The 16th and 17th centuries were the formative 200 years leading to the creation of the United
States of America.
They started with Spanish conquistadors exploring the southeastern United States and ended with
12 English colonies firmly in place along the Atlantic seaboard, in place with well-established
ideals of self-governance, democracy, and religious tolerance.
It was right here at this point on the U.S. Virgin Islands that Christopher Columbus made
landfall on his second voyage to the New World.
425 years later, these islands would become part of the United States of America, a country
that would spring from the greatest colonization effort the world has ever seen, the colonization
of the North American continent.
A year earlier, Columbus had embarked on his first journey of discovery.
Columbus himself was a man of mystery whose origins are still debated today.
The legend has it that Columbus had to convince King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella of Spain
to outfit three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and his own flagship, the Santa Maria, for
voyage west to find the Far East.
It was a daring plan, since at this time other nations were sailing east around Africa, looking
for a sea route to India and China.
As a result, Columbus blazed the most famous sea route in history, the route to the New
World, and his voyages would lead directly to the colonization of North America.
It started on August 3, 1492, when Columbus sailed from Palos, Spain.
69 days later, he and his crew landed at the present-day island of San Salvador.
Columbus thought he had made it to India and even named the Caribbean islands the Indies.
Now looking for gold, Columbus traveled from San Salvador to present-day Cuba, then Haiti
and the Dominican Republic.
On March 15, 1493, Columbus completed his journey and returned to Spain.
His next voyage took him to the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he interacted with the native
islanders.
On his third voyage, May 1498 to October 1500, Columbus sailed to Trinidad and then to Venezuela.
On his fourth and final trip, May 1502 to November 1504, Columbus sailed to Honduras,
Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama.
Following Columbus's last voyage, Spanish conquistadors spread out through the southern
part of North America, beginning with Ponce de Leon landing in Florida in 1509.
The European nations followed; England, France, the Netherlands and Sweden.
It was an effort that would span more than 200 years, colonize a vast, untamed land and
ultimately lead to the founding of the United States of America.
The beaches of Florida's Atlantic coast are now home to vacationers escaping the harsh
winters of the North.
But the first Europeans to set foot upon these pristine sands were Hispanic explorers
nearly 500 years ago.
Indeed, a map of the southern coastline of the United States reveals a legacy of Hispanic
names.
In Augustine, Punta Gorda, Pensacola, Galveston, Corpus Christi.
These places were named by intrepid Hispanic explorers who sought not only a western sea
passage to China, but land for colonies.
Colonies that would enable Spain to settle the new world Christopher Columbus had discovered.
During the first of these explorers was Juan Ponce de Leon, the first European to set foot
upon the southern coast of what would become United States of America.
Ponce de Leon was born in Santa Fe, Spain, around 1460 and fought in the wars to oust
the Moors from Granada in southern Spain.
In 1493, he joined Columbus's second expedition to the West Indies, staying in the Caribbean
where he joined the ranks of the Hispanic conquistadors who sought their fortunes in
the new world.
conquistadors were military leaders who invaded foreign lands and conquered the inhabitants.
Ponce de Leon was part of a tradition that went back thousands of years to men like Alexander
the Great, Julius Caesar, and William the Conqueror.
When Ponce de Leon heard of gold on the neighboring island of Puerto Rico, he organized an expedition
to the island and conquered it.
Appointed governor in 1509, he established the oldest European settlement on the island.
Four years later Ponce de Leon outfitted another military expedition to find the island of
Bimini in the Bahamas.
Along the way, he landed on the east coast of Florida at what was to become St. Augustine
and claimed the territory for Spain.
He named this land La Florida in honor of the Easter Sunday known as Pasqua de Florida,
Feast of Flowers.
Later he was shortened to Florida when it became the United States' 27th state.
Supposedly Ponce de Leon was searching for the lost fountain of youth.
Perhaps associated with one of Florida's many spectacular springs, the fountain of youth
was said to give everlasting life and health to whomever drank from its miraculous waters.
