Spanish Explorations MS Chapter 3 Section 1

1. Prince Henry the Navigator conducted a special school in Portugal for seamen and explorers and helped launch the Great Age of Exploration.

Christopher Columbus had studied geography and cartography (the art and technique of making maps and charts) in Portugal under Prince Henry. He was convinced that the world was round and that he could sail west and eventually arrive in the Indies. Columbus persuaded the King of Spain to

provide him with three ships and crewmen and supplies for his historic voyage in 1492. Columbus was correct in his belief that the world was round, but he did not know about the American continents, which the Europeans would call the New World.

Hernando deSoto’s Expedition

2. In the early 1540s, less than fifty years after the discovery of the New World, a Spanish expedition led by Hernando de Soto trekked across the land that would become the state of Mississippi. This

expedition (a journey for a specific purpose, such as exploration) was the beginning of what

historians call the European period, or colonial period, of American history. The great powers of Europe—Spain, France, and England—were locked in

a two-hundred-year struggle to control the New World and its vast wealth.

4. After spending about a month building rafts to ferry his men and supplies across the great river, de Soto continued westward through Arkansas into east Texas. Failing to find any gold or other treasure in Arkansas and Texas, de Soto returned to the river, where he died from a long-festering wound suffered in an earlier battle. Hernando de Soto was buried in the muddy waters of the great river that will always be associated with his name. After de Soto’s burial, the survivors of his expedition, which was less than half its original size, sailed down the Mississippi to the Gulf Coast, where they followed the coastline

to the settlement at Tampico, Mexico.

Th e Beginning of European Rivalries

5. After de Soto’s failure to find any treasure,

the southern woodlands were undisturbed for

another 130 years. Eventually, the great pow-

ers of Europe realized that the real treasures of

the New World were not gold and silver. More

profit could be made from trade and commerce

with the colonies (geographical areas politi-

cally controlled by a distant country) that could

be established in this vast land that Columbus

had discovered. So France, Spain, and England

began establishing colonies in the New World.

6. As long as these European colonies were

located along the fringes (on the coastline of

North America), there was minimal contact or rivalry among the nations. But as the settlements began to move inland and the nations started claiming the same territory, that rivalry spawned (generated) a series of colonial wars. Those wars would ultimately result in the removal of the European powers from North America and the emergence of the United States. The place called Mississippi was right in the middle of that rivalry.