American Origins: A Short History (AD 1000 - 1707)

The following is a high school level summery of the exploration and colonization of the New World written from a Christian perspective. I originally wrote it in 2014, but I thought it might be interesting enough to republish here.  

THE VIKINGS 

The Vikings were the first great ocean navigators and the first to discover the New World. The Christian Norse explorer Leif Ericson made landfall in Canada in AD 1000 almost five hundred years before Christopher Columbus.

The Vikings contributed to the art of navigation and exploration with their innovative hull designs which allowed their ships to sail in the open oceans and withstand violent storms.

The Vikings constructed the first Christian settlement in the New World on present day Newfoundland. This colony was recently discovered by archeologists.

The original Viking settlement did not last long, but the descendants of the Norse Vikings would return to the New World in preceding centuries to establish lasting settlements that would eventually grow to include the entire North American continent north of the Rio Grande River (the modern United States and Canada). 

RENAISSANCE EXPLORERS 

There were three major factors that contributed to Renaissance period exploration: (1) an increased demand for oriental luxury goods and desire to access them easier, (2) the creation of large kingdoms with enough money to finance exploration, and (3) a passionate desire to spread Christianity to other parts of the world.

A population spike and increased prosperity at the end of the Medieval period led to a demand for more luxury goods. This demand caused an increase in trade across Asia from China and India into Europe. However, this trade was extremely risky and expensive.

The trade routes pushed products through numerous territories and states before they were able to finally reach Europe. Because the Muslims had conquered the Anatolian peninsula (modern Turkey), and most trade passed through these Islamic lands, Christians were forced to pay high taxes to transport their new products from the Far East. This added to the already considerable expense.

The Merchants were always looking for ways to acquire goods faster and cheaper. It was eventually speculated that a direct route west across the Atlantic may be faster and more preferable than the expensive path through the heathen Middle Eastern territories. 

Contrary to a popular modern myth, almost nobody believed the world was flat during Columbus’ time. Europeans had known the world was a sphere for almost two thousand years by the time Columbus was born. The Bible itself makes at least two plausible references to the spherical nature of the Earth in Isaiah 40:22 and Job 26:7.

As one expert wrote:

“There never was a period of ‘flat earth darkness’ among scholars (regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the Earth’s roundness as an established fact of cosmology.” [1]

The Renaissance explorers assumed that Europe was the first land mass East of Cathay (the Far East). However, they miscalculated by an entire continent. They were unaware that America stood between them and the East.

The rise of consolidated kingdoms provided more funding for lengthy and risky explorations that wouldn’t have been funded by private citizens with limited capital at their disposal.

The most important example of this situation can be found on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). Over the course of 781 years, the peninsula’s Christian Visigothic northern kingdoms had finally driven the Muslim invaders across the straits of Gibraltar and back into North Africa. This triumphant long march was finished in the year 1492. Not coincidently, that was also the year “Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”

With Christendom rising, and the threat of Islamic aggression waning, monarchs could afford to focus more on exploration than conservative defensive tactics.

On the religious front, the Protestant Reformation had created a sense of urgency in both Catholic and Protestant spiritual thought. Which side would prevail? Who would grow to dominate the Christian world?

These questions loomed large in the minds of devout monarchs, clergy, and advisors, and provided another inspiration to advance exploration. Catholics and Protestants competed to convert the aboriginal heathen across the globe.  

Christopher Columbus discussed the Christian motives for his journey in a letter to the monarchs Ferdinand and Isabelle:

“Your Highness, Catholic Christians and Princes who love the holy Christian faith, and the propagation of it, and who are enemies to the sect of Mahoma [Islam] and to all idolatries and heresies, resolved to send me, Cristóbal Colon, to the said parts of India to see the said princes… with a view that they might be converted to our holy faith… Thus, after having turned out all the Jews from all your kingdoms and lordships… your Highnesses gave orders to me that with a sufficient fleet I should go to the said parts of India… I shall forget sleep, and shall work at the business of navigation, so that the service is performed.” [2]

The Portuguese had been the first to launch large scale exploration around the world, but it would be the Spanish that would discover the ultimate prize.

