The Spanish explorations
The Spaniards were the first Europeans to reach the New World, and by the sixteenth century they were exploring the territory that became the United States. The earliest known exploration of Florida was made in 1513 by Juan Ponce de Léon, the governor of Puerto Rico. In 1539 Hernando de Soto landed on the west coast of Florida with 620 men and 220 horses. His expedition travelled north into Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee. In 1541 they reached the Mississippi River, crossed it and travelled westward through modern day Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. |
Discovery of the Mississippi by William Henry Powell (1823–1879) This fanciful depiction hangs in the United States Capitol rotunda. |
De Soto died on the expedition, which failed in its objective to acquire gold and establish colonies. But in 1565 the Spaniards founded St Augustine, Florida, the first European town in the present-day United States. The colony included a fort, church, hospital fish market and over a hundred shops and houses, built decades before the first English settlements.
In 1609 they founded Santa Fe in New Mexico. This became the first centre of mission activity in the south-west. Missionaries, particularly Franciscans and Jesuits, established mission settlements in which the Indians were persuaded to live and to convert to Catholicism. By 1630 there were fifty Catholic churches and friaries in New Mexico and some 3,000 Spaniards.
Other European powers
While the Spaniards were establishing their missions, other European powers arrived on the American Continent, notably the French, the Dutch, and the English.The eventual dominance of British settlements was not inevitable and did not initially seem likely. The Dutch were the first northern European settlers. In 1609 Henry Hudson, an English navigator employed by the Dutch East India Company sailed up what became the Hudson river, and in 1625 the Dutch East India Company established Niew Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, purchased from the local Lenape Indians.
