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Who discovered North America

Posted on July 3, 2024

Last Modified on July 14, 2024

The Discovery Age

Western historians refer to the period from the late 15th century through the 17th century as "The Age of Exploration" or "The Age of Discovery". These terms are obviously ethnocentric as they refer to the discoveries made by western Europeans primarily on the seas during the "Age of Sail" even though we know discoveries have been made throughout human history and across the globe. The terms are also a bit of a white wash because while gaining new geographical knowledge was certainly a motivation for some, primarily these adventures were driven by profit. This led to occupation, exploitation, colonization, and for some native cultures total obliteration. This bigger picture was not fully painted at the time, however. The exploration voyages were financially risky and dangerous and the men who undertook them were literally sailing into the unknown. It is hard to imagine what experiences could be analogous today unless it would be rocketing off the planet in a space ship to another world. If we were to find another culture already established on that world how would the story end?

It wasn't Columbus

The explorer named Cristoforo Columbo (anglicized as Christopher Columbus, 1451–1506) is usually referred to simply as "Columbus" by convention. Note that Christopher had a brother, Bartholomew Columbo, who went along on many of his brother's voyages. Columbus may have been the first European since the Norse to learn that there was a vast and peopled continent across the sea. The Norse had not only discovered land but settled on it, eventually getting into a tussle with the natives which prompted them to return to Greenland but they did write it all down and its possible that later Europeans could have heard those accounts. Columbus certainly did not discover North America (modern day United States and Canada) as the Norse did, since all of Columbus' voyages were to the Carribean and South America.

The Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria made their initial landfall in the Bahamas and subsequent expeditions by Columbus explored (and apparently exploited) what is now the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the Carribean generally and parts of the Central American coast. His voyages revealed to Europeans that there were new lands to the west which had potentially vast resources and population but also, perhaps more ominously, confirmed that the native population did not possess gunpowder technology.

Columbus' expedition of 1492 did not originally set out to discover new land, but instead to find a new route to an old one. All sailors of the day knew the world was a sphere and there was consensus among scholars regarding that sphere's estimated circumference. Columbus, either because he really didn't do the math correctly or because he wanted the voyage to seem more achievable to his patrons, severly under-estimated the circumference of the earth and so, when he sighted land it seemed to those who heard about it that perhaps he had indeed reached India, dooming millions of native Americans to hundreds of years of mistaken identity.

Columbus' attempt to find a new route to India via the western ocean was certainly bold and he had no way to know that the geography of the Americas was against such a venture. The honor of the discovery of a sea route to India was subsequently granted to Vasco da Gama who successfully sailed southward around Africa in 1499. It should be noted that da Gama returned with only a third of his men after a two year voyage and had only made it to Calicot which is far short of the source of the pepper and cinnamon and other spices his patrons sought. An efficient sea route to India was still up for grabs before 1500.

After a few years of trying to capitalize on their discoveries in the Carribean, Columbus and his brother Bartholomew had become deeply unpopular among Spanish settlers and other adventurers. In 1500 the Spanish monarchs sent Francisco de Bobadilla as judge to investigate allegations that the brothers "accepted bribes, enslaved the natives, under-paid the quinto real for pearls and gold, mishandled the rebellion of Francisco Roldán, and that they had committed treason". Columbus and his brother were sent home in chains, under arrest. Columbus was eventually acquitted of all charges and the crown soon funded another voyage. On this following expedition the brothers made first contact with the Mayans from the Yucatan, meeting a trading vessel loaded with rich trade goods and carrying well dressed Mayans. The brothers promptly looted the goods and kidnapped the Mayan captain to act as interpereter before letting the canoe go on its way thus the unfortunate first meeting of the Maya was recorded in the Mayan books of Chilam Balam.

Why Columbus Day then?

President Benjamin Harrison made the first call for a national observance of Columbus Day in 1892 in honor of the 400th anniversary of the voyage. I will paraphrase his statement as "Let the people cease from toil to express honor to the discoverer and our subsequent four centuries of accomplishment". There was no mention of Columbus' nationality in his statement at all. Colorado became the first state to celebrate Columbus Day in 1906 after a vigorous campaign in a newspaper run by an Italian.