But such tales are fanciful.
Like the conquistadors, at this time Ponce de Leon was searching for gold.
Though he did not find any, he did find something just as valuable, the Gulf Stream Current.
In the decades that followed, Spanish galleons loaded with treasure from Mexico and Peru
would use the Gulf Stream in their return journeys to Spain.
Ponce de Leon tried twice more to find the island of Bimini, but was unsuccessful.
In his last expedition in 1521, he and a force of 200 men landed on the west coast of Florida.
Native American warriors attacked them, and Ponce de Leon was wounded by an arrow.
He later died from his wounds in Havana, Cuba in July 1521.
He is now buried in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Today, the Southeastern United States is the core of the deep south, and form a stronghold
of the Confederacy.
Now tens of millions of people live and work there.
But 500 years ago, it was home to swamps, marshes, primeval forests and fierce Indian tribes.
It was a mysterious and unknown area no Hispanic conquistador dared to explore.
Yet one man, a man in the tradition of Spain's warrior explorers, would lead an expedition
through this untamed wilderness for three years.
That man was Ernando De Soto.
Perhaps the most famous European explorer since Marco Polo.
In fact, throughout the Southeastern U.S., many towns and counties carry his name.
In an expedition that would not be rivaled until 260 years later by Lewis and Clark's
core of discovery, De Soto led a force of 600 men across 10 southern states and even
as far north as Indiana and Michigan.
But it was here in present-day Florida that he came ashore in 1539 to begin his expedition,
seeking his fortune and glory for Spain.
By 1530, Spain's first generation of conquistadors, led by Hernan Cortez, expanded her western
empire to include all of Mexico and Central America, where they found immense riches
in gold and silver.
Then enticed by rumors of gold and cities, lost empires and immense treasures that lay
in the unexplored regions of North and South America.
The conquistadors sought even greater wealth.
The result was that a second generation of explorer warriors, men like Francisco Pizarro,
Francisco Carranado and Ernando De Soto, were driven to explore these regions and see what
was there.
The greatest of these explorers was De Soto.
The man responsible for claiming the Southeastern United States for Spain.
De Soto was born around 1500 in Spain.
At the age of 14, he traveled to the West Indies, where in 1531 he joined Francisco Pizarro
and his assault on the Incan Empire.
During this expedition, Pizarro made De Soto his second in command.
With his share of the treasure, 18,000 ounces of gold, De Soto returned to Spain in 1535.
He settled down in Seville and became a wealthy gentleman.
But his retirement did not last long.
Spurred by twin dreams of finding gold in Florida and a northwest sea passage to China,
he sold all his property and prepared an expedition to the New World.
In 1537, Spain's King Charles I made De Soto governor of Cuba, granted him the right to
conquer Florida, and gave him the right to choose any land he wished in Florida for
his own plantation.
Two years later, De Soto was ready to fulfill his dream when he arrived on Florida's west
coast, May 30, 1539.
For the next four years, his incredible expedition of discovery covered more than 4,000 miles,
exploring the southeastern part of what would become the United States, including Florida,
Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana.
But he also crossed the Ohio River into Indiana and Michigan.
De Soto maintained meticulous records, providing the only firsthand detailed accounts of the
immense cities of the Malm builders' vast empire and powerful Indian tribes.
De Soto's expedition used the phases of the moon as a means of dating the expedition's
events and findings.
This novel time-dating would make it possible for anyone reading the journals at a later
date to know exactly where and when the expedition made its important discoveries.
De Soto never found gold or a northwest passage to China.
At the same time, the expedition's contacts with the native tribes were disastrous, leading
to continuous warfare with everyone the Spanish met.
Finally, in June 1542, De Soto succumbed to a fever and died on the banks of the Mississippi
River, where he was buried.
Interestingly, two hundred years after De Soto's expedition, these Indian cities and tribes
had vanished when Europeans once more returned to the area.
