A Teacher's Guide to Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story (Young Reader's Edition, Volume 1)

By Rod Bolitho and John D. McBride

A wonderfully written, sweeping narrative history of the United States that will help Americans discover the land they call home.

Guide for Teachers using Land of Hope: Young Readers Edition. Middle School grades 6-8

The FIRST Teachers Guide to accompany the two-volume narrative Land of Hope: Young Readers Edition

This Teacher's Guide to the Young Reader's Edition of Wilfred McClay's Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story is an invaluable supplemental resource for teachers who use the Young Reader's Edition as a textbook for middle-grade courses in US history. Prepared by McClay in collaboration with John McBride, a master teacher with more than thirty years of secondary and collegiate teaching experience, it is an exceptionally rich and useful tool for classroom instructors.

Each chapter of this Teacher's Guide receives a five-part treatment: a short summation of the chapter's contents questions and answers about the chapter, a list of key names and terms appearing within each one, a crossword puzzle based on those names and terms, and one or more primary source documents for class analysis with accompanying questions and answers. Longer documents are broken into shorter passages with questions interspersed to help younger readers. 

This Teacher's Guide also features a collection of map exercises as well as special units to assist instructors in teaching students about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the two-party system.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Release date: Sep 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9781641773102

Rod Bolitho

Rod Bolitho is a freelance consultant in English Language Teaching and Education. His most recent book is Continuing Professional Development  (with Amol Padwad, 2018: Cambridge University Press India).

Book preview

PREFACE · A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO THE TEACHER’S GUIDE

WELCOME TO THIS Teacher’s Guide, a resource for teachers who are using Wilfred McClay’s Young Reader’s Edition of Land of Hope.

You, as the teacher on the spot, will of course use these materials as you think best, taking account of the specifics of your particular courses and the school in which you teach. What follows are some general suggestions as to what may work in various situations. But you are always the best judge of that.

1. The first question is, how much time is available? US history survey courses have typically been a full year in length, and this will presumably be the case for most teachers using this Young Reader’s Edition of Land of Hope. But single-semester courses are, sadly, increasingly common. Even in the longer courses, the question has always been what to leave out, and if you have only a single term, you must omit quite a lot. The good news is that while Land of Hope is a relatively compressed book that has already cut many details, what remains is (we hope!) a well-written and coherent narrative, and the larger themes and trends, the changing shapes of the forest, are more visible without a thicket of trees, without an inundation of names and dates that can impede students’ understanding. The difficult choice made in writing Land of Hope is that coherence and clarity are preferred over comprehensiveness, acknowledging it is impossible to include every important detail or every subtlety of historical interpretation. Land of Hope is called an invitation for a reason – it’s meant to be inviting. This edition is especially meant to appeal to younger readers, though without pandering to them.

2. The Teacher’s Guide includes several different kinds of resources for each chapter. First, it provides a short summary, followed by questions and answers for each chapter; it then provides a list of terms and names for identification and a crossword puzzle based on them, and finally one or more primary source documents that relate to the chapter’s themes and time period, with questions with answers for each document.

The summaries are useful both as introductions to the main ideas or themes of a chapter, and also as review materials at the end of a semester. The identifications and puzzles are partly for fun, but also provide a good check on whether a student is reading carefully enough.

The questions and answers for the Land of Hope chapter itself most commonly follow the contents of the book fairly closely, with both questions and answers often taken directly from the text. In some cases, they may draw on additional insights or information not taken from the book. Such added material will be in parentheses and will generally begin with a phrase like Teachers may… Students will not have these in the Student Workbook so teachers can choose whether to include them or not. (It is often satisfying as a teacher if one can add an insight, or more detail, beyond what the text provides.)

The Student Workbook includes the same questions, but no answers – the students have to supply them – and the bolding is removed. We have found that when students are given material with some parts already emphasized, they tend to skim those parts and ignore everything else. The bolding is there to help the teacher. Having students use highlighters to mark key names and ideas is a good practice, in which case our bolding may serve as a rubric.

Teachers should note that the primary documents at the end of each chapter vary quite a bit in length and difficulty. Some, including poems and song lyrics, are short and easy to understand on a literal level, though not necessarily to appreciate in their implications. Other documents are quite long, and will require more time and effort from the students to read and understand. We have added material in red text to help teachers and students. Sometimes it is just basic information – this song was written at this time by this person – or explanations of words and context students need to know to comprehend (e.g. in a song about railroading a jungle is a hobo camp).

For long and demanding documents, however, our intent is to lead students through them to understanding. Many students (and teachers!) find large blocks of text intimidating. And so, we have broken them into smaller chunks, paragraphs mostly, with a reading question in red text. In the Teacher’s Guide the bolding should suggest the answer. There is no bolding in the Student Workbook and students can learn to find and highlight as they read, with the question as a guide.

The reading questions are repeated at the end of the document. Some students will benefit from copying the answers they have highlighted into the space provided. (Others will regard it as busywork.) There are also often document questions after the reading questions. These require students to use the entire document to answer, and sometimes are the basis for a class discussion or an essay.

We’ve also included supplemental materials in the Student Workbook, such as a table of presidencies and the full texts of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the like that students will find useful as a reference.

3. The Teacher’s Guide also includes four Special Units, for teaching the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the two-party system. These materials can be integrated with or incorporated into the regular chapter units, or taught independently of them, providing instructors with the flexibility to do a more in-depth study of the particular documents or institutions. Land of Hope is not a civics textbook, but these four units do go a long way towards students’ understanding of the basic structure and philosophy of the American constitutional system.

4. Finally, and in the spirit of improvement, we have one request to make of you, the readers and users of this Teacher’s Guide and Student Workbook. Because we want the Teacher’s Guide to be as useful as possible, we ask that you please feel free to be in touch with us regarding any and all manner of suggestions, including errors or misleading or otherwise unhelpful entries. No observation is too trivial or too sweeping. We want (and need) to hear from you. We want to do steadily better and better, and the principal way of doing that will be through the feedback that we get from you, the teachers on the front lines.

Moreover, please be aware that this print edition of the Teacher’s Guide is just a first installment of a more extensive digital resource that we will be creating, and any advice, requests, criticisms, suggestions, and the like that you may have will help us better shape that resource. In any event, whatever you have to say will be attended to by all of us. Please feel free to write us at this address,

Wilfred McClay

Professor of History, and Victor Davis Hanson Chair

of Classical History and Western Civilization

Hillsdale College

33 East College Street

Hillsdale, MI 49242

EPIGRAPH AND INTRODUCTION

THE EPIGRAPH AND INTRODUCTION to this book are reflections on the meaning and value of history, including some initial thoughts about what it means to be a land of hope. We urge teachers to devote some time to considering these matters in their classrooms. Land of Hope is built around the idea that history is not just a record of facts; instead, it is a reflection on the human past, whose meaning goes to the depths of our humanity. We should try to model that fact in the way we teach.

For that reason, we encourage you to give particular attention to the epigraph, a quotation from the novelist John Dos Passos. Such quotations are often seen as merely decorative in character; but in this particular book the Epigraph is a key to the meaning of all that follows. It appears in the book immediately after the dedication page and before the Table of Contents, but here it is in its entirety, for your convenience:

Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today. We need to know what kind of firm ground other men, belonging to generations before us, have found to stand on. In spite of changing conditions of life they were not very different from ourselves, their thoughts were the grandfathers of our thoughts, they managed to meet situations as difficult as those we have to face, to meet them sometimes lightheartedly, and in some measure to make their hopes prevail. We need to know how they did it.

In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking. That is why, in times like ours, when old institutions are caving in and being replaced by new institutions not necessarily in accord with most men’s preconceived hopes, political thought has to look backwards as well as forwards.

JOHN DOS PASSOS, THE USE OF THE PAST,

FROM THE GROUND WE STAND ON:

SOME EXAMPLES FROM THE HISTORY

OF A POLITICAL CREED (1941)

EPIGRAPH QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

1. When do we need history? Why?

We need history in times of danger, to discover what kind of firm ground other generations have found.

2. What do you think Dos Passos means by the idiot delusion of the exceptional Now?

With that pungent phrase, Dos Passos is pushing back against the wrong-headed idea that the present age is so unique, so unprecedented, so radical a break with all previous human experience that the past has nothing to teach us.

3. Do the conditions that Dos Passos describes apply today? That is, are old institutions caving in and being replaced by new institutions? Give some examples.

Some examples are the changes and disruptions caused by the internet, porous national borders, global labor markets, and the free movement of capital across the globe. Ask students to provide other examples.

4. Dos Passos wrote this in 1941. Are our problems today greater or more frightening than then? Do we suffer from the same idiot delusion as did previous times and peoples?

The times are perhaps as frightening, but not more so. Anyway, without a knowledge of history, we would have no basis for a comparison. Hence the necessity of this course of study!

INTRODUCTION QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

1. According to Cicero, why study history? (p. xiii)

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child."

2. Does your story begin with you? Or did you arrive in the middle of things? (p. xiii)

Every one of us, without exception, was born into a world that we didn’t make, under conditions we didn’t create. We became what we are, in part, because of those things that came before us and helped to shape us. Shouldn’t we want to know about them?

3. What is history NOT? What is a proper history? (p. xiv)

History is not the whole past in every little detail. It doesn’t include everything, and it cannot. That would be overwhelming. Proper history is a careful selection out of the past. It is organized wisely and truthfully, in a way that allows us to see the larger pattern of the past and to focus on the details of a particular story.

4. What is the purpose of this book? What is it designed to do? (p. xv)

The purpose is to tell our American story. The book is designed to help us learn the things we must know to become informed, self-aware, and dedicated citizens of the United States of America. Becoming a good citizen is about more than just knowing the laws. It means acquiring a sense of membership, of belonging – of claiming the nation’s past as your own. We hope it helps you to understand and appreciate the country in whose midst you find yourself and makes you more capable of carrying out the duties of citizens, including the preservation of what is best in our nation’s institutions and ideals.

1 · BEGINNINGS

SUMMARY

The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. – Lewis Mumford (p. 4)

FROM THE TIME of the ancient Greeks, there has been a widespread belief that the West was a place of renewal. This belief helped to fuel the European fascination with America. In fact, it is impossible to understand the history of America apart from the history of Europe; America was an offshoot of Europe that grew up during a time when Europe was undergoing large economic, social, religious, technological, and cultural changes. America would prove to be a new land where laws and customs and ideas from Europe would have freedom to develop and flourish.

Initially, though, the European discovery of America was the result of Europe’s growing interest in trade with the East. By the Late Middle Ages (1300–1500), Europe was entering into a new age of innovation, exploration, trade, and expansion. By the late 1400s, France, England, Spain, and Portugal emerged as wealthy nations wanting to explore water routes to the Far East (the Indies) to expand commerce.

The Italian explorer Christopher Columbus became convinced that sailing west would be a faster and more direct way to reach the East, and he persuaded the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella to support him in that attempt. Columbus began his exploratory voyage westward on August 3, 1492, and on October 12, his party spotted one of the islands of the Bahamas which Columbus named San Salvador, meaning Holy Savior. He would go on to command four round-trip voyages between Spain and the Americas between 1492 and 1503, establishing contact between the Old World and the New World, which would eventually give rise to the establishment and settlement of America. But he never fully grasped what it was that he had found.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

1. Should we begin with the earliest settlers who crossed from Asia 20,000–30,000 years ago? Or with the Vikings under Leif Eriksson who reached North America about 1,000 years ago? (pp. 1–2)

No, because they had no direct or significant role in the establishment of the settlements and institutions that would eventually make up the country we know as the United States.

2. Yet the lost civilizations of ancient America and the voyages of Leif Eriksson do remind us of what major theme? (p. 2)

They point to the presence of America in the world’s imagination as an idea, as a land of hope, of refuge and opportunity, of a second chance at life for those willing to take it. Ideas are as much a part of history as battles, elections, and other deeds. And that idea, and the persistence of that idea, is one of the themes of this book. It is in the book’s title itself.

(Teachers may point out that if you are doing okay where you are, you tend to stay there. The people who travel to a new world are NOT necessarily doing well where they are; they want something they do not have. And many did not come voluntarily, having being brought as captives or driven by hunger or oppression.)

3. What is the idea of the West? Why has it fascinated people since ancient times? (p.3)

The West had, since the days of Homer, been thought of, in Europe, as a symbol for renewal and discovery, a place of wealth and plenty, a land of hope – an anticipation of what a New World could be like.

4. America is best understood as an offshoot of Europe. Why is America named so? (pp. 3–4)

Even the name America comes from the first name of the Italian-born navigator and explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who was among the first to speculate that the lands Columbus discovered were not part of Asia but part of an entirely new landmass. (A German mapmaker put Amerigo’s name on the new world. We must be thankful he did not use the last name, Vespucci; then we would be Vespuccians living in the USV.)

5. What sort of offshoot of Europe was America? (p. 4) (Answer is three words, each beginning with un.)

So much of it was unpredictable, unplanned, unanticipated.

6. The writer Lewis Mumford expressed this surprising process in a sentence: The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. What did Mumford mean? (pp. 4–5)

Europe was becoming a dramatically different place from what it had been for the three preceding centuries, during the relatively stable and orderly years we now call the High Middle Ages (1000–1300). But by the Late Middle Ages (1300–1500), Europe was entering the modern age. It was no longer stable. Instead, it was becoming a place of widespread change, innovation, and disruption – in technology, in political and social practices, in economics, in religion.

7. Why was it important that everything was changing at once? (pp. 4–5)

If any one of these innovations or disruptions had come along just by itself, without the company of others – say, if the desire for an expansion of global commerce had not been accompanied by powerful new navigational instruments that made such commerce possible – its effects would have been far less pronounced. But by coming all together at once, these changes gathered strength from one another, so that they contributed to a more general transformative fire, as when many small blazes combine to fuel a large blaze. In history, as in our individual lives, it is seldom about just one thing.

8. The movement toward the West actually began with a movement toward the East. Explain. (pp. 5–6)

The Crusades were motivated by religion but also by the fact that the Muslim conquests had closed the Silk Road and Europe’s trade with China and the Far East. Marco Polo’s accounts heightened interest in reaching China, a source of great wealth. The goal was to get around the Islamic territories and to reach the Indies, China, and India, where the spices and money were.

9. How did oceanic seafaring develop? (p. 6)

The search to discover an all-water route to the East boosted attention to oceangoing exploration and stimulated a passion for extending and mapping the boundaries of the known world. Fortunately, vital technological inventions and improvements in navigation and ship design were becoming available, and these made such expansive voyages possible. Advances in mapmaking and astronomical navigation; the invention of the dry magnetic compass, the astrolabe, the quadrant, the cross-staff, and other such instruments; and the development of new ships, such as the oceangoing Genoese carrack and the fast and maneuverable Portuguese caravel – all of these changed the game entirely when it came to seaboard exploration.

(Remind students that the Mediterranean Sea is, literally, the sea in the middle of the land. Europeans reasonably imagined that the world was mostly land, instead of being, in fact, mostly water. When you are traveling out of sight of land for weeks or months at a time, a lot of new technology is necessary, as well as a new way of thinking.)

10. Why did feudalism break down? What replaced it? (pp. 6–8)

Feudalism was basically a system whereby an upper class protected and ruled a lower class. There was not much room for a middle class, but as commerce, banking and cities developed, a merchant class grew impatient with feudal restrictions and robber barons. They preferred a strong monarchy whose uniform laws would extend over a wide area. Nations ruled by powerful kings came to dominate the barons. Cannons helped.

11. Which four modern nation-states developed first? (p. 8)

By 1492, four such national states were evolving in Europe: France, England, Spain, and Portugal. All four had both the wealth and the motivation to support the further exploration that would be needed to find a water route to the East and to expand the reach of their commerce and growing power.

(Spain and Portugal together make the Iberian peninsula. The Iberian nations were closest to Africa and would lead the way.)

12. Who turned Portugal into an exploring powerhouse? (p. 8)

Prince Henry the Navigator sent annual expeditions to explore the coast of Africa, and these returned with accurate (and top secret!) maps. Under Henry’s leadership, skilled Portuguese crews combed the entire west coast of Africa, opening it up to commerce. Eventually (after Henry’s death), explorers like Bartholomew Dias and Vasco da Gama would round the southern end of the African continent and, by 1498, establish the long-sought waterborne path to India.

13. Many of the best captains and navigators were Italians. Why was Italy not involved in these explorations? (p. 8)

Because Italy was divided into dozens of small city-states, none of which had the resources available to a national monarchy.

14. Who was Christopher Columbus? (pp. 8–9)

The example of such Portuguese exploits drew Christopher Columbus away from his native Italian city-state of Genoa to settle in Lisbon at the age of twenty-six. Though still relatively young, Columbus was already a highly experienced and capable sailor who had been to ports in the Mediterranean and northern Europe. In partnership with his brother, he made voyages under the Portuguese flag as far north as the Arctic Ocean, south along the coasts of West Africa, and west to the Azores Islands. He was very ambitious, and thought he knew how to get to India by sailing west instead of east.

15. Who knew the world was round before 1492? (p. 9)

Pretty much everybody. Around 200 bc the Greek Eratosthenes used shadows, angles, and geometry to estimate its circumference with surprising accuracy.

16. What was Columbus’s theory about the earth? Who was right? (p. 9)

Columbus believed the earth was smaller than most others thought, so that the western ocean between Europe and Asia could be sailed across easily. He was quite wrong, and his ships would have perished in a vast ocean if they had not run into a new continent.

17. Why were the Spanish willing to take a chance on Columbus’s wild plan, while the Portuguese were not interested? (p. 9)

Because Bartholomew Dias rounded Africa in 1488, so the Portuguese were ahead of the game (and had a monopoly on the route, since only they had the maps). The Spanish were playing catch-up.

18. Where did Columbus think he was when he landed? (p. 10)

On October 12, 1492, his party spotted land, one of the islands of the Bahamas. Columbus named the island San Salvador, meaning Holy Savior. What they had found was in fact an outpost of a new and unexplored landmass. But Columbus refused to believe that these lands could be anything other than the Indies he had counted upon finding, and he accordingly called the gentle Arawak natives who greeted them by the name Indians.

19. How many voyages did Columbus make? With what results? (pp. 10–11)

He made three more voyages, four in all. Columbus insisted, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that the lands he visited during those voyages were part of Asia. He was possessed by an iron determination that his initial theory had to be true. By his third voyage, which took him to present-day Venezuela, he came to believe that, while that land was not the Indies proper, it was merely a barrier between him and them, and all that remained was to find a strait or other passage through.

(It was Balboa, exploring across the Isthmus of Panama, who discovered that there was another great ocean to the west of the new-found lands. That was the point at which the Spanish knew what most suspected by then, that what Columbus had discovered was a new continent and not Asia.)

20. So what is the great irony of Columbus? (p. 11)

He had made one of the most important discoveries in human history, and yet he didn’t quite realize it. He was never able to understand what he had discovered. He was obsessed with finding a new way to reach the riches of the East. But that obsession was the force that had propelled him into a far more momentous discovery in the West, that mysterious land of mythic renewal. And yet he could not see what was before him with fresh and open eyes. America is hard to see.

IDENTIFICATIONS

Cicero

Amerigo Vespucci

Crusades

astrolabe

carrack

Marco Polo

Silk Road

feudalism

Prince Henry the Navigator

Vasco da Gama

Christopher Columbus

Bartholomew Dias

San Salvador

Balboa

Map Exercise 1 · PORTUGAL AND SPAIN EXPLORE AND DIVIDE THE WORLD

(Students should use two colors of markers to distinguish between Spanish and Portuguese activities.)

Portugal and Spain are in a race to get to Asia, to India and China, where the spices and other wealth are known to be. Portugal has a head start and is methodically exploring to find a way around Africa. The Spanish have only recently united under Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, driving out the Moors in southern Spain in 1492. They are playing catch-up and so are willing to gamble on Columbus’s crazy scheme. Write the number of the voyage below on the route shown on the map. Write the names of the oceans and continents on the lines provided. Write the number of each expedition below on the matching dotted line representing that expedition on the map.

Under Prince Henry the Navigator and his successors, Portugal explores down the west coast of Africa, until in 1488 Bartolomeu Dias reaches the Cape of Good Hope (note the name!). They now know that Africa had a southern end.

Vasco Da Gama then (1497–99) rounds the Cape and reached India, creating a direct connection between Portugal and Asia and establishing a Portuguese empire of trade.

Meanwhile (1492) Columbus, believing the world to be much smaller in circumference than it actually is, accidentally bumps into a continent he didn’t know (and refused to believe) was there. Columbus makes three additional voyages (last one in 1502–1504), exploring the Caribbean which he believes to be outer islands of Asia, which is where he is determined to get.

Spain and Portugal, both faithful Catholic countries, ask the Pope to divide the world between them, which was done in 1494 in the Treaty of Tordesillas. At the time it looked like Portugal got the better deal. This treaty largely avoided war between these two countries over the new discoveries, although other nations did not sign it nor recognize its limits.

Another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, makes two voyages, first for Spain (1499– 1500) and then for Portugal (1501–1502). The second one is shown. Vespucci then (maybe) wrote two widely-read pamphlets recounting his real and other imagined voyages; based on these, the German Martin Waldseemuller put Vespucci’s name (Latinized to America) on the first printed map showing the New World.

By 1513 it is clear to everyone that what Columbus had actually discovered was a new world. But that Columbus’s theory of the world’s smaller size was wrong was finally confirmed in that year when the Spaniard Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and found the Sea of the South (the Pacific). This meant that the world was not Asia/Atlantic Ocean/Europe but instead was Asia/Pacific Ocean/New World/Atlantic Ocean/Europe. What Columbus believed was a single Atlantic Ocean was two oceans and two continents!

Mark the following places on the map.

A. San Salvador Island

B. Panama

C. Brazil

D. Mexico

E. Florida

F. Great Lakes

G. Portugal

H. Spain

I. France

J. England

K. Mediterranean Sea

L. Jerusalem

M. Cape Horn

N. Cape of Good Hope

O. Arabia

P. India (western edge)

Map Exercise 2 · SPAIN EXPLORES THE DISCOVERED WORLD

Europe had known for many centuries that China and India were there: the Silk Road had been in operation since 130 bc, when China began trading silk with the Parthian Empire (Iran) in exchange for horses, and the Parthians then trading the silk with Rome in exchange for wine. Things carried by camels and other animals had to be light as well as valuable, and spices (especially pepper) became the favored commodity. The Muslim conquest of Constantinople (aka Byzantium or Istanbul) in 1453 closed the Silk Road for Christian Europe.

Why didn’t the Arabs (whose ship designs Portugal copied) or the Chinese (whose sea-going junks made it to Africa) become the world discoverers? Because they were already THERE. Indeed, Portugal’s explorations tapered off once they reached India; they had found what they were seeking. It was Spain that still wanted a route to the Far East.

So it was Ferdinand Magellan (a Portuguese in Spanish service) who in 1519 sailed from Spain (with 270 men in five ships) across the Atlantic to begin the first circumnavigation of the globe. He discovered the Strait of Magellan, a less difficult passage around South America which avoided the treacherous Cape Horn (note the name and compare with the other Cape, of Good Hope). The distance far exceeded what the expedition had prepared for, and it suffered heavily. Magellan was killed in the Philippines, and finally in 1522, one ship and nineteen men returned safely to Spain. Nevertheless, the ship was full of spices.

Meanwhile (1521) Cortez conquered the Aztecs in Mexico, followed in 1532 by Pizarro’s conquest of the Incas in Peru. Both resulted in gold by the ton, making Spain the wealthiest nation in Europe.

This set the stage for two simultaneous expeditions into North America, where the Spanish were confident that there must be even more gold. Hernando de Soto (1539–42) explored the eastern, and Francisco de Coronado (1540–1542) the western parts of what became the United States. No gold was found.

Mark the following places on the map.

Europe

Egypt

Somalia

Arabia

Persia

India

China

Java

Cape of Good Hope

Cape Horn

Philippines

Constantinople/Byzantium/Istanbul

Rio Grande

Red River (northern boundary of TX)

Mediterranean Sea

Indian Ocean

North Atlantic Ocean

South Atlantic Ocean

North Pacific Ocean

South Pacific Ocean

Mississippi River

DOCUMENT

COLUMBUS’S LOG OF HIS FIRST VOYAGE, 1492

Columbus was interested in everything. For brevity, what follows has been edited to remove most of the geographic and botanical information. The entire log is much longer.

Thursday, 11 October.

At two o’clock in the morning the land was discovered, at two leagues’ distance; they took in sail and remained under the square-sail lying to till day, which was Friday, when they found themselves near a small island, called in the Indian language Guanahani. Presently they descried people, naked, and the Admiral landed in the boat, which was armed, along with Martin Alonzo Pinzon, and Vincent Yanez his brother, captain of the Nina. The Admiral bore the royal standard; this contained the initials of the names of the King and Queen each side of the cross, and a crown over each letter Arrived on shore, they saw trees very green many streams of water, and diverse sorts of fruits. The Admiral called upon the two Captains to bear witness that he took possession of that island for the King and Queen his sovereigns, making the requisite declarations.

What was Columbus’s first priority upon landing? Why? To claim the territory for the rulers of Spain, his employers and financial backers.

Numbers of the people of the island straightway collected together. Here follow the precise words of the Admiral: "As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force, I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted, and became wonderfully attached to us. Afterwards they came swimming to the boats, bringing parrots, balls of cotton thread, javelins, and many other things which they exchanged for articles we gave them, such as glass beads, and hawk’s bells; which trade was carried on with the utmost good will.

Was Columbus’s initial attitude towards the natives belligerent, or peaceful? What was his first expressed concern upon meeting them?

His attitude was peaceful, and his concern was with converting them to Christianity, and with trade.

But they seemed on the whole to me, to be a very poor people. They all go completely naked, even the women, though I saw but one girl. All whom I saw were young, not above thirty years of age, well made, with fine shapes and faces; their hair short, and coarse like that of a horse’s tail, combed toward the forehead, except a small portion which they suffer to hang down behind, and never cut. Some paint the face, and some the whole body; others only the eyes, and others the nose.

Was Columbus more interested in the natives’ possessions, or in the natives themselves?

He was more interested in the people themselves.

Weapons they have none, nor are acquainted with them, for I showed them swords which they grasped by the blades, and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their javelins being without it, and nothing more than sticks, though some have fish-bones or other things at the ends. They are all of a good size and stature, and handsomely formed. I saw some with scars of wounds upon their bodies, and demanded by signs the origin of them; they answered me in the same way, that there came people from the other islands in the neighborhood who endeavored to make prisoners of them, and they defended themselves. I thought then, and still believe, that these were from the continent.

Were the natives ignorant of war?

No, but they were not well armed.

It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and would be good servants and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion. They very quickly learn such words as are spoken to them. If it please our Lord, I intend at my return to carry home six of them to your Highnesses, that they may learn our language. I saw no beasts in the island, nor any sort of animals except parrots." These are the words of the Admiral.

What role did Columbus see the natives as having within the Spanish empire?

As servants, and as Christians. (Servant does not necessarily mean slave; Columbus would have considered himself the servant of the king and queen. And the monarchs would have considered themselves servants of God.)

Saturday, 13 October.

At daybreak great multitudes of men came to the shore, all young and of fine shapes, very handsome; their hair not curled but straight and coarse like horse-hair, and all with foreheads and heads much broader than any people I had hitherto seen; their eyes were large and very beautiful; they were not black, but the color of the inhabitants of the Canaries, which is a very natural circumstance, they being in the same latitude with the island of Ferro in the Canaries. They were straight-limbed without exception, and not with prominent bellies but handsomely shaped. They came to the ship in canoes, made of a single trunk of a tree, wrought in a wonderful manner considering the country; some of them large enough to contain forty or forty-five men, others of different sizes down to those fitted to hold but a single person. They rowed with an oar like a baker’s peel, and wonderfully swift. If they happen to upset, they all jump into the sea, and swim till they have righted their canoe and emptied it with the calabashes they carry with them.

What about the natives impressed Columbus?

Their physical attractiveness, and their ingenuity.

They came loaded with balls of cotton, parrots, javelins, and other things too numerous to mention; these they exchanged for whatever we chose to give them. I was very attentive to them, and strove to learn if they had any gold. Seeing some of them with little bits of this metal hanging at their noses, I gathered from them by signs that by going southward or steering round the island in that direction, there would be found a king who possessed large vessels of gold, and in great quantities. I endeavored to procure them to lead the way thither, but found they were unacquainted with the route. I determined to stay here till the evening of the next day, and then sail for the southwest; for according to what I could learn from them, there was land at the south as well as at the southwest and northwest and those from the northwest came many times and fought with them and proceeded on to the southwest in search of gold and precious stones.

What did Columbus most want to find?

Gold and precious stones.

The natives are an inoffensive people, and so desirous to possess any thing they saw with us, that they kept swimming off to the ships with whatever they could find, and readily bartered for any article we saw fit to give them in return, even such as broken platters and fragments of glass. I saw in this manner sixteen balls of cotton thread which weighed above twenty-five pounds, given for three Portuguese ceutis. This traffic I forbade, and suffered no one to take their cotton from them, unless I should order it to be procured for your Highnesses, if proper quantities could be met with. It grows in this island, but from my short stay here I could not satisfy myself fully concerning it; the gold, also, which they wear in their noses, is found here, but not to lose time, I am determined to proceed onward and ascertain whether I can reach Cipango. At night