A Voyage Long And Strange : On The Trail Of Vikings, Lost Colonists

“What would it be like to explore this New World, not only in books but on the ground? To take a pilgrimage through early America that ended at Plymouth Rock instead of beginning there? To make landfall where the first Europeans had, meet the Naturals, mine the past, and map its memory in the present? To rediscover my native land, the U.S. continent?” (Horwitz 7).

Beginning with the southern Chesapeake colonies, the regions of North America were classified by their founding nation and structure. Several sects from all over Europe made North America their home throughout the 17th century. After facing prosecution in England, the Puritans and Separatists traveled to the New World’s northeast aiming to establish religiously tolerant settlements, whereas the Spanish Conquistadors explored the “West Indies” with hopes to exploit the Southwest’s piñata of expensive metals and non-Christian natives. Both groups shared the goal of a new world; however, New Englanders and the Spanish Conquistadores’ differed fundamentally in their initial motivation to explore the foreign paradise. Each group’s initial motivation

Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is best known as the first Spaniard to explore what we now consider to be southwestern United States. His nine-year odyssey is chronicled within the book The Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition. His account is considered especially interesting because it is one of the very first documents that illustrates interactions between American natives and explorers. However, when examining the exploration of the modern United States, there are many arguments that have to do with the entitlement to the land and the motivations behind settling in the first place. Most explorers were obviously in favor of their own conquests and Cabeza de Vaca is of course no exception. In Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition, Cabeza de

In chapter one Conquerors and Victims: The Image of America Forms (1500-1800) Gonzalez talks about the impact upon the arrival of the Europeans to America. This arrival was categorized as “the greatest and most important event in the history of human kind”. Spain and England were two countries that had a big impact on our modern world and transplanted their cultures around the territories they took over. Both countries created their empires in which they established on their identities and viewpoint of their language and social customs. Upon their arrival the native population was outnumbered, many of which live around Mexico’s Valley and others populate the Central Andes region and Rio Grande.

Although “historians no longer use the word “discovery” to describe the European exploration, conquest and colonization of a hemisphere already home to millions of people”, it was one of the greatest and most important discoveries ever in our history that changed the lives of millions of people. (Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty: An American History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), pg 1.) For some the “discovery”of America would mean an opportunity for a better life, for others the “discovery” brought misery and death.

Have you ever wondered where why the many different countries in Europe came to America to explore and colonize? There were two main concepts that drew the Europeans to America: the excitement and profit of the "New World", and the past histories of their countries. The English, French, and Spanish each came to the Americas in search of a new beginning; a fresh start in which they could escape past torment and capture new wealth. However, each motive defined the character of each settlement.

The long history between Native American and Europeans are a strained and bloody one. For the time of Columbus’s subsequent visits to the new world, native culture has

From the mid 1500’s to the 1700’s, people from all over Europe flocked to the vast lands of North America. Spain and England quickly became the most dominant European presences in the Americas. Citizens of the two countries had very different experiences in the New World. This was partially due to their different interactions with Native Americans, religions and their different motivations for coming to the New World. Although rivals at the time, Spain and England’s colonization efforts shared many similarities.

The Frontier Thesis may play a heavy part in U.S. history, but there are implications for truly understanding the outlines of this thesis. Fredrick Jackson Tuner during a great meeting of American Historical Association on July 12th, 1893 in Chicago, a paper named “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” This paper introduced an innovative way of astonishment to understanding the construction of America. Turner envisioned that the history of America was not focused one the prominence of the Frontier and the America established many trades and accomplishments from this voyage. Such as Tuner laid out the foundation of his thesis, he also didn’t account for the flaws that were overlooked from his discernment of the Frontier. (Tuner, pg. 1-9)

The Lewis and Clark expedition was a truth that was to become the crowning accomplishment in the lifetime of the brilliant thinker, inventor, and founding father, Thomas Jefferson . It has become a profounding turning point throughout America’s history. Investigating the recently obtained Louisiana Territory, which nearly doubled the size of the country, arranged Jefferson the opportunity to widen the boundaries of the United States to include both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The threat of the unknown lay ahead for Lewis and Clark’s team. The explorers had no idea what they would e be confronted with on their journey, but still they advanced into the unknown area that could officially be called part of America. Thanks to the addition of Lewis, Clark, their essential guide Sacajawea, and the many men that traveled with them America was able to expose land as well as providing important information about the topography, the biological studies, the ecology, and the studies of the American Indian as they discovered the mysteries of the Louisiana Purchase. Although it was a treacherous and costly journey, the Lewis and Clark expedition was the most important exploration in American history.

By the late 1600’s to the beginning of the 1700’s, the colonization of the America’s by the English had been reaping great rewards. The English controlled much of the eastern seaboard, and were highly interested into further

In the 1580s, painter John White travelled to the New World as an artist and governor with his mind thinking of water colors, landscapes, and villages. Voyagers in the era usually asked artists to go along with them to help document the new areas found and the people there. These paintings were used to encourage Europeans to immigrate to the Americas, advertising the lush green lands so that new colonies could be started. White’s accurate paintings changed the way Europeans looked at America and provided important information about the Roanoke voyages. His works were the most helpful illustrations of Native American in the 1500s. John White’s first-hand account of the Village of Secotan depicts a lively, yet peaceful, Native American village.

In modern America, we often take for granted the natural world that surrounds us and the American culture which is built upon it. For many of us, we give little thought to the food sources that sustain and natural habitats that surround us because when viewed for what they are, most people assume that they have “simply existed” since the country was founded. However, the documentary ‘America Before Columbus’ provided this writer an extremely interesting record of how the America we know came to exist. In the documentary, one of the most interesting discussions centered on the fact that it was not merely the arrival of conquistadors and colonists that irrevocably changed the landscape of the Americas, but that it was also the coined term known as the “Columbian Exchange” that afforded these travelers the ability to proliferate so successfully. The basic definition of the Columbian exchange is one that defines the importation of European flora and fauna. It could also loosely represent other imports, both intended and unintended, such as tools, implements, and even disease. Armed with this definition, it takes little imagination to envision how differently the Americas might have developed had any significant amount of the native European flora, fauna, or other unintended import not been conveyed to the Americas through the Columbian Exchange. Beyond the arrival of explorers, settlers, and colonists to the New World, the breadth of what the Columbian Exchange represented to

The Americans continent have always been a fascination of the explorers of the globe. The first recorded European expedition to land on the Americas was led by a Nordic explorer named Thorvald Asvaldsson. Thorvald Asvaldsson was the grandfather of Leif Erikson, another famous Nordic explorer. Thorvald was the first recorded European explorer to set foot on any portion of the Americas. He was exiled from Norway and all other Viking settlements for manslaughter. When Leif’s father was a small boy, their

1. Based on the readings from weeks one and two, discuss the images of America the European writers constructed to promote colonization and settlement. What kinds of unique natural resources and environmental factors did they extol in their accounts of the New World? Relate these images to natural resources and environmental factors today.