King and Queen of Spain Ferdinand & Isabella were two devout Christians who laid the groundwork for the unification of the modern Spanish nation state. They finished driving the Muslims out of the Iberian Peninsula and expelled non-Christians. They brought the crime rate to the lowest level in years and paid off enormous national debts. Queen Isabella sponsored Columbus’ exploration that reached the New World. 

SPANISH EXPLORATION 

Christopher Columbus was born in Italy to a middle class wool weaver. He was tall, redheaded, covered in freckles, with pale skin, light colored eyes, and an aquiline nose. There are no contemporary portraits of him, and our knowledge of his physical appearance comes from the descriptions given by his son and peers.

Columbus was also very ambitions, and after securing funds from the Spanish monarchs he set sail for “India” in four vessels the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria (The Girl, The Pint, and Saint Mary).

The subsequent explorations into mainland America revealed multitudes of natives who in Mexico and South America lived within tyrannical states dominated by emperors who were adored like gods.

In Mesoamerica, the natives practiced widespread human sacrifice in which the heart of the victim was torn out of their chest while the victim was still alive, and the rest of the body was cannibalized. These horrors were abominable to the Christian settlers, and they forcibly suppressed them immediately upon their conquests.

The Spanish described the temples of the natives as being caked in blood. The natives, however, were too afraid of their own demonic gods to get rid of them. When told by the Conquistadors to tear their idols down, they begged the Christians to do it out of fear of divine retribution.

The first hand Spanish chronicler Bernal Diaz wrote in his account ‘The Conquest of New Spain’ that each village he traveled through was filled with the skeletons of countless butchered victims. 

Some have speculated that pre-Columbian (before 1492) Mesoamerica was so populated with Amerindians that the locals had to kill each other in droves to avoid destroying their ecosystems.

Whatever the cause of their savage practices, the problems were quickly remedied when the demon worship was immediately ended by the Christian Europeans. Successive smallpox epidemics wiped out more than half of the Amerindian population in the New World.

The Christian conquest of the heathen empires of the New World were astounding feats of military genius. Mere hundreds of European warriors were able to conquer whole empires populated by millions of people.

In the Battle of Otumba, Cortez and his three hundred and forty Conquistadors, and less than a couple hundred Indian allies, defeated an army of forty thousand Aztec warriors after marching for days. Furthermore, they accomplished this with almost no guns, horses, or food. It remains among the greatest military victories in human history. The Spanish Christians were outnumbered 67 to 1.

In an even more astounding victory, Fransico Pizzaro conquered the entire Inca Empire of twenty million people with a force of only one hundred and sixty eight men!

Despite common misconception, Europeans did not rely on guns to conquer the Amerindians. They often didn’t have access to them because they’d run out of gun powder or were of little use in the environment. European success in New World battles was the result of superior military tactics. 

Throughout history, Europeans have almost always been at a numerical disadvantage. This was true when the Greeks were fighting the Persians and the Franks were fighting the Muslims. Europeans had honed their battle tactics better than anyone else in the world, and they used these to incredible effect upon the American Indians who’d never had to compete in the global “varsity league.”

The Christian conquerors also possessed quick wittedness and perception. The Spaniards were severely outnumbered while laying siege to the Aztec capital city. They improvised a naval blockade on the Tenochtitlan lake in which they built ships to blockade the city and prevent resupply. The natives were ill prepared for these improvised tactics and remained unable to compete even on their own native territory.

Many Spanish settlers and adventurers came to the New World looking for farm land and a new life. Many of them had few prospects in Spain, and a shortage of land sent many of the “second sons” (sons who wouldn't inherit enough of their father’s property) to America looking for fresh opportunities.

By the 1600s, the Spanish and Portuguese had explored most of the New World and settled much of it. 

ENGLISH & FRENCH COLONIZATION 

The English and French were slow to enter New World colonization, but they were very successful after starting, and their settlements have survived until the modern era.

French colonization began with an attempt to settle modern day Quebec and discover a northwest passage through the continent on route to China. 

