USA > New York > History of the state of New-York : including its aboriginal and colonial annals, vol. pt 1 > Part 12
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est conditions that they had found in their voyage : exceeding us in bigness -- of the colour of brasse, some inclining to white- nesse, black and quick eyed, of sweete and pleasant counte- nance, imitating much the old fashion." Among them they saw many pieces of wrought copper, which were esteemed more than gold, which for the colour the natives made no ac- count of. Among the presents that were given to them, bells, crystal of azure colour, and other toys to hang at their cars or about their necks, were most esteemed by them. They did not desire cloth of silk or of gold or other sort, neither did they care for things made of steel or iron, " which we often shewed them (continues Varrazano) in our armour, which they made no wonder at ; and in beholding them they onely asked the arte of making them; the like they did at our glasses, which, when they beheld, they suddenly laught, and gave them us again." They were very liberal in giving what they had. They and their visiters became great friends. One day the latter entered the haven with their ship, having before rode a league off at sea by reason of contrary wind. Here the na- tives visited them in great numbers, and showed by signs where they might safely ride in the haven. " After we were come to an anker, (Varrazano continues) we bestowed fifteen dayes in providing ourselves many necessary things, whither every day the people repaired to see our ship, bringing their wives with them, whereof they were very jelous; and they themselves entring a board the ship, and staying there a good space, caused their wives to stay in their boats ; and for all the entreatie we could make, offring to give them divers things, we could never obtaine that they would suffer them to come aboarde our ship. Oftentimes one of the two kings (of these people) comming with his queene and many gentlemen for their pleasure to see us, they all stayed on shore two hundred paces from us till they sent a message that they were coming. The queene and her maids staied in a very light boat at an island a quarter of a league off, while the king abode a long space in the ship, uttering divers conceits with gestures, view- ing with great admiration the shippe, demanding the property
141
Varrazano at New-York ?
§ 31.]
of every thing particularly." Sometimes the sailors staid two or three days on a little island near the ship, for necessaries. They were often five or six leagues within the land, which they found pleasant, and adapted for any husbandry of corn, winc, or oil. There were plains twenty-five or thirty leagues in breadth, which were open, and without any impediment. They entered the woods, and found them " so great and thicke that any army, were it never so great, might have hid it selfe- therein, the trees whereof are okes, cipresse trees, and other sortes unknowen in Europe." They found " Pome appel, damson trees and nut trees, and other sorts of fruit," differing from those of their own country. The natives fed upon pulse " that grew in the country with better order of husbandry than in the others. They observed in their sowing the course of the moone, and the rising of certaine starres, and divers other customs spoken of by antiquity. They dwell together in great numbers, some twenty-five or thirty persons in one house. They are very pitifull and charitable towards their neighbours, they make great lamentations in their adversitic, and in their miserie, the kinred reckon up all their felicitie. At their departure out of life, they use mourning mixt with singing, which continueth for a long space."
This harbour, where Varrazano found these kind people, and where he remained more than two weeks, is thus described by him : " This land is situate in the paralele of Rome in 41 degrees and 2 terces, but somewhat more cold by accidentall causes and not of nature. The mouth of the haren lieth open to the south halfe a league broad, and being entred within it betweene the east and the north, it stretcheth twelve leagues, where it wareth broader and broader, and maketh a gulfe, about twenty leagues in compasse, wherein are five small islands, very fruitful and pleasant, full of hie and broad trees, among the which islandes any great navie may ride safe without any feare of tempest or other danger. Afterwards turning towards the south, in the entring into the haven, on both sides there are most pleasant hils, with many rivers of most cleare water fall- ing into the sen. In the middest of this entrance, there is a
142 European Discoveries and Claims to New- York. [PART I.
rocke of free stone, growing by nature, apt to build any castle or fortresse there for the keeping of the haven."
Dr. Belknap says, that the harbour which Varrazano enter- ed, " by his description, must be that of New-York."* Other writers have intimated a similar conclusion, without, however, pretending to examine the subject.f Dr. Miller,Į (in his dis- course designed to commemorate the discovery of New-York by Henry Hudson) observes : " If we suppose Staten Island and Manhattan Island to be included in the number five, of which he (Varrazano) speaks, and also the whole of the wa- ters in which these islands are embosomed, to belong to the 'gulf,' which he represents as ' twenty leagues in compass,' the description will be found a tolerably accurate one, and to apply with more probability to the harbour of New-York than any other."
