by Hans Holzer
Whether because of this, or for political expendiency, the white-robed Dominicans opposed the brown-robed Franciscans in the matter of the Indians: to the Dominicans, the Indians were fellow human beings deserving every consideration and humane treatment. To the Franciscans, they were clearly none of these, even after they had been given the sacraments of Christianity!
And to the Spanish landowners, the Indians were cheap labor, slaves that could not possibly be allowed any human rights. Thus we had, circa 1530, a condition in some ways paralleling the conditions leading up to the War Between the States in 1861.
Here then is the passage referred to, from Sir A. Helps’ The Spanish Conquests in America, London 1900, volume I, page 179 et seq.
The Fathers (Jeronimite) asked the opinions of the official persons and also of the Franciscans and Dominicans, touching the liberty of the Indians. It was very clear beforehand what the answers would be. The official persons and the Franciscans pronounced against the Indians, and the Dominicans in their favor.
The Jeronimite Fathers…and Sybil had insisted on a name, so important to this haunting: Hieronymus…Latin for Jerome!
How could any of us have known of such an obscure ecclesiastical term? It took me several days of research, and plain luck, to find it at all.
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Who Landed First in America?
TO MANY PEOPLE, perhaps to the majority of my readers, the question posed in the title of this chapter may seem odd. Don’t we know that it was Christopher Columbus? Can’t every schoolchild tell us that it happened in 1492 and that he landed on what is today known as the island of San Salvador?
Well, he did do that, of course, and as late as 1956 an American, Ruth Wolper, put a simple white cross at Long Bay, San Salvador, to mark the spot where he stepped on American soil.
Still, the question remains: Was Columbus really the first to discover America and establish contact between the “Old” and the “New” Worlds?
If you want to be technical, there never was a time when some sort of contact between the Old World and the New World did not exist. Over the “land bridge,” Siberia to Alaska, some people came as far back as the prehistoric period. The Eskimo population of North America is of Asian origin. The American Indian, if not Asian, is certainly related to the Mongol race and must have come to the Americas at an even earlier time, perhaps at a time when the land masses of Eurasia and North America were even closer than they are today. For we know that the continents have drifted apart over the centuries, and we suspect also that large chunks of land that are not now visible may have once been above water.
But what about the people of Western Europe? If Columbus was not the first to set sail for the New World, who then did?
Although any patriotic Italian-American may shudder at the consequences, especially on Columbus Day, the evidence of prior contact by Europeans with the American continent is pretty strong. It does not take an iota away from Columbus’ courageous trip, but it adds to the lore of seafaring men and the lure of the riches across the ocean.
Perhaps the question as to who landed first on American soil is less vital than who will land last—but the thrill of discovery does have a certain attraction for most people, and so it may matter. It has been an American trait ever since to be first, or best, in everything, if possible.
Nothing in science is so well established that it cannot yield to new evidence. The Pilgrims are generally considered to have been the first permanent settlers in this country, landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620. But there is new evidence that the Portuguese got here earlier—in 1511, to be exact. Dighton Rock, in Berkley, Massachusetts, bears markings in Portuguese consisting of crosses, a date, 1511, and the name Miguel Cortereal. Artifacts of sixteenth-century Portuguese manufacture have been found at the site. Until a Rhode Island medical doctor by the name of Manuel da Silva, whose sideline is archaeology, put two and two together, this fact had been completely ignored by “the establishment” in science. And at nearby Newport, Rhode Island, there is a stone tower similar to Portuguese churches of the sixteenth century. Cannon and swords of Portuguese origin have been dated pretty exactly, and we know from their state of preservation approximately how long they have been in the ground. They antedate the Pilgrims and the trip of the Mayflower by a considerable span.
But we are dealing here not with the first settlement in America but with the discovery itself. How far back did civilized man reach America from Europe? Did the Phoenicians, those great sailors of antiquity, get this far? To date, we have not found any evidence that they did. But we do know that they reached Britain. Considering the type of boat these pre-Christian people used, the voyage from Asia Minor through the Mediterranean and the Straits of Gibraltar and then along the French coast and finally through the treacherous Straits of Dover must have called for great nautical skill and daring. Phoenician settlements certainly existed in England. Perhaps offshoots of these early Britons might have ventured across the Atlantic on a further exploration. I am not saying that they did, but if some day Phoenician relics are unearthed in North America, I can only hope that the established historians will not immediately yell “fraud” and step on the traces instead of investigating open-mindedly.
Another great race of seafaring explorers whom we must reckon with are the Norsemen who plowed the oceans some two thousand years after the Phoenicians.
From their homes on the barren shores of Scandinavia they sailed along the coasts of Western Europe to terrorize the people of France and eventually to establish a duchy of their own in that part of France which to this day is known as Normandy for the Normans or Norsemen who once ruled there and who from there went on to rule all of England—a country which the Vikings used to raid long before there was a William the Conqueror. Then they sailed on to raid Ireland and to establish Viking kingdoms in that country, and still farther on to distant Iceland.
