In 1496, Henry VII, was induced to favor a voyage of Western discovery, and John Cabot, a Venetian merchant, resident at Bristol, was duly empowered, with his three sons, by letters patent, to make discoveries in the northern or western seas, for their own profit, and the aggrandizement of the English nation.
Under this commission, John Cabot and his son Sebastian, at their own charge, sailed for the Western ocean. On June 24, 1497, they discovered the American Continent, making land on the wild and inhospitable shores of Labrador. This was anterior, by over fourteen months, to the time when Columbus first got sight of the main land of the American continent, and more than two years prior to the vaunted discoveries of Americus Vespuccius; yet the latter has given a name to the New World, and most unjustly robbed his more worthy predecessors of a merited honor.
In 1500, Gaspar Cortereal, under the auspices of the King of Portugal, made a voyage of discovery to the New World. He ranged the coast of North America, through the distance of six or seven hundred miles, and carefully examined the natural features of the country. This expedition is remarkable only for the treachery of Cortereal towards the simple natives. Upon his return to Portugal, he seized upon more than fifty of the Indians, and sold them into slavery.
The French were more tardy in their discoveries than the English. They made voyages to Newfoundland, as early, however, as the year 1504, and in a few years, the fisheries on the Labradoe coast were prosecuted by the fishermen of Brittany and Normandy, with success.
In 1508, Thomas Aubert sailed for Newfoundland--discovered the St. Lawrence, sailed up the same for some distance, and upon his return to France, treacherously carried away from their homes several of the Indians.
In 1523, John Verazzano, a Florentine, under the patronage of Francis I. Of France, sailed for the American continent on a voyage of discovery. He sailed along the coast of North America, from Florida to Labrador, named the country New France, and thus laid a foundation for the claim of France to the territory by right of discovery, though England had a prior right through the Cabots, by more than a quarter of a century.
In 1534, an expedition for discoveries in America, was set on foot, under the patronage of the French king. Jacques Cartier, an experienced seaman, was placed at the head of the expedition. He sailed in April of this year, with two small vessels of sixty tons each, and one hundred and twenty men in all. In August he discovered the river St. Lawrence, and sailed up the river for many leagues. The soil having been taken possession of by appropriate ceremonies, in the name of the king of France, Cartier returned home with the most glowing descriptions of the country he had discovered. The glory of his discovery was tarnished by his treacherous seizure of two of the natives at Gaspe Bay, and their transportation to France. Cartier visited America a second time with three well appointed ships, furnished by the French Government. He sailed up the St. Lawrence, till he thought the navigation unsafe, then moored his ships safely, and took to his boats. In these, he prosecuted his discoveries as far up the river as Montreal, which name he gave to a neighboring hill. Here at an Indian town, the chief settlement of the tribe, he was received with the greatest hospitality, and he obtained from them some knowledge of the country now included in Vermont and New York. Returning to his ships, he passed the winter upon the banks of the St. Lawrence, and having taken possession of the country in the name of his king, he reached France on the 8th of July 1536. He again was treacherous to the friendly natives--seized upon their chief, and four others, and carried them to France. Donnacona the Chief, died in France.
In 1540 an expedition was started in France, at the head of which was Jean Francis de la Roque, lord of Roberval, and of which Cartier was second in command, and chief pilot. Roberval and Cartier disagreeing, the expedition was unfortunate. They did not sail together. In 1541, Cartier sailed for the St. Lawrence, where he arrived and built a fort near the site of Quebec.2 Here he passed the winter, and in June following, "he and his ships stole away and returned to France just as Roberval arrived with a considerable reinforcement." Deprived of the services of Cartier, Roberval accomplished nothing, and after tarrying a year in his vice royalty of Norimbega, he abandoned the enterprise, and returned to France. But the discoveries of Cartier were too important to be abandoned altogether. Various attempts were made to follow them up with permanent settlements. But the civil wars in France stayed foreign and domestic enterprise. The gaining of a Kingdom, was of more importance than the planting of a colony. America attracted very little of the attention of the French, until about the close of the 16th century, when the success of private individuals in trading upon the American coast, once more attracted the attention of the Government to the subject of colonizing America.