But surely Staten and Manhattan islands cannot fall within the description of small ones, of which Varrazano speaks. Besides, Manhattan Island is, to all appearance, so much a part of the mainland; that it would hardly have been discov- cred as an island, especially when it was " full of hie and broad trees ;" neither could he have mistaken our cast and north ri- vers, running parallel with that island, for a gulf " twenty leagues in compass," the entrance into which, in the progress of its disembogation, " grew broader and broader." Neither would the topography of the surrounding regions authorise Us to say, that there were at that time " plains, twenty-five or thirty leagues, broad, open, and without any impediment ;" and still more conclusive, there is no triangular island, (as de- scribed by Varrazano) ten or fifteen leagues off the entrance at Sandy Hook, or the Narrows. "The mouth of the haven" here, is more than half a league broad. The distance from Sandy Hook to New-York Bay is not "twelve leagues." It
* Amer. Biog. vol. I. p. 33.
f Professor Ebeling. Dr. Barton.
Discourse, 1809, before Hist. Soc. by Samuel Miller, D. D. Vol. I. N. Y. II. C. p. 24.
1
143
Varrasano.
$ 31.]
does not " wear broader and broader, making a gulf twenty leagues in circumference ;" neither, retrograding south, are " there many rivers falling into the sea."
We believe, that although Varrazano may have touched at Sandy Hook, coasted Long Island, and visited some one of our former islands in its north-eastern vicinity, and in the lati- tade mentioned by him, yet he never entered our bay or river. It appears to us, that his description may apply with tolerable precision to Newport, in Rhode Island. There are the small islands, the gulf, the safe mooring for a navy, the outlets to the sea of many rivers, whether we include those of Taunton, Lees, Coles, Palmer's and Seakonk or Pawtucket, emptying into the gulf or sea, or the east passage, and other outlets to the ocean.
Having left this place in May, Varrazano says, in the con- clusion of his northern voyage, that he visited the land in times past, discovered by the Britains, in the 50th degree. This was Newfoundland .* Having thus coasted 700 leagues of new country, and being refitted with water and wood, he returned to France, and arrived at Dieppe in July, whence he addressed his letter to the king. A short time after his return to France, he fitted out a new armament. All we know of this voyage (says Charlevoix) is, that he never has been heard of. A report has been published, į that Varrazano, having set foot in a strait, where he wanted to erect a fort, the sava- ges fell upon him and his people, massacred and eat them. Ramnsio says this was in sight of the rest of the crew, who had remained on board the ship, and were unable to rescue their companions. §
* The degree is given pursuant to his letter, though it has been else- where stated that he attained the 56th degree, about the coast of Labrador, and gave the country the name of New France. See Dr. Miller's Disc. Vol. I. N.Y. H. Coll. p. 26, and Belk. Am. Biog. Vol. I, p. 159, cited.
t Charlevoix. Ilist. Nouv. Fr.
# In " les Fastes Chronologiques de la Decouverte du Nouvau monde," sous l'annee, 1525. Charlevoix does not credit the report.
$ I.N. Y. Hist. Coll. 27. Forster's North. Voyages, 436 cite !.
144 European Discoveries and Claims to New- York. [PART I.
In the only voyage of his, of which we have an authentic account, we dwell with most pleasure upon the characteristic simplicity, friendship, and humanity of the natives. We have detailed these instances in their favour, because they occurred at a period, when the warm native fountain of good feeling and disinterested charity, had not been frozen by the chilly approach and death-like contact of civilized man. We have dwelt upon these incidents as the most interesting portion of Varrazano's adventures. They present human nature . in an amiable point of view, when unsophisticated by metaphysical subtlety, undisguised by art, or, even when unadorned by the refinements, the pageantry, the pride and circumstance of civilization. They illustrate the posi- tion, which we believe is true, that the natives of this conti- nent, before they had been exasparated by the encroachments and provocations of Europeans, when the former were confi- ding, and unsuspicious, without any foresight of the terrible dis- asters which their interviews with the latter were destined to become the tragical prelude, entertained uniform feelings of kindness, of hospitality, and of benevolence.
