HISTORY. COLONIAL PERIOD. The territory in cluded within the United States of America was originally occupied solely by numerous tribes of Indians. The Northeastern coast was probably vis ited about the year A.D. 1000 and subsequently by the Northmen (see VINELAND). and other naviga tors may in the following five centuries have sighted parts of the coast ; but the existence of the American continent was unknown to the world at large until after Columbus's discovery in 1492. In 1497 .John Cabot reached the coast of America, probably in the neighborhood of Cape Breton. The Portuguese Cortereal ex plored the coast southward from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in 1500-01. and probably from as early a date as 1504 fishermen from Normandy and Brittany frequented the shores of Newfound land. In 1513 Juan Ponce de Leon explored a portion of Florida in a romantic search for the fountain of youth : and in 1520 some Spanish vessels from Santo Domingo were driven upon the coast of Carolina. During the following year. through the conquests of Cort6s (q.v.) and his followers, Mexico, including the territory later known as Texas. New Mexico, and California, became a province of Spain. In the same decade Verrazano explored the coast between North Caro ling, and Newfoundland and Narvaez made his disastrous expedition to Florida. Ferdinand de Soto in 1539-42 led a Spanish expedition from the coast of Florida westward, discovering the Missis sippi River (April, 1541). Simultaneously with this expedition, Coronado's men explored a great part of what is now the Southwestern United States. A Spanish settlement was made at Saint Augustine, Florida, in 1565; and in 1584 85 Sir Walter Palcgh (q.v.) sent two expeditions to the coast of North Carolina, and attempted to form a settlement on Roanoke Island. None of the settlements attempted dur ing the sixteenth century, however, except Saint Augustine, had any perinanence; and it was not until the seventeenth century that the Europeans, and especially the English, devoted their enter prises to colonization rather than to exploration. King James in 1606 granted a charter to a large colonizing corporation which comprised two com panies, the London Company,. which received certain rights between 34° and 41° north latitude, and the Plymouth Company, which received cer tain rights between 35° and 45°. The London Company in 1607 founded Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement within the limits of the present United States. Dere in 1619 a representative assembly was called, the first in the New World. In 1607, also, two members of the Plymouth Company, Sir Fer dinand Gorges and Sir John Popham, sent out an expedition to the Kennebec, where the settlers experienced a severe winter, and in 1608 abandoned the undertaking. In 1620 certain dis
senters who had secured a grant from the Lon don Company landed by mistake farther north ward and settled Plymouth. Between these two colonies the Dutch had already established them selves (1613) at New Amsterdam. Quebec was settled in 1608, and a large part of the country on the Great Lakes and on the Mississippi was explored by Nicolet (1634), by Marquette and Joliet (1673), and by La Salle (I682), and settle ments were early made by the French at the out posts of Kaskaskia and Arkansas Post, and at Mo bile and Vincennes. Thus the beginnings were made of two distinct movements of the incoming popu lation, in the course of one of which the English were to occupy practically the entire Atlantic seaboard of the present United States, excluding Florida, while in the course of the other the French were to establish themselves at strategic points on the two great waterways. The coloniz ing work of the French was such as to make con spicuous the trading post, the military element, and the bureaucratic class, and to minimize the features of public development, of local political life, and of permanence in method and purpose. The English, on the other hand, brought with them their school, their Church, and their polit ical forms, and founded colonies on lines which were adhered to throughout their later develop ment. (The early history of the various colonies, the union of which formed the United States, will be found under the !leads of the different States.) In some of the colonies representative govern ments were maintained, in which all officers, both executive and judicial, as well as the entire legislature, were chosen by the people. On the other hand, in the royal provinces, such as Vir ginia and New York, the ehief judicial and execu tive officers, as well as members of the upper branch of the legislature, were appointees of the Crown, the general population sharing in the provincial government only through the choice of the members of the legislature. This dis tribution of privilege characterized also the pro prietary provinces, smelt as _Maryland, in which, However, appointments were made by the pro prietors instead of by the Crown. Thus in the royal and proprietary provinces the ultimate authority was outside of the province, while in charter provinces all authority apparently was within each province, and there was in the scheme by which these provinces were organized no effective means of subordinating their political actions to the power of the central administra tion except through the alteration or abolition of their charters..