Chapter III: Part 3

In 1643, Williams went to England and secured a charter for his colony. It was called “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” and it is to be remembered as the first colony which by its laws secured entire religious toleration. The Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies so disapproved of the principles on which it was founded that they would not unite with it in joint action. But the Rhode Island colony was a great safeguard and protection to them. It was the influence and friendship of Roger Williams which kept the fierce Narragansetts from taking up arms against the white men at a time when it would have been dangerous and perhaps fatal to the struggling young colonies.

The exact date of Roger Williams’ death is uncertain. He is said to have lived to the age of eighty-four, devoting himself to the interests of his colony, which he lived to see prosperous and flourishing.

Henry Hudson

As time passed, people became convinced that the land which Columbus had reached was not the shore of Asia as they had at first thought. For more than a hundred years, however, they thought that it was only a narrow body of land and that a passage, or many passages, would be found connecting the Atlantic with the ocean to the west and opening a direct route to India. It was not strange that they held this theory. The early explorers had reached the land at its narrowest part and beheld from the Isthmus of Panama the great western ocean. They did not know that the unexplored land broadened into great continents to the north and south.

As years passed, people became more and more anxious to find a short passage to India. The Turks controlled and blocked the overland passage to Asia. The ocean route by way of Africa was long and roundabout; for the Dutch this had also the disadvantage of making it necessary for their ships to pass and repass their enemy Spain and their trade-rival Portugal. The Dutch had, by long and desperate fighting, freed themselves from Spanish control and they had become the great sea-traders of the world.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century they had about three thousand vessels on the seas--more than all the rest of Europe combined. Most of these were under control of the Dutch East India Company, the largest and richest trading association in the world. They traveled the long ocean route south of Africa and brought back tea, coffee, spices, silks, and dye-woods from Asia. If only they could find a direct way to Asia how their profits would be increased! Early in the seventeenth century they heard of a sailor in England who had been to seek this direct route and they engaged him to make a voyage for them. This sailor was Henry Hudson.

When and where he was born and what were the events of his early life, we do not know. He was an Englishman by birth, a brave, energetic man by nature, a navigator by profession. We first hear of him in 1607, four days before he started on a voyage for some London merchants, to seek a northeast passage to India. He had a small vessel with only ten men, besides himself and his little son John who accompanied him on all his voyages. Hudson left London in April, 1607. He sailed along the coast of Greenland and was at last turned back by the ice barrier between Greenland and Spitzbergen. He made two interesting observations in these unknown seas--first, the changing color of the sea near Spitzbergen,--green, blue, dark, transparent,--second, the great number of whales which afterwards were the source of a profitable industry. Unable to carry out his purpose, he returned to England after an absence of four and a half months.

In April of the next year, 1608, the London merchants sent him out again to seek the northeast passage. He reached Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla and vainly endeavored to find a passage through the ice; in August he returned from his unsuccessful voyage. The London merchants now gave up the scheme--at least for the time.

But the Dutch heard of Hudson and asked him to make a voyage for them. He agreed to undertake for the Dutch East India Company a third voyage in search of a northeast passage to India. He set out in April, 1609, with two vessels, the Half Moon and the Good Hope, and a crew of about twenty men, some Dutch, some English. As before he sailed to the northeast, and as before his passage was blocked by ice. The Good Hope returned to Amsterdam, it is supposed, after a mutiny near Nova Zembla.

But Hudson and the Half Moon did not return. Having for the third time failed to find the northeast passage he sought, he resolved to look for one to the northwest. This was probably suggested to him by a letter and maps which his friend Captain John Smith had sent him. Smith expressed the opinion that north of the English colony, Virginia, there was a sea which led into the Western Ocean. Sailing past Greenland, Newfoundland, and Cape Cod, Hudson reached the coast of Virginia, and entered the Delaware River.

Turning northward he kept near the shore till he observed an opening in the land, New York Bay, which he entered. This bay had been entered before. Verrazano, an Italian sailor in command of a French ship, had sailed in and out of it. French vessels had afterwards traded there, but had made no settlements.

Into this bay emptied a river which Hudson thought might connect the eastern and the western ocean; up this river he sailed about a hundred and fifty miles, as far as the present site of Albany; then he turned back, being convinced that the stream did not afford the passage he sought. He spent a month exploring this river, to which his name was given. The land was “pleasant with grass and flowers and goodly trees.” It was, he said, “good ground for corn and other garden herbs, with great store of goodly oaks.” The natives, he said, were a “sensible and warlike people.” He carried on trade with the Indians who brought tobacco, maize, beans, grapes, pumpkins, and skins, to exchange for knives, beads, and trinkets. There arose disputes and in a fight one white man and several Indians were killed.

On Hudson’s way back to Holland, he stopped in England to leave some English sailors; there he was detained, being ordered by the English government to “stay and serve his own country.” His charts and records were delivered to the Dutch who laid claim to the country he had found, calling the Delaware the “South River,” and the Hudson the “Great North River,” and the country between “New Netherlands.”

In April, 1610, Hudson sailed on his fourth and last voyage, to seek for English merchants the northwest passage. His little vessel the Discovery entered the strait and bay which bear his name, and he spent three months exploring the coast. In November the vessel was frozen in and the crew spent the winter on the northern sea, suffering from scarcity of food as well as from the severe climate. When summer came, Hudson wished to continue his search. He believed that men should, to use his own words, resolve “To achieve what they have undertaken, or else to give reason wherefore it will not be.”

His crew wished to return home and mutinied against him. One midsummer day, they seized him, his son, and seven loyal seamen, and set them adrift in a boat. The little craft floated off on the summer sea and nothing more was ever heard of it or of a soul on board. An old Dutch legend says that Hudson and his men came safe to shore and made their home in the fair land he had discovered. Years later, when thunder rumbled in the heights along the Hudson River, the old Dutch folks would shake their heads and say, “Hendrik Hudson and his crew are playing ninepins.”

Peter Minuit

A Dutch West India Company was organized on the same plan as the rich and powerful Dutch East India Company. The western company was to trade on the coast of Africa and of America from Newfoundland to Magellan. For convenience in this trade, forts and posts were established where agents were stationed to carry on trade and collect furs. A fort and trading-post was established on Manhattan Island. There was gradually built up a village; this became a town and finally grew to be a city. At first it was called New Amsterdam; now it is the wealthy and populous city of New York.

The first directors who were sent to New Amsterdam by the Dutch Company lacked either ability or character to govern the settlement well. At last, however, the Company found the right man for the place. This was Peter Minuit. He was not a Dutchman. He was French by descent and German by birth; his early manhood had been spent in Germany.

He was appointed director of the council of New Amsterdam and came to Manhattan in May, 1626. His ship brought seeds, plants, and tools, for he realized that on agriculture as well as on commerce depended the success of the colony. He wished to establish it on a foundation of justice. His first act was to summon the Indian chiefs of the neighborhood and to buy from them the island of Manhattan. Gay-colored cloth, beads, knives, and hatchets were displayed, and for goods to the value of twenty-four dollars the Dutch bought the island of Manhattan and bought also the good will of the Iroquois. Thus the settlement was spared, for the most part, the horrors of Indian warfare which wasted most of the other colonies. Before Penn came to America, the Dutch leader, Minuit, treated the Indians in fair and humane fashion. We are not to think that the Indians were defrauded by the small sum paid for Manhattan. To them it was a mere hands-breadth of their vast possessions, a place to hunt deer and turkey and build wigwams and till cornfields.

Minuit tried to establish friendly relations with the English colonies north of him and sent courteous letters and presents of sugar and Dutch cheese to Governor Bradford of Plymouth.

Minuit looked after the welfare of the colony and also after the interests of the Company. A flourishing fur trade was carried on with the Indians; a large vessel was built and sent to Holland loaded with furs--beaver, otter, mink, and bear--and with oak and hickory timber. Furs were the money of this settlement, as tobacco was of Virginia, and they were used in the payment of salaries and debts. The Indian money, wampum, was also used in the commerce of the colonies, six pieces of wampum being equal to one stiver, a small Dutch coin worth about two cents. Bouweries, or farms, occupied the meadows along East River; grain was grown, and sheep, cattle, and hogs were raised. The thrifty Dutch people lived in comfort and plenty.

The colony prospered under Minuit’s management, but his rule came to an end on account of trouble with the “patroons.” These patroons were large land-owners along the Hudson. In order to get the colony settled, the Dutch Company granted land fronting sixteen miles on the river and extending back to the Atlantic or to the Pacific to persons who would establish settlements of at least fifty persons within four years. These patroons had almost absolute power over the settlers on their land; the only restrictions on their privileges and trade were that they were forbidden to make cloth, in order to protect Dutch manufacturers, or to trade in furs, which was the especial privilege of the Company.

The patroons, however, encroached on the Company’s fur trade, and Peter Minuit excited their enmity by endeavoring to protect the rights of the Company which he represented. On the other hand, the Company thought that he did not check and control the patroons as he should. Between the two he was recalled. He returned to Holland in the spring of 1632, having really established the colony of New Amsterdam which he governed for six years.

Failing to get his wrongs redressed by the Dutch West India Company, Minuit offered his services to Sweden to establish a colony in the New World. This plan had already been suggested by William Usselinx, a Dutch merchant who had projected the Dutch West India Company in 1621. Minuit carried out the plan. He and his friends in Holland bore half the expense of fitting out an expedition to found a Swedish-Dutch Company.

Owing to Minuit’s illness, the vessels did not sail till late in 1637. They reached the shores of the Delaware in March, 1638, and took possession of the west bank of the river. Minuit had little regard for the claims of territory made by nations whose wandering ships had touched the coast and sailed away again. In his opinion the land belonged to those who purchased it from the Indian inhabitants and settled there and cultivated the soil. As at Manhattan, he met the Indian chiefs and formed a treaty never broken by either party. The Indians of Delaware, like those farther north, belonged to the great Iroquois Confederacy or Five Nations.

