USA > Georgia > A history of Georgia : from its first discovery by Europeans to the adoption of the present constitution in MDCCXCVIII. Vol. I > Part 2
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On his return to Porto Rico, in October following, he transmitted to his sovereign an account of his dis- covery, who, in return for so valuable a service, ap- pointed him Governor of Florida, with the onerous
rida, the Indians of Cuba and Hispani- ola affirming that old people bathing themselves in them became young again."-Irving's Voyages and Discov- eries of the Companions of Columbus, 312. The idea of a fountain of im- mortality is as old as the days of Plato. Glaucus, as is said, discovered it, but 1841. In the last named work, the full title of which is, “ Voyages, Rela- tions et Mémoires Originaux pour servir à l'Histoire de la Découverte de l'Amérique, publiés pour la première fois en Français, par H. Ternaux- Compans," are several pieces relating to the early Spanish navigators. In paid a sad penalty for not being able the relation of Hernando d'Escalante to show it to others. De Repub., 10, c. xi. Ovid, Met. xiii. 904, seq. " Recueil de Pièces sur la Floride. Par H. Ternaux-Compans," 18, Paris,
Fontanedo, the Voyage of Lucas Vas- quez de Ayllon is made to precede the first visit of Ponce de Leon, pp. 16, 17. 13 Herrera, Dec. i. lib ix. cap. v.
6
HIS DEFEAT AND DEATH.
condition, however, that he was to conquer and col- onize it for the crown.
After many delays, he returned to it, in 1521, with two ships and sufficient force to establish a colony. But his party were repulsed by the Indians, himself was mortally wounded in the conflict ; and the ships, with the few survivors, returned to Cuba, with the sad story of failure and defeat. The wonderful foun- tain which was to confer youth and immortality, he never found ; and though he bathed in many streams, the shadow on the dial of his life went not back- wards-the dew of his youth never returned-and the only immortality he found, was in the name of " the first discoverer of Florida." He died of his wound in Cuba, in 1521.
About the year 1520,14 Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon,
14 Herrera, Dec. ii. lib. iii. cap. vi., medo, endeavoured to arrest his efforts, says, " Much about this time." Peter (Prescott, Hist. Con. Mex., ii. 233, im- Martyr gives no date. Galvano in plies they did not meet, but Herrera, Hakluyt, quoting from Gomera, Hist. Dec. ii. lib. vii. cap. iv., says they did,) which so fretted Narvaez that he sent him back to Cuba, but, by the influence of Ayllon with the sailors, he was landed in St. Domingo .- (De Solis, ii. 68.) How long these transactions occupied we know not, but the more probable opinion is, that the first voy- age of the ships fitted out by Ayllon and his confederates sailed without him. Peter Martyr does not mention the name of Ayllon, but says, " Certain Spaniards in two barks, built at the charge of seven men," &c .- (Dec. vii. cap. ii.) There is no date to the De- cade, but the next which has one, the ix. cap. of vi. Dec., is dated 14th July, 1524. Indeed, it is clear from what he says, that De Ayllon had not been in Chicora at that time, for in Dec. vii. Gen. lib. iii. cap. vii., says, 1520. It is certain that the first part of this year was taken up with his mission to Cuba, as a Commissioner from the Royal Audience of St. Domingo to Don Diego Velasquez, who with in- temperate zeal was fitting out a fleet to send against Cortez, then on his conquering march to Mexico; and failing in preventing its departure, Vasquez sailed with the expedition, in March, 1520, to Mexico, that he might avert, if possible, an open rup: ture between the parties .- (Trescott's Hist. Conquest of Mexico, ii. 226.) The course which the licenciate Ayllon pursued, who remonstrated against all the proceedings of Panfilo de Narvaez, and, in conjunction with Father Ol-
7
LUCAS VASQUEZ DE AYLLON.
of Toledo, a licenciate of the court of Spain, and a member of the Royal Audience or Senate of St. Do- mingo, in company with six others, residents of His- paniola, fitted out two15 ships for the purpose of pro- curing Lucaian Indians, to work on their plantations. For the King of Spain, upon the report of the licen- ciate Roderick de Figueron, had ordained that all those Indians whom he had declared cannibals, might be captured and sold for slaves.
But, failing to obtain any of these, they sailed away northward, having had some information of Ponce de Leon's voyage, and made land at the mouth of the Combahee river, in South Carolina, which was called the river Jordan in honour of the pilot of the expedi- tion. The country was called, by the natives, " Chi- cora," and the sound in which they dropped anchor, now known as St. Helena, had never before been visited by Europeans. The natives flocked to the shore to see these ships, " astonished at the miracle and strangeness thereof."16 But a few presents secured their confidence, and lured them into the net, which European perfidy and cunning had spread to entrap them. Quieted in their fears, and suspecting no evil, great multitudes of them, on a day appointed, visited the ships. But no sooner were the decks well crowd- ed, than the anchor was weighed, the sails unfurled, the ships put to sea ; and, in a few days, the hundreds
cap. ii., he writes, that while Ayllon was in Spain soliciting the govern- ment of Chicora, he sometimes had him at his house, and then prefaces an account of the manners and customs of the Carolina Indians, by saying, " Such things there as Ayllon himself, the licentiate, showed unto me, set down in writing by report of his fellows,
and which the Chicorans by word of mouth confess, I will here recite." Holmes, Car lenas, Charlevoix, Carroll, and others, have fallen into the mistake here corrected.
15 Herrera says, three ships .- Re- cueil de Pièces sur la Floride.
16 Peter Martyr, Dec. vii. cap. ii.
8
DE AYLLON'S EXPEDITION TO CHICORA.
whom he thus tore away from Chicora, freemen, either perished at sea, or were landed at St. Domingo, slaves. One of his two vessels foundered on its homeward passage, and all on board, about two hundred, per- ished ; and but few in the other vessel lived to wear the yoke of Spanish bondage.
Undismayed by the disasters of this voyage, Vas- quez de Ayllon spread an account of his discovery before Charles V., having been sent over to the court of Spain as procurator from St. Domingo to the Coun- cil of the Indies; and, after long entreaty, obtained of the Emperor permission to conquer and govern Chi- cora. In 1524, he fitted out, from Hispaniola, a new fleet for the conquest of Chicora. It consisted of three ships, and he joined the expedition as its leader. But his enterprise met the fate it deserved. Two hundred of his men were massacred by the natives; one of his ships was lost at the mouth of the Jordan; and but a dejected remnant of that proud and hope-lured band, returned to Hispaniola. Of the fate of Ayllon we are uncertain. Some say17 that, wounded in spirit, he only survived his repulse to return to St. Domingo, to die of a broken heart; while others assert,18 that he was killed, with his companions ; leaving nothing wor- thy of remembrance.
Thus were the first visits of the Spaniards to this country marked by crime and blood. Their perfidi- ous conduct, and their inhuman outrages, sowed broad- cast the seeds of a sanguinary harvest. From every drop of Indian blood thus spilt, there sprang up armed warriors; who, for years, visited the early settlers with the torch, the tomahawk, and the scalping knife, as if to avenge the shades of their slaughtered ancestors.
17 Herrera.
18 Galvano in Hakluyt.
9
VOYAGES OF JEAN DE VERRAZZANO.
While Spain and England were thus following up the great discoveries of Columbus and Cabot, France was not inactive. Her monarch, Francis I., possessed a chivalric and enterprising spirit ; and, though fond of war, was a generous patron of letters and the arts. Interested in the discoveries which the bold fishermen of Normandy and Brittany had made on the banks of Newfoundland and the Isle of Breton, he engaged the services of Jean de Verrazzano, a celebrated navigator of Florence, to seek, in the great ocean of the west, countries yet unexplored by the maritime adventurers of the age.