Meantime, the circumnavigation of the globe, by Sir Francis Drake, the voyages of Sir Martin Frobisher, and the writings of Sir Richard Hackluyt, had awakened a spirit of enquiry and enterprise in England, as to the New World, and Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, in 1602, started an enterprise for planting a colony in New England.
The voyage to America had usually been made by way of the Canaries, but Gosnold conceived the idea of making the continent of America by a more direct course.
On the 26th of March, of this year, he embarked at Falmouth, in a small vessel, called the Concord, with a thirty-two men, and in seven weeks, made land on the coast of New England, supposed to have been in New Hampshire. He sailed down the coast, and landed in Massachusetts, upon Cape Cod, which he first discovered, and which he named, doubtless, from the abundance of fish found in its waters.
Having doubled this cape, he landed upon an island which he named from the queen, Elizabeth. Here the adventurers tarried six weeks, passing their time in exploring the neighboring shore, trafficing with the natives, and in making preparations for a permanent abode. They built a store-house, and a fort; but after more mature reflection, ill supplied with provisions, and with scanty means of defence against the natives, they abandoned the idea of a permanent residence, and sailed for England with their vessel laden with sassafras root, which was them much esteemed as a medicine. Gosnold had accomplished his object; marked out a straight, and much nearer course to America; explored a hitherto unknown region at a season of the year when a virgin soil was laden with a luxuriant growth of vegetation; been successful in his traffic with the natives; and now, elated with success, he and his companions spread the most glowing descriptions of the country they had visited. The spirit of adventure had been dormant for nearly a century. It was now awakened with increased energies.
On the 10th of April, of 1603, an expedition set sail for America, under the command of Martin Pring, and was successful. It reached the coast of Maine, and Capt. Pring examined the coast, and some of the eastern rivers and harbors--the Penobscot, the Kennebec, the Saco, the Kennebunk, the York, and the Piscataqua.3 He examined the Piscataqua for three or four leagues, and thus made the first known discovery of the territory of New Hampshire. The expedition was one undertaken by private enterprise, in part, and part by the corporation of Bristol, and was prosecuted in two small vessels, the Speedwell, a vessel of fifty tons, and the Discoverer, a bark of twenty-six tons, the former having thirty men on board, and the latter but sixteen. Pring had the advantage of the knowledge of a former adventurer, as a man who had made the voyage, the year previous with Gosnold, was his pilot. This advantage was great. The expedition made the coast of Maine early in June, and made their first harbor among the islands of the Penobscot Bay. They soon coasted southward, and discovered the Saco and the Piscataqua; so that the discovery of New Hampshire may be definitely set down as in June 1603, twenty years prior to its permanent settlement upon the banks of the Piscataqua. Capt. Pring coasted still farther southward, and filling his vessels with sassafras, on the southern coast of Massachusetts, he returned to England, after an absence of six months.
In 1603, Pontgrave, a merchant of St. Malo, and Samuel de Champlain, a native of Saintonge, were commissioned by the king of France to prosecute discoveries in the New World. The expedition under their united command, went up the St. Lawrence, explored the country visited by Cartier, selected Quebec as the site of a fort, and obtained more accurate knowledge of the manners and customs of the natives, and of the geography of the country.
In November of this year, Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, a Calvinist, and an able man, obtained an exclusive patent of the country of New France, from the fortieth to the forth-sixth degree of latitude, under the name of Acadia4 Champlain returned in season, to engage in an expedition with De Monts, to settle Acadia.
This expedition started from Havre, March 7, 1604, and was prosecuted in four vessels. Arrived upon the American coast, one vessel went up the St. Lawrence, while the others continued south, and made the .coast of Acadia. Settlements were made by De Monts, at Port Royal, and upon the island of St. Croix, in the river of that name. Champlain, with others of the expedition, explored the coast of New England as far south as Cape Cod, with the view of making farther settlements upon the coast; but the numbers of the Indians disheartened them, and they returned to St. Croix. This exploration of the coast took place in the summer of 1605.
