The first europeans

THE FIRST EUROPEANS
The first Europeans to arrive in North America — at least the first for whom there is solid evidence were Norse, traveling west from Greenland, where Erik the Red had founded asettlement around the year 985. In 1001 his son Leif is thought to have explored the northeast coast of what is now Canada and spent at least one winter there. While Norse sagas suggest that Vikingsailors explored the Atlantic coast of North America down as far as the Bahamas, such claims remain unproven. In 1963, however, the ruins of some Norse houses dating from that era were discovered atL’Anse-aux-Meadows in northern Newfoundland, thus supporting at least some of the saga claims. In 1497, just five years after
Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean looking for a western route toAsia, a Venetian sailor named John Cabot arrived in Newfoundland on a mission for the British king. Although quickly forgotten, Cabot’s journey was later to provide the basis for British claims toNorth America. It also opened the way to the rich fishing grounds off George’s Banks, to which European fishermen, particularly the Portuguese, were soon making regular visits. Columbus never saw themainland of the future United States, but the first explorations of it were launched from the Spanish possessions that he helped establish. The first of these took place in 1513when a group of men underJuan
Ponce de León landed on the Florida coast near the present city of St. Augustine. With the conquest of Mexico in
1522, the Spanish further solidified their position in the Western Hemisphere.The ensuing discoveries added to Europe’s knowledge of what was now named America —after the Italian Americus Vespucci, who wrote a widely popular account of his voyages to a “New World.” By1529reliable maps of the Atlantic coastline from Labrador to Tierra del Fuego had been drawn up, although it would take more than another century before hope of discovering a “Northwest Passage” to Asia...