Minuit took possession of the country in the name of the young queen of Sweden and built a fort called Christina in her honor. He cultivated friendly relations with the English at Jamestown and with the Dutch trading-posts on the east bank of the Delaware. A thriving fur trade was established with the friendly Indians and soon the Dutch West India Company complained that their trade was greatly injured by Minuit’s colony. The governor of New Netherlands wrote a letter of protest against the Swedes occupying this land, but during the three years that Minuit remained in charge the Dutch confined their protests to words.

After doing his utmost to establish the colony in peace, strength, and safety, Minuit left it on a trading expedition. He sailed to the West Indies to barter for tobacco to carry back to Old Sweden. While he was guest on a Dutch vessel in the harbor a violent hurricane came up, the ship was driven to sea and was never heard of more. Thus perished the first governor of New Sweden, the real founder of New Amsterdam.

Peter Stuyvesant

The Last Dutch Governor of New York

Van Twiller succeeded Minuit as governor of the New Netherlands. He proved incompetent and was replaced by Kieft, who by cruelty and injustice provoked the Indians to war. Kieft so mismanaged affairs that in three years the population of the New Netherlands was reduced from three thousand to one thousand.

In 1647 Peter Stuyvesant was appointed governor. He was the son of a Dutch clergyman, but, being fond of fighting and adventure, he had chosen war as his profession. He took part in several of the battles by which the Dutch gained mastery over the Spaniards at sea. At one time he undertook to conquer the Spanish island of St. Martin and lost a leg in the fight. He was called “Old Silver Leg,” because his lost limb had been replaced by a wooden stump, ornamented with bands of silver. He was also called “Headstrong Peter,” a title which he well deserved.

The Dutch West India Company thought that this brave, fearless soldier would be the very man to control their troublesome colony on the Hudson. So he was appointed and came to the colony in May, 1647, with a fleet of four vessels. He told the people, “I shall be in my government as a father over his children”--a very severe and stern parent he proved.

A strong man was needed to save the colony from ruin. Enemies threatened it on all sides.

In the first place, there were the Indians whom Kieft had provoked to war. Stuyvesant stopped the sale of intoxicating liquors to them; while stern, he was so just and honest and fearless that he won their respect and they made and kept peace with him.

In the second place, the encroachments of the New Englanders were a constant source of annoyance. The Dutch claimed all the land between the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers by right of Hudson’s discoveries, and valued it as a field for fur trade. “The land is too good to stand idle,” said the English, and occupied it with their farms and villages. The Dutch protested and asserted their claims, but in vain. The English farmers continued to occupy the land, and more and more came in conflict with the Dutch.

Stuyvesant decided that a fixed line--even one which yielded some territory claimed by the Dutch--was better than an unfixed one constantly advanced by the English. In 1650, therefore, he made an agreement, surrendering the land already held by the English--which the Dutch could not have regained--and establishing a fixed line beyond which the English agreed not to advance. Stuyvesant acted wisely in the matter, but the West India Company was dissatisfied, thinking that he ought not to have surrendered the Dutch claims.

In 1652 New Amsterdam was granted a charter as a city. It had then about three hundred houses and fifteen hundred inhabitants. The city was to have a council, but, instead of allowing the people to elect the members, Stuyvesant appointed them and he presided at all meetings of importance. The sturdy Dutchman was resolved that his will should be the law of the colony. The people assembled in convention and asked, among other things, that they might appoint local officers. Stuyvesant ordered them to disperse, informing them “his authority was from the West India Company and from God and not from ignorant subjects.”

In the course of time there arose trouble between the Dutch colonists and the Swedes who had settled along the Delaware on land claimed by the Dutch. Finally, a Swedish captain took possession of a Dutch fort. Stuyvesant, with a force of six or seven hundred men and seventeen ships, set forth to uphold his country’s rights. He went to the Delaware, or South River, retook the forts, and compelled the Swedes to swear allegiance to the Netherlands. A Dutch garrison was put in charge of the fort and thus ended Swedish rule on the Delaware.

While absent on this expedition, Stuyvesant received evil tidings from Manhattan. An Indian woman had been killed by a Dutchman for stealing peaches from his garden. To revenge this injury, the Indians during the absence of the fighting men on the Delaware attacked and burned the settlement, killed some of the hated whites, and carried off others as prisoners. Stuyvesant made ready to march against the Indians, but did not do so as they requested terms of peace and returned their prisoners. Later, the Indians made another attack and Stuyvesant promptly punished them by force of arms.

Under the just, firm rule of the despotic, high-tempered governor, the colony of New Netherlands flourished. Farms were cleared and tended, villages were formed, trade flourished, and immigration increased. But the end of Dutch rule on the Hudson was at hand. In 1664 Charles II., king of England, granted to his brother James, Duke of York, the entire territory claimed and occupied by the Dutch, which he asserted belonged to England. England and Holland were then at peace, but the Duke of York did not hesitate to bring on war. He fitted out four war-ships with four hundred and fifty soldiers and sent them to America under command of Colonel Nicolls. The Dutch were informed that the vessels were going to the colonies in New England. Instead, they sailed to New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant had neither powder nor provisions for a siege, and his soldiers wished to accept English terms. Nicolls informed the council that none of the people’s rights would be interfered with--only the flag and the governor would be changed. Brave sturdy old Stuyvesant tore up the letter offering these terms and wished to fight for the rights of the Company he represented. But the council, soldiers, and citizens would not support him, and he had to yield.

