A Century Of Exploration

By David Saville Muzzey, 1920

The hundred years that followed Christopher Columbus’s death in 1506 and culminated in the establishment of the first permanent English colony on American soil in 1607 were a period of intense activity. This century was defined by daring voyages, compelling narratives of exploration, and the pursuit of conquest in the newly discovered lands. While subsequent centuries saw exploration driven by scientific curiosity about indigenous populations, the land’s resources, and the opening of new trade routes, the 16th century possessed a different character. Spanish noblemen, driven by the allure of mythical fountains of youth in Florida and the rumored gold of dazzling cities in the western deserts, traversed treacherous landscapes in pursuit of these elusive goals.

The era was also deeply influenced by religious fervor. A stern missionary spirit intertwined with the desire for wealth. The cross was planted as a symbol of faith, often accompanied by the soldiers kneeling in gratitude on ground stained with the blood of those deemed heretical.

However, the primary aspiration of European explorers was to reach Asia, with its legendary riches. America was often perceived as an impediment, an obstacle in the path to the East. Well into the 17th century, mariners continued to probe the northern coasts of America, seeking a navigable passage around the continent, each river mouth greeted with the hope of it being a gateway to the Indies.

During his fourth voyage in 1502, Christopher Columbus navigated the coast of Central America, still hoping to find a westward route to China. In contrast, Amerigo Vespucci’s voyage along the South American coast between 1501 and 1502 provided strong evidence that he had discovered a "new world," even if it did not offer a direct route to Asia.

Another explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, dedicated himself to finding a westward passage to the Indies. In September 1519, this Portuguese navigator, serving under the Spanish flag, embarked on what many consider one of the most extraordinary voyages in history with five ships and a crew of approximately 300 men.

Sailing along the Brazilian coast, Magellan ventured southwards. After suppressing a dangerous mutiny during a harsh winter spent on the desolate Patagonian coast, he navigated the narrow straits at the tip of South America, which would later bear his name: the Straits of Magellan. This perilous five-week passage through the convoluted waterways led his ships to the tranquil expanse of an ocean that he gratefully christened the "Pacific."

The trials faced by Magellan and his crew worsened upon entering the Pacific. For weeks, they sailed westward across this vast ocean, unaware of its immense scale, which covers nearly half the globe. Hunger escalated into starvation, thirst into desperation, and hope began to dwindle. On two occasions during this arduous 10,000-mile journey, land appeared, only to reveal barren, uninhabitable islands. Finally, they reached the inhabited islands of Australia. Although Magellan himself was killed in a skirmish with the natives of the Philippine Islands, his ship, the Victoria, continued its westward journey across the Indian Ocean. Rounding the Cape of Good Hope, it eventually reached Lisbon, Spain, on September 6, 1522, with a skeletal crew of only 18 survivors.

Magellan’s voyage achieved the first circumnavigation of the globe. It provided definitive proof that the Earth was round and highlighted the vast proportion of water to land. It also disproved Columbus’s belief that America was merely a collection of islands off the coast of Asia. Magellan’s voyage demonstrated that America was a continent situated in its own hemisphere, separated from Cathay (China) by a much wider expanse of water than that separating it from Europe. It took further explorers generations to fully map and understand the size and shape of the American continent. Ultimately, Magellan’s voyage established the continent’s position relative to the known world.

While Magellan’s crew battled starvation across the Pacific, equally dramatic events unfolded in Mexico. Using Haiti as a base, the Spanish conquered and colonized Puerto Rico and Cuba by 1508. Expeditions were then dispatched westward to the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and northward to Florida in the same year. In 1519, Hernán Cortés, a Spanish adventurer known for his courage and strategic acumen, was sent by the governor of Cuba to conquer and plunder the wealthy Indian kingdom located north of the isthmus. This was the Aztec Empire, a confederation of Indian tribes ruled by Emperor Montezuma. The land was rich in gold and silver, and its people were skilled in art and architecture. They had a complex religious system with magnificent temples but practiced human sacrifice. The Aztec capital, Mexico City, was built on an island in the middle of a lake and connected to the mainland by four causeways.

Aztec religious beliefs included a legend of a fair-haired god of the sky, Quetzalcoatl, who had been exiled but was prophesied to return and rule in peace and prosperity. When the Aztecs saw the Spaniards arriving with their "white-winged towers" (ships) on the sea, they believed that their fair god had returned. Cortés quickly capitalized on this perception. The natives were awed by his cannons and armored knights. He seized Montezuma, captured Mexico City, and, in 1521, declared the Aztec Empire a dependency of Spain. This marked the first secure foothold for the Spanish on the American continent and served as a vital base for further exploration and conquest.

The twenty years following Cortés’s conquest of Mexico represented the zenith of Spanish exploration in America. The Spanish flag and language were carried from Kansas to Chile and from the Carolinas to the Pacific Ocean. The accounts left by the heroes of these expeditions are filled with excitement and adventure.

