The Iroquois Confederacy was the strongest native power for war. They numbered about 10,000, and lived in compact, fortified villages, in Western New York. We have little accurate knowledge about the numbers of the natives. Scholars now agree that those east of the Mississippi did not exceed 200,000. Many a single city in our country to-day contains more people than dwelt in all the continent, north of Mexico, when Europeans first touched its shores. 7. The distribution of the native peoples affected vitally the success of European settlement. The Spaniards in South and Central America had to deal only with races gentler than any of these North American Indians. So the Spaniards conquered too rapidly. They overran the continent faster than they could occupy it. Their rule, too, was built upon the slavery of the natives. The conquerors mixed their blood with this enslaved population until their own nationality was lost. The French, in the north, came into conflict with the formidable Iroquois; and deadly blows by this fierce confederacy did much to prevent French mastery of America. The English, in their time of weakness, touched only the Algonkins, who could not seriously endanger European settlement. At the same time, the Algonkins were untamable; and so the English did not mix blood with them. And they were dangerous enough to scattered settlements to help keep the English colonies fairly compact, down to the Revolution. This compact settlement gave opportunity for true civilization, and it made possible the union of the colonies against England, when the time came. Both nature and the natives, seeming unkind to the English colonist, were really kinder to him than to his rivals. 8. In certain ways the Indians aided English colonization directly. They furnished the first settlements with the "Indian corn " that warded off starvation; and soon they taught the colonists to plant both corn (maize) and tobacco the two native products of supreme value in the early period. Maize was long the main food supply. European grains failed in the new climate season after season, while the colonist was learning the new conditions. Moreover, to clear and prepare the soil for wheat or barley took much time. Maize was a surer crop and needed less toil. The colonist learned from the Indian to raise it, at need, without even clearing the forest,merely girdling the trees to kill the foliage, and planting among the standing trunks. It was no accident that this Indian grain came to be called " corn," the general name for European grains. Tobacco the colonist exchanged for European goods. If Indian corn enabled him to live through the first hard years, it was tobacco that first made him rich. Colonies too far north to raise tobacco found their first wealth in furs; and these, too, they obtained mainly from native hunters. Indian wampum at times made an important part of colonial money. Forest trails, worn into deep paths by the feet of generations of Redmen, became highways for White travel.1 Water routes, too, discovered by native pilots in birch canoes, were adopted by White traders. And stations for the exchange of furs, where certain trails and waterways joined, became the sites of mighty cities like Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, and Duluth. 1 Cf. map facing page 10. The New York Central Railroad follows the old Iroquois trail from Lake Erie to the Hudson; and in Minneapolis one of the finest streets (Hennepin Avenue) is an ancient Indian trail from the neighboring Lake Harriet to the Mississippi just above the Falls of St. Anthony. CHAPTER II ENGLAND'S RIVALS 9. Spain was first in the field in American colonization. During the crusades, Europe had learned to depend on Asiatic spices, sugars, cottons, silks, and metalwares, as luxuries and even as daily necessities. For two hundred years a vast caravan trade brought these articles, in a steady stream, from COLUMBUS AT THE COURT OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. From the imaginative painting by Brozik in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. central Asia to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean; but in the fifteenth century the rise of Turkish barbarians in Asia Minor closed this route. Europe, just then awaking from the long torpor of the Middle Ages, eagerly sought new trade routes into Asia. Portugal found one, to the south, around Africa. Columbus, aided by the Spanish Isabella, tried a still bolder western road and stumbled on America in his path (Modern World, §§ 255, 343). 10. This discovery marked the close of the fifteenth century. The next century in the New World was Spain's. The story of her conquest is a tale of heroic endeavor, marred by revolting ferocity. The details, as an old Spanish chronicler said, are “all horrid transactions, nothing pleasant in any of them." Not till twenty years after the discovery, did the Spaniards advance to the mainland for settlement; but, once begun, her DE SOTO DISCOVERING THE MISSISSIPPI. From the imaginative painting by William H. Powell in the Capitol at Washington. handfuls of adventurers swooped swiftly north and south. By 1550, she held not only all South America (save Portugal's Brazil), but also all Central America, Mexico, the Californias far up the Pacific coast, and the Floridas. The gold from Mexico and Peru helped to give Spain her proud place as the most powerful country in Europe through most of the sixteenth century; and she guarded her American possessions jealously. The Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean were Spanish lakes, and the whole Pacific was a "closed sea." Frenchman or Englishman, caught upon those waters, was put to death. § 12] FRANCE IN AMERICA 9 11. Nor was Spain content with even this huge empire on land and sea. She was planning grandly to occupy the Mississippi valley and the Appalachian slope in America, and to seize Holland and England in Europe; but, in 1588, she received a fatal check. The gallant English "sea-dogs" destroyed the "Invincible Armada" in a wonderful nine-days' sea fight. That victory did more than merely save England: it marked a turning point in World history. Spain never recovered her old supremacy upon the sea, and so other European peoples were left free to try their fortunes in America. 12. For a time, France seemed most likely to succeed Spain as mistress of North America. A quarter of a century went to exploration and failures. Then, in 1608, Champlain founded a French colony at Quebec. Soon, canoefleets of traders and missionaries were coasting the shores of LA SALLE TAKING POSSESSION OF THE MISSIS- the Great Lakes and establishing French stations there— at points still known by French names. Finally, in 1682, after years of splendid effort, LaSalle succeeded in following the Mississippi to the Gulf, setting up a French claim to the entire valley. In later years New France consisted of the colony on the St. Lawrence in the far north, and the semi-tropical colony of New Orleans, joined to each other, along the interior waterways, by a slight chain of trading posts and military stations -Detroit, Sault Ste. Marie, Vincennes, Kaskaskia, St. Louis, and the like (map facing next page). |