At around the same time there was a movement to promote Leif Erikson (the leader of the Norse expedition already discussed) as the discoverer of America. President Calvin Coolige speaking in 1925 to a crowd celebrating the centennial of the arrival of Norwegian immigrants in Minnesota told the crowd that he believed Erikson was the first European to discover America and that he had done so 500 years before Columbus. Wisconsin became the first state to celebrate Leif Erikson Day in 1930 (made an official national day of observance in 1954).

Italian Americans were the latest big group of immigrants to the US at the time and facing the typical negative press associated with large groups of poor immigrants looking for work. Community leaders saw the success of Columbus Day in Colorado as an opportunity to raise the visibillity and spirit of Italian Americans. Through the Catholic fraternal organization known as the Knights of Columbus they lobbied hard for the US to commemorate the day nationally. Although Roosevelt proclaimed this should be done during his term in the 1930s, it wasn't until 1970 that Congress acted to add the day as an official holiday. In hindsight, there were probably some better choices for a representative of Italian nationality.

Was Columbus even Italian?

In 1492 there was no Italy. Columbus was from Genoa which is a city in Liguria that is in the far north of modern day Italy but which at the time was a proud city state along the coast with its own (Romance) language and ancient traditions. Modern Italian law only recognizes Ligurian as a dialect of Italian and not a separate language so it is not taught in schools and today only about 9% of Ligurians can speak it.

Italy was formed out of many such separate city-states in 1871. If you want to argue that all of Italy was united under Roman rule this is true, but that empire fell apart in 476 and many other countries that were part of Rome are not considered part of Italy today. If you want to argue that all of Italy is united through a common language, this is true but there are many places (France, Spain to name a couple) that share a common Romance language yet we don't think of them as Italy. Columbus would have originally considered himself Genoese but in 1476 at the age of about 25 he moved to Lisbon in Portugal which was building a reputation for supporting exploration and building wealth in sea-going trade. He lived in Portugal for many years but perhaps remained ever a man of Genoa.

Portugal and Spain were in direct competition with Genoese and Venitian traders who had established overland routes to the far east. To compete, these countries would need to establish alternate sea routes to the east (or discover new lands to trade with over the sea) since they sat on the Atlantic coast. Columbus spent 16 years in Portugal and though he had audience with the King, he could not get funding for a westward voyage from him. The Portugese at the time were the world's premier sailors and the King and his councilers knew that the best scientific estimate for the distance across the Atlantic from Lisbon to China was too great for a sea voyage to be practical. Columbus' proposal used calculations that the Portugese knew were too optimistic. Ultimately Columbus had to pivot and find backers elsewhere and eventually sailed for Queen Isabella of Spain instead, but it was over the objections of the Spanish King and his councilers.

So to summarize, the Genoese sailor who lived most of his adult life in Portugal and then sailed for Spain to the Bahamas and Haiti and never even saw the North American continent is the guy picked to represent Italian heritage in the US.

Who really discovered America?

We now know that Calvin Coolige had it right and that it was actually the Norse (the Vikings) who landed in North America first. Lief Erikson is mentioned by name in written sources and those stories were later confirmed by archaeological evidence at L'Anse aux Meadows (Meadows Cove). The Norse may have stayed in the new world only several seasons but there is evidence that they returned there for many years. Recent radiologic data suggests the site may have been in use for up to a hundred years! There is a distinct lack of burials so the site may have been used primarily for boat repair and gathering of resources, but written sources suggest the Norse may have explored a good distance southward along the coast while the site was in operation. If the sagas are to be believed, they eventually came into conflict with indigenous people and decided to abandon the outpost. Their adventures in the new world were written down and preserved, we can read them today, but were they known to European explorers in the late 1400s?

Piecing together what was known at what time can be difficult. Historical evidence for discovery voyages can come from contemporary written statements, records of loans and grants, official documents of patent (monopoly on the proceeds of a discovery), private letters, dated maps, and more. Is the written information accurate? Is there bias in the account? Is the written account purposely misleading? Maps may include details that, when accurate, suggest that they must have been obtained by exploration even when we have no written record of a voyage from which that geographical information could have come. Its also possible that a map may contain information that looks "correct enough" to appear accurate when it was really just a guess. Archaeological information, when available, may be employed to confirm hypotheses.

Enter John Cabot

Evidence suggests that the first European to make landfall in North America since the Norse may have been an explorer named Giovanni Cabotto (John Cabot). It was common before the modern era to anglicize names to make them easier for English speakers to read and pronounce, but in my opinion this just creates more confusion than it saves. Almost everything known about John Cabot's discovery voyages come from about twenty-five surviving documents, almost all of which are published in J.A. Williamson's standard work on the subject, "The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery Under Henry VII", 1961.

Cabot lived from about 1450 to 1499 (the exact years of his birth and death are unknown). Like Columbus, most historians believe he was originally from Genoa, though other places of origin have been suggested. At an early age his family moved to Venice where he became a Ventian citizen in 1476 (this required at least 15 years residency so he may have come as a child) which enabled him to begin trading in the Mediterranean. He is refered to for the rest of his life as a "Venetian" which is another city state in modern Italy. The language of this region is a Romance language descended from the Vulgar Latin and distinct from Italian. There is evidence that Cabot left Venice as a debtor in 1488, and inspired by the voyages of Columbus, and upon hearing about opportunities in England he moved there sometime around 1494 and was there during the reign of Henry VII (1487-1502) who supported his expeditions.

Williamson's work describes the state of affairs in England earlier in the 1480s as relates to exploration and it appears that beginning in about 1480 there were numerous endeavours funded seeking "lost islands" and other semi-mythical lands to the west. In fact, it seems sure that men of Bristol had already discovered their mythical "Isle of Brasil" and seem to have collaborated with Cabot on a voyage to return to it. If so, these voyages are not recorded and they did not associate this place with Asia. Even though all of this is speculation, it is clear at least that Columbus and Cabot's voyages did not happen in isolation.

Williamson also teases the idea that Cabot might have personally observed the return of Columbus to Spain. Witnessing the fan fare that surrounded that event including the parade of unfortunate natives from Hispaniola and realized immediately that Columbus had not in fact made it to Cathay whose culture Cabot was familiar with. He would have realized that Columbus instead must have landed on some intervening island even if the Spanish leaders did not recognize as much or at least would not publicly admit it. Cabot would, within three years incorporate these ideas into his proposal to the English King; that Columbus did not sail far enough and the route to India might still be theirs to find. Cabot would suggest that ships might resupply where Columbus discovered land and the subsequent journey to Cathay might be easier as they could then hug a coastline or travel over shallow continental shelf.

The John Day letter

Perhaps the most important discovery about Cabot came in 1956 when Louis-Andre Vigneras found a letter in the Spanish Archives that was written in the winter of 1497/8. In it, John Day, a merchant of Bristol, England wrote to "The Grand Admiral" of Spain (Columbus) describing in great detail a voyage by John Cabot in 1497 also mentioning an earlier, failed mission by him in 1496. The letter describes how Cabot in his single ship of 50 tons with only 20 crewmen discovered what appeared to be an inhabited "island" about 1800 miles west at the latitude of Dursey Head, Ireland. He set foot upon it and claimed it for England, not venturing too far inland because he had so few crew and then explored the coastline for about a month before returning and the return journey was much quicker (about 15 days) as they had the wind at their back the entire trip. Interestingly, the letter says that the land discovered was certainly the same land that men of Bristol had already discovered "in the past" which they called the "Isle of Brasil". Dursey Head and Newfoundland are both at 51 degrees latitude and about 1900 miles apart.

A Spanish representative then in London by the name of Pedro de Ayala made a report in 1498 to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella that the people of Bristol had been outfitting multiple ships a year for several years in search of the "Island of Brasil and the Seven Cities" at the whim of "this Genoese", who in context of the report would be Cabot. The report states that in 1497 "sure proof had been brought to the [English] King that they had found land." The fact that England had apparently been sending ships westward since 1480 and that this practice had increased by the mid 1490s and now John Day's letter suggested that the English may have discovered North America before John Cabot's 1497 voyage and had been keeping it quiet until they could establish a firmer claim on the "new found" land.

In any case, Cabot won from the English King an extremely generous patent to explore westward wherein he was entitled to retain almost full rights to any and all material discoveries, paying only a small tithe of the profits to the crown. By comparison, Columbus pledged to return almost everything he found to the Spanish monarchy and was permitted to keep but a small portion of any profit for himself. In Cabot's 1497 voyage its unclear if he returned from the new world with anything of value at all beyond the confirmation of land, but we know that he set out with more ships and more men in 1498. Sadly, that is currently all we know for certain about his 1498 voyage as there are no documents published that confirm that he ever returned from it. With no list of companions for this journey, historians cannot determine if any of them can be documented as living in England after a possible return.

What Columbus and Cabot believed

We know that before 1500 nearly everyone in Europe believed that a route to Asia over the western ocean was about to be found. The general thought was that Columbus had discovered some islands off the coast of Asia but hadn't explored far enough to locate the great port cities and that the next exploration westward might find them. Similarly, Cabot may have believed that the men of Bristol had discovered the north-eastern coast of Asia and Cabot's 1498 mission was to take a year to explore as far South from his northern landing as possible to locate Asian ports along the coast. They must have been very confident because the ships were not only outfit with enough food for a lengthy voyage, they also took trade goods with them. Clearly they expected to find people to trade with.

The Portugese are not pleased

Word of Cabot's 1497 landing had reached the Portugese who felt that the English were impinging on the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas of 7 June 1494, an agreement between Spain and Portugal for dividing up the new world between them. Moral authority for which having already been granted by an earlier papal bull, the "Aeterni regis" of 1481 issued by Pope Sixtus IV.

The Portugese immediately began sending explorers westward in 1498 to enforce their claims. Gaspar Corte-Real sailing for Portugal landed in the new world, probably in Labrador or Newfoundland in 1501 and kidnapped 50 Haudenasawnee native Americans to sell in Portugal as slaves. Williamson states that on this same voyage Corte-Real obtained pieces of an Italian sword and Venetian ear-rings from the natives and that Corte-Real thought that the items must have come to the natives through overland trade routes from Europe, either because Corte-Real believed that he had landed in Asia or that he wanted others to think so. Since Cabot never met any natives on his 1497 voyage, it suggests that he or others of his crew may have encountered some on his 1498 voyage and that the items were discarded, lost, or traded at that time.

The John Day letter shows there was communication regarding western expeditions being sent from England to Spain. Cabot's 1498 expedition became known to the Spanish who also rallied to protect their claims. It is possible, though we have no evidence for it, that an English ship from Cabot's 1498 expedition may have even have made it as far south along the coast of America as to stray into the area of Spanish claims. Whether they did or not, Columbus' brother had once been in treaty with Henry VII, and if an English ship was anywhere near the Caribbean in 1499 it might have provided even more reason for the Spanish to recall the Colombo brothers in 1500 as we've already mentioned.

Disapointment

Columbus and Cabot had not discovered Asia, nor a route to it. They had discovered a new continent, already peopled, but without any port cities or obvious technology. The Columbo brothers knew very well that they needed to find wealth in this new world somehow, whether it be gold or slaves. Merchants who had filled Cabot's boats with goods for trade would be very disappointed if he did return. There would be no fanfares in the streets, only debts. Perhaps it isn't surprising that there are very little records of Cabot's return or any mention of those who journeyed with him to the west. The voyages of John Cabot faded from memory quickly as new discoveries were made by subsequent explorers.

Sebastian Cabot

John Cabot's son Sebastian Cabot, who inherited his father's 1496 patent also sailed west and by the mid 1500s his voyages and his fathers may have become conflated. Certainly Sebastian sailed in 1508 and returned in 1509 and it is possible that the events of John Cabot's 1498 voyage became attributed to this later voyage by Sebastian. Sebastian's aim was to find a northwest passage to Asia (after it became clear that the "new found land" wasn't it) and it seems from his geographical description that he may have done so, but his crew mutinied and he had to return. Later in life he sought the employ of Spain and such a northerly route would have been closed to him (Portugal claimed the northern routes) and so he downplayed his northwest discoveries. It was only later when he returned to England that he spoke of them publicly.

This is where things get weird.

Dr. Alwyn A. Ruddock of Birkbeck College, University of London (1952–76) was an economic historian who had established herself as an authority in the area of Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton, UK in the medieval period. She retired in 1976 and after her husband's death in 1981 she continued her research privately. At the age of 76 in 1992 she submitted a proposal to the University of Exeter Press to write a book about John Cabot which she hoped would be out in time for the 500th anniversary of his voyages in 1997. After a review of the proposal, the Exeter Press issued Ruddock a contract. It was shortly therafter that her health began to decline and over the following years despite several requests, Exeter never received a manuscript to review. The contract was renewed in 2002 as Ruddock was evidently still working on the book, but still no manuscript was ever submitted.

Ruddock's proposal for the book about Cabot is not more than an outline; a list of chapter headings and associated sub-topics, most not more than a few words of description or perhaps a sentence in length describing the areas of research the book would cover including some new claims, chapter by chapter. As Ruddock had been performing research for at least 10 years by the time the proposal was submitted the outline is extensive and apparently based on quite a lot of new evidence to support each of the topics listed in the proposal.

When Ruddock passed in 2005 friends and colleagues found, to their horror, that she had stipulated in her will that all of her research notes, letters, photographs, microfilm and unfinished writings were to be destroyed after her death. The will even stipulated that a substantial sum be paid out to one of the trustees to ensure this would be done. All that survives today of Ruddock's work for this book is the proposal she originally submitted to Exeter in 1992.

The destruction of her notes was considered a significant loss because while many of the topics listed in Ruddock's proposal could well be summaries of existing research, others could only be explained if she had found new documentary evidence about Cabot and his associates to support them. Maddeningly, the proposal does not list which sections might reveal new evidence and where specifically this potentially new evidence could be found. It makes sense that Ruddock would wish to keep this information close until the book was published, but if she had indeed uncovered new evidence to increase the body of knowledge around Cabot, once her notes were destroyed those documents would need to be re-discovered. I heard one history youtuber refer to Ruddock as "controversial" because of this decision but her research was never controversial - she was well respected in her field. It was only her decision to destroy her research notes that is controversial and it suggests that either she felt that no one else should benefit from her unfinished work after her death or that she believed the information she had gathered was still too inconclusive to trust someone else to publish it in her name.

Perhaps the most exciting example is this excerpt from her outline for chapter XV:

"...John Cabot and his companions given up for lost. Return of the survivors in the spring of 1500. Death of John Cabot. The king compensates Weston for his losses. His last years in Bristol. Arrest of Thirkell and Bradley ordered June 1500. Thirkell and Bradley's end. Fra Giovanni does not return..."

There is no known documentary evidence that could support these statements, so the question was what did Ruddock find? A letter Ruddock wrote to Simon Baker in 1999 adds that John Cabot's death occurred "less than four months after his return", a detail which suggests she had found some new documentation. Supplementary notes regarding her proposal that were sent to Exeter stated that the information for these chapters came from "English records as yet uncatalogued" and that these show Cabot's "return and death and also which Bristol men and London supporters came back and how the king treated them". Dr Evan Jones of Bristol suggests that these records could be "the king's memoranda rolls or the exchequer memoranda rolls, both of which are uncatalogued and both of which had been employed by Ruddock previously. It may also be that the household books of Henry VII contain further useful information."

Some of the lost documents re-discovered

The hunt for Ruddock's sources has carried on through the Cabot Project at Bristol University and elsewhere and some of the missing documents have since come to light. In 2009, Jones announced the re-discovery of one of Ruddock's pieces of evidence in "Henry VII’s letter to John Morton concerning William Weston’s voyage to the new found land". This letter suggests that Weston was scheduled shorly to set sail to find the "New Found Land" and could only have been written in 1498, 1499 or 1500. The accounts of the King's treasurer from the time list a payment to Weston immediately after a payment to "a Venetian in reward" which is assumed to be Cabot. Since it is known that Cabot was often accompanied to court by several Bristol merchants this entry suggests that one at least was Weston.

In 2011, a document entitled "Privy Seal Warrant for John Cabot's pension of £20 per year, granted in December 1497 by King Henry VII, following Cabot's discovery voyage to North America" was published which supports one of the topics listed for Chapter XI of Ruddock's proposal.

In 2012, Francesco Guidi-Bruscoli released his work "John Cabot and his Italian Financiers" which provided documentary evidence for a topic listed for Chapter VI in Ruddock's proposal that Cabot had financial backing from Italian bankers in London, specifically the Florentine House of the Bardi.

Some of Ruddock's topics for which we previously had no known evidence now appear to have been based upon documents she found in her research which were lost again after her death. Does this mean that all of those topics will be shown to be based in fact? If so, John Cabot may not have been not lost at sea on his 1498 voyage but instead returned to England with information about the new world that he could pass on to his son Sebastian.

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