“I had rather be carried to my grave,” he said, as he ordered the surrender.

He went to Holland to prove that he had done his best to uphold the Company’s rights. Having done this, he returned to his home in the New World. He led a quiet, comfortable life in his fine old country home--in what is now the business heart of New York City,--and in the course of time, he and Governor Nicolls became great friends.

The Dutch resented the English seizure of their colony and declared war against England. When peace was made, it was agreed that each nation should keep what it had won. Holland had won the most victories and so gained most territory by this agreement; but the city of New Amsterdam and the colony of New Netherlands--both of which were called New York in honor of their new ruler--remained in English hands. The Dutch inhabitants were secured in their rights and privileges, according to Colonel Nicolls’ promise, and they went on their sober, hard-working way. From them the English, in time, borrowed many Dutch customs and festivals,--such as that of having Easter eggs and of celebrating Christmas with the visit of St. Nicholas or Santa Claus.

Samuel de Champlain

The Father of New France

For years the Portuguese and the Spanish shared between them the trading-posts and commerce of the world. Portugal controlled the ocean route to Asia, and Spain by virtue of her early discoveries and explorations laid claim to the whole of the New World. But as time passed this state of affairs was changed. In the Old World, the Dutch became the successful rivals of the Portuguese; in the New, Spain had to contend with France, England, Holland, and Sweden, all of which were seeking a share of the prize.

For a long time France was the chief rival with which Spain had to reckon. Verrazano, a Florentine sailor, was sent from France in command of four vessels to seek the longed-for westward route to Cathay. Left at last with one ship, he reached in 1524 the coast of North Carolina, “a new land never before seen of any man, ancient or modern,”--for in the opinion of the Europeans the natives counted not at all. Verrazano sailed along the coast, into the Bay of New York and out again, and along the coast of New England to Newfoundland. Provisions giving out, he returned to France and gave the first description of the coast of the United States.

In the wake of Verrazano, followed other Frenchmen. One of these was Jacques Cartier. In 1534 he came to the coast of Newfoundland and sailed up the St. Lawrence River, hoping to find through it an outlet to Cathay. On a second voyage, he entered and named the Bay of St. Lawrence and ascended the great river as far as Montreal. A third voyage he made in 1541, for the purpose of establishing a colony. But a severe winter and much sickness and suffering discouraged the colonists, and the next year they left New France for Old.

Years passed. Civil and religious wars laid France waste, and many earnest men began to look to the New World for an asylum from the Old. A band of French Protestants led by John Ribaut left their native shores to make their home in America. Instead of sailing northward, they landed in 1562 on the shores of Florida, which was the territory of Catholic Spain. The colony was attacked by the Spaniards under Menendez, and men, women, and children were killed. This terrible slaughter was avenged by the French under De Gourges, but the tide of French colonization was turned from the southern coast.

Five years after this massacre, there was born Samuel de Champlain, who won the title of the “Father of New France.” His father was a French ship captain; he himself was trained in the art of navigation and became a captain in the royal navy. “Navigation is the art which has powerfully attracted me ever since my boyhood and has led me to expose myself almost all my life to the impetuous bufferings of the sea,” he said.

Chaplain served awhile in the army; when peace came his adventurous spirit led him to the West Indies. This was Spanish territory and the Frenchman went thither at the risk of his life. He spent two years in America. To him it seemed, as it had seemed to some Spanish and Portuguese officials, that it would be a good plan to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. Champlain wrote, “If the four leagues of land which there are from Panama to the (Chagres) river were cut through, one might pass from the south sea to the ocean on the other side and thus shorten the route by more than fifteen hundred leagues; and from Panama to the Strait of Magellan would be an island and from Panama to the New-found lands would be another island, so that the whole of America would be in two islands.”

Always on his voyages Champlain kept a diary and made maps of the lands he visited. When he returned to France, he gave the king a minute account of the colonies and treasure of Spain. It was shame to France, he thought, that on the New World, discovered more than a century before, only their enemies had a foothold.

A French nobleman who was planning to found a colony in America decided that this enterprising young sailor-soldier would be the man to lead the undertaking. Champlain entered into the plan with enthusiasm. In 1603 he set out to reconnoiter the new land, following the route of Cartier. He sailed up the St. Lawrence River, to the present site of Montreal. During the next four years he made five voyages to the New World, exploring the coast from New England northward. He led a band of colonists who after a winter of hardship and sickness returned in 1607 to France. But Champlain was not discouraged. He was resolved to extend the power of France and of the Catholic religion in the new land, to penetrate the unknown wilds, and to seek a route to the East. He was appointed Lieutenant-governor of the French colony, an office which he held until his death, and came to America in 1608 to establish a settlement on the St. Lawrence River. In July the colonists landed and erected a store-house, the beginning of the city of Quebec.