We read of Cabeza de Vaca, a shipwreck survivor in the Gulf of Mexico, making his way across vast stretches of Texas and Mexico to the Gulf of California, traveling from tribe to tribe. There was the ruthless Gonzalo Pizarro, replicating Cortés’s conquest south of the isthmus and adding the silver mines of Peru to the Spanish treasury. And the noble Hernando de Soto, with his 600 knights in silk doublets and cassocks, his priests in splendid vestments, his Portuguese soldiers in shining armor, his horses, hounds, and hogs, all prepared for a triumphal procession to kingdoms of gold and ivory. However, he was destined to lead his starving and constantly ambushed army through the swamps and forests from Georgia to Arkansas, ultimately succumbing to fever and being buried in the Mississippi River. Then there was Francisco Coronado and his 300 followers, driven by the lure of the Seven Cities of Cibola, chasing the golden mirage of the western desert from the Pacific coast of Mexico to present-day Kansas. These explorers were all seeking to expand the Spanish Empire.

Despite the vast expenditure of lives and resources, there were no Spanish settlements north of the Gulf of Mexico by the mid-16th century. The Spanish were primarily motivated by the pursuit of gold, not colonization. They encountered indigenous people living in simple dwellings but failed to find the fountain of youth or the fabled cities of gold. They could not foresee the future wealth that would be extracted from the lands they traversed, and the disillusioned survivors returned to Mexican towns.

However, to the south and west of the Gulf of Mexico, in the islands of the West Indies, the Spanish had established a substantial empire. The discovery of gold in Haiti and the conquest of the rich treasures of Mexico and Peru brought thousands of adventurers and tens of thousands of African slaves to tropical America. Spain governed these lands despotically, regulating commerce and justice through the "India House" in Seville and imposing Spanish culture. A printing press was established in 1536, and universities were opened in Mexico and Peru shortly after the mid-century. The essential features of Spanish government were transplanted across the ocean: absolutism in government and religion. Trade was restricted to specific ports; heretics and their descendants were barred from the colonies; the brutal conditions in the mines decimated the native population. The land was considered the property of the sovereign and granted to nobles who, under the guise of protecting and converting the natives, turned their fiefs into vast slave estates, treating both Indians and Africans with extreme cruelty.

Despite these oppressive aspects, Spanish colonization brought some benefits to the New World. The Spanish introduced European agricultural techniques to the fertile islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Jamaica, and exploited the rich veins of gold and silver in Mexico and Peru. They built cities, dredged and fortified harbors, established schools and universities, and constructed cathedrals and palaces. Spain, unified by the union of Aragon and Castile, and with its king elevated to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire as Charles V, was the most powerful state in Europe during the 16th century. Gold from the American mines enhanced the splendor of the Spanish throne, and its civilization was reflected in its colonies. However, Spain’s decline began with the wars waged by Charles’s dictatorial son, Philip II, to suppress the freedom of his Dutch subjects, and the defeat of his Armada by Queen Elizabeth’s navy in 1588. By the end of the 16th century, Spanish colonization had lost its momentum.

While the Spanish were the dominant explorers in America during the 16th century, they were not the only ones. In 1524, the King of France commissioned Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian navigator, to seek a westward passage to the Indies. Verrazano sailed along and charted the coast of North America from Labrador to the Carolinas but did not find a route to Asia. Ten years later, Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River to an Indian village in Montreal, Canada. His passage to China was blocked by rapids, which he named Lachine ("China" rapids). However, France’s focus was diverted by foreign and civil wars during the latter half of the 16th century, and, with one minor exception, colonization projects were put on hold until peace returned and Henry of Navarre ascended to the throne in 1598.

While war hindered French enterprise, it fueled English colonial activity, which had been dormant since John Cabot’s voyages. England and Spain became fierce rivals – religiously, commercially, and politically – during Elizabeth’s reign (1558-1603). England was fighting for its survival and the Protestant cause against the aggressive Catholic monarch Philip II. Unable to attack Philip directly on the Spanish peninsula, England sent troops to aid the Dutch revolt and targeted the source of Philip’s wealth by attacking his treasure fleets from the Indies. English seamen, such as Hawkins, Davis, Cavendish, and especially Sir Francis Drake, performed acts of extraordinary bravery against the Spanish, scouring the American coasts and the high seas for their treasure ships, engaging entire fleets single-handedly, circumnavigating the globe with their plunder, and even raiding Spanish harbors to "singe King Philip’s beard" by burning his ships and docks. These explorers were crucial to England’s rise.

