Before the Pilgrims

Mid-November may not be the best time to mention it, but the settlement of North America by Europeans did not begin with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. A whole lot of exploration and settlement took place before that, and all this is the subject of a fascinating book by Tony Horwitz, A Voyage Long and Strange (2008).

Americans make a big deal about the Pilgrims, and in a few days most of us will feast in their memory, but Horwitz wanted to know about those explorers and settlers who came before. He wanted to, as much as possible centuries later, walk in their footsteps and see what they saw.

It is not a pretty picture, which may be why most Americans, including most American history teachers, choose to ignore it, or at least gloss over it. By 21st century standards, these were not nice people. They lusted after gold. They robbed, raped, enslaved and massacred the native people they encountered. They didn't even behave kindly toward their own people, as in the case of the Roanoke settlers who were abandoned.

Horwitz begins with the Vikings, who explored and founded short-lived settlements in the northeastern regions of the continent around the year 1000, then turns to Christopher Columbus, who succeeded "because he was so stubbornly wrong." He died believing he had found a new route to India. After that Horwitz examines such explorers at DeLeon and DeSoto and the settlements in St. Augustine and Jamestown.

But Horwitz looks not just at the past but also at the present. He travels to places that may (or in some cases may not) have been visited by these people, looks for remnants of their time there and talks with both scholars and people who now live in these areas to get their take on the past. Much of this is written in the manner of Bill Bryson, full of information presented in a wry and whimsical way.

As important as history may be, Horwitz concludes by stating that myth may be more important. It feels good to ignore a "monstrous man" like DeSoto and failed settlements where so many people died and focus instead on myths about Pilgrims. (They weren't called Pilgrims until many years later, they had a feast but didn't make a big deal out of it, the Indians were uninvited guests, they probably ate venison and fish but not turkey, etc.) As journalists like to say in jest, why let the facts get in the way of a good story?