Five discontented men in the party formed a plot to kill Champlain and turn the fortress over to the Spaniards. One of the men, however, betrayed the plot; the conspirators were arrested, the ringleader was hanged, and the others were sent prisoners to France. The winter of 1609 found the French colony one of three in the New World. At Jamestown, in Virginia, were the English; at St. Augustine, in Florida, were the Spaniards; and far to the north at Quebec in Canada, were the French. No one could then guess which nation would finally become supreme, though the chances seemed in favor of the Spaniards.

The first winter at Quebec was one of hardship and sickness, and when spring opened only eight of the twenty-eight Frenchmen were alive. In 1609 Champlain, ever ready for adventure, accompanied some Algonquins and other Indians on an expedition against their enemies the Iroquois, the Five Nations. He wished to see “a large lake, filled with beautiful islands, and with a fine country surrounding it” of which he had been told. He reached the beautiful lake, which now bears his name; on its banks his firearms turned the battle against the Iroquois and begun the long warfare in which the French were opposed to this great confederation of tribes. The very day that Champlain brought on his nation the enmity of this deadly foe, a little Dutch vessel, the Half Moon, was anchored on the New England coast. A few weeks later it entered the Hudson River,--bearing a crew of English and Dutch--the two peoples who were to be allies of the foe which the Frenchmen made that day and to turn the tide of battle against France.

From 1609 till his death, the time of Champlain was divided between New and Old France. Exploring, fighting, establishing trading-posts, he was busy building up the young colony and developing its resources. In 1620 his young wife, whom he had married ten years before when she was a mere child, came for the first time to Quebec. After four years of hardship, she returned to France and did not again revisit the New World.

The French colony grew and prospered. It was on friendly terms with its Indian neighbors with whom it carried on a flourishing fur trade. Furs were the currency and wealth of the French colony, as of the Dutch colony on Manhattan. The French exported every year to France from fifteen to twenty thousand skins; the Dutch at Manhattan thought business good when they shipped four thousand.

In 1628 the French colony was reduced to sore straits from scarcity of food. This was increased by the English capture of the ships bringing supplies. Winter passed and with spring the suffering increased. “We ate our peas by count,” says Champlain. His heart was wrung by the sufferings of the people, especially of the women and children. “Nevertheless,” he says, “I was patient, having always good courage,--and can say with truth that I aided every one to the utmost that was in my power.” In this extremity in 1629 Quebec was attacked by English war-ships and was forced to surrender.

Champlain was detained awhile as prisoner in England. Afterwards New France was by treaty restored to France and Champlain returned to Quebec where he died Christmas Day, 1635. “Of the pioneers of the North American forests his name stands foremost on the lists,” says Parkman.

Robert de la Salle

The Explorer of the Mississippi River

The Spanish adventurer, De Soto, in his march westward in 1541, was the first white man who reached the Mississippi River. Year after year passed and the Spaniards did not occupy the land along its shores. Instead, they settled the islands and shores to the south and sought silver and gold in Mexico and Peru. While the Spaniards were occupying southern regions, the French were taking possession of northern lands, penetrating inland along the St. Lawrence River.

The French traders and missionaries who went westward heard stories of a mighty river not far distant, which flowed to the sea. In the spring of 1673 two Frenchmen set out in birch canoes to find and explore this river, hoping thus to reach the Pacific Ocean. These Frenchmen were Louis Joliet, an explorer in search of the passage to the Pacific, and Father Marquette, a priest familiar with Indian dialects, who wished to reach the savages of the wilderness. Joliet and Marquette went up the St. Lawrence and through the Great Lakes. They were guided by two Indian boys to the Wisconsin River down which they floated in their canoes. After several days the explorers landed at a settlement of the friendly Indian tribe, the Illinois. The peace pipe was smoked and a banquet was served of Indian meal made into mush, boiled fish, baked dog, and buffalo meat. Again embarking, the adventurers sailed on till they reached the place where the Missouri empties into the Mississippi.

The Indian guides informed them that they could ascend the river and going westward reach a prairie across which their canoes could be carried; then they could embark on a river which flowed southwest into a lake; from this issued a river which flowed into the western sea. The Frenchmen did not follow the course thus pointed out and it was many years before the truth of the statement was verified. But if you look on a map you see the Missouri can be ascended to the Platte River, the source of which is near the Colorado River which flows into the Gulf of California.

The Frenchmen sailed down the Mississippi as far as the mouth of the Arkansas River. They were convinced that the stream entered the Gulf of Mexico and they did not care to encounter the hostile Spaniards or the warlike Indian tribes which they were told dwelt on the banks of the lower Mississippi. So they turned back, going up the Illinois River and passing the marshy prairie which is now the site of the great city of Chicago. After a journey of more than twenty-five hundred miles, they reached in September the mission at Green Bay.

Robert de la Salle, a gentleman of Normandy, was in Canada when Marquette and Joliet returned from their voyage. He was much interested in their discoveries and he determined to go from the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi. He wished to take possession of the land in the name of the king of France to whom it was considered that the whole valley of the great river belonged by virtue of the discoveries of Marquette and Joliet; he wished also to establish military and trading posts along the lakes and the river; he hoped that he would find a passage to the Pacific Ocean. The king gave his consent and aid to the plan.