When the Scandinavians came to our coasts, they were cor- dially welcomed, until their own aggressions provoked an in- terminable hostility .* When Columbus visited the new world, the natives viewed him as a supernatural being, and treated him with the veneration, inseparable from a delusion, which Colon was willing to countenance. When Vespucius Ameri- cus landed, he also was treated as a superior being. When the Cabots coasted this continent, when Cartier first visited the St. Lawrence, when the French first settled in Florida as friends, when Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and after him the Cap- tain employed by Sir Walter Raleigh, first landed in Virgi- nia, when Hudson discovered and explored our bay and river, when the pilgrims colonized New-England, the generous re- ception which they all met from the natives, should stand a
* Sce ante. p. 117.
§ 31.]
Varrasano. 145
monumental rebuke to the shameful prejudices too prevalent among ourselves, since we supplanted their descendants on the soil which their fathers left them as a patrimony, We will cite proofs of two instances which took place thirty-seven years apart, but which are given as a general illustration of our position. In the first report of Sir Walter Raleigh's cx- pedition, it is said by his captain, and those in the employ, in 1584, that they were entertained with as much bounty as they could possibly devise. They found the people most gentle, loving, and faithful, void of all guile and treason, and such as live after the manner of the golden age .*
The second proof may be found in the prefatory remarks to the first sermon ever preached in New-England. It bears date not long after the landing of the pilgrims, (viz. Dec. . 1621) and was made by one of them .; Speaking of the Indians, he says : " To us they have been like lambs, so kind, so submis- sive and trusty, as a man may truly say many Christians are not so kind and sincere. When we first came into this couri- try, we were few, and many of us were sick, and many died by reason of the cold and wet, it being the depth of winter, and we having no houses nor shelter, yet, when there were not six able persons among us, and that they came daily to us by hundreds with their sachems or kings, and might, in one hour, have made a despatch of us, &c. yet they never offered us the least injury. The greatest commander of the country, called Massasoit, cometh often to visit us, though he lives fif- ty miles from us, often sends us presents," &c.
Similar proofs might be multiplied, and it might also be shown that the cruelty of the natives towards the white visi- tants, when traced, will be discovered, in almost every case, to have been provoked by oppression or aggression. It is true, that Varrazano, in his letter,į speaks of the natives in the
· See Hakluyt.
Printed in England 1622, reprinted in Boston 1815
: Seevol. I N. V. Hiet, Coll. p. 58, 59. Von. I.
19
1.16 European Discourses and Claims to New- York. [PART I.
northern regions, as disinclined to any intercourse, or amica- ble traffic. " "They would come to the sea shore upon certaine craggy rocks, and we, standing in our boats, they let downe with a rope what it pleased them to give us, crying continu- ally that we should not approach to the land, demanding im- mediately the exchange ; and when we had nothing left to exchange with them, when we departed from them, the people shewed all signes of discourtesie and disdaine, as were possible for any creature to invent. We were, in despight of them, two or three leagues within the land, being twenty-five armed men of us : And when we went on shore, they shot at us with their bowes, making great outcries, and afterwards fled into the woods." But the fact is, they had known or heard of the visits of white people before. The Spaniards are said to have early explored the northern regions. "Wherever they moved in anger (says Kotzebue) desolation tracked their progress, --- wherever they paused in amity, affliction mourned their friend- ship."* The French also had early engaged in the cod- fisbery on the grand banks, and, with the people of other na- tions, erected houses at Newfoundland as early, it is said, as 1518.f But carlier still, it will be remembered, that the Ca- bots had been there ; and although they were treated in a ve- ry different manner from Varrazano, yet the two savages whom they took to the court of Henry the VIT. were proba-" bly never returned to their kindred and friends, as they un- questionably had been promised. Forstert ascribes the inve- teracy of the Esquimaux to the previous kidnapping of some of their countrymen. We have seen, even when Varrazano was on the coast of Maryland, how deaf to the agonies of be- reaved parents the whites could be. From causes like these, arose, no doubt, the unsocial hostility of the northern natives, to which may be reasonably attributed the subsequent fate of
· Pizarro, ia Peru.
* Anti-Colonial Hist. Vol. VI. N. Am. Rev. p. 46. (D. s. )
Northern Voyages
3
. 147
Verrazano.
$ 32.]
Varrazano, and perhaps that of Hudson, whose tragical story will be related hereafter. .
In other parts of the continent, when we scrutinize the con- duct of the whites, we shall find they early treated the natives as beings destitute of those feelings, which the God of na- ture has implanted in the breast of man, which revolt at ag- gravated injustice, and which, therefore, could never submit quietly to those systems of fraud, wanton attack, kidnapping, and murder, that disgraced the first visits and conquests up- on this continent, and induced, by degrees, that deep-toned hatred, which subsequently distinguished the natives as barba- rians.
