EUROPEAN EXPLORATION



EUROPEAN EXPLORATION

More than 500 years ago, people were dreaming about faraway lands. Many people at the time believed that the world was flat. Others thought that sea monsters lived in unknown waters. In spite of these fears, men were willing to risk their lives to explore. These brave men, called explorers, lived during the Age of Discovery.

The quest for adventure in Europe began with Marco Polo in 1271. He traveled by land from Italy to Asia with his father and his uncle. When Marco Polo returned home, he fought in a war. He wrote a book about his travels while in jail as a prisoner of war. The stories he wrote helped others become interested in exploration. Even Christopher Columbus had a copy of Polo’s book.

Europeans at this time enjoyed the taste of spices from Asia. With no way to keep food from spoiling, spices helped to cover up the bad taste. Inspired by Polo, merchants tried to find short trade routes to the East. They believed it would be less expensive to transport spices by ship instead of land.

While looking for new sea routes to Asia, explorers discovered land in the West by accident. No one quite knew the impact these discoveries would have on the world.

Kings and queens always wanted to conquer new lands. Each monarch wanted to spread his or her empire. Explorers were sent to find new trade routes as they traveled across the world. Trading with other countries helped monarchs become powerful.

To help trade, it was important to have good maps. However, no one really knew how large Earth was because Europeans hadn’t visited some parts of the planet. Back then, maps of the world looked very different than they do today. Mapmakers tried to guess the size of Earth, but they were not always right.

Greed, science, and religion made men willing to risk their lives for exploration. Explorers dreamed of finding treasures. If they were successful, the entire crew of the ship became rich. The thought of finding treasure tempted kings and queens too. Believing that large amounts of gold were in faraway places, rulers paid for the trips.

Although most people in the 1500s believed that Earth was flat, some explorers thought it was round. They wanted to prove this to the world.

Others wanted to take their Christian beliefs across the seas. Sailors convinced rulers that they should make Christians out of natives in newly found lands. In this way, many explorers acquired their ships and crews.

The risks of adventure were great. Many captains faced mutiny aboard their ships. A mutiny, or revolt, happened when a crew was unhappy or thought the captain wasn’t doing good job. The men who led the revolts would get into a lot of trouble if a mutiny failed. Ferdinand Magellan (muh-JELL-uhn) stopped a revolt by leaving one of his men in Brazil. He had another man put to death.

Life on a ship was difficult. Many sailors died from disease and starvation during long trips at sea. Both the captain and crew knew that shipwrecks were possible, too. After landing on a shore, the crew sometimes found hostile native tribes waiting for them. Every trip was an adventure into the unknown.

Sometimes the early explorers’ discoveries were accidental. Each trip brought back new information to Europe. The descriptions by explorers helped mapmakers draw better maps. With each new trip, history was changed forever.

The Vikings

Were the Vikings the first Europeans to land in America? Many historians think so. The Vikings, or Norsemen, came from Scandinavia. They set up colonies in both Iceland and Greenland.

Around 986, a Viking ship sailed all the way to North America. When these Vikings arrived home, they told about their adventures. A man named Leif Ericksson decided to explore this new land himself. He retraced the same course as the first boat.

Ericksson called the place where he landed Vinland because of all the grapevines. Many people think Ericksson actually founded Newfoundland in Canada.

Over many years, the Vikings tried to settle in the new land. Archaeologists think they have found an old Viking settlement in Newfoundland. Old houses, boat sheds, a spindle, and a cloak pin have been found in the ground.

A stone with early Norse writing on it was found all the way in Minnesota. Scientists do not yet know if the stone is authentic.

A few years ago a Viking map was found. The paper the map was drawn on was very old. But scientists figured out that the map was fake because the ink that was used was too new.

Christopher Columbus

As a young child, Christopher Columbus read about Marco Polo’s adventures in China. Columbus dreamed of becoming a sailor and traveling to China, also.

Columbus first sailed on a ship when he was just 14 years old. When he was 26, his boat was wrecked off the shore of Portugal, and he swam to shore. He even made a trip to Iceland where some think he saw maps of North America.