It was about the 19th of March, 1525, that he was greeted with the sight of land, which, in his letter to the King19 of France, he says, " had never before been seen by any one, either in ancient or modern times." This, by some authors,20 is supposed to have been near Cape Fear River in North Carolina ; but there is not wanting authority to fix this point off the mouth of the Savannah river;21 and his description of the place seems to confirm the statement. He writes : " The whole shore is covered with fine sand, about fifteen feet thick, rising in the form of little hills about fifty paces broad. Ascending further, we found several arms of the sea, which make in through inlets, wash- ing the shores on both sides, as the coast runs. An outstretched country appears, at a little distance, rising somewhat above the sandy shore in beautiful fields and broad plains, covered with immense forests of trees, more or less dense, too various in colors, and too
19 See this letter, dated " Dieppe, 8th July, 1524," in full, in Collections of New York Hist. Soc., second series, i. 23. vol. i. 55, from which the facts related in the text are taken.
20 Bancroft, History U. S., i. 16. Rev. Dr. Miller, in N. Y. Hist. Col.
21 Forster's Voyages, 432-436.
10
EXTENT OF HIS DISCOVERIES.
charming and delightful in appearance, to be described. I do not believe that they are, like the Hyrcynian for- ests on the rough wilds of Scythia and the northern regions, full of vines and common trees, but adorned with palms, laurels, cypresses, and other varieties un- known in Europe, that send forth the sweetest fra- grance to a great distance."
Verrazzano mentions incidentally, in his letter to the King, his being in latitude 34 degrees; but, as this was after he had returned from coasting fifty leagues to the south, it is evident that part of the land which he saw, and with which he held communica- tion, must have been the coast of Georgia. This opinion is strengthened by the assertion of Laudon- nier,22 in his description of Florida, written within forty years from the voyage of Verrazzano ; who says that Verrazzano discovered all the coast from the 28th to the 50th degree of north latitude, and called it New France. It was not the object of Verrazzano to plant colonies, but to discover lands. And this voyage pro- duced no other results than " the earliest original account, now extant, of the coast of the United States,"23 and the setting up of a claim, by France, to the territory included between the 25th and 54th de- grees of north latitude.
With this voyage ceased, for a time, the maritime explorations of the French.24 In seven months from the return of Verrazzano from this first voyage, Fran- cis I. was taken prisoner by Charles V., at the battle of Pavia, and confined nearly a year in Madrid; and France, without a sovereign on her throne,-without money in her treasury,-without an army in the field,
22 Laudonnier's Narrative in Hak- luyt, iii. 305.
23 Bancroft, Hist. U. S., i. 17.
24 Robertson's Charles V., book iv.
11
THE UNCERTAINTY OF HIS FATE.
and encompassed on all sides by a victorious and active enemy, was in no condition to prosecute the discove- ries made by her daring navigator. This enterprising Florentine again visited America, probably in the ex- pedition fitted out under the auspices of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey ; for Hakluyt speaks of an old, excellent map of this coast, which Verrazzano gave to the king, evidently showing that he was in the service of the English monarch.25
Various are the reports as to the subsequent fate of Verrazzano.26 All that we know with certainty is, that one great action distinguished him from the mass of ad- venturers, in an age which produced a Columbus, and a Cabot, and a Cortez ; while doubt and mystery have enveloped the rest of his career.27 Thus, through the sons of the small maritime states of Genoa, Venice, and Florence, did the three great kingdoms of Europe- Spain, England, and France-become possessed of America. Yet Italy has never planted a colony, nor owned a province, in the New World. Her older bards28 sung of lands yet to be discovered, when " ocean should relax its bounds." Her cities cradled and nursed the men who made the prophecies of her poets truths of history ; yet they laid no filial offering of new-found lands at the feet of their classic mother. Following up the voyage of Cabot, the design of Cor-
25 See these statements examined in Memoirs of Seb. Cabot, 276.
26 Common tradition reported that he died at sea. Bancroft i. 18. Ramu- sio (tom. iii.) states that Verrazzano, " having gone on shore with some companions, they were all killed by the natives, and, in the sight of those who remained in the ship, were roasted and eaten."