Champlain made the Piscataqua Bay, July 15, 1605, and discovered the Isles of Shoals. The next day, near a point of land, which he called "Cape of the Islands," and which is now doubtless known as "Odiorne's Point" in Rye, Champlain discovered a canoe, and near it five or six savages, who approached his barque, "dancing merrily on the shore." He landed and made the savages, each a present of a knife, and some biscuit, which they received with the same demonstrations of joy. Thus, Champlain, if not the first discoverer of the territory of New Hampshire, was doubtless the first to tread her soil, as it is not known that Capt. Pring, or his followers, left their vessel, when they discovered the Piscataqua, in 1603.
After Champlain had distributed his presents to these Indians, he says, "This done, I made them understand, in the best way that I could, that they should show me the direction of the coast. After they had marked with a coal the Bay and Cape of the Islands where we now were; they figured with the same crayon, another Bay, that they represented as very large.
And they figured, within this Bay, a river that we were to pass, which extends very far and is barred.5*The next day, the 17th of the same month, we raised anchor to go towards a Cape that we had seen the preceding day, which lay towards the south--south east, (Cape Ann.) This day we could make only five leagues, and passed some islands covered with wood (Plum Island.) I recognized in this Bay all that the savages had told me at the Cape of the Isles. Besides, there is in this Bay, a very wide river, which we have named the Riviere du Gas which in my judgment rises in the direction of the Iriquois, a nation which is at open war with the mountaineers, who are upon the great river St. Lawrence."5
Thus Champlain was the discoverer of our noble river, which he called "Riviere du Gas," but which very appropriately, retains the Indian name of Merrimack,6 first heard and written by De Monts, upon the banks of the St. Lawrence, in 1604, the year preceding its actual discovery, by the Sieur de Champlain.
De Monts, leaving his settlement at Port Royal, returned to France in 1605, to find his affairs ruined, the king having revoked the powers conferred upon him. He however succeeded in sending out supplies to his little colony, which arrived in season to prevent its complete ruin; and thus sustained, it continued to thrive until 1614, when it was broken up by Sir Samuel Argall, at the head of a force from the colony of Virginia.
Soon after the return of Gosnold to England, another expedition was started, under the patronage of the Earl of South Hampton, and Lord Arundel. Capt. George Weymouth was given the charge of it, who, in an attempt to discover a North West passage to India, had entered the Penobscot river. Capt. Weymouth left England in March 1605, and in about six weeks, made Cape Cod. Coasting North, he again entered Penobscot river, and made a harbor. Here he decoyed five of the natives on board and carried them by force to England. Their names were Manida, Sketwannoes, Tisquantum, Assecumet and Dehamda. This was the first outrage upon the innocent natives by the English on the shores of New England, of which we have any account in history. Three of these Indians, Manida, Sketwannoes, and Tisquantum, were placed in the family of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, at his earnest request.
The spirit of enterprise in relation to discoveries, and colonies in America, was now fully awakened. The accounts of these natives, of the country adjacent to the Penobscot, and Kennebec, losing nothing by the imagination of Gorges, and through his extensive influence, and intercourse, widely disseminated, continued to excite this spirit.
April 10, 1606, a company of noblemen, gentlemen, and merchants, obtained a patent from King James, to colonize North America, betwixt the parallels of thirty-four, and forty-five degrees of North latitude, embracing the coast form Cape Fear to Halifax, with the small exception of Acadia, at that time occupied by the French.
This tract, comprising eleven degrees of latitude, was divided into two districts, called North, and South Virginia, each one to be colonized by a distinct company. The first, composed of noblemen, gentlemen, and merchants, in and about London, was called "The London Company," and had the control of South Virginia, extending from the thirty-fourth to the forty-first degree of latitude. The second, composed of noblemen, gentlemen, and merchants, residing at Plymouth, and other towns in the West of England, was called the "Plymouth Company," and had the control of North Virginia, extending from the thirty-eigth, to the forty-fifth degree of latitude. Thus three degrees of latitude were common to both companies. To prevent collision, it was stipulated, that the colony last located, should not approach within one hundred miles of that already established.
Meantime, the Plymouth company, at the head of which was Sir John Popham, Lord Chief Justice of King's Bench, in 1606, sent two vessels to North Virginia, which comprised the whole of the territory now called New England, to make farther discoveries. These vessels were commanded by Capt. Martin Pring, and Henry Chalong.