What De Soto had described, the powerful Mississippian Indian culture, had been replaced with new
cultures such as Choctaw, Cherokee, and Creek.
As a result, De Soto was for a long time denied just credit for the scope of his remarkable
journey of discovery.
Though De Soto's expedition ended disastrously, of the six hundred men who started out, less
than three hundred survived, what did survive were his journals, providing a unique early
account of a region that would become part of the Spanish Empire and eventually the American
South.
In fact, so great an American hero was De Soto to Walter P. Chrysler that in 1928, the U.S.
automaker named one of his premier model lines, De Soto, to honor the famous explorer.
The Great American Desert Southwest called to the last of the conquistadors.
The last of the warrior explorers who made the harrowing journey across the Atlantic
Ocean to find fortune in an untamed new world.
More than two hundred years would pass before French or English adventurers would set foot
again on the lands he discovered for Spain.
Because of his daring, Spain would enlarge its holdings in North America to include Texas,
Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California.
He was Francisco Vasquez de Coronado.
By 1540, Spain had increased its presence in the new world so that it now included all
of Mexico, Central America, and portions of South America.
But Spain's conquistadors were still not through exploring.
Enando De Soto was already trekking through the southeastern half of North America.
At the same time, the Southwest, with its rumors of easy wealth, beckon Francisco Coronado
to his date with destiny.
Coronado was born into a noble family in Salamanca, Spain in 1510.
At the age of 25, he sailed to Mexico as an assistant to its new viceroy, San Antonio
de Mendoza.
He settled in Mexico City, where he married the daughter of the colonial treasurer and
became a governor of the province of Nueva Galicia in 1538.
It was from here that he would begin the expedition that would bring him everlasting
fame as well as disappointment.
Rumors of the Golden Cities of Cibola in Quibera had circulated through Mexico's center non-Cortez
conquered the Aztecs in 1521.
Then in 1539, new accounts of these mysterious cities of gold came from Frei Marcos de Niza,
a priest who with an African slave known as Esteban, had trekked through the Southwest
and told of rich kingdoms with elephants, camels, and incredible riches.
In 1540, Coronado was determined to make one last grand discovery for Spain, seeking
the fabled Golden Cities of Cibola.
So he led an expedition of 300 Spanish adventurers, 1,000 Indian allies, and 1,500 pack animals
into the southwestern desert and southern plains of North America.
For the next two years, he traveled through New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and into eastern
Kansas.
At one point, he and his men were within a couple hundred miles of Fernando de Soto's
expedition.
Had the two explorers met up, the history of North America might have been very different.
At the same time, Melquior Diaz, one of Coronado's captains, journeyed up the Colorado River
from the Gulf of California, and sent expeditions as far west as the Imperial Valley region of
presente California.
However, Coronado's expedition, like De Soto's, would not discover any Golden Cities or mineral
wealth.
But the Chronicle of Coronado's adventure, published after his death, provided information
about an area of the New World not traversed again until the 18th century, when the French
Mallet brothers entered the Rocky Mountains in 1741.
By this time, Coronado's exploits had led Spain to colonize the land north of the Rio
Grande River from Texas west to California.
Finally, in 1848, Coronado's land of discovery would become part of the United States of
America.
Though Coronado returned to Mexico empty-handed, he continued to be a man of influence in Mexico's
city until his death in 1554, from injury sustained during his 1540 expedition.
This massive Spanish fort Castillo de San Marcos was built from 1672 to 1695 in order
to protect the oldest permanent European settlement in the United States.
Indeed, 55 years before the pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving and 211 years before
the creation of the United States, an energetic and far-seeing Hispanic naval officer, Don
Pedro Menendez de Aveles, along with 800 soldiers and settlers, landed on the east coast of
Florida at this spot.
That year, 1565, they found at St. Augustine and established the first colony in what would
later become the United States of America.
In spite of 70 years of Caribbean colonization, the North American continent still remained
unsettled, that would change through the unsurpassed efforts of one man, Don Pedro Menendez de
Aveles.
Don Pedro was a naval officer who did not see Spain's invasion of North America the way
the conquistadors did.
He saw it as a place of permanent settlement.
Interestingly, though Florida had been claimed by Spain in 1513 by Ponce de Leon, and again
in 1539 by Ernando De Soto, she still had not established any colonies on this part
of the North American mainland.
However, that changed when France founded the St. Caroline colony on Florida St. John's
River in 1564.
The colonies fought threatened Spain's treasure ships, which sailed along Florida's shoreline
returning to Spain.
Spain's king Philip II sent his highest admiral Menendez and 2,000 sailors, soldiers, and
their families to Florida with orders to colonize the land and drive out pirates and settlers
of other nations.
The plan was for the Spanish Armada to sail up Florida St. John's River and attack the
French colony directly.
However, the French had blockaded the river.
Menendez and his troops were forced to land at a smaller harbor south of St. Caroline.
Menendez called this new landing St. Augustine.
But Menendez's troubles with the French were not over.
The French explorer Jean-Ribault gathered his ships to attack the Spanish colony.
But a storm wrecked his ships at present-day Daytona Beach.
During advantage of this situation, Menendez and 500 men attacked the French fort at St.
Caroline and killed all the soldiers, letting only the women and children go free.
Now Menendez began to settle the land in earnest.
He explored the area and set up a string of forts along Florida's coastline.
He made diplomatic treaties with more of the Indian tribes, trading for much needed supplies.
At the same time, Menendez invited missionaries to establish missions throughout Florida to
convert the Native Americans to the Catholic faith.
He also built outposts on St. Helena Island in South Carolina and on Chesapeake Bay.
Menendez left Florida in 1567 and returned once more in 1571.
He died in Spain on September 17th, 1574.
But his vision left a unique Spanish legacy in Florida that can still be experienced in
the city he founded.
St. Augustine, a city that along with its fort, protected Spain's colonies in the Caribbean
from English invaders well into the 17th century.
Roanoke Colony is the greatest of the sixteenth century's mysteries.
An entire colony of 117 English settlers vanished without a trace.
But its true importance transcends the mystery.
Roanoke was the brainchild of one of England's most leading visionaries, Sir Walter Raleigh.
Indeed without Raleigh's drive to colonize, England might never have settled the Atlantic
Seaboard and gone on to dominate North America.
Ever since Spain had sent back news of fabulous riches in the New World, all Europe had been
ablaze with thoughts of the wealth that must lie there right for the plucking.
A few bold mariners such as England Sir Francis Drake were plundering the Spanish treasure
fleets crossing the Atlantic from the Caribbean.
But the drive to settle North America would fall to Sir Walter Raleigh.
Raleigh was one of the sixteenth century's swashbuckling heroes.
And in 1552, he became an explorer, soldier, and writer.
At the age of 28, he gained the favor of England's most far-seeing monarch, Queen Elizabeth I.
He soon convinced the Queen that England needed a permanent North American settlement, funneling
riches back to the mother country.
In 1584, Elizabeth granted Raleigh a charter to colonize North America, and established
a base from which to raid Spanish treasure fleets.
Raleigh's first expedition left England in April 1585.
It established a colony on Roanoke Island and Pamlico Sound in present-day North Carolina.
They called the region Virginia in honor of Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen.
But struck with sickness and fear, the survivors returned to England in 1586 with Sir Francis
Drake, who had been marauding Spanish ports in the Caribbean.
Undaunted, Raleigh sent a second expedition a year later.
A group of 117 colonists included 17 women and landed at the same place on Roanoke Island.
At first, it did better than the original colony.
But the invasion of England by the great Spanish Armada in 1588 delayed much needed supplies.
When a supply ship returned in 1590, all the settlers had vanished, and the only clue
to their whereabouts was a post with a single word, Croatton, carved into the wood.
As a result, the 16th century would close with no English colony in North America.
But thanks to Raleigh's vision, that would soon change with the founding of Jamestown
in 1607.
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