The first colonization was undertaken with four hundred settlers, but the colony failed when disease set in, and Indians attacked the settlers. Subsequent French settlement attempts around North America failed. Quebec City proved to be among the only lasting settlements. The rest of France’s substantial territory was filled with small forts populated by wilderness men who wandered the forests hunting for skins.

The English were more successful, and their model was more sustainable in the long run.

England began late behind the other colonial powers in the New World, but England's fortunes began to change with the rise of Queen Elizabeth Tudor. Many of Elizabeth's favorite courtiers earned charters. The Queen also encouraged her subjects to explore and settle the Western Hemisphere. 

Sir Walter Raleigh tried to settle the area of Roanoke (in modern North Carolina) in 1585, but the English found that it had mysteriously disappeared upon returning. All they found was the word “CROATOAN” written on a tree. To this day, nobody knows what happened to the Roanoke colony.

In 1606, James I granted new colony charters to several companies. 

JAMESTOWN 

The London Company was the first to act on their new charter. In 1607 they sent 144 men to Virginia where they founded Jamestown. Most of the settlers weren’t ready for what awaited them, and many were gentlemen adventurers who wanted some excitement. Few of them really wanted to work. One out of every three men died over the course of the first year. In a state of emergency, Captain John Smith took over the colony. 

Smith stood five foot four inches tall and had reddish blonde hair. He arrived in America at the age of twenty six, but he’d already lived an eventful life. Smith had fought as a mercenary against Spain, braved the seas as a pirate, and battled the Muslims in the Mediterranean. At one point, he was sold into slavery by the Turks where his master’s mistress fell in love with him. He eventually escaped through Russia and returned to England before setting out for the New World.

Smith quickly imposed military discipline on the colony and enforced the well known Biblical edict: “He who will not work will not eat.”

While Smith protected the men from hunger with his rules, he also protected them from an equally menacing enemy beyond the walls of James Forte: the Indians.

There had been conflicts between the Amerindians and English from the beginning. While the Indians didn’t necessarily object to English settlement in the New World (they sometimes encouraged it), the two cultures were so different from each other that conflict was almost inevitable.

For one thing, the European concept of property rights had no parallel in Indian society, and Indians would often incite English anger by hunting their cattle and livestock. This situation was dramatically exasperated over the issue of land ownership.

Indians would sell huge amounts of land to Christians for almost nothing. Both sides would walk away from the deal thinking they’d gotten an amazing deal. The Indians though they were getting wealth for nothing because they’d never believed they owned the land in the first place, and the Europeans couldn’t believe the Indians would give up so much land for so little payment in trade trinkets. 

Ultimately, the Europeans had the last laugh. When brewing misunderstandings finally came to violent blows, Christian settlers proved they were superior in the art of war.

Christian colonization of the New World is often portrayed as a situation in which Europeans stole the Western Hemisphere from the Indians, but this is an incredible over simplification. Generally speaking, the settlers expanded easily across the continent because smallpox and other diseases wiped out huge number of the Indians before Europeans ever showed up. 

John Winthrop wrote that when the Plymouth Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts Bay there was almost no human activity for hundreds of miles:

“But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection.”

Besides this, the Indians committed many atrocities against the settlers including the famous Powhaton Massacre at Jamestown. These attacks were met with counter strikes by the settlers on Indian corn and villages. Eventually, the English tactic of depleting native food supply forced many tribes to move inland.

The Jamestown colony also introduced an important Indian crop that would forever change the fate of the continent: tobacco. The first planter to fully utilize the crop was John Rolfe. Rolfe also married the Indian princess Pocahontas, and her conversion to Christianity was a tremendous encouragement to other Europeans hoping to convert Indians to Christ.

Jamestown was also important because it introduced the legislative assembly into American history. This 1619 precedent set the stage for stronger republican virtues among the Christian settler population.

Complete liberty was common among settlers because, though they were English citizens, England was over a thousand miles across the ocean. The English government basically ignored the colonies’ existence until the rise of British imperial mercantilism in the 1690s.