Muslins controlled the city of Jerusalem for many years. Columbus hoped to use money made from his trips to gain control of Jerusalem for Christians.

Columbus went to the king of Portugal and asked for money to help him sail to China. The king said no, so Columbus asked King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. After a few years, they gave him three ships and a small crew.

His ships, the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, left Spain on August 2, 1492. They headed west across the Atlantic Ocean. Columbus believed the line of latitude that ran through Spain would take him to Japan. He felt that if he could stay on this course, he would eventually find land.

On October 12, the crew spotted land. It was San Salvador in the Bahamas, but Columbus thought it was an island near Japan. The crew spent some time on the island with the natives. Believing he had found Asia, Columbus sailed home a hero.

The native tribes in the New World often paid a big price once explorers made contact. Explorers brought terrible diseases with them and the native died by the thousands.

Amerigo Vespucci

It is not by chance that the name Amerigo sounds like the word America. An Italian named Amerigo Vespucci explored the New World around 1500.

Vespucci made four trips to South America and wrote about each. His crewmembers were the first Europeans to see the Amazon River. He wrote about how the natives cut off the heads of their enemies. Vespucci also described many rare animals that he saw.

It is because of Vespucci’s writing that his name ended up on a map. Martin Waldseemuller (zalt-ZAY-mew-ler), a mapmaker, read Vespucci’s descriptive letters. In 1507, he put the name America on the Southern continent.

Six years after his first map, Waldseemuller printed a new map and left off the word America. He no longer thought it was a good idea to name the New World, America. But it was too late and the name remained.

Henry Hudson

In 1507, Englishman Henry Hudson began one of four trips hoping to find a water route through North America. They called this route the Northwest Passage. They thought it connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This passage does not actually exist, but the explorers thought it might.

On one trip, Hudson took a boat called the Half Moon and 20 men for his crew. When his crew found out that he planned to go into the Artic Ocean, they threatened a mutiny. The icy winter was just too much for them. Instead, Hudson sailed to New York Bay and explored a river. The river was later called the Hudson River.

Hudson’s ship, the Half Moon, was painted blue with wispy white clouds. The rear of the ship was blue with stars and a moon.

On his last trip, he explored further north. He made it through Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay, which were also named for him. By November, the icy waters froze the ship in place. The crew had to live on the boat all winter long. When summer came and they could get the boat free of the ice, the crew mutinied. After taking over, the crew sent Hudson, his son, and seven others away on a small boat. These nine men were never heard from again.

The crew that mutinied against Hudson returned to England. In England they were put in prison because of the mutiny.

Ferdinand Magellan

For a long time, European ships had to sail around the southern tip of Africa to get to the islands of Southeast Asia. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese navigator, thought he could find a shortcut to these islands. So, in 1519 he sailed west from Spain with five ships and 240 men. He thought that going across the Pacific Ocean would be shorter than going around Africa.

In South America, he discovered a narrow strait near the continent’s southern tip. His maps showed Japan as only 200 miles from Mexico. It was only then that Magellan told his crew that he had decided to sail around the world. On Magellan’s long voyage, the food supply became very low. To stay alive the crew ate the leather rigging from the ship and rats found on the ship. The crew almost starved to death before landing in the Philippines on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Unfortunately, Magellan died in a war against a tribe in the Philippines. He never saw Spain again. Later, only one ship and 18 men made it back to Spain. It had taken the men three years to make this trip around the world and they were the first people to accomplish this great feat.

Hernando Cortes

While Magellan’s crew was sailing around the world, the Spanish began their conquest of the Americas. Soldiers called conquistadors, or conquerors, explored the Americas and claimed them for Spain. Hernando Cortes was on eof these conquistadors. He landed on the Central American coast with 508 men in 1519.

The Spanish arrival shook the Aztec Empire, which dominated most of Mexico. The Aztec emperor Montezuma feared that Cortes had been sent by an Aztec god to rule Mexico. Montezuma sent Cortes gifts – including two disks of solid gold and silver – to get him to leave. But the gifts only excited Spanish dreams of riches.