Two of the Indians, Manida and Assecumet, forced from home by Weymouth, were on board of Chalong's vessel, to ensure a more cordial reception to the exploring party.
The vessel commanded by Chalong, was taken by the Spaniards, and carried into Spain.
Capt. Pring made the coast of Maine without misfortune, surveyed its coasts, harbors, and rivers, and returned to England with a most flattering report.
The London Company started an expedition on the 19th day of December, 1606, for the permanent settlement of a colony in Virginia. This expedition consisted of three small vessels, the largest of not over one hundred tons burthen, and having in all one hundred and five men, destined to remain in the colony.
On the 31st day of May, 1607, two small ships sailed from Plymouth, under the auspices of the Plymouth Company, having one hundred adventurers on board, for the purpose of establishing a colony in North Virginia. This expedition was under the command of Capt. George Popham, a brother of Chief Justice Popham, and of Raleigh Gilbert.
After making the island of Monheagan, they landed at the mouth of the Kennebec, on Parker's island, where they built a fort, and called it St. George. Two of the Indians, Sketwannoes and Dehamda, seized and carried away by Weymouth, accompanied this expedition, and secured for the colonists, a welcome from various tribes. The Indians of the Kennebec, as well as all others of this region, westward to the Saco river, were subject to the power of a Sagamon, at the head of the Penobscot tribe, located on the river Penobscot--who from his position, ruling many tribes, was styled a Bashaba. The Bashaba of Penobscot sent his son to welcome the strangers, and to open a trade in furs with the English colony. Their intercourse with the natives, was thus established upon a most friendly footing, and might have been retained, had they treated the Indians properly. In December following, the ships sailed for England, leaving but forty-five persons, to sustain the infant colony. These were soon disheartened by misfortunes. Their storehouse was burned. Their President, the life of the expedition, died. The winter was cold and rigorous. News came in the spring, of the death of the patron of the enterprise, Chief Justice Popham. Gilbert, who had succeeded to the Presidency, made vacant by the death of Popham, determined to return to England, by the next vessel, on account of the death of his brother, Sir John Gilbert; and added to all of these misfortunes, they had doubtless increased the animosity of the neighboring Indians, by improper and most unjust conduct. Their affairs being thus situated, they broke up the colony, and sailed for England, by the first vessel that touched at the Kennebec. Thus was the second colony, attempted in New England, dispersed within the first year of its existence.
This unfortunate issue, seems to have damped the spirit of colonization for a time, as no farther attempt was made, to plant a colony upon the New England shore, till 1620. The coast, however, was often visited for private adventure.
In 1611, Edward Harley and Nicholas Hobson, under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, made a voyage of discovery to the New England coast. Little is known of their success, other than upon the score of their inhumanity. Upon their return, they seized upon five of the natives whom they had decoyed on board, and carried them to England. They seized upon a sixth, Pechmo, who succeeded in making his escape, by leaping from the vessel into the water and swimming to the shore. By such inhuman conduct the natives became exasperated, and sought revenge upon future voyagers to the coast. It was the conduct of such men as Weymouth and Harely, which sowed the seeds of those destructive, and bloody wars, that afterwards so harrassed the infant colonies of New England.
In 1609, the fourth day of April, Henry Hudson, an English navigator, but now in the employment of the Dutch East India Company, set sail in the Crescent in search of the north west passage. The crew of the Crescent consisted of Englishmen and Hollanders, and a son of Hudson accompanied the expedition. Impeded by ice in his course towards Nova Zembla, Hudson turned to the West in quest of discoveries, passed Greenland, and Newfoundland, and running down the coast of New England, he made Cape Cod, to which he gave the name of New Holland. Sailing hence, he made the Capes of Virginia and turning northward, on the third day of September, he anchored within the bay of New York, and on the eleventh day of September, passed the Narrows, and anchored in the harbor of New York. With the Crescent and his boats, Hudson made his way up the noble river that bears his name, beyond Albany--where he had friendly intercourse with the Indians. Returning, the Crescent arrived safely at Dartmouth, from which place, Hudson despatched an account of his discoveries to his employers at Amsterdam. This voyage of discovery of Hudson's, was the foundation of the claim on the part of the Dutch to New York, and the territory south and east of the Hudson, from cape May to Cape Cod, under the name of New Netherlands. But colonization was no object of the Dutch. Their visits to America were purely for traffic with the natives, so that New Netherlands existed for a long time, rather in name than in the fact of population.
