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3. The Coming of the Europeans
- The University Press of Kentucky
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3 The Coming of the Europeans THE FIRST EUROPEANS to come into the Indian-dominated world in NorthAmerica were the Spanish. The initial center ofSpanish concern was the Caribbean, where the island of Santo Domingo fell under Spanish control soon after Columbus' voyages of the 1490s. Spanish interestthen reached to Mexico in the 1520s, where the fabled wealth of the Aztecs was won. Then conquest focused on another rich land full of immediately exploitable wealth-the Inca civilization in Peru conquered by Pizarro in 1536. The Spanish awareness north of Mexico and the Caribbean was focused on what they called, "La Florida." Florida itself was discovered by Ponce de Le6n in 1513. This province was ultimately to grow to include Spanish efforts in most of the southeastern part of the present United States. Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon attempted the first settlement of the area of the Carolinas in 1526. In 1539 and 1540, two Spanishexploration parties were sent into areas of the present United States. One led by Coronado went from Mexico into the high plains as far north as Kansas. The other was from the Tampa Bay area in Florida and went into the southeastern part of the present-day United States under the command of Hernando de Soto. De Soto set out in the late winter of 1539 and made his way through the settlements of the Apalache Indians in northern Florida and southern Georgia. Led by at least seventy conquistadores on horseback, this party of several hundred was principally searching for gold. In March of 1540, the de Soto party left the Indian village calledApalache on the west Florida coastheaded for a kingdom"governed by a woman" who had "many neighboring lords her tributaries ." In May, de Soto found this ruler, the "Cacica," on the upper Savannah River, probably in the neighborhood of modem Hartwell, 26 The Contest for Appalachia Georgia. The Spanish took the Cacica hostage, forcing her to lead them to the"cities" in the mountains. Though rich valleys were encountered , the whole endeavor proved a great disappointment. And to make matters worse, the Cacica slipped away from the Spaniards, and the de Soto party was forced to find its way out of the GeorgiaCarolina mountains unaided. Before the Cacica escaped, the de Soto party may have gone as far northward as Brevard, or possibly to Franklin, North Carolina, then came back to the coastal plain by way of the Etowah and Coosa Rivers. The three Spanish accounts of the expedition agree that none of the societies in the mountains were particularly impressive, certainly not as impressive as other major Temple Mound cities that they contacted later along the Mississippi River. At least two other Spanish parties explored the Appalachian region soon after de Soto's visit. In 1559 and 1560, Tristan de Luna y Arellano, governor of Florida, led a party up the Alabama River to the Coosa River, then westward across northern Alabama. Then in 1566, a military camp under the command of Juan Pardo was established by the Spanish for some months in the Carolina upcountry on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge. The Pardo party may have left some permanent traces of its time in North Carolina, for there are still mysterious ruined mines in the Mount Mitchell area of the state that may date from the sixteenth century. In 1567, this party also ex____ plored the area of East Tennesee. Clearly, Spanish designs were not easily discouraged, but little was found in the eastern part of the present United States that was as attractive to them as Mexico or Peru, aside from a far-flung but temporary mission system anchored at St. Augustine. From the first contacts with Europeans, the Indians, with their already sophisticated trading system, found that some benefits could be gained from trade with the Europeans for furs. Europe's demand for furs was already well established by 1600. Prior to the discovery of the forests of North America, furs had been supplied earliest by western Europe's forests, then during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by the forests of Siberia. In the seventeenth century, American furs and pelts were of a vastly superior quality to even those taken from Siberia, and the new American forests were entered eagerly, especially by the Dutch, English, and French. The French from Quebec, which they founded as a colony in 1608, opened the earliest significant fur trade system in North America. They did this by exploiting the forests drained...