The Spaniards marched inland and formed alliances (agreements with friendly peoples) with the native peoples who hated Aztec rule. After a few months, Cortes reached the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan (teh·NAWCH·tee·TLAHN). Montezuma received Cortes with great ceremony and housed the conquistadors in a magnificent palace. But Cortes took Montezuma captive and tried to rule the Aztec Empire by giving commands through Montezuma. The Aztecs rebelled.

The Aztecs surrounded the Spaniards and their allies in their headquarters in Tenochtitlan. On the night of June 30, 1520, the Spaniards tried to sneak out of the city, but the Aztecs discovered then and vicious fighting broke out. About 800 Spaniards later called the event La Noche Triste (lah·NAW·cheh TREES·teh) – The Sad Night.

Despite this defeat, the Spaniards and their allies regrouped. In May 1521, Cortes led his forces back to Tenochtitlan. At this point, the Spaniards got help from an invisible ally. Many Aztecs fell victim to an outbreak of smallpox, which severely weakened their ranks. The germs that caused this disease had been brought to America by the Europeans.

Cortes placed Tenochtitlan under siege for three months. When Tenochtitlan finally fell, the Aztec Empire lay in ruins. An Aztec poet described the scene:

Broken spears lie in the roads; we have torn out hair in our grief.

The houses are roofless now, and their walls are red with blood….

We have pounded our hands in despair against the adobe walls,

for our inheritance, our city, it lost and dead.

Aztec poet

On the rubble of the Aztec capital, the Spanish built Mexico City. Over time, the populations and cultures of Spain and Mexico merged and produced a new society, that of the present-day nation of Mexico.

Francisco Pizarro

Despite the call of the Aztecs, a people called the Inca still had a powerful empire centered in the Cuzco Valley in what is now Peru. By 1525, the Inca ruled a 2,000-mile-long territory in the Andes Mountains along the western coast of South America. The Inca also possessed much gold and silver.

Native American stories of Incan wealth reached the Spanish. In 1531, a conquistador named Francisco Pizarro led an expedition of 180 men into Peru. Like the Aztecs, the Incas feared that the Spanish might be gods. The Incan emperor Atahualpa (AH·tuh·WAHL·puh) ordered his troops not to fight. Then he went to meet the conquistadors. The Spanish attacked quickly. They killed thousands of Incas and took Atahualpa captive. In an attempt to free himself, the Incan emperor gave the Spanish a treasure of gold. The Spaniards strangled him anyway.

With Atahualpa dead, the Incan Empire collapsed. Having been ordered by Atahualpa not to fight, the Incas refused to defend themselves even after his death. Then Pizarro took control of this area for Spain. The Spanish called the area Peru.

Sir Francis Drake

Queen Elizabeth I of England hired Francis Drake to take riches from Spanish ships. Drake also explored the New World. After sailing through the straits of Magellan in 1577, he headed north along the west coast of South America. Along the way he raided treasures from Spanish ships. The gold he took was so heavy that it almost sunk his ship.

Drake continued north and explored the coast of California. He looked for the Northwest Passage hoping to get back to England by sailing east. He did not find it, so he sailed across the Pacific Ocean and back to England. There, the queen knighted him and continued to send him out on important trips.

The Age of Discovery led to exciting new Ideas. Explorers found passageways through uncharted waters. Mapmakers used new information to make better maps. Spices and unusual foods exchanged hands. Religious beliefs spread around the world. And sailors fulfilled their dreams for adventure.

Robert Cavelier La Salle, sieur de

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Robert Cavelier La Salle, sieur de , 1643-87, French explorer in North America, one of the most celebrated explorers and builders of New France. He entered a Jesuit school as a boy but later left the religious life. In 1666 he went to Canada, where he developed land for the king at Lachine. In 1673 the governor of New France, Frontenac, made him commandant of Fort Frontenac. After a visit to France, where he was granted a patent of nobility, La Salle began (1675) to develop the trade at the post. In 1677 he was in France again and obtained a patent to build forts, explore, and trade. When he returned, he brought with him Henri de Tonti , who was his lieutenant in later enterprises.

