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First Europeans in North America
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 a settlement 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 Viking sailors 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 at L'Anse-aux-Meadows in northern
Newfoundland, thus supporting at least some of the claims the Norse
sagas make.
 In 1497, just five years
after Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean looking for a
western route to Asia, a Venetian sailor named John Cabot (right)
arrived in Newfoundland on a mission for the British king. Although
fairly quickly forgotten, Cabot's journey was later to provide the
basis for British claims to North 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, of course, never saw the mainland United States, but the
first explorations of the continental United States were launched
from the Spanish possessions that he helped establish. The first
of these took place in 1513 when a group of men under Juan Ponce
de Leon 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 Amerigo Vespucci, who wrote a widely popular account
of his voyages to a "New World." By 1529 reliable 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 would be completely abandoned.
Among the most significant early Spanish explorations was that of
Hernando De Soto, a veteran conquistador who had accompanied Francisco
Pizzaro during the conquest of Peru. Leaving Havana in 1539, De
Soto's expedition landed in Florida and ranged through the southeastern
United States as far as the Mississippi River in search of riches.
 Another Spaniard, Francisco
Coronado (left) , set out from Mexico in 1540 in search of the mythical
Seven Cities of Cibola. Coronado's travels took him to the Grand
Canyon and Kansas, but failed to reveal the gold or treasure his
men sought.
However, Coronado's party did leave the peoples of the region a
remarkable, if unintended gift: enough horses escaped from his party
to transform life on the Great Plains. Within a few generations,
the Plains Indians had become masters of horsemanship, greatly expanding
the range and scope of their activities.
While the Spanish were pushing up from the south, the northern portion
of the present-day United States was slowly being revealed through
the journeys of men such as Giovanni da Verrazano. A Florentine
who sailed for the French, Verrazano made landfall in North Carolina
in 1524, then sailed north along the Atlantic coast past what is
now New York harbor.
A decade later, the Frenchman Jacques Cartier set sail with the
hope -- like the other Europeans before him -- of finding a sea
passage to Asia. Cartier's expeditions along the St. Lawrence River
laid the foundations for the French claims to North America, which
were to last until 1763.
Following the collapse of their first Quebec colony in the 1540s,
French Huguenots attempted to settle the northern coast of Florida
two decades later. The Spanish, viewing the French as a threat to
their trade route along the Gulf Stream, destroyed the colony in
1565. Ironically, the leader of the Spanish forces, Pedro Menendez,
would soon establish a town not far away -- St. Augustine. It was
the first permanent European settlement in what would become the
United States.
The great wealth which poured into Spain from the colonies in Mexico,
the Caribbean and Peru provoked great interest on the part of the
other European powers. With time, emerging maritime nations such
as England, drawn in part by Francis Drake's successful raids on
Spanish treasure ships, began to take interest in the New World.
In 1578 Humphrey Gilbert, the author of a treatise on the search
for the Northwest Passage, received a patent from Queen Elizabeth
to colonize the "heathen and barbarous landes" in the New World
which other European nations had not yet claimed. It would be five
years before his efforts could begin. When he was lost at sea, his
half-brother, Walter Raleigh, took up the mission.
In 1585 Raleigh (right) established the first British colony in
North America, on Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina.
It was later abandoned, and a second effort two years later also
proved a failure. It would be 20 years before the British would
try again. This time -- at Jamestown in 1607 -- the colony would
succeed, and North America would enter a new era.
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