La Salle established a fort on Lake Ontario. Not far from Niagara Falls, he built a vessel which he called the Griffin. This sailed through Lakes Erie and Huron and Michigan and then was sent back richly laden with furs. Unfortunately, it was wrecked on the return voyage with all on board. In the winter of 1680, La Salle returned to the fort on Lake Ontario to get supplies. In August, 1680, La Salle’s party, consisting of twenty-three Frenchmen and thirty-one Indians, set out in birch canoes to explore the Mississippi. Delayed by storms and tempests and Indian wars, the voyagers did not reach the mouth of the Chicago River until January, 1682. The canoes were dragged on sledges down the frozen Chicago River. When they reached the Mississippi, they were detained by the masses of ice on its waters.

As soon as possible the Frenchmen embarked and sailed down the river, stopping to get corn and information from Indian tribes on their way and to give religious instruction. They slept in the wigwams of the savages and won their hearts by just and kind treatment.

They sailed down the mighty river till they came in sight of the open sea. On the ninth of April, 1682, La Salle in the name of King Louis of France took possession of the land which he called Louisiana. The French flag was raised over the valley of the Mississippi--a territory three times as large as France. The return voyage was made in safety, though it was delayed by hostile Indians, want of food and the illness of La Salle. He did not reach Quebec till the autumn of 1683.

He sailed for France that winter to organize a colony for settling the southern country discovered by him. The king entered eagerly into the plan and La Salle was sent with four vessels bearing men and supplies to establish a colony. Ignorant of the coast, the captain went too far west and reached Matagorda Bay in Texas early in the spring of 1685. La Salle wished to seek the mouth of the river, but the captain, impatient to return, landed the stores and sailed away. La Salle made the best of matters and finding the climate pleasant and the Indians friendly, he established a colony there.

Month after month passed, and no supplies were received from France. Therefore he set out, January, 1687, with twenty men to find the Mississippi River and make his way to Canada. There he hoped to get supplies and send letters to France requesting aid for the colony. On the journey some men rebelled against his authority, killed his nephew and a faithful Indian, and later shot La Salle himself. “Thus died our wise commander, constant in adversity, intrepid, generous, engaging, dexterous, skillful, capable of everything.... He died in the prime of life, in the midst of his enterprises, without having seen their success.” He had laid the foundation of French power in the Mississippi valley, and had established it upon a basis of friendship with the natives, which made possible its growth in peace and security.

Lords Baltimore of Baltimore

An interesting figure in the Stuart court was that of the first Lord Baltimore, the Catholic nobleman through whose interest and influence the colony of Maryland was established. George Calvert--he was not yet Lord Baltimore--entered public life as the secretary of Sir Robert Cecil; he won the favor of King James I. and in 1619 he was knighted and made secretary of state. So far from seeking office, we are informed that “he disabled himself various ways, but specially that he thought himself unworthy to sit in that place so lately possessed by his noble lord and master.”

A few years later he openly connected himself with the Catholics and resigned his office. He did not, however, lose favor with the Protestant king who granted him the title of Baron Baltimore of Baltimore, and confirmed his claim to large estates in Ireland. But George Calvert’s interest lay in another direction and the remainder of his life was given to “that ancient, primitive, and heroic work of planting the world.”

As early as 1609 he had been a member of the Virginia Company and his position as secretary of state made him intimately acquainted with the course of exploration and colonization in the New World. At that time Catholics in England were not allowed liberty of worship. Calvert desired to establish a colony where men, especially those of his own faith, might enjoy the free exercise of their religion. In 1620 he purchased a plantation in Newfoundland and the next year he sent colonists with tools and supplies to found a settlement, which he named Avalon. “Westward Hoe for Avalon,” by Captain Whitbourne, published the next year, described in glowing terms the country with its good fisheries, abundant berries, cherries, and pears, and “red and white damask roses.” In 1623 the king granted a charter giving Lord Baltimore practically royal authority over the province. As a sign of sovereign power, the king of England was to receive a white horse whenever he visited Avalon.

In 1627 Lord Baltimore for the first time crossed the ocean to the province so eloquently described by Whitbourne. He found--a stormy sea beating against a rough peninsula which was broken by stretches of barren sand, tracts of marshes, hills clothed with stunted, cone-bearing trees, and narrow spaces of arable land. Desolate as it was, Lord Baltimore saw Avalon at its best, for it was summer.

In a few weeks he went back to England and the next year he returned to Avalon with his wife and all his family except his eldest son Cecilius or Cecil. The hardships of the long, severe winter and the contests with the French convinced Lord Baltimore that the northern province was no place for his colony--the twenty thousand pounds he had spent on it were wasted. He wrote to the king, complaining that “from the middle of October to the middle of May there is a sad fare of winter upon all this land,” and requesting a grant of land in a more genial climate, to which he might remove his colony of forty-six persons. At first he endeavored to obtain territory south of Virginia, but this was opposed by the Virginia Company which claimed the land and said it was about to send colonists thither. Finally it was decided that it would be well to establish an English colony north of Virginia to keep back the Dutch and the French who were settling territory claimed by England. Lord Baltimore received a grant of land on Chesapeake Bay, extending to the Potomac. But this land he was never to settle or even to see. He died in April, 1632. The grant thus devolved on his son Cecil, a young man of twenty-eight, who carried out the plans so dear to his father.