In 1679 a blockhouse was built at the outlet of the Niagara River, and in August they set out across the Great Lakes in the Griffon, which Tonti had built. That first sailing vessel on the lakes took the adventuring traders to Green Bay; the party then went by land. The Griffon was lost a little later, probably in a storm. La Salle went along Lake Michigan and built Fort Miami on the site of present St. Joseph, Mich., then continued to the Illinois River. There he built Fort Creve Coeur.

La Salle sent Michel Aco and Father Hennepin on an expedition to the upper Mississippi, while he himself went back to Fort Frontenac for supplies. After La Salle's departure Tonti was attacked by hostile Iroquois and was forced to flee the settlement. La Salle, returning, found the Illinois posts deserted. He set out to find Tonti and also organized (1681) a Native American federation of the Illinois, the Miami, and smaller tribes to fight the Iroquois.

He was reunited with Tonti at Mackinac Island, and the two men with Father Zenobe Membré and a small party descended the Mississippi to its mouth, arriving Apr. 9, 1682. La Salle took possession of the whole valley, calling the region Louisiana. Tonti went back to the Illinois and at Starved Rock began construction of a village; La Salle joined him, and Fort St. Louis was completed (1682-83).

La Salle was deprived of his authority by the new governor in 1683 and went to France, leaving Tonti in the Illinois country. Given power to colonize and to govern the region between Lake Michigan and the Gulf of Mexico, La Salle set out (1684) with four ships for the mouth of the Mississippi. He never reached it. With three of his ships La Salle reached the Gulf of Mexico; but because of the sandy sameness of the coastline he was unable to find the Mississippi. He and his men landed on the Texas shore, probably on Lavaca Bay. They made futile attempts to reach the Mississippi overland, and the men grew mutinous. On the third attempt the explorer was murdered by his own men.

Samuel de Champlain

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Samuel de Champlain, 1567-1635, French explorer, the chief founder of New France.

After serving in France under Henry of Navarre (King Henry IV) in the religious wars, Champlain was given command of a Spanish fleet sailing to the West Indies, Mexico, and the Isthmus of Panama. He described this three-year tour to the French king in Bref Discours (1859). In 1603 he made his first voyage to New France as a member of a fur-trading expedition. He explored the St. Lawrence River as far as the rapids at Lachine and described his voyage in Des Sauvages (1603).

With the sieur de Monts , who had a monopoly of the trade of the region, Champlain returned in 1604 to found a colony, which was landed at the mouth of the St. Croix River. In 1605 the colony moved across the Bay of Fundy to Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal, N.S.), and in the next three years Champlain explored the New England coast south to Martha's Vineyard, discovering Mt. Desert Island and most of the larger rivers of Maine and making the first detailed charts of the coast. After the sieur de Monts's privileges had been revoked, the colony had to be abandoned, and through the efforts of Champlain a new one was established on the St. Lawrence River.

In 1608 in the ship Le Don de Dieu, he brought his colonists to the site of Quebec. In the spring of 1609, accompanying a war party of Huron against the Iroquois, Champlain discovered the lake that bears his name, and near Crown Point, N.Y., the Iroquois were met and routed by French troops. The incident is believed to be largely responsible for the later hatred of the French by the Iroquois.

In 1612 Champlain returned to France, where he received a new grant of the fur-trade monopoly. Returning in 1613, he set off on a journey to the western lakes. He reached only Allumette Island in the Ottawa River that year, but in 1615 he went with Étienne Brulé and a party of Huron to Georgian Bay on Lake Huron, returning southeastward by way of Lake Ontario. Accompanying another Huron war party to an attack on an Onondaga village in present-day New York, Champlain was wounded and forced to spend the winter with the Huron.

Thereafter Champlain devoted his time to the welfare of the colony, of which he was the virtual governor. He helped to persuade Richelieu to found the Company of One Hundred Associates, which was to take over the interests of the colony. In 1629 Quebec was suddenly captured by the English, and Champlain was carried away to four years of exile in England; there he prepared the third edition of his Voyages de la Nouvelle France (1632). When New France was restored to France in 1632, Champlain returned. In 1634 he sent Jean Nicolet into the West, thus extending the French explorations and claims as far as Wisconsin. He died on Christmas Day, 1635, and was buried in Quebec.

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