A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz

(He'd been introduced to the beverage by Britishers in Maine.) Shortly after came Squanto, who had learned the settlers' language the hard way: He'd been kidnapped by an earlier English expedition and sold into slavery. The first native to greet the Mayflower was an English-speaking Indian named Samoset, who asked for a beer. Plymouth: where pious Pilgrims, by dint of their faith and labor, made a new nation.Īnd yet it takes only a little effort to see that the Puritans were walking in others' footprints. Once on its feet, the newborn American nation looked back in search of origins, and located its heroes and sacred places on the stony shore of Massachusetts.'Īnd thus a creation myth was born.

As journalist Tony Horwitz writes in his fascinating chronicle, 'A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World,' our nation's founding was 'slow and messy: a primordial slime of false starts and mutations that evolved, over generations, into English colonies and the United States. Of all the American settlements launched by the lethally efficient Spanish in the 16th century, only St. No, it's not pretty, this work of making empires. Among the few spared: those who converted on the spot to Catholicism and a few musicians 'to play for dancing.' The river where French blood ran still bears the name Matanzas, Spanish for 'slaughters.' Spanish fleet commander Pedro Menéndez, after capturing two parties of unarmed French Huguenot settlers on the Florida coast, condemned hundreds of them to immediate death by stabbing. In conquering the settlement of Mavila, De Soto's army succeeded in massacring between 2,500 and 3,000 Indians - a single-day death toll that rivals Antietam. Any natives who tried to escape were attacked by dogs or burned at the stake. He preferred to loot the local maize supply, then impress available natives into service as porters and guides. The Indians, of course, had no idea what was being shouted at them, and for the sake of expediency, Hernando De Soto never bothered with the Requerimiento. I declare that the deaths and injuries that occur as a result of this would be your fault and not His Majesty's, nor ours.' I will do all the harm and damage to you that I can. I will take your wives and children, and I will make them slaves. I will make war against you everywhere and in every way. Before attacking Indian settlements, they were required to read a summons called the Requerimiento, which spelled out the consequences of resistance: 'I assure you that, with the help of God, I will attack you mightily. Just ask the Spanish conquistadors of the 16th century.

A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz