discovery of America

[Kali]

In today's encore 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."

Author: Tony Horwitz
Title: A Voyage Long and Strange



Happy T-Day, Everybody!

[Kali]

1. kick

did you read that last bit? loved it :rofl: :toast:

[fizzgig]

2. that's the first thing i would ask for

:toast:

[frogmarch]

3. Thanks! I had

heard "rumors" of the Portuguese and the Spanish having arrived here before the English, but that's all. Thanks for posting this, Kali.

[Capn Sunshine]

4. Rumors!!!

Don Juan de Onate became the first Governor-General of New Mexico and established the capital in 1598. Fifteen fucking ninety eight, you east coast eurotrash posers!

[frogmarch]

5. Now wait just a goldurned minute!

I'll have you know I'm a midwestern eurotrash poser, thank you very much! hmpf.

I put "rumors" in quotations to indicate they were so-called rumors, so don't get all het up. Jeez! :)

[Capn Sunshine]

6. I was referring to the whole shipful of Pilgrims

and their Massachusetts " we discovered it because we are all that matters" attitude. Not you amigo. :)

[Wolf Frankula]

7. Four Hundred Ninety Two Years Before Columbus

A fella named Leif Eriksson and a crew full of Scandinavians landed in America.

Fifteen Thousand Eight Hundred Years before them, Oswald White-Bear and Fred Little Mammoth of the Beijing Explorers Club landed in what would become Alaska.

Pilgrims? Hah!

Wolf Frankula