English exploration in North America before Jamestown has been relatively neglected, except for Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony. This study is a survey of the contacts which the Tudor English, 1497-1603, made with North American natives.John Cabot and his young sons reached North America in 1497. He or one of his successors took three American aborigines to England. Henry VII showed concern for natives of North America and suggested that his explorers make rules designed to protect the aborigines. Henry VIII helped finance voyages to America and indirectly laid foundations for later English discovery and colonization, but his son, Edward VI, and his daughter Mary were little interested in furthering English activities in North America.Elizabeth the Protestant was enthusiastic about America and about Christianizing its natives. She was unlucky in backing Thomas Stuckley in the early 1560'x, but involved herself extensively in the three voyages of Martin Frobisher in the late 1570's. These voyages turned into a wild gold chase but his expeditions returned with much information, not appreciated at the time, of the Arctic regions of North America and its people. The Eskimos captured five of Frobisher's men, whom he was never able to recover. The captain seized several natives and took them to England where they aroused much curiosity. The Privy Council gave Frobisher specific instructions concerning his future contacts with the welfare of the aborigines. A minister, who accompanied Frobisher's third expedition, was to remain a year with a company of 100, serve them and convert the Eskimos. This colony did not remain, however.Sir Francis Drake made his global circumnavigation during the years Frobisher sailed with his three expeditions. The son of an Anglican rector and avid Protestant, Drake obviously had a real Christian interest in the Indians whom he encountered, especially in Nova Albion or California. He hoped to establish colonies in the Western Hemisphere which would be missions to the pagans. These colonies and their Christian Indians were intended to counter Spanish activities in the New World.Early in the 1580's Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed with an expedition to Newfoundland. His. leading associate, the pro-Catholic Sir George Peckham, wrote a tract to promote this expedition which was the first to argue extensively that England should colonize in America in order to Christianize and civilize the Indians.Gilbert's half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, was long involved in colonization efforts, in Christianizing the Indians, and extending the English empire.Captain John Davis followed Martin Frobisher a decade later to the Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions. In the 1590'x, Davis wrote two books in which he praised the Eskimos as the most blessed of peoples, and asserted it was England's Christian responsibility to carry the Gospel to these pagans.The Reverend Richard Rakluyt was the younger cousin of the lawyer, Richard siakluyt; as leading geographers during Elizabethan times, they knew most of the great English captains and navigators. The minister was the compiler, editor and publisher of a mass of geographical information often described as the prose epic of the English nation.English Separatists during the 1590's made a colonizing thrust into the St. Lawrence Gulf, and after the turn of the century the English made two ploys into the New England area, where the Indians seemed friendly at first. In the south, one of the two voyages sent to look for the lost Roanoke Colony ended in tragedy just after Elizabeth died.By 1603 many of the Indians in the Chesapeake Bay and Roanoke areas were hostile to the English. Spaniards and Frenchmen, as well as Englishmen who had visited there earlier were in part responsible for this. Thus by the beginning of the Stuart period the English had secured a comprehensive knowledge of the eastern North American coast, but through their own efforts or those of others, had to some degree alienated its native inhabitants.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/180639 |
| Date | January 1971 |
| Creators | Sewell, William Kenneth |
| Contributors | Stoeckel, Althea L. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | x, 289 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
| Coverage | e-uk-en |
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