FROM OUR FRIENDS AT DELANCEY PLACE: DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY
In today's excerpt-the discovery of America. Author Tony Horwitz muses on the discovery of America after hearing from a Plymouth Rock tour guide named Claire that the most common question from tourists was why the date etched on the rock was 1620 instead of 1492:
" 'People think Columbus dropped off the Pilgrims and sailed home.' Claire had to patiently explain that Columbus's landing and the Pilgrims' arrival occurred a thousand miles and 128 years apart. ...
"By the time the first English settled, other Europeans had already reached half of the forty-eight states that today make up the continental United States. One of the earliest arrivals was Giovanni da Verrazzano, who toured the Eastern Seaboard in 1524, almost a full century before the Pilgrims arrived. ... Even less remembered are the Portuguese pilots who steered Spanish ships along both coasts of the continent in the sixteenth century, probing upriver to Bangor, Maine, and all the way to Oregon. ... In 1542, Spanish conquistadors completed a reconnaissance of the continent's interior: scaling the Appalachians, rafting the Mississippi, peering down the Grand Canyon, and galloping as far inland as central Kansas. ...
"The Spanish didn't just explore: they settled, from the Rio Grande to the Atlantic. Upon founding St. Augustine, the first European city on U.S. soil, the Spanish gave thanks and dined with Indians-fifty-six years before the Pilgrim Thanksgiving at Plymouth. ... Plymouth, it turned out, wasn't even the first English colony in New England. That distinction belonged to Fort St. George, in Popham, Maine. Nor were the Pilgrims the first to settle Massachusetts. In 1602, a band of English built a fort on the island of Cuttyhunk. They came, not for religious freedom, but to get rich from digging sassafras, a commodity prized in Europe as a cure for the clap. ...
"The Pilgrims, and later, the Americans who pushed west from the Atlantic, didn't pioneer a virgin wilderness. They occupied a land long since transformed by European contact. ... Samoset, the first Indian the Pilgrims met at Plymouth, greeted the settlers in English. The first thing he asked for was beer.
Tony Horwitz, A Voyage Long and Strange, Henry Holt, Copyright 2008 by Tony Horwitz, pp. 3-6.
posted by UMRBlog @ 05:16
4 comments
4 Comments:
Who is this clown who runs the Rant Blog??
Why would any human being denigrate another person the way he has on his blog. The man is despicable!! Take a look at the latest posting “the real problem” decide for yourself if he deserves to be posted on your blog site.
He has obliviously led a privileged life and never done any medial type work. He has never had to work to support himself. He apparently has no religious background or empathy for his fellow human beings.
Do everyone a favor and dump his link.
Tony, may I refer you to a book titled "The Island at the Center of the World." It's about the Dutch settlement of Manhattan Island, some history the English rewrote after making New Amsterdam into New York; one of those Dutchmen was the Conover ancestor (then spelled van Couwenhoven). It's a good read.
Well!! That explains why so many genteel ladies enjoyed sassafras tea at the turn of the last century!
Bushie,
I'll look but he's never been linked here. I've just been too busy to read anybody else lately.
TYFCB
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