In 1613, there were only two or three rude hovels upon the island of Manhattan, and these merely as a temporary residence. In 1615, a settlement was commenced on an island just below Albany--as a mere outpost for the Indian trader. In 1623, there were a few houses with thatched roofs and wooden chimnies, about the trading house on Manhattan Island. From this time the settlement was permanently occupied. This is the small beginning of New York--now the commercial emporium of the New World. The Dutch discovered the Connecticut river, and in 1633 built a fort within the present limits of Hartford. But the enterprise of their pilgrim neighbors surrounded the fort with towns--and compelled them to give up the idea of colonizing the valley of Connecticut. The Dutch colony at New York progressed with various success--sometimes harassed by vindictive war with the natives, and again by internal divisions, until 1664, when the Duke of York, having obtained a charter of the territory "form the Connecticut river to the shores of the Delaware," an English squadron, under Richard Nichols, sailed into the harbor of New York, and demanded the surrender of New Amsterdam, and the immediate acknowledgment, on the part of the Dutch, of English sovereignty. On the eighth day of September, 1664, the demand was acceded to, and New Amsterdam, with the name of New York, passed into the hands of the English. The surrender of Fort Orange soon followed, and the Fort was named Albany from the Scottish title of the Duke of York. Thus, in less than a half century from its permanent settlement by the Dutch, was their large territory of New Netherlands, wrested from their hands and placed in those of a rival power. Had the Dutch had the enterprise and power to have made good their claim by the right of discovery, the western part of New Hampshire, the whole of Vermont and the best part of Massachusetts and Connecticut, as well as the whole of Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey--must have been the subject to their control. How widely different must have been the destiny of New England--of this republic.
In 1614, Capt. John Smith, the chivalrous founder of Virginia, made a voyage of discovery to the coast of New England. At the island of Monheagan, he made a number of boats, in one of which, in company with eight men, while the others of his crew were engaged in fishing, he examined the coast from the Penobscot river to Cape Cod. He examined the Isles of Shoals, which he called "Smith's Isles;" and posterity should not have deprived him of this modest tribute to his distinguished merit. He examined also the Piscataqua river, and "found it to be a safe harbor with a rocky shore." After his return to England, Capt. Smith published a description of the country he had explored, which he called New England, and made a map of its coast, which he presented to Charles, Prince of Wales.
Smith left Capt. Hunt on the coast of Maine, completing his freight of fish, intended for the Spanish market. Hunt being an unprincipled man, destitute alike of justice or humanity, seized upon twenty-four of the natives, and carrying them to Spain, sold them as slaves. This was the third outrage of the kind, committed against the natives, on this costs, and was the foundation of an implacable hostility towards the whites, on the part of the Indians--that, sharpened by a continued series of like outrages upon the rights of hospitality, grew at length, into a fiend-like malignity, which spared neither age, or sex.
Not far from this time, a tribe of the Tarratines, east of the Penobscot, attacked the Penobscots, and killed the Bashaba. Upon the death of the Bashaba, the greatest confusion prevailed among his people, as many of their most powerful Sachems aimed at the sovereignty, and a fierce and bloody war ensured. This was followed by a most fatal disease, which swept throughout the tribes of New England. So that it has been estimated, that by these calamities, of war and pestilence, nineteen twentieths of the Indians, upon this coast, were destroyed.
In 1616, Gorges whose adventurous spirit had not been checked by the preceding misfortunes, sent out to the coast of Maine, an exploring party, under the command of Richard Vines, with express reference to establishing a permanent settlement. Vines and his party, undoubtedly passed the winter upon on the banks of the Saco. This was during the raging of the pestilence among the Indians. Vines and his party were received by the natives, with the utmost hospitality, passed freely among them, slept in their wigwams, and yet suffered not from the dreadful malady.