$ 32.
The unhappy fate of Varrazano was the cause, that during many years neither the king or nation thought any more of America. At length, ten years afterwards, Philip Chabot, Admiral of France, by representing the advantages and policy of giving encouragement and protection to their northern fish- ery and fur trade, induced Francis to undertake the establish- ment of a French colony in the New World, whence the Spa- niards derived so great wealth. He introduced James Cartier to the king as worthy of his trust and patronage. Accordingly he was commissioned and set sail from St. Malo with two ves- sels, sixty tons each, on the 20th April, 1531, with one hun- dred and twenty-two men. (99) fle proceeded further than Varrazano. After arriving at Bonavista, he coasted New found- land, entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence by the Strait of Bellisle, found its harbours cold and inhospitable, passed over tothe south - westerly side of the Gulf, and discovered Baye de Chaleur, so. named by him from its contrast with those he had visited. Having thus discovered and named this bay, as well as the Gulf of St. Lawrence, he proceeded northwardly, and discovered the river of that name. (100) When Cartier landed in Canada, the na- tives evinced every expression of joy and friendly welcome. At one time three hundred men, women. and children. " came
-
148 European Discoveries and Claims to New-York. [PARTI.
to us, (says Cartier, *) very friendly, rubbing our arms with' their own hands, then would they lift them up toward heaven, showing many signs of gladness; and in such wise were we assured one of another, that we very familiarly began to traffic, of whatsoever they had, till they had nothing but their naked bodies, for they gave us all whatsoever they had, and that even of but small valuc. We perceived that this people might very casily be converted to our religion."
So confiding were these primitively simple and unsuspecting people, that one of their chiefs suffered Cartier to take two of bis sons to France.f
Next year, (1535) with an equipment of three ships, and accompanied by several young men of distinction, who had entered as volunteers, he returned, discovered the great river of Canada, sailed to the island of Hochelaga, the capital of the whole country, which he named Montreal,# wintered in a little harbour near the west end of the Isle of Orleans, which he called Port de St. Croix, and returned next summer, carry- ing home some of the natives.§
Cartier during this visit, again met people throughout the country equally inchned to friendly intercourse. At St. Croix in the island of Orleans he was received by an Indian King by the name of Donnacana, and his little Ogouhana, with all the pomp of royalty peculiar and suitable to the state of a savage chief.|| At Hochelaga "all the women and the mai-
* See "A shorte and briefe rarration of the two navigations and discoveries to the north-west parts, called New France. First translated out of French into Italian by Ramutius, and Englished by John Florio, 1580-and Remarks on Indians, in a letter to Edinburgh Reviewers, published London, 1822.
f Vel. I. Belknap's American Biography, p. 162-3.
# Bakluyt. See Belknap, Vol. I. p. 170.
1 Hakluyt, Vol. III. Sce Belknap, Vol. I. p. 162, 177, 199, (among the nalives whom he took to France were the two young Indians, who went with Him on his first return, and now Donnacana also. They were never brought back from France.
§ See Sullivan's District of Maine, and authorities cited by him. Wil- liams's History of Vermont, Vol. I. p. 252. Vol. I. Belknap's American Bio- graphy, p. 185-7. 172
$ 32. Cartier-St. Lawrence River -- Iroquois. 149
dens (says Cartier,*) gathered together, part of which had their arms full of young children, and as many as could come to rub our faces, our arms, and what part of the body they could touch, showing us the best countenance that possibly was, desiring us with their signs, that it would please us to touch their children."
In 1540 he made a third voyage, built a fort, and began a settlement the next year four leagues above St. Croix, and the year after broke up and sailed to Newfoundland Roverval met Cartier, proceeded up the St. Lawrence four leagues above the island of Orleans, built, wintered, and also returned the next year with his colony. i
Thus the St. Lawrence was discovered (1535) by the Frenchj: seventy-four years before the discovery of Lake Champlain and Hudson river.§ This river, which receives its chief sup- ply of water from the great lakes, and connected with Ontario, forms the north-western boundary of our State, rises from lake Nipissin, north-east of lake Superior, about 2000 miles from Quebec, is 90 miles broad at its entrance, and navigable 500 miles, and more from the sea. Hochelega, where the city of Montreal (formerly Ville Marie, |) now stands, was owned by our Iroquois Confederacy when the French settled in Canada, at the commencement of the seventeenth century. If these were the people whom Cartier met, how changed their charac- ter and condition. This is not the place to explain the causes of this change. If Hochelega was arrested from these native proprietors, Montreal has suffered a terrible retribution. For it will appear that the Iroquois subsequently made a fero- cious irruption into this island, sacked, ravaged, burned, massacred, and inflicted a shock upon Canada, from which she
" A short aud brief narration," &c. ib. And see Belknap, Vol. I. p. 179, 170 and 182.