Their consummate skill with boats and their advanced understanding of astronomy and meteorology, as well as their incredible fighting power, combined to make them the great nautical adventurers of the early Middle Ages.
These men had lots of wood, so they built ships, or better, longboats, capable of riding even the worst seas. At one point traces of their domination existed in such divers places as Scandinavia, the British Isles, France, southern Italy, and Sicily.
What concerns us here, however, is mainly their exploits at seafaring and discovery in a westerly direction beyond Iceland. It was Iceland, which has the world’s oldest Parliament, the Althing, that also provided us with the earliest written accounts concerning the exploration of America. Especially is The Saga of Eric the Red explicit in the account of one Eric, known as the Red from his beard, who lived in Iceland, which was then part of the Viking domain.
In the year 985, he quarreled with his kinsmen and was forced to leave Iceland. Banished for a three-year term, he explored the western coast of Greenland in search of new lands. It was he who gave the icy territory its name, hoping that it might attract immigrants. Greenland is considered part of the North American continent, but to Eric it was merely another island worth investigating. He thought that the land he had looked over held promise, and later brought his wife Thjodhild and their young son Leif over to Greenland, along with twenty-five ships of men and supplies. The majority of these Norsemen settled at the southern tip of Greenland in an area they called the Eastern Settlement. Here Eric operated a farm which he called Brattahlid or “steep slope.” Some of the Norsemen, however, sailed on farther and founded another place they called the Western Settlement.
As his son Leif grew up, Eric sent him to Trondhjem to spend a year at Court. At that time Leif became a Christian, although Eric refused to accept the new religion to his dying day. But Leif impressed the King so strongly that Olaf appointed him his commissioner to preach Christianity in Greenland. To make sure he did his best, he sent along a Benedictine monk. The year was 1000 A.D. Leif Ericsson did what was expected of him, and Greenland became Ch
ristianized.
Sometime thereafter occurred the event that had such tremendous bearing on American history.
An Icelandic trader returning home from Norway was blown far off his course by a storm and finally, instead of getting to Iceland, somehow managed to make landfall at Brattahlid in Greenland. He was welcomed then by Leif, the son of Eric, and told his host that, while struggling with the sea far to the west of Greenland, he had sighted land still farther west, where no land was supposed to be—a land on which he had not dared to step ashore.
Now, this evidently has just the kind of challenge that would spur a man like Leif Ericsson to action. He rigged his ship and gathered a crew and sailed westward to see if, indeed, there was land there.
There was land, and Leif went ashore with his men, and found that wild grapes were growing there and so—the saga tells us—Leif named it Vinland.
The sagas report on this in quite considerable detail. They also tell us of several other expeditions from Greenland to Vinland following Leif’s first discovery, which took place about the year 1000. And yet, until recently, these reports were considered legends or at least tradition open to question, for not every word of ancient sagas can be trusted as being accurate, although in my opinion a great deal more is than “establishment” scholars want to admit.
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Follins Pond, Cape Cod—where the Vikings first landed
Then in 1967 a group of Eskimos living at the side of Brattahlid started to excavate for the foundations for a new school. To their surprise, and the Danish Archaeological Society’s delight, they came upon a beautifully preserved graveyard, filled with the remains of dozens of people. In addition, the foundations of an eleventh-century church and a nearby farmhouse were also found, exactly as the saga had described them. Life magazine published a brief account of these exciting discoveries, and all at once the reputation of Leif Ericsson as a real-life personality was reestablished after long years of languishing in semi-legendary domains.
It is known now for sure that the Greenland colonies established by Eric lasted five centuries, but somehow they disappeared around 1500 and the land was left to the Eskimos. Only two hundred years later did the Scandinavians recolonize the vast island.
The most remarkable part of the sagas, however, is not the exploration of Greenland but the discovery and subsequent colonization of what the Vikings called Vinland. And, although few scholars will deny that the Vinland voyage did indeed take place, there has always been considerable discussion about its location.
There have been strange digs and even stranger findings in various parts of the United States and Canada, all of which tended to confuse the strait-laced archaeologists to the point where, until recently, the entire question of a Viking discovery of America was relegated to the “maybe” category.
Eventually, however, discoveries of importance came to light that could no longer be ignored, and once again the topic of Leif Ericsson’s eleventh-century voyage to America became a popular subject for discussion, even among nonarchaeologists.
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There were, until the present experiment was undertaken, only two ways to prove an event in history: written contemporary testimony, or artifacts that can be securely tied to specific places, periods, or historical processes. Even with the two “ordinary” methods, Leif Ericsson did not do badly. The saga of Eric the Red and his son Leif Ericsson is a historical document of considerable merit. It is factual and very meticulous in its account of the voyages and of the locations of the settlements. About twenty-five years ago it was fashionable to shrug off such ancient documents or stories as fictional or, at best, distorted and embroidered accounts of events. Certainly this holds true on occasion. One of the most notable examples of such transposition is the story of King Arthur, who changed from a real-life sixth-century post-Roman petty king to a glamorous twelfth-century chevalier-king. But the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls gave scholars new food for thought. They, and the recent excavations at Masada, King Herod’s fortress, proved that at least some very ancient historical accounts were correct. The thrill of rediscovering landmarks or buildings mentioned in contemporary accounts, and covered up by the centuries, is a feeling only an archaeologist can fully appreciate. The unbiased scholar should be able to find his way through the maze of such source material especially if he is aided by field work. By field work I mean excavations in areas suspected of harboring buildings or artifacts of the period and people involved. In addition, there are the chance finds which supplement the methodical digs. The trouble with chance finds is that they are not always reported immediately so that competent personnel can investigate the circumstances under which these objects show up. Thus it is easy for latter-day experts to denounce some pretty authentic relics as false, and only later, calm reappraisal puts these relics in a deserved position of prominence.
In the case of the Vikings, there had been a strong disposition on the part of the “establishment” scholars to look down on the Viking sagas, to begin with, partly on psychological grounds: How could the primitive Norsemen manage not only to cross the stormy Atlantic in their little boats, but even manage to penetrate the American continental wilderness in the face of hostile Indians and unfriendly natural conditions? How did the Egyptians get those heavy boulders onto their pyramids without modern machinery? We don’t know—at least “officially”—but the Egyptians sure did, because the stones are up there for everybody to see.
Probability calculations are not always reliable in dealing with past events. Like the lemmings, the inveterate Norse sailors had a strong inner drive to seek new lands beyond the seas. This drive might have helped them overcome seemingly impossible obstacles. Men have crossed the Atlantic in tiny boats even in recent times, against all odds of survival, but they did it successfully. In recent years the feeling among scholars has tended to accept the Vinland crossings as genuine, and concentrate their search on the location of that elusive piece of land the Vikings called Vinland.
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It is here that one must consider the physical evidence of Viking presences in America, for there is some evidence in the form of buildings, graves, stones, and artifacts of Norse origin that cannot be ignored.
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In 1948 a retired engineer and navigator named Arlington Mallery discovered some ruins of a Norse settlement on the northern tip of Newfoundland, and promptly concluded that this was Vinland. In 1951, in a book called Lost America, Mallery reported his investigations of Norse traces not only in Newfoundland, but also in Ohio, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Because Mr. Mallery was not an “establishment” scholar with an impressive institution behind him, his discoveries, though carefully documented, drew little attention in the press and with the public at the time.
What exactly did Mallery find?
At a place called Sop’s Island in northern Newfoundland, he discovered the remnants of four houses of the Viking type and period. In and around them he found many iron tools, nails, boat rivets, chisels, and axes of the typically Norse design completely alien to the native population of the island. William D. Conner, an Ohio journalist who has been interested in the subject of Vinland for a long time, detailed Mallery’s struggle for evidence in an article in Fate magazine of November 1967. According to Conner, Mallery’s main deficiency was that the radiocarbon dating process now commonly used to date artifacts could not have been used by Mallery, because it had not yet been invented at the time. Nevertheless, Mallery compared the iron implements found in Newfoundland with tools of Scandinavian origin and found them to be identical. Being primarily a metallurgical engineer and not an archaeologist, Mallery had the iron tools tested from the former point of view. These tests, made by independent laboratories, showed that the iron artifacts of Newfoundland were made in the same way and at the same time as definitely identified Norse tools discovered in Greenland and Denmark.
But Mallery was not satisfied with his Newfoundland discoveries. He had always felt that the Vikings had
spread out from their initial landing sites to other areas along the coast and even farther inland. Mallery was an expert cartographer, and his reading of three ancient Icelandic maps helped him establish his theory of Viking landings in North America.
The first of these three, the Stephansson map, shows a large peninsula along the coast of Labrador, then called Skralingeland. This peninsula on the map is labeled Promontorium Winlandiae, promontory of Vinland. Mallery felt this referred to the northern peninsula of Newfoundland rather than Labrador. The second map was drawn by one Christian Friseo in 1605 and is a copy of a much older map available to him at the time. The third of the maps mentioned by Mallery and Conner is the Thordsen map, also of Icelandic origin, dating from the sixteenth century. It shows an area of Canada opposite Newfoundland, and refers to “Vinland the Good.”
Additional support for Viking presences in North America came from excavations and discoveries made by Dr. Junius Bird, curator of archaeology at the American Museum of Natural History. These finds were made in northern Labrador in the Nain-Hopedale area, and consisted of iron nails, boat spikes, clinch rivets, and stone house remains. The stone houses, in Mallery’s view, were also of Norse origin and not built by the local Eskimos, as some had thought. The construction of the twelve houses found was much too sophisticated to have been native, Mallery argued. But Labrador had been a way station to the Newfoundland site of a Viking camp, and it did not seem to be quite so outlandish to suggest that Vikings did indeed visit this region.
However, Mallery also discovered evidence of Norse penetration in Virginia and Ohio, consisting of iron spikes and other iron artifacts excavated in rural areas. After comparing these finds with Scandinavian originals of the period in question, Mallery came to the conclusion that they were indeed of Viking origin.