From seizing Spanish gold on the seas to competing for the golden land was a natural progression. In 1578, veteran soldier Sir Humphrey Gilbert received a patent from Queen Elizabeth to "inhabit and possess all remote and heathen lands, not in the actual possession of any Christian prince." Gilbert failed to establish a colony on the harsh coast of Newfoundland, and his ship was lost on the return voyage. His patent was passed on to his half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, a favorite of Elizabeth’s court. Raleigh’s ships sought milder climates, and a colony was established on Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, in 1585. At Elizabeth’s suggestion, the land was named "Virginia" in honor of the "Virgin Queen." The colonists diligently searched for gold and explored the coasts and rivers in search of a passage to Cathay.

However, misfortune struck. Supplies from England were delayed, and the colony was abandoned. Raleigh repeatedly tried to establish a lasting settlement, but the conflict with Spain consumed the nation’s resources, and the planters prioritized gold hunting over agriculture. Raleigh invested his personal fortune in this venture and eventually abandoned it, optimistically prophesying to Lord Cecil: "I shall yet live to see it an English nation." He did live to see the beginnings of an English colony in Virginia, even from his prison cell, where he was under a death sentence, procured by the Stuart king who succeeded the "spacious times of great Elizabeth."

Wherever the European visitors landed on the American continent, whether on the shores of Labrador, the tropical islands of the Caribbean Sea, the vast plains of the southwest, or the slopes of the Andes, they encountered a sparsely clothed, copper-skinned race of people with high cheekbones and straight black hair. Believing he had reached the Indies, Columbus called the curious and friendly inhabitants who greeted him "Indians." This inaccurate name has been used ever since to refer to the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.

In Mexico, Central America, and South America, the Spanish explorers and conquerors found a more advanced native culture in terms of art, industry, architecture, and agriculture than was later discovered among the Indians of North America. Even the foundation of an organized state existed in the Aztec confederacy of Mexico. Massive pueblos, or communal houses made of adobe, were built around a square or semicircular courtyard in rising tiers, accessed by ladders. A single pueblo could house up to a thousand people. The Aztec and Inca chiefs lived in elaborately decorated palaces.

The Indian tribes north of the Gulf of Mexico had generally reached a stage of development known as "lower barbarism," characterized by pottery-making and rudimentary agricultural practices. Between the simple teepee of the Pacific Coast tribes and the imposing pueblo of Mexico, the typical dwelling was the "longhouse" or "roundhouse" of the village Indians from Canada to Florida. These houses were constructed of sturdy saplings covered with bark or mud plaster.

Individual family compartments were separated by thin walls along a central aisle or radiating from a central hearth. Forty or fifty families commonly lived in a single house, sharing their staple foods of corn, beans, pumpkins, wild turkey, fish, bear, and buffalo meat. Personal property was limited to clothing, ornaments, and weapons. The women prepared the food, cared for the children, crafted utensils and ornaments of beads, feathers, and skins, and strung polished shells, or "wampum," which the Indians used as currency and for communication. The men were engaged in war, hunting, and tribal councils. In their leisure time, they repaired their bows, sharpened arrowheads, or stretched birch bark over canoe frames. They engaged in various games and dances, both solemn and celebratory, and enjoyed relaxing in the sun.

The Indians were generally welcoming to the Europeans upon their initial encounters. It was largely the white man’s cruelty and treachery that transformed the red man’s initial curiosity into hostility rather than fostering lasting alliances. Over time, many tribes vanished, while others were either decimated or assimilated by the white settlers.

The most fertile part of the North American continent, which the Spanish adventurers explored in the 16th century and whose edges were touched by explorers from other nations, was destined to become the United States of America. It was blessed with diverse climates, abundant rainfall east of the Rocky Mountains, exceptionally fertile soil, and vast deposits of coal and metals.

While South Africa and Mexico have larger gold and silver reserves, some countries, such as France and Italy, have maintained a highly civilized population for centuries but have lacked abundant natural resources. Others, like Manchuria and Russia, have been richly endowed by nature but have lacked the knowledge and initiative to exploit their wealth. However, in the United States, people and resources were ideally matched. As the tide of migration slowly moved westward, across the Alleghenies, across the Mississippi River, across the Great Plains and the crests of the Rockies and the Sierras, an intelligent and energetic race of pioneers cleared the forests, cultivated the fertile river bottoms, and mined the coal and iron deposits.

The process was gradual. The early explorers and settlers on the Atlantic Coast had no understanding of the vastness of the continent before them. Even in the mid-17th century, French explorers believed that the Mississippi River flowed into the South Sea (the Pacific Ocean). English settlers on the Atlantic Coast did not begin crossing the Alleghenies until the 18th century. The Rockies were discovered in 1743, and within the next 50 years, the Pacific Coast was mapped by explorers and traders. Finally, in 1805, an expedition led by President Thomas Jefferson reached the mouth of the Columbia River, linking the Atlantic and Pacific shores for the first time. This occurred more than three centuries after Columbus’s voyages and nearly 200 years after the establishment of the first permanent English settlement in America.