This freedom from influence brought about the rise of a unique American identity. The younger generations born in North America had never experienced the Old World and had no attachment to it. Increasingly, Americans began to see themselves as a new nation of people independent of England and her Empire. 

NEW ENGLAND 

While the Jamestown colonists primarily came to the New World to extract profit and convert the Indians to Christianity, the puritan pilgrims of New England came to the New World to escape the stifling religious conditions of their homeland.

The Pilgrims first escaped England for Holland but still felt the conditions weren’t suitable. They secured passage across the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. Along the way, they got blown off course and decided to settle in Massachusetts.

Before they left the ship they wrote the Mayflower Compact, which is now regarded as one of America’s founding documents. It reads:

“In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the Faith, etc. Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, 1620.” [3]

The Pilgrims knew that a just state had to be founded upon Biblical faith and values. Without this, there could be no civil society.

The colony went through rough times before John Winthrop reinforced the settlers with fresh help. He moved himself and the Plymouth Company headquarters to Massachusetts. Winthrop was called the “Moses” of the Puritan exodus to the New World. Indeed, he often fit the role. In his most famous sermon, Winthrop warned his fellow settlers they must hold fast to God for protection and success, but if America turned its back on him then God would turn his back on America:

“Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So, shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace? The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, ‘may the Lord make it like that of New England.’ For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God's sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going. And to shut this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deuteronomy 30: ‘Beloved, there is now set before us life and death, good and evil,’ in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it. Therefore, let us choose life, that we and our seed may live, by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him, for He is our life and our prosperity.” [4]

The Plymouth colony's politics were so interwoven with Christian faith that one couldn’t participate unless one was a member of the church. This had the effect of creating a strong faith tradition in the colony which contributed to its eventual success.

The Plymouth colony experienced many of the same problems that the Jamestown settlement did when interacting with the Indians. The Puritans went to war with an Indian tribe during the Pequot War after the murder of an English trader. The Pequot tribe was subsequently defeated and eliminated from the local political scene.

The colonists were part of the local political scene just like the other Indian tribes were, and there was little sense among the Amerindians that whites were a single aggressive group. All of the tribes, including the English, were actively fighting for supremacy. The colonists made alliances, lobbied for rights, and pushed for political advantage over their enemies whenever possible.

The end result was that European Christians proved to be the best at playing the political game. They were shrewder in social dealings and ultimately rose above the rest to total domination. Moderns love to portray the Indians as innocent victims of colonial greed, but this isn’t the case. The Indians were playing the same game as the colonists... they just ended up losing.

The colonists in both Jamestown and Plymouth continued to expand across the American territory as time went on. High settler birth rates ensured the Christian population was doubling and tripling within very small time frames despite persistent disease and Indian attacks. 

COLONIAL DEVELOPMENTS 

Migration to the New World almost halted after 1640, and almost all of the population growth after that period was due to high fertility. The existing American stock in 1640 were a highly homogeneous group of people despite being located across the Eastern Seaboard and having different reasons for arriving.

Almost all of the settlers were of British descent, and most were from the Eastern and Southern portion of England that was inhabited by the Norse invaders of the eleventh century (Normans). The only substantial acceptation to this was the presence of some German blood in Pennsylvania. The Dutch, Swedes, and Huguenot French populations were so small and insignificant that their surnames all but disappeared within a couple generations.

Nearly all of the colonists were Protestants, although there were some English Catholics in Maryland. Before long, however, even the small number of Catholics in Maryland were so outnumbered by Protestants that the Jesuit order was banished and Catholic education was branded illegal.

The stage had been set for the rise of the American nation state. 

 

NOTES 

[1]  Stephen Jay Gould. 'The Late Birth of a Flat Earth.'

[2] E. G. Bourne. 'The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503: The voyages of the Northmen, The voyages of Columbus and of John Cabot.' Page 79

[3] 'Beyond the Pilgrim Story,' Pilgrim Hall Museaum. pilgrimhallmuseum.org

[4] John Winthrop. 'A Model of Christian Charity.' religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu