The Smart Aleck's Guide to American History

by Adam Selzer

  According to legend, de León went to Florida to search for the fountain of youth, a pool of magical waters that would keep people young forever. In reality, he was probably not that gullible.

  The first known story of his looking for such a thing came in a history book written in 1535—years after de León died—which stated that de León went to Florida looking for the waters of Bimini, which, he had been told, would cure his impotence. By 1615, the story had turned into de León looking for a pool that would grant eternal youth. Neither of these bodies of water actually existed, though both would explain why so many old people go to Florida nowadays.

  Juan Ponce de León, keepin’ his fingers crossed that he won’t get eaten by cannibals.

  EL DORADO: FOR THE EVEN MORE GULLIBLE

  You have to remember that no one had any idea what this new world might contain; at a time when many people never got more than a few miles from their homes, tales of things that sound downright ridiculous to us nowadays seemed perfectly plausible. Even if de León wasn’t looking for the fountain of youth, it was probably only because he hadn’t heard about it.

  One legend that got around quite a bit was that somewhere in the New World was a city containing fabulous riches—or even a whole city—or seven cities—made entirely out of gold. The most famous of these legends today is the legend of El Dorado, the city of gold.

  The original story of El Dorado, the one that sent explorers packing, was not of a city of gold, it was a story of a golden king. According to legend, every so often the king of a South American tribe called the Muisca would cover himself in gold dust and jump into a lake, carrying with him a whole bunch of jewels and gold nuggets as offerings to the gods. This may in fact have been true—conquistadores, Spanish explorers, heard about this firsthand from some of the Muisca. But they didn’t have any gold cities, or even very much gold. Still, the legend persisted, and several expeditions were launched to find the place. They even tried to drain Lake Guatavita, which is in Colombia, a couple of times to see if there were any jewels in it (and supposedly found some, though they never quite drained the lake completely).

  Somewhere along the line, the legend of the golden king morphed into legends of a golden city. Stories of cities of gold were nothing new by 1492; rumors that there was a golden city someplace in the world had gone around since the Middle Ages, when even what was going on in the next country over was a big mystery to most people. But since hundreds of years of explorers and armies tramping through Europe and the Middle East had failed to turn up any golden cities, news that there was a whole new continent out there to explore was all some treasure hunters needed to hear. Guys like Francisco Coronado and García López de Cárdenas mounted enormous, expensive expeditions to find the golden cities they had heard about all their lives. They both came up empty-handed, but in the process, López managed to discover the Grand Canyon. Later, of course, that canyon would become a gold mine in terms of tourist dollars. If only he had thought to open a gift shop.

  Amerigo Vespucci worked as a navigator on several voyages to the New World. A couple of letters recounting his voyage greatly exaggerated his role. Some historians say he was talking a big game, and others say that he didn’t really even write the letters at all. But they were popular reading, and in 1507, people started naming the American continents after him (unless you’re one of the people who believe they were naming it after Richard Amerike, a guy who funded some of the pre-Columbus fishermen’s expeditions). That’s life for you—daring explorers who get eaten by cannibals are lucky to get a toll road from Scranton to Schenectady named after them, but some navigator gets two whole continents!

  SOME EARLY SPANISH COLONIAL FAILURES

  SAN MIGUEL DE GUADALUPE (1526): This settlement fell apart so quickly and completely that we don’t even know if it was in present-day Georgia or South Carolina. Served ’em right, in a way: these settlers were the first to use African slave labor in America.

  THE NARVÁEZ EXPEDITION (1527): A crew of six hundred set out to install Panfilo de Narváez as governor of the Gulf Coast. All but five of them died.

  PENSACOLA (1559): The original settlement was destroyed by a hurricane after about a month. The survivors tried to build it again but gave up in 1561. Eventually, it was rebuilt, and today it is the Red Snapper Capital of the World. Inspiring, ain’t it?

  THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS

  After Columbus’s success at not starting any colonies, there were several failed attempts to settle the New World in the 1500s, mostly by the Spanish, in Florida and California. But historians generally agree that the Spanish really sucked at forming settlements in those days. They were pretty good at wiping out other civilizations, but not so great at starting new ones of their own.

  Their first successful settlement was Saint Augustine, Florida, in 1565. Of course, the term “successful” is relative; Saint Augustine had a bit of bad luck early on. It was attacked and burned by the English, then again by pirates, who once showed up and killed just about everyone who lived there. But the settlement survived and remained under Spanish control for nearly two hundred years.

  It wasn’t until well after the founding of Saint Augustine that the British decided to get in on the act of colonizing the New World. In 1578 and 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert made unsuccessful attempts to set up a colony in America. After he died, Sir Walter Raleigh took over the job. He sent ships full of settlers over to North America, commanding them to establish a colony and name the land Virginia, in honor of Queen Elizabeth, who was known as the Virgin Queen (though a lot of people think she and Walter were awfully close, if you get our drift).

  “What dost thou make of this, Wayne?” “I haven’t the foggiest notion, Vern.” “It verily beateth the heck out of me, Jim.”

  Sir Walter Raleigh models the latest bib. He wore this thing by the docks. Are you man enough to try that? No. No, you are not.

  We hate to break it to you, but your life will not be as interesting as Sir Walter Raleigh’s. He hung out with kings and queens, explored new worlds, searched for El Dorado, and was in charge of the first English colony in the New World. Plus, he popularized tobacco among the English, and is credited with planting the first potato in Ireland. Tobacco turned out to be bad news, and the potato thing probably isn’t true, but still—it’s more than anybody is ever going to credit you with if you don’t get your act together.

  Raleigh personally supported the first colony in Roanoke, having told the potential settlers that they’d strike it rich by finding gold—possibly even El Dorado—in America. You might say that he started the tradition of telling European emigrants that the streets in America were paved with gold.

  The people Raleigh talked into becoming settlers picked an island near present-day Virginia for their colony, and once they arrived, they busied themselves with attacking and burning native villages. Funnily enough, the natives were not very keen on this and started attacking back. Since the natives were fighting with them, not helping them find food (with which they needed all the help they could get), the settlers didn’t end up having much to eat. When a ship came to check on these colonists in 1586, everyone was hungry and wanted to go home, and all but fifteen returned to England. This is why, to this day, the Roanoke, Virginia, high school football team is called the Quitters.6

  THE FIRST ENGLISH KID

  A few weeks into the second colonization of Roanoke, a settler gave birth to a girl with the really cool name of Virginia Dare. Virginia was the first white Anglo-Saxon Protestant to be born in America.

  Undaunted, and still intent on impressing the queen and hooking a nation on tobacco, Raleigh sent another group across the Atlantic in 1587 to make another attempt at a colony. The island he sent them to was not so much an island as it was a swamp (today, realtors would call it a rustic fixer-upper in a historical neighborhood—steps to beach, free heat,7 no pets), and the natives who lived nearby were not very friendly. To survive, the colonists would be depending entirely on supplies s
ent from England now and then.

  A supply ship was supposed to come to bring them some gear in 1588, but it didn’t. That was the year that the Royal Navy launched an attack on the Spanish Armada, and with a war going on, everyone sort of forgot that there was a colony to take care of. No supply ship actually came until 1590, and by then, the colonists had vanished. All they left behind was the word “Croatoan” carved into one post, and “Cro” carved into another. Most people assumed that this meant that they had gone to Croatoan Island, but a massive storm kept anyone on that supply ship from being able to search for them.

  No one ever found out for sure what had happened to these colonists. Some say they starved to death, others say they were killed by the natives, and still others say they moved north and settled among some peaceful natives (perhaps only to be slaughtered later by less peaceful ones). This is one of those mysteries that will probably never be solved. There are a lot of those in history.

  Years after the colonies failed, in 1594, Raleigh himself explored South America in search of a golden city that was supposed to be at the head of the Caroní River. When he made it back to England, he claimed to have found it, but he was lying through his teeth. In reality, he hadn’t even made it up the river.

  John Smith claimed that Pocahontas (above) risked her life to save his when he was about to be bludgeoned to death. Most people doubt his story these days; anything you hear about what really happened is in fact just a guess. Pocahontas and Smith were never romantically linked, but she did become friends with the colonists—and saved their butts by bringing them provisions every few days. After Smith went back to England, Pocahontas married an Englishman named John Rolfe, changed her name to Rebecca, and went to London, where she spent the last year of her life living as a celebrity. This engraving of her was made in 1616, which means it might actually be a realistic portrait.

  Nearly twenty years later, he went back looking for El Dorado. During this expedition, he and his men sacked a Spanish outpost, and the Spanish ambassador demanded that King James have Raleigh executed. King James had never liked Raleigh anyway, and had him beheaded in public in 1618.

  JAMESTOWN

  The first English colony that lasted any length of time was Jamestown, which was founded in 1607 by the Virginia Company, a private company (as opposed to one sponsored by the government). They raised money from investors to set up the colony not in the name of the Crown, but in the name of the three “G’s”—glory, God, and gold. Actually, it was mostly just gold, but throwing glory and God into the mix probably looked good on paper.

  John Smith, the guy from the Disney movie about Pocahontas (which has very little basis in fact), was arrested for mutiny on the voyage over and spent about half of the trip incarcerated; the crew planned to hang him as soon as they hit land. However, upon getting off the ship, they opened sealed orders from the Virginia Company that named Smith a member of the governing council, thereby saving his butt.

  The colonists picked the site, on a peninsula in the James River, mainly because they thought it would be easy to defend from any invading armies, but also because there were no natives living there to kill them off. Unfortunately, the fact that they were wide open to both malaria and pirates went right over their heads.

  Pretty soon, they realized why the natives weren’t living there: the land was pretty much useless. The water was undrinkable, the land was unfarmable, mosquitoes were everywhere, and the nightlife was horribly dull. Still, rather than finding a better place, they stayed, and those who didn’t die of dysentery or attack by the natives (who didn’t live there but showed up within two weeks to attack them anyway) managed to build a fort.

  The leader of the group, a guy called Christopher Newport, loaded up his boat with tons and tons of what he thought was gold, and sailed back to England ready to spend it, leaving about a hundred colonists behind. When he got to London, he found out that it wasn’t gold at all—it was actually iron pyrite, aka fool’s gold, which was pretty much worthless. The quest for glory, God and gold wasn’t exactly off to a rip-roaring start.

  WHAT HAPPENED TO THOSE CROATOAN GUYS?

  So what happened to the lost colony? Historians have come up with a ton of theories over the years, such as:

  1. THEY WENT TO CROATOAN ISLAND. Leaving this word carved into the post may have meant that they had moved to Croatoan Island nearby.

  2. THEY DIED. Some believe that they starved to death due to a lack of supplies or were killed by natives, presumably of the Croatoan tribe (thus explaining the message). Given the way this chapter has gone so far, this seems reasonable enough, but if they were being attacked, they probably wouldn’t have had much time to stand around carving things on posts.

  3. THEY BECAME HOPI. Some say they were adopted into the Hopi tribe or some other nearby tribe. There were many vague reports of at least a handful of colonists surviving someplace in mainland Virginia over the years.

  4. THEY BECAME CHESEPIAN. When Captain John Smith founded Jamestown in 1607, Chief Powhatan told him that the Roanoke settlers were living about fifty miles away with the Chesepian tribe. He also told Smith that he’d just finished killing them. He showed Smith some English tools as proof, but no bodies were found. However, this is probably when Smith decided to be reeeeeally nice to Powhatan.

  Vasco Núñez de Balboa.

  FATES OF THE EXPLORERS

  Plenty of the early explorers of America came to bad ends. In fact, most of them ended up getting killed and/or eaten—not necessarily in that order.

  VASCO NÚÑEZ DE BALBOA: Discovered the Pacific Ocean and was then betrayed by a rival, who had him beheaded.

  JOHN CABOT: Vanished at sea.

  MARTIN FROBISHER: Explored the colder parts of Canada (fun!) and ended up loading his boat with fifteen hundred tons of what he thought was gold. Like Christopher Newport, he learned the hard way that it was iron pyrite. Unlike Newport, he didn’t learn his lesson. He went back to Canada and loaded up thirteen hundred tons of what turned out to be–once again—iron pyrite. He then became a pirate and was shot to death in 1594.

  HUMPHREY GILBERT: Tried to found a colony in Newfoundland, failed, and died in a storm on the way home.

  HENRY HUDSON: Annoyed his crew and was sent away in a little boat with a tiny crew, never to be seen again.

  FRANCISCO PIZARRO: Conquered the Incas, then was stabbed to death by rivals.

  JOHN RATCLIFFE: Became the second president of the Virginia colony, then was tortured to death by the women of Powhatan’s tribe.

  JUAN DÍAZ DE SOLÍS: Explored the southern part of the new continent. Also eaten by cannibals.

  HERNANDO DE SOTO: Explored the Southeast for four years, then died of a fever.

  GIOVANNI DA VERRAZZANO: Discovered that the new land was a “new world,” not just a pretty big island. He was eaten by cannibals.

  A Pilgrim prays for a safe, successful voyage. Unfortunately, this ship, the Speedwell, sprang a leak, forcing them to turn around. We’re guessing they had someone else do the praying before the next attempt.

  The investors from the Virginia Company were a bit miffed at ol’ Christopher. They wrote a letter to the colonists demanding that they send over some money, a lump of gold, news that they’d found “the South Sea,” and at least one colonist from the second Roanoke colony that had disappeared. John Smith sent a letter back telling the investors that if they wanted a successful colony, they should have sent better colonists. As it was, he said, the company shouldn’t get their hopes up, as the colonists were too busy trying not to get themselves killed to be all that worried about finding gold for a bunch of jerks back in England.

  In 1609, Smith went back to England and wrote a book about himself in which he referred to himself in the third person. He spent a good chunk of the book bragging about how great he was, and most people now assume that you shouldn’t believe a word of it. Still, the fact is, Jamestown did reasonably well under his leadership, and tanked after he left. The years 1609 and 1
610 are referred to as the Starving Time, when 80 percent of the colonists starved to death. Your teacher may not mention this, if he or she is one of those dainty types, but there’s some evidence that they ended up eating each other when things got really lean. Those who were alive and uneaten were eventually shipped back to England.

  Martin Frobisher.

  But new settlers continued to be sent over, and by 1619, the colony was doing well enough to hold the first meeting of an elected government in the United States. However, the Crown didn’t exactly think that a 20 percent survival rate could be considered “thriving,” and in 1624, they revoked the Virginia Company’s charter and officially made Virginia a royal colony instead of a private one. The Colonial period had officially begun.

  Myles Standish was hired to be the Plymouth colony’s military commander, in case some army wanted to take it over. He became an unlikely romantic hero after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem about him, but by the time the poem was published, Standish had been dead entirely too long to reap the benefits.

  Many school history books brush over all this stuff, because even most of the less dainty teachers don’t much like to talk about people being slaughtered or eaten. Instead, they focus on the Pilgrims, who were just about the most boring human beings ever to walk the earth, but who at least didn’t get eaten.

  THE PILGRIMS

  The Pilgrims were a group of religious separatists who got kicked out of England. They moved to Holland, where they could worship as they chose, but didn’t like it there, and when one of them wrote mean things about the king of England, the king sent people to Holland to arrest him. So they decided to move to the New World, where there wouldn’t be any kings or Dutch people to bother them.