f Hakluyt. Sec Belknap, Vol. I. p. 178, &c.
# Sce ante p. 130, as to the Spanish claim to prior discovery.
i See hereafter.
Il Long's Voyages and Travelsp. 2. Spafford's Gazetteer of New - York, rt. St. Lawrence.
-
150 European Discoveries ona Claims to New- York. PART I.
recovered not for a long time. After all, where is the people whose mild and hospitable character would not be irritated into frenzy on beholding the obtrusive settlement and violent dispos- session of their country by foreigners; on beholding the path- way of strangers over the graves of their fathers; the en- croachment of men of different complexion, language, and manners, proudly disdaining to intermix, too scornful to meet on terms of equality, and arrogantly demanding a soil to which they were aliens ! Where is the people who under such cir- cumstances would not meet their invaders and spoilers with the instruments of death in one hand, and a fire-brand in the other; swear, with Warsaw's last champion, by the dread name of their country, "for her to live, and with her to die;" and " if forced to retire before superior discipline, dispute every inch of ground, raze every house, burn every blade of grass, and make the last entrenchment of liberty their grave!" (101)
Almost simultaneous with the discovery of the St. Lawrence. was that of the Mississippi. Four years after the former, viz. 1539, the Spaniards under Ferdinand de Soto sailed from Cuba in quest of gold, landed at Florida with six hundred men and two hundred horses, traversed the country nearly fourteen hundred miles from the sea, discovered the Mississippi twelve hundred miles from the mouth of it, built brigantines, and sail- ed down the river, after spending three years. Soto having died upon the Red river in 1542, the remnant of his broken army escaped the year after from the Mississippi to Cuba. (102)
§ 33.
Gold and the labour of the enslaved natives being the in- centives to Spanish adventure, no attempt was renewed upon North America until the controversy in France, between the Huguenots and Catholics, precipitated a French settlement in Florida (afterwards Virginia,) and roused the Spaniards to new acts of atrocity. Their cruelty to the natives having ope- rated to defeat every attempt to settle among them, their pre- dominant passion for gold had drawn their attention elsewhere.
151
French Policy.
§ 33.]
In France during the succeeding reigns of Henry the second and Francis the second, nothing more appears to have been . done towards North America. The civil wars that with little intermission harassed and divided that kingdom, from Henry the second to Lewis the fourteenth, diverted both prince and people from their commercial interests, to those of parties in religion and government. (103) The politics of the house of Valois, (though France was perhaps never governed by princes of so ingenious and refined a turn,) were wholly of a machia- villian kind. They tended to distract, to unsettle, totry danger- ous schemes, and to raise storms only to display skill in direct- ing them. The parties then in France solely contended what power should be conceded to, or extorted from the king, with- out considering the means by which their country might be made a great kingdom. Therefore, which way soever the ba- lance inclined, whether to the king or to the nobles, to the catholics or to the protestants, it was immaterial to the real happiness of that nation. The parties only gamed out of a common stock, neither could be enriched. But their dissen- tions made all of them poor and weak, nor until the beginning of the seventeenth century, in the time of Cardinal Richlicu, can we designate the true era of French policy. (104)
It was amidst these dissentions, and during the successorship to Francis the second in the reign of Charles the ninth, * that Admiral Coligna, (105) the celebrated leader of the protestants. a great commander, an able statesman, and too comprehen- sive in his views not to see the advantages of a settlement in America, turned to this country as an asylum in case of ne- cessity for a persecuted sect. He procured two vessels to be fitted out for discoveries upon the coast of Florida, which in two months arrived near the river Albemarle. The hatred of the Indians to the Spaniards secured the French a friendly re- ception, and in 1564 the Admiral fitted out five or six ships with as many hundred men to begin a colony. They accord-
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