Florida.]