CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AND THE AGE OF DISCOVERY 25

the world came to know that a new continent had been found, England laid claim to the whole of North America on the ground of the Cabot discoveries.

THE NAMING OF AMERICA

Strange were the fatalities in the career of Christopher Columbus, doubt concerning so many events of his life, no authentic portrait, the indigence and want of his last years, and, above all, the failure of the New World to be called after his name.

For many years it was not known that Columbus had discovered aught than some unimportant islands of the sea; that a great continent was to be opened to civilization, through his initiative, had not yet dawned upon the world. Meantime others were making voyage after voyage over the western seas and bringing their glowing reports of what they had found. Among these was Amerigo Vespucci, or Americus Vespucius, a native of Florence, a resident of Seville. Not much is known of his life; but it is claimed that he made at least three voyages to the new lands. On one of these, probably in 1501, he is said to have explored far down the coast of Brazil. It now began to dawn upon Europe that a new continent had been discovered, but this was not connected in the public mind with the work of Columbus, who had discovered only islands and possibly a new route to the Indies. When, therefore, Vespucius wrote a brief account of the "New World," as he called it, he created a greater sensation than Columbus had done ten years before. His pamphlet was translated into many languages, and he was hailed throughout Europe as one of the greatest mariners of his time.

In 1507 Professor Waldseemüller, of the little college of St. Dié among the Vosges Mountains of Lorraine, published a pamphlet on geography, and in this he first suggested the name America. "I see no reason why," he states, "this fourth part of the world should not take its name from its sagacious discoverer and be called Amerige, or America." The suggestion found favor, and it was not long until the name America found its way on all new maps and globes representing the Western Hemisphere. At first it was confined to Brazil, but at length it was made to designate all of South America and eventually (about 1541) all the land area of the New World.

1 This same year, 1507, Waldseemüller made a map of the New World and used on it the name America. A copy of the original was recently found in an old library at Wurtemburg.

There is no evidence that Americus, who was a friend of Columbus, had any intention to defraud the latter of the honor of giving his name to the continent, nor was there any sinister motive on the part of the German professor. The naming of America must be classed as an accident born of ignorance of the facts. The "Indies" discovered by Columbus were renamed West Indies, and the name came to be confined to the islands lying east of Central America.

OTHER DISCOVERERS AND DISCOVERIES

The eastern coast of North America was discovered 1000 A.D. by the Northmen led by Leif Ericson (son of Eric the Red, who had planted a colony in Greenland), and a temporary settlement called Vinland made. As the vine does not grow north of 47 degrees, the settlement was probably somewhere on the New England coast, but the exact location cannot be ascertained. Several voyages to Vinland were made, according to the Norse sagas, and the voyagers encountered Indians whom they called "Skraelings," inferior men. These preColumbian discoveries had long been forgotten at the time of Columbus, who probably never heard of them. They added little to geographical knowledge and left no permanent effect on the world.

Balboa. A Spaniard named Vasco Nunez de Balboa, a bankrupt and leader of rebels, while traversing the Isthmus of Panama, in 1513, was informed by an Indian chief that there was a great sea beyond the mountains, and that the lands bordering on it abounded in gold. Balboa ascended the mountains and, casting his eyes to the southward, beheld a vast glittering sea that seemed boundless in extent. He called it the South Sea. It proved to be the greatest body of water in the world, and came to be called the Pacific Ocean. Magellan. In 1519 a bold Portuguese navigator, named Ferdinand Magellan, with five small vessels and about two hundred and fifty men, sailed from Spain westward, and three years later fifteen of them with one ship returned from the East to their starting point. All the rest had perished, and among them the brave commander, Magellan, who was killed by the natives in the Philippine Islands. This was the first voyage around the world.

Other early discoverers of importance were, Vasco da Gama, who sailed around Africa in 1497 and reached the East Indies by way of the Indian Ocean, returning a few years later laden with spices and ivory, and thus accomplishing what Columbus and others were attempting to do by crossing the Atlantic; Caspar de Cortereal, who explored the eastern coast of the United States in 1500; and Cabral, who, the same year, in a voyage to India while attempting to follow the course of Vasco da Gama, swung too far westward and touched the coast of Brazil. This was a real, though accidental, discovery of America and might have occurred even if the discoveries of Columbus had never been made. These three navigators, Gama, Cortereal, and Cabral, were all Portuguese.

Under Discoveries may also be mentioned the Conquest of Mexico by Cortez, with a band of about five hundred Spaniards in 1521, and the Conquest of Peru twelve years later by Pizarro.

CHAPTER II

THE INDIAN

In these modern days when friend can converse with friend across three thousand miles of sea, when the news of the day from the uttermost parts of the earth lies printed before us on the following morning, it seems almost incredible that it is but four centuries since half the land area of the globe was utterly unknown to the inhabitants of the other half.

What a world of wonder was unfolded to the eyes of the European as he explored the great new continent, with its broad silent rivers, its illimitable plains, its boundless forests! Here he found the most wonderful cataracts of the earth, the longest rivers, the broadest valleys, the greatest lakes; he found a vast mountain system, extending from the Arctic regions through the torrid zone into the frigid climes of the South almost from pole to pole; he found strange new birds and animals and plants; but amid all the wonders of this enchanting land the most wonderful thing he found was the new race of his own human kind. Yes, here was man, the most interesting of all studies- more interesting even to the botanist than are the trees and the flowers, more interesting to the astronomer than the stars, or to the geologist than the minerals and the fossils. Here was a new race unlike all known races of men. Physically the Indian was equal to any other race; mentally he was weak and he was strong. He was a child, he was an animal, and yet he was a man. He lived amid the vast solitudes of the wilderness and seemed but a part of nature, yet his breast was filled with human passions; he had his loves and his hatreds, his religion and his hopes. Not having advanced in civilization to the point of using letters, he had not recorded his own history. Where the Indian originally came from, how he came to inhabit America, and how many ages he had dwelled here before the coming of the white man, will probably never be known. Many are the theories concerning the origin of the red man, but all are mere conjectures.

The Indian has been classed as a distinct and separate race of mankind, and indeed he differs as greatly from the Caucasian, the Mongolian,' or the Ethiopian as they differ from one another. In fact the various Indian nations differ so greatly as to call forth the opinion that they could not all belong to the same race or stock; but while the Algonquin and the Iroquois differed greatly from each. other and still more from the Aztec and the Inca, the difference was no greater than that between the Englishman and the Russian, the Spaniard and the German. Moreover, all the aboriginals of the New World were characterized by certain peculiarities which marked them conclusively as belonging to the same race. In color the typical Indian was cinnamon-brown, varying in shade; he had high cheek bones, small, dark set eyes, straight, raven-black hair, and a scanty beard. "The race is physically more homogeneous than any other on the globe." 2

INDIAN RELIGION

The belief in a Great

The American Indians were all religious. Spirit who governed the world, who taught the water to flow and the bird to build her nest, who caused the changing of the seasons and the succession of day and night, who gave the sunshine to his children and brought the thunders and the rain- this belief was universal with the aboriginals of America.3 The Indian believed in a future life, a happy hunting ground, where he would be accompanied by his dog, would need his bow and arrow and hatchet, and where his occupation would be similar to that of this life, except that all care and sorrow, and toil that wearies, would be removed. The religion of the red man was an ever present consciousness; he prayed when he sat down to meat and when he arose; he prayed when he went on the chase and when waging war upon his fellowman. His religion, however, was grossly corrupted with superstition. He believed that spirits dwelled in animals, in trees, and in everything about him. His imagination peopled the air and the water and the forests with living, invisible creatures, and often filled him with superstitious dread. Many of these spirits are evil, and the Indian felt that he must protect himself against them by carry

1 Physically the Indian resembles the Mongolian.

2 Brinton's " Myths of the New World," p. 52.

3 Some writers claim that the monotheistic idea was unknown among most Indian tribes until the coming of the Europeans. See Brinton, p. 69.

4 Starr's "American Indian," p. 80.

ing some charm, by repeating certain secret words, and he often propitiated them, as he believed, by offerings and by prayer. He believed in signs and omens and dreams. The rustle of a leaf, the whistle of a bird, or the rolling of the thunder-all had their meaning to the untutored red man. His dreams were revelations from heaven, and he would sacrifice anything to carry out their suggestions.

He worshiped the Great Spirit; he worshiped the sun and the stars, the rivers and the mountains, but rarely did he bow down. to that which he had made with his own hands. He offered to his God the firstlings of his flock, the best of his possessions; but only here and there, as among the Aztecs of Mexico, did he engage in the revolting practice of offering human sacrifice.

In one respect the religion of the Indian differed from that of almost all other peoples. He did not look upon himself as a sinner in the sight of the Great Being. His tribe may have offended as a whole, but he did not feel a personal responsibility, nor did he believe that his future happiness depended in any way upon his actions in this life. His religion led him to torture himself at times in the most shocking manner; he did this, not as an atonement for sin, but to enlist the sympathy and aid of his God in some special enterprise. He never failed to pray for success in any special undertaking, even though his sole object was to steal horses and other property from his enemy. He believed in a life of happiness hereafter for all men (except perhaps his most hated enemy), regardless of their manner of living in this life. As a rule the Indian had little to regret. He followed the dictates of his conscience with the utmost exactness; and while his conscience, which was based on tribal custom and not upon religion, bade him to be honest and kind in his dealings with his own people, it permitted him to steal from his enemy, to destroy his property, and to torture him to death.

HOME LIFE

The home life of the American Indian before it was disturbed by the coming of the white man was of the most simple and primitive character. It was scarcely above that of the animals that inhabited the forest with himself. He lived in a den of filth - a little hut or a movable tent,' and with this he was content. Here he often slept or 1 To this rule there were many exceptions, such as the Aztecs, the Incas, the Pueblos, and the Iroquois who had houses of a more substantial character and who were far less nomadic in their habits than many of the tribes.