37 N. A. Rev., Oct. 1837, art. " Life and Voyages of Verrazzano," written by Geo. W. Green, Esq., U. S. Consul at Rome.
28 Seneca, Medea, act ii., chorus : Venient annis Secula seris," etc.
Dante, Inferno, canto xxvi. v. 115. Pulci, " Morgante Maggiore," canto xxv. stanzas 229, 230.
12
THE VOYAGE OF STEPHEN GOMEZ.
tez, and the universal hope of the Atlantic kingdoms, Stephen Gomez, of Corunna, under the patronage of Charles V., sailed, in 1525, on an expedition to discover the long sought northern passage to Cathay. He was a skilful navigator; and having shared with Magellan the enthusiasm of a discovery of the South Pacific, he now hoped to enjoy the honour of first reaching the same ocean by a northern route. Only one caraval was fur- nished him, and he was directed to search out whether any such passage could be found, north of Florida. He coasted along our shores to the 46th degree of north latitude, when, neither finding the strait, nor Cathay, he returned to Spain, after a voyage of ten months ; seeking to cover the mortification of defeated hopes by freighting his ship with Indians, of both sexes, whom he sold as slaves.29 He was the first Spaniard who navi- gated the whole Atlantic coast of our Union.
The highway to the New World once opened to those commercial enterprises in which kings were competitors, crowds of adventurers flocked thither, ani- mated by every motive, and governed by every interest. To the aborigines of America, it was an age of crime, perfidy, and blood. The avarice for gold towered over every other passion : it swayed the minds, it seared the conscience, it hardened the heart of noble and ignoble, of leader and follower; and, like the outburst- ings of a volcano, it left the blackened traces of its desolation in the loveliest portion of the western hemi- sphere. From a friend, the Indian was turned into a
29 Peter Martyr, Dec. viii. lib. x. vs, that no man should offer violence He says : " This Stephanus Gomez to any nation, fraighted his shipp with people of both sexes, taken from cer- taine innocent halfe naked nations who contented themselves with cottages in steede of houses." hauing attained none of those thinges which hee' thought hee should haue found, lest hee should returne empty, contrary to the lawes sett downe by
13
EXTRAVAGANT VIEWS OF THE "NEW WORLD."
foe; from peace, it became war; from liberty, it was slavery and death.
The various descriptions which had been written of Florida, gave rise to much of public hope and interest. Its conquest became, with the chivalrous spirits of Spain, an object of magnitude and importance. The minds of adventurers were inflamed with glowing descriptions and high-wrought fictions. The avaricious were al- lured by the hope of gain; the ambitious by the lust of power; and the church linked with the state, to foster expeditions which should plant the cross upon the altars of paganism, and bring the idolatrous savage within the pale of Christianity. The sword and the crozier were to revolutionize the western hemisphere ; and Spain, under Charles V., was to be the political mistress of the world. But her rapacity was her ruin ; and she, who once called America her own, has now not a province to acknowledge fealty to her crown. Not one of the Spanish enterprises of the sixteenth cen- tury was founded in justice or integrity. They were based on false principles, which carried with them their own destruction. Attached to the idea of the "New World," were the most extravagant and fictitious views. Its shores were sought, not by the careful husbandman, the industrious artizan, and those who would have col- onized its solitudes and cultivated its fields; but by ambitious courtiers, by gay cavaliers, by haughty hidalgos and superstitious priests. The Indians, re- garded by them more as wild beasts to be slaughtered or captured, were subjected to their merciless tyranny- slain by myriads in their native land, or carried away by thousands to toil in the mines and on the plantations of their self-appointed conquerors. To all this, how- ever, they were blinded by the glare of wealth and
14
PANFILO DE NARVAEZ.
the lustre of conquest. The victories of Cortez and Pizarro atoned, in their eyes, for any outrage, and threw a halo of glory over their miscreant deeds.