This expedition of Vines, was successful in its main object, as it proved that colonists could withstand the vigorous winter climate of New England. Gorges, and his adventurous friends, were pleased with the result of their enterprise, and set about forming plans for permanently colonizing the country. In this matter, however, they were anticipated by accident.
At the time the first voyagers to New England, visited its shores for private gain, or for the purposes of colonizing its shores, that aggrandizement might follow to lordly proprietors, and chartered monopolies; events had for a long time been ripening in England, that in the end, prepared the way for a permanent settlement, in the wilds of New England, by a colony, asking no other boon, than religious freedom. The Pilgrims, persecuted alike by Catholic, and Episcopalian, determined to forsake England, that they might enjoy that religious liberty in a foreign land, that was denied them in their native country. They chose Holland as their place of refuge. After much toil, and suffering from their persecutors, they arrived in Holland. Here they tarried for nine years, when from a variety of circumstances, and after mature deliberation, they determined to remove to America. Accordingly, in 1617, they sent Agents to England, to obtain consent of the London Company, to their settling "the most northern parts of Virginia." After various delays they obtained a patent in 1619, and immediately set about the work of emigration.
Two ships, the Speedwell of sixty tons, and the Mayflower, of one hundred and eighty tons, were provided for the voyage. In these small vessels, the Pilgrims "left the old for the new world, Aug. 5, 1620." The Speedwell proving leaky, the expedition put back for repairs, and sailing again, was forced back by a storm, till at length, abandoning the Speedwell, on the sixth day of September, 1620, the Pilgrims, in the Mayflower, left the harbor of Plymouth, for the wilds of America. After a long and tedious passage of sixty-five days, duped by the captain of the Mayflower, who was in the interest of the Dutch, they "were conducted to the most barren and inhospitable part of Massachusetts," and "were safely moored in the harbor of Cape Cod," on the eleventh day of November, 1620. Exploring parties were sent out to discover a more favorable location. On the eleventh day of December, Carver, and others, in a shallop, landed at a place that they thought inviting for a settlement, and on the fifteenth of December, the Mayflower was brought into its harbor. The place, they called Plymouth, in grateful remembrance of the many kindnesses, they had experienced in the town they had left, in their native land.
Thus was established the first permanent colony in New England. "The vine had been planted, which has long enriched her valleys, and adorned her hills."
1For an account of the voyages of the "Northmen," see work of C. Christian Rafn, entitled Antiquitates Americanæ; also, Humbolt's Cosmos. Return
2An Indian word meaning a narrow place or strait. Return
3Penobscot, means the Rock Place, being derived from Penops (a rock,) and Auke (a place.) Kennebec, means a snake.
Saca, is a contraction of Sawacotauke, which means, literally, the Burnt Pine Place, derived from Sawa, (burnt.) Coo, (a pine,) and Auke, (a place,) the t being thrown in for the sake of euphony.
Kennebunk, is doubtless a corruption for Kennebeauke, the snake place.
Piscataqua, written anciently Pascataquack, means literally the Great Deer Place, being derived from Pos, (great,) Attuck, (deer,) and Auke, (a place.) Return
4This word, written Acadia, Cadia, and Cadie, is generally supposed to be derived from the French or Latin;--but it is an Indian word corrupted by the French. The original word is Aquoddiauke, from Aquoddie, (a pollock,) and Auke, (a place,) and meaning a place for pollock. This word was very naturally corrupted by the French into Acadia, Cadia, and Cadie. The original word is still preserved in the neighborhood, in Passamaquoddy, the name of a Bay at the entrance of the St. Croix, in the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, which is derived from Pos, (great,) Aguam, (water,) Aquoddie, (pollock,) and meaning great water for pollock. Return
5*Charlevois ps. 72-77. Return
6This river was called Merrimack, by the northern Indians. Merrimack, means, doubtless, a place of strong current, from Merruh, (strong,) and Auke, (a place) the m being thrown in for the sake of the sound.
But by the Massachusetts Indians, this river was called Monomack, from Mona, (an island,) and Auke, (a place,) meaning the Island Place, from the number of beautiful islands in this river.Return
