Violent Metamorphosis: The Americas before, during, and after European Colonization

After one year, my lecture on the only authentic pre-Columbian European artifact ever found in the United States becomes public.

Created in Norway, 1069-1080 AD, during reign of King Olaf Kyrre
–Made of silver alloy
–Found at Goddard Site, Naskeag Point, Maine, dated 1100s-1200s AD

The only authentic Norse artifact ever found in the United States, this small silver coin dated to the 11th century may be an elaborate hoax, or a crucial clue to trade and contact between Europe and America in the centuries between the fall of Vinland and the arrival of Columbus.

We examine the enigmatic and elusive figure of Columbus, from his likely Jewish background, to his bizarre and hairbrained scheme of sailing to Asia, his brutal and chaotic invasion of the West Indies, his struggle to defend his honors and titles, and finally his apocalyptic vision of his own role in the End Times. We consider how Columbus, a fairly obscure and rejected figure after his death, came to be held up as a symbol of both the best and the worst of the American psyche.

We trace how Portugal and Spain, two previously marginal European kingdoms, rapidly and unexpectedly exploded onto the world scene, building a chain of fortified colonies stretching from North Africa to China, and conquering the larger and richer empires of Mexico and Peru. The early Iberian colonizers sought to continue the tradition of the Crusades and the Reconquista, and saw their foreign conquests as steps towards retaking Jerusalem; the benefited not only from superior weaponry and navigation, but from cataclysmic disease epidemics that brought the Pre-Columbian empires to their knees.

After 1500, Florida becomes a battleground in a new struggle for control of North America; we discuss the repeated doomed attempts by French and Spanish adventurers, from Ponce de Leon to the Huguenot colonists at Fort Caroline, to establish a foothold in Florida, until Spain finally succeeds in creating a lasting European stronghold at Saint Augustine.

How did a chain of sparsely populated islands, stalked by earthquakes, hurricanes, and deadly tropical diseases, become the most powerful and prosperous colonies on earth? We trace how bands of adventurers, including pirates and Crusader knights, took advantage of Spain’s fragile hold on the Caribbean islands, superior seafaring skills, and the growing slave trade, to build unlikely new societies, while the Irish and African laborers that they forced into service adapted or struck out for freedom.

We consider the struggles of European colonists and missionaries, indigenous tribes, and African laborers to protect their territories and secure their freedom through two tumultuous centuries of Spanish rule in Florida. From the first arrival of yellow fever, to the construction of an indestructible limestone fortress, to the creation of the first black-led town in America, the Spanish era laid the foundations of a distinctive Floridian society which miraculously persisted and was never conquered by its powerful enemies to the north.

How did a series of brutally conquered states and forced labor camps evolve over 200 years into a flourishing empire of trade, art, and culture? How did this new civilization manage land, money, and the status distinctions of ancestry and color? Why did Spanish America, one of the biggest imperial domains ever seen on earth, fail to benefit the mother country? And how did a cloistered nun in Mexico City come to be known as the first intellectual leading light of the Americas?

About 10 ft. long-made in France, ca. 1540s-lost in shipwreck, ca. 1562-5, Located on bottom of the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Canaveral.

We examine the mysteries surrounding a French bronze cannon recently discovered on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean near Florida, amidst the wreckage of an unidentified sixteenth-century fleet. The cannon and other artifacts are rare, priceless remnants of French Protestants’ ill-fated attempts to colonize North America before the Spanish, and their discovery sparked a heated international legal dispute. The mysterious shipwreck gives us a window into a rare moment when Europe’s vicious religious wars spilled over into the Americas.

How did the early colonists in Virginia know that they could profitably grow a species of tobacco from South America? They learned about it from the series of mostly short-lived English, French, and Dutch colonies and outposts in tropical South America, between the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, in the area called “Guiana.” We discuss with historian Melissa Morris of U. of Wyoming how these early colonies, despite being almost totally forgotten by historians, left a lasting imprint on the Americas, and reveal the haphazard and unpredictable nature of early global empires.

Anticipating the 400th anniversary of the foundation of Plymouth colony, Michael J. Simpson and I discuss the deep background of the creation of “New England” — the long history of contact, exchange, violence, disease, and acculturation among indigenous and European peoples, both before and after 1620, that created a complex creolized world before any Puritans were even on the scene. Michael’s instagram: @hiddenhistoryri (Payment for this installment will be split between the two collaborators)

– Ceramic chalice, decorated in Jemez black-on-white style, with crosses
– Made in pueblo of Giusewa, between 1598 and the 1630s
– Found in the ruins of the Spanish mission at Giusewa, 1937

A simple pottery chalice, probably made by a local indigenous woman, reveals the early stages of interaction between Spanish missionaries and the ancient Pueblo civilization — an intermingling that would lead to conflict, and eventually, a massive revolt that some have called “the first American Revolution.”

Seal stamp, made of Bronze, with image of St. Catherine of Alexandria, made in Spain, ca. 1680s, possibly earlier-used by Santa Catalina de Guale mission, in Georgia and Florida, and found on Amelia Island, Florida. The only surviving Spanish mission seal ever found in the United States, this small bronze stamp was once the critical link to Spain’s northernmost mission in America. Small enough to sit in the palm of the hand, the Dorion mission seal encapsulates a history of religious zealotry, conversion, and inter-imperial struggle in what is now the American southeast.

Made of salt-glazed stoneware, in Frechen, Germany, ca. 1605–Found at James Fort, Jamestown, Virginia–Held in Collection of Historic Jamestowne.

In some ways, this Bartmann (or “Bearded Man”) stoneware beer jug with an effigy of a jovial fat man and coats of arms is typical of the wares that poured our of Germany in the 1600s, several of which were found in the long-lost ruins of James Fort, the first English fortress at Jamestown. On the other hand, a peculiar feature of its decorative crest suggests possible hidden meanings, hinting at secret Catholic sympathies threatening England’s first serious effort to colonize the New World.

“Cowboys and Indians.” For most Americans, the words evoke a sinister game, representing a timeless enmity between the forces of civilization and savagery. In actual historical fact, cowboys and Indians were symbiotic trading partners, and many cowboys were Indians themselves; but the image of the cowboy as a conqueror and as the bearer of civilization into the “Wild West” has become central to the American national myth. We trace how the romantic self-image of the 19th-century buckaroos as modern-day knights gradually evolved into the iconography of gunslingers battling on the untamed frontier, from early dime novels to grand “horse operas” to Hollywood Westerns and science fiction, and finally to the new fable of the gay cowboy.

Why do we have uniformed officers called “police” who do things (like patrolling streets and investigating missing persons) that we call “policing”? We trace the evolution of law enforcement over the past two hundred years in response to urban growth, immigration, and labor unrest, and the struggles over who controls the police and their activities.

All of history is, to one degree or another, mythology – the weaving of a coherent, usable narrative out of the chaos of people’s lives. We consider how societies all over the world, since before the beginning of civilization, have developed myths to explain the world that they experience. We also trace some of the major schools of academic history, which have tried to fashion overarching storylines to give meaning to human struggles – from Biblical providential history to Marxism to postmodernism. We begin by examining the most central myth of the origins of American society: the “first Thanksgiving.”

Who the heck are the “Anglo-Saxons,” and why are Americans getting all lathered up about “Anglo-Saxon institutions”? Find out where the Anglo-Saxon myth came from and how over the past three hundred years it’s been used to justify Parliamentary supremacy, the Rhodes Scholarship, the American entry into World War I, immigration restrictions, and college admission quotas. You never knew you were suffering under the Norman yoke, but now you do.