Hitherto, the knowledge of this southern coast had been gained by the transient visits of hurrying naviga- tors, who held but few communications with the na- tives, and those mostly of a treacherous and bloody nature. Panfilo de Narvaez had, indeed, with five ships and over four hundred men, attempted to pene- trate the country granted to him by Charles V., com- prising "all the lands lying from the River of Palms to the Cape of Florida." But his expedition, from his landing in Florida, was one series of disasters. He was lost; and of the splendid equipment which sailed from Cuba, in March, 1528, only five persons survived. Four of these, after great sufferings, succeeded in reaching Mexico, on the 22d of July, 1536, having wandered more than eight years among the Indian tribes bordering on the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico.30
Since this defeat of Narvaez, in 1528, ten years had elapsed, and yet no one dared to embark in that dan- gerous enterprise. Cabeza de Vaca, however, one of the survivors of that ill-fated armament, persisted in the assertion that Florida was the richest country in the world; and he went over to Spain, to beg of Charles V. its government and its conquest. He arrived too late. It had already been conferred on Ferdinand de Soto. 31
. 30 Herrera, Dec. iii. lib. iv. cap. iv., Palms to the Cape of Florida." This also Dec. iv. lib. iii. cap. v. In "Re- is a very curious document, showing cueil de Pièces sur la Floride," is a in a very strong light the ground on which the Spanish sovereigns claimed jurisdiction over America. French translation of the summons, " made by Panfilo de Narvaez to the inhabitant ; of the countries and prov- 31 Virginia Richly Valued, etc., in inces extending from the River of Hakluyt, Supplement, 696.
CHAPTER II.
TRAVELS AND DISCOVERIES OF FERDINAND DE SOTO.1
IT seems strange, that the disasters consequent upon the several expeditions to Florida, did not deter from further enterprises in that region. But the mag- nificent results of the conquest of Mexico by Cortez,
1 In sketching the character and Reino de la Florida, y de otros Hero- travels of De Soto, I have been guided, icos Caballeros Españoles, e Indios ; 1 st, by the Portuguese relation in Hak- escrita por el Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, etc. Madrid, fol. 1723. luyt, entitled, " Virginia richly valued by the description of the main-land of Florida, her next neighbour; out of the four years' continual travel and discovery, for above one thousand miles east and west, of Don Ferdinand de Soto and six hundred able men in his These are the three original author- ities from which all succeeding writers have drawn their statements. The account in " Universal History," (Mod- ern, vol. 36,) is condensed from the re- lation of Garcilaso de la Vega. company. Wherein are truly observed the riches and fertility of those parts, abounding with things necessary, usc- ful, and profitable for the life of man, with the nature and dispositions of the inhabitants. Written by a Portu- guese gentleman of Elvas, employed in all the action, and translated out of the Portuguese, by Richard Hakluyt." Lond. 1609.
2d. La Florida del Inca. Historia del Adelantado, Hernando de Soto, Governador, y Capitan General del tempts the same thing.
3d. Herrera's General History of the vast Islands and Continents of Amer- ica. Vols. v. and vi. of the English translation, by Captain John Stevens. . Lond. 6 vols. 8vo. 1740.