Cecil, who was the real founder of Maryland, never visited the colony; he sent out settlers and supplies under his younger brother, Leonard. Leonard was the first governor of Maryland, as the land was called in honor of the English queen, Henrietta Maria. The charter given Lord Baltimore granted more absolute power than was ever bestowed on any other English colonist in the New World. “Cecilius, Absolute Lord of Maryland and Avalon,” could make peace or war; he had the law-making power also and the people could merely advise and assent or dissent. The only tribute required was the yearly payment of two Indian arrows to the king and of one-fifth of all the gold and silver found in the land. As soon as the settlers landed, Leonard Calvert established friendly relations with the Indians whom the Englishmen found to “have generous natures and requite any kindness shown them.” The peaceful relations with these Indians, called “Friend Indians” in later treaties, were never broken.

Sailing up St. Mary’s River, the colonists found a place which pleased them as a site for a settlement. They purchased it from the Indians for “axes, hoes, and cloth.” Here St. Mary’s was built in 1634, on the former site of an Indian village.

From the first the policy of the Maryland colony was “peace, unity, and religious toleration.” Until it was established, there was no place in the English colonies in America where Catholics had religious liberty. In the colony on the Potomac, the Catholics enjoyed the free exercise of their religion and granted to others the same privilege. This religious toleration was secured by law in 1649. It was agreed that “no persons professing to believe in Jesus Christ should be molested in their religion.”

The chief trouble of the Maryland colony in its early days was with William Claybourne, a trader from Virginia who had established a settlement and trading-post on Kent’s Island. This was a part of the territory afterwards granted to Lord Baltimore. After much contention and dissension about the matter, in 1646 Claybourne stirred up a rebellion. Governor Calvert, armed with royal authority, took forcible possession of the island. A few months later Calvert died, having appointed as his successor, Thomas Greene, a Catholic and Royalist.

This “land of the sanctuary,” as Maryland was called, grew in wealth and prosperity. In 1656 Hammond described it for the benefit of home-staying Englishmen: “Maryland is (not an Island as is reported, but) part of that main adjoining to Virginia only separated or parted from Virginia, by a river of ten miles broad, called Patomack River,--the commodities and manner of living as in Virginia, the soil somewhat more temperate (as being more northerly) many stately and navigable rivers are contained in it, plentifully stored with wholesome springs, rich and pleasant soil, and so that its extraordinary goodness hath made it rather desired then envied.”

William Penn

A Famous Quaker

About the middle of the seventeenth century a good deal of attention was attracted in England to the religious sect called Quakers, Professors, Friends, or Children of the Light. One of their ablest exponents was George Fox. He was grave and temperate in life, but so firm that it was said of him, “If George says _verily_ there is no altering him.” “Verily” was the strongest word of assent he permitted himself, obeying literally the Bible command, “Swear not at all.”

The Quakers thought that the Bible only ought to be the rule for men and churches, that there should be no set forms of worship, and that men should pray and preach, not at appointed times, but only as moved by the Spirit. They believed that every man is led by the “inward light,” or the Spirit of God, saying, “He that gave us an outward luminary for our bodies, hath given us an inward one for our minds to act by.” The Quakers refused to pay tithes and taxes to support the established church and, thinking it wrong to fight, they refused to serve in the army. At that time hats were worn indoors as well as out, and men took them off as a token of respect. The Quaker refused to pull off their hats to men of any rank, uncovering only in prayer. “Hat honor was invented by men in the Fall,” they said. These Quakers were recognized by their sober attire,--broad-brimmed hats and sober-colored clothes,--and by their use of “thee” and “thou” and “thine” instead of “you” and “yours.” To use the plural forms in addressing one person, they said, was contrary to grammar, to Biblical usage, and to truth.

When George Fox, a lad of twenty, was preaching this faith, there was born in England one who was to spread it abroad in the New World. This was William Penn. His father, Sir William Penn, was an Admiral in the royal navy and was anxious to see his son master of an estate and a title. All these plans were upset by the son who at twenty-four joined the Quakers. His father summoned him to London to argue with him, but the youth stood firm. He appeared covered before his father. The old Admiral tried to effect a compromise and get him to take off his hat to his father, the king, and the Duke of York, but he refused. He would not yield one point of the Quaker customs, dress, language, or faith. As he would not yield, his father in the end did so, and paid his fines.

The Quakers were so beset at home that Penn and others wished to establish for them a refuge in the New World. Penn became one of the owners of the colony of West New Jersey to which many Quakers went. But he was not satisfied with his partnership here and desired a province and colony of his own. This was not difficult to acquire. King Charles II., who owed Admiral Penn’s estate sixteen thousand pounds, had little gold or silver in his treasury and claimed much land in the New World. He willingly settled his debt by granting William Penn the land west of the Delaware; for this Penn was to pay yearly two beaver skins, and one-fifth of all the gold and silver found in the colony. Penn wished to call this land of woods Sylvania, and the king added to the name that of his old friend, the Admiral, calling it Pennsylvania.

