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| Explorers in a New
Land 1000-1550. Norse sailor Leif Ericson became the first known European to set foot on the New World -- about A.D. 1000. No mariner matched his feat until Christopher Columbus reached the Bahamas in 1492, and John Cabot found the fish-rich Grand Bank in 1497 and began the futile search for a navigable Northwest Passage. During the next 53 years Spanish explorers probed the Southwest and as far east as Kansas seeking gold, and France staked its claim to the game-rich St. Lawrence Valley. 1551-1650. In this period Francis Drake claimed California for England; Juan de Oñate colonized New Mexico and blazed new trails east into Kansas and west to Lower California; and Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in French Canada and pushed west to Lake Huron. Meanwhile Henry Hudson discovered the river that bears his name and Captain John Smith charted New England's coast. 1651-1750. In the final 100 years of colonial exploration an Italian Jesuit, Eusebio Kino, founded the first missions in southern Arizona and northwest Mexico, but France scored the most spectacular successes. Fur trader Louis Joliet and Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette padled down the unmapped Mississippi to the Arkansas River to open up the fur trade in the Midwest. Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, descended to the mouth of the Mississippi and claimed all the land in the vast river system for France. Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de La Vérendrye, and his sons, Louis and François, eventually extended the French fur empire all the way to the upper Missouri River.
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| SKC Films Library --> American History. --> Discovery of America and Early
Explorations. This page was last updated on 10/25/2011. |
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