McCulloch, in his " Researches Phi- losophical and Antiquarian, concerning the Aboriginal History of America," Baltimore, 1829, endeavours totrace out the route of De Soto .- Appendix iii. pp. 523, 531. Theodore Irving, in his " Conquest of Florida," 2 vols., at-
16
FERDINAND DE SOTO.
and of Peru by Pizarro, gave rise to the hope, that in the wilds of Florida there might be found cities and mines, as rich and productive as those wrested from the Aztec Kings, and the Peruvian Incas. The rest- lessness of human ambition, spurred on by the splen- did victories already gained, sought new fields of triumph, where valour might find reward in wealth or power, equal to any yet obtained. In the desire for renown, many bartered well-earned laurels for shadowy titles, and spent ample fortunes in fitting out the splendid equipments of their ruin. Peculiarly was this illustrated in the character of Ferdinand de Soto. Springing from an humble origin, with " nothing but his sword and target," he entered into the wars then raging in the West Indies; and, passing through the several lower grades of service with renown, rose to a most distinguished rank as an able and high-minded general under Pizarro, in his conquest of Peru.
Here he surpassed most of his fellows in deeds of daring and stout-hearted valour; but, foreseeing the difficulties arising between the Pizarros, Alvarado, and Almagro, he wisely left the country ; and carrying with him the wealth he had acquired from the spoils of Atahuallpa and the pillage of Cuzco, returned, in 1535, to Spain.
He left his native land more than twenty years before, a poor adventurer; he returned with riches and fame; set up the establishment of a nobleman; became the associate of the proud and the titled ; married the daughter of Arrias, the Governor of Nicai- agua ; and, presenting himself at court, begged of the king the conquest of Florida.
His desire was granted, and he was made Governor of Cuba, and Adelantado of Florida, with the title of
-
17
DE SOTO'S EXPEDITION-ITS GRANDEUR.
Marques of certain portions of the land he should conquer.
The fitting out of the expedition was magnificent beyond anything which had yet sailed for America. The reports of Cabeza de Vaca, and the military prowess of De Soto, drew together a great multitude, of noble birth and fortunes, to serve in the undertaking. They gathered from Badajoz, and Salamanca, and Valencia, and Elvas, in such numbers, that many men of good account, who had sold estates, in order to equip them- selves for the voyage, were obliged to remain behind for want of shipping. Such was the zeal to engage in this enterprise, that fortunes were given for offices un- der De Soto. The brother of the Marques of Astorga dispossessed himself of 60,000 reals of rent; his kins- man Osorio exchanged a town of vassals; and Bal- tazar de Gallegos sold houses and vineyards, and ninety ranks of olive trees in the Xarafe of Seville, to fit themselves out for the conquest of Florida.
From the thousands who pressed forward to unite their fortunes with De Soto, he selected six hundred, mustered them into service, and distributed them among the vessels prepared for the voyage.
On Sunday morning, the 6th of April, 1538, the ships of De Soto, together with the fleet for New Spain, set sail from St. Luca, at the mouth of the Guadal- quiver.
They departed amidst the sounding of trumpets, the roar of cannon, and the shouts of the populace. Joy shone in every eye, and hope swelled every heart : little did they imagine that all this pomp and gaiety was only like hanging garlands of roses round the necks of victims destined for sacrifice. After touching,
2
7
18
SAILS FROM CUBA AND REACHES FLORIDA.
at the Canaries, the fleet reached Cuba in May, where De Soto was received with honours and rejoicings.
From Havana, he sent Juan Dannusco, with three vessels and fifty men, to discover a haven in Florida. He brought back with him two Indians, who said, by signs, that there was much gold in Florida, which infused new life into the bosoms of the adventurers.
After a year's delay in Cuba in arranging its gov- ernment, and rebuilding Havana, the fleet, consisting of five great ships, two caravals, and two brigantines, aboard of which were two hundred and thirteen horses, and nine hundred men, beside the sailors, embarked for Florida. They set sail on Sunday, the 18th of May, 1539; and on Friday, the 30th of May, landed in Florida, two leagues from the town of an Indian chief, called Ucita. The point of debarkation was on the western coast of Florida, in what is now called Tampa Bay; but which, because they first saw it on Whit- sunday, they named the Bay of Espiritu Santo. Here he landed his horses and his men, and pitched his camp on the sea-side.
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