The grant was made in 1680; two years later, in order to have an outlet to the sea, Penn secured a grant of the land which afterwards formed the state of Delaware. The very year that this second grant was made, many Quakers sailed to make their home in the new land. In the fall and winter of 1682, twenty-three ships came, bringing settlers to the Quaker colony. The next year Penn could say, “I have led the greatest colony into America that ever any man did upon a private credit, and the most prosperous beginnings that ever were in it are to be found among us.” In three years there were more than seven thousand settlers,--English, French, Dutch, Swedes, men of different races and various creeds.

Penn made it from the first a “free colony for all mankind,” assuring the people “You shall be governed by laws of your own making. I shall not usurp the right of any or oppress his person.” He put the government in the hands of a governor and of a council and general assembly chosen by freemen. Laws were passed forbidding drunkenness, dueling, stage plays, and card playing. Death, which was then in England the penalty for theft and many other offences, in Pennsylvania was inflicted only as punishment for wilful murder, according to the law of God, as the Quakers understood it.

Penn founded his colony on principles of peace and fairness to the Indians. Under a great elm-tree at Shakamaxon, afterwards Kensington, he made with the natives, a treaty of peace and friendship “never sworn to and never broken;” the red man was granted equal rights with the white, and they were to be friends “while the creeks and rivers run and while the sun, moon, and stars endure.” The Indians with whom the Pennsylvania colonists were brought in contact were the mild and peace-loving Delawares. Fortunately for the Quakers, the fierce Susquehannocks, beaten by the Five Nations, had six years before gone southward.

Penn laid out the site of a town at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. He named it Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. It was laid out with broad fair streets for he wished it to be a “fair and green country town.”

Two years later, Penn sailed back to England to decide a dispute about the boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland. It was fifteen years before he revisited his colony. He endeavored to see it governed well, but from a distance this was difficult. There were men hard to control. “For the love of God, me, and the poor country, be not so governmentish, so uneasy, and open in your dissatisfaction,” he wrote.

When Penn returned in 1699 it was with the plan of spending his remaining days in his colony. But two years later he learned that there was a plan afoot to turn his province into a crown territory and he sailed back to England to protect his rights. One matter after another came up to detain him and he remained in England till his death in July, 1718.

James Edward Oglethorpe

The Founder of Georgia

The colony of Georgia was the last founded of the thirteen original colonies. It was established by Oglethorpe, a man of noble birth who was animated by principles of philanthropy and patriotism.

James Edward Oglethorpe was born in London, about 1688. When a youth he entered the army and fought bravely against the Turks for several years. After his return home his attention was attracted and his sympathy aroused by the condition of prisoners in England, especially of poor debtors. In those days debt was regarded and punished as a crime; debtors were confined in prisons with murderers and thieves. It is thought that Oglethorpe’s attention was specially drawn to the matter by the sad case of one of his friends. This man, being unable to pay his debts, was imprisoned and loaded with chains; unable to pay even the fees required by the jailer, he was confined in a miserable prison where smallpox was raging, caught the disease, and died.

Oglethorpe investigated the conditions of prison life in England and found them bad and brutal beyond description. Most of the prisons were filthy dens in which men, women, and children were herded together, the child who had stolen a loaf of bread side by side with a brutal murderer. Oglethorpe brought the subject before parliament and succeeded in having a committee appointed to investigate the matter and take steps to limit the corruption and cruelty of the officials.

Besides attempting to relieve their condition at home, Oglethorpe began to plan an asylum abroad for the poor debtors and for persecuted sects. He wished to establish a place where those who were unfortunate and discouraged could begin life anew. It seemed to Oglethorpe that England would derive many benefits from such a colony as he planned. The country would be relieved of the burden of supporting unfortunate men who there would become self-supporting. New industries might be developed,--especially the culture of silk worms in which he was much interested. He wished to plant this settlement in the southern regions claimed by England, making it a military colony to prevent the encroachments of Spain and to protect the other English colonies.

In June, 1732, Oglethorpe and twenty associates obtained a grant of the land lying between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers and extending westward to the Pacific Ocean, according to the usual terms of the grants of the times. The English claimed this land by virtue of the expeditions of Sir Walter Raleigh and they were desirous to occupy it before it was seized by the Spanish in Florida or the French on the Mississippi. In honor of the reigning King George II., the territory was named Georgia.

Oglethorpe agreed with Bacon that “it is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men to be the people whom you plant,” and he tried to select men who were unfortunate rather than wicked. Every opportunity was to be given the people to reform and to build up homes and fortunes. Oglethorpe went as governor of the colony, hoping by his personal aid and supervision to encourage and direct the people.

For military reasons, Oglethorpe urged that negro slavery be prohibited and that rum should not be brought into the colony. Among the men who aided in establishing and directing the colony were John and Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield, the famous Methodist clergymen.