Countless trips to The Anchor with many more countless cups of coffee spurred my month-long intensive study of the European colonization of the New World, from the European conquest of the Canaries in the Atlantic to the end of the Powhatan Confederacy at Jamestown in 1618. While studying in the cafe after we closed, Bob walked in and asked what I was doing. I told him I was reading a book about North America in the years immediately prior to European settlement. He asked if it was fiction, and I said No. "I can only read historical fiction," he said. "I just like a good story." Well, isn't that what history is?
My studies began, as I said, at the Canaries. The European enslavement of the indigenous Guanche peoples set the stage for European policy with colonial expansion. Columbus set sail from the Canary Islands and reached the Mediterranean in 1491. Although often hailed as the first European to discover the New World, he thought it was western India for the longest time, and as he died he was still unsure as to its true identity. He wasn't the first, either: the Vikings had attempted a settlement in North America many years prior, but the native Americans had sent them hurrying back home. The conquering of the Mediterranean gave the Spanish an operating base for incursions into South and Central America. The destruction of the Inca (who had one of the most successful and humanitarian empires in human history), the annihilation of the Aztec (also known as the Triple Alliance, and almost as sophisticated in philosophy as the ancient Greeks; also, they were the first to make sure every male had a formal public education), and the bloody subjugation of the Mayans was due not to Spanish steel and might but to European germs. The Inca of Peru had been consumed internally by political strife and smallpox before being slowly wiped out by the Spaniards. The Aztecs repulsed the infamous Cortes, and his eventual domination was due not to his own prowess but by recruiting thousands upon thousands of indigenous natives, who had been under the heel of the Aztecs, to lead the revolt (the fall of the Aztec capital was one of the costliest battles in human history, with 200,000 deaths and the city razed to the ground; and this after 2/3 of the Aztec population was exterminated by disease). Winning over the native Americans who were too weak against the onslaught of European disease, the Spanish sought to take over North America as well, in the hope of finding gold and silver. Their efforts were futile, but revealing: excursions into the Mississippi Valley revealed a North America teeming with powerful Indians and vast societies. The Europeans spread disease, got their asses kicked, and headed back to New Spain.
Their footprints in North America were felt for hundreds of years to come: millions of Indians died as European diseases traveled along Indian trade routes and laid waste to the American northeast. Entire Indian groups dissolved, villages abandoned, entire peoples gone. The Europeans didn't see this happen: because the European powers craved gold and silver, and because North America didn't have it, there was really no point in settling it. The climate was too mild for the cash crops of molasses, sugar-cane, and tobacco (tobacco could be grown, but it was far too harsh to compete with the West Indie varieties). Another reason for avoiding settlement of North America was that there were still far too many people. The Spanish, French, and English attempted settlements, and the vast majority of these failed due to Indian hostilities (they kicked the Vikings out, they were pretty bad-ass). The French, by happenstance, monopolized upon the burgeoning fur trade (Indians traded animal furs for European goods, especially metal), but they didn't make any permanent settlements: the Indians were too prosperous, and they controlled the trade. So as the French, Dutch, and English sought to curb Spanish trade domination through the advent of licensed piracy, the Indians of North America went through terrifying epidemics. The introduction of European diseases would, in time, decimate up to 96% of the Native American population. The fragmented societies often coalesced into different tribes, or wandered the land as refugees to be absorbed into other Indian groups. By the time of English colonization in North America, the majority of the Indian nations known had been created out of the refuse of disease or, at the least, had been severely reworked.
The peoples of North America descended into a state of perpetual war: tribes warred against one another in the effort to attain domination over the various tribes in the area, and the escalation of warfare was monopolized upon by the Dutch and French: they sold guns to the Indians in return for furs, and the Indians would use these guns in their own wars against one another. The American frontier became a bloody, violent place as Indian groups sought to regain control and balance in the aftermath of the plague. Epidemic after epidemic led the land ripe for the plucking, and when England stormed onto the scene, she was able to get a foothold in Jamestown. There were still lots of Indians, but they were crippled by disease and, in the web of native American politics, had their hands forced to "make room" for English colonization. The Native Americans at Jamestown allowed the English to live there: the chief Indian, Powhatan, sought to use the English to his advantage against his enemies. This was an unfortunate move that eventually led to the downfall of the Powhatan Confederacy as the English population became too big to get rid of. In Plymouth, the famous site of the first Thanksgiving, the Indian leader Massasoit embraced the English as friends only because he needed the threat of their presence to protect his feeble, disease-charred tribe from annihilation at the hands of the hostile Narragansett Indians prowling along his borders. By giving the English footholds in Jamestown and Plymouth, the Native Americans sealed their fate: the English would keep coming, bringing with them livestock that would decimate the lands, weeds that would kill the crops, and diseases that would turn entire Indian civilizations into ghost towns.
Ultimately, the first 127 years of European interaction with the New World is a story of two hemispheres colliding and how the earthquakes changed the face of the Western Hemisphere. One out of every five people on earth died from disease, making it the worst plague in human history.
It's a humbling thing to think about, it really is.
We Americans are literally living on top of an apocalypse.
This month (January) will be spent studying colonial America.
At least colonial America up to 1754.
Because then comes The French & Indian War.
February will be delightful!
