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A People and A Nation
A History of the United States
Brief Eighth Edition

M ARY B ETH N ORTON

Cornell University

C AROL S HERIFF
College of William and Mary

D AVID M. K ATZMAN
University of Kansas

D AVID W. B LIGHT
Yale University

H OWARD P. C HUDACOFF
Brown University

F REDRIK L OGEVALL
Cornell University

B ETH B AILEY
Temple University

D EBRA M ICHALS
Merrimack College

Australia • Brazil • Japan • Korea • Mexico • Singapore • Spain • United Kingdom • United States
 A People and A Nation: A History of the © 2010, 2007 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
United States, Brief Eighth Edition
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 13 14 12 11 10
 Brief Contents

Maps xii 16 Reconstruction: An Unfinished

Figures xiii Revolution, 1865–1877 409
Tables xiv
Preface to the Brief Eighth Edition xv 17 The Development of the West,
Preface to the Full-Length Eighth Edition xvii 1877–1900 439
1 Three Old Worlds Create a New, 18 The Machine Age, 1877–1920 465
1492–1600 1 19 The Vitality and Turmoil of
2 Europeans Colonize North Urban Life, 1877—1920 493
America, 1600–1650 28 20 Gilded Age Politics, 1877–1900 522
3 North America in the Atlantic 21 The Progressive Era, 1895–1920 548
World, 1650–1720 55
22 The Quest for Empire, 1865–1914 575
4 American Society Transformed,
1720–1770 80 23 Americans in the Great War, 1914–1920
600
5 Severing the Bonds of Empire,
1754–1774 107 24 The New Era 1920–1929 627
6 A Revolution, Indeed, 25 The Great Depression and the
1774–1783 131 New Deal, 1929–1941 655
7 Forging a National Republic, 26 The United States in a Troubled World,
1776–1789 154 1920–1941 684
8 The Early Republic: Conflicts at 27 The Second World War at
Home and Abroad, 1789–1800 181 Home and Abroad, 1941–1945 707
9 Defining the Nation, 1801–1823 203 28 The Cold War and American
Globalism, 1945–1961 733
10 The Rise of the South 1815–1860 230
29 America at Midcentury, 1945–1960 762
11 The Modernizing North,
1815–1860 261 30 The Tumultuous Sixties, 1960–1968 792
12 Reform and Politics in the 31 Continuing Divisions and New Limits,
Age of Jackson 1824–1845 289 1969–1980 821
13 The Contested West, 32 Conservatism Revived, 1980–1992
1815–1860 315 850
14 Slavery and America’s Future: 33 Into the Global Millennium: America
The Road to War, 1845–1861 346 Since 1992 878
15 Transforming Fire: The Civil War, Appendix A-1
1861–1865 373
Index I-1
iii
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

Maps xii
Figures xiii
Tables xiv 3
Preface to the Brief Eighth Edition xv North America in the Atlantic World,
Preface to the Full-Length Eighth Edition xvii 1650–1720 55
❚ The Growth of Anglo-American Settlements 57
❚
1 ❚
A Decade of Imperial Crises: The 1670s 62
The Atlantic Trading System 65
Three Old Worlds Create a New,
❚ Slavery in North America and the Caribbean 68
1492–1600 1
❚ Imperial Reorganization and the Witchcraft Crisis 72
❚ American Societies 3 Links to the World: Exotic Beverages 76
❚ North America in 1492 5 ❚ Summary 77
❚ African Societies 8 Legacy for a People and a Nation: Americans of African
❚ European Societies 10 Descent 77
❚ Early European Explorations 12
❚ Voyages of Columbus, Cabot,
and Their Successors 13 4
❚ Spanish Exploration and Conquest 17 American Society Transformed,
❚ The Columbian Exchange 19 1720–1770 80
❚ Europeans in North America 20
Links to the World: Maize 21
❚ Population Growth and Ethnic Diversity 82
❚ Summary 23 ❚ Economic Growth and Development 86
Legacy for a People and a Nation: Kennewick Man/Ancient
❚ Colonial Cultures 91
One 24 Links to the World: Smallpox Inoculation 93
❚ Colonial Families 96
❚ Politics: Stability and Crisis in British America 99
2 ❚ A Crisis in Religion 101
Europeans Colonize North America, ❚ Summary 103
1600–1650 28 Legacy for a People and a Nation: “Self-Made Men” 103

❚ Spanish, French, and Dutch North

America 30
❚ The Caribbean 33 5
Links to the World: Wampum 34 Severing the Bonds of Empire,
❚ English Interest in Colonization 35 1754–1774 107
❚ The Founding of Virginia 37 ❚ Renewed Warfare Among Europeans and Indians
❚ Life in the Chesapeake 41 109
❚ The Founding of New England 44 ❚ 1763: A Turning Point 112
❚ Life in New England 48 Links to the World: The First Worldwide War 113
❚ Summary 51 ❚ The Stamp Act Crisis 116
Legacy for a People and a Nation: Blue Laws 51
v
vi Contents

❚ Resistance to the Townshend Acts 120

❚
❚
Confrontations in Boston 122
Tea and Turmoil 125
8
❚ Summary 127
The Early Republic: Conflicts at Home
and Abroad, 1789–1800 181
Legacy for a People and a Nation: Women’s Political
Activism 127 ❚ Building a Workable Government 182
❚ Domestic Policy Under Washington and Hamilton
184
❚ The French Revolution and the Development of
6 ❚
Partisan Politics 188
Partisan Politics and Relations with Great
A Revolution, Indeed, 1774–1783 131
Britain 190
❚ Government by Congress and Committee 133 ❚ John Adams and Political Dissent 192
❚ Contest in the Backcountry 135 ❚ The West in the New Nation 194
❚ Choosing Sides 136 ❚ “Revolutions” at the End of the Century 196
❚ War and Independence 138 Links to the World: Haitian Refugees 198
Links to the World: New Nations 139 Legacy for a People and a Nation: Dissent During
❚ The Struggle in the North 143 Wartime 199
❚ Life in the Army and on the Home Front 145 ❚ Summary 200
❚ Victory in the South 147
❚ Summary 150
Legacy for a People and a Nation: Revolutionary
Origins 150 9
Defining the Nation, 1801–1823 203
❚ Political Visions 205
❚ National Expansion Westward 208
7 ❚ The Nation in the Orbit of Europe 212
Forging a National Republic, 1776–1789 ❚ The War of 1812 215
154 Links to the World: Industrial Piracy 219
❚ Creating a Virtuous Republic 156 ❚ The Nationalist Program 220
Links to the World: Novels 158 ❚ Sectionalism Exposed 223
❚ The First Emancipation and the Growth of Racism ❚ Summary 225
160 Legacy for a People and a Nation: States’ Rights and
Nullification 226
❚ Designing Republican Governments 163
❚ Trials of the Confederation 165
❚ Order and Disorder in the West 169
❚ From Crisis to the Constitution 170 10
❚ Opposition and Ratification 175 The Rise of the South 1815–1860 230
❚ Summary 177 ❚ The “Distinctive” South? 232
Legacy for a People and a Nation: The Township and Range ❚ Southern Expansion, Indian Resistance,
System 177 and Removal 235
Links to the World: The Amistad Case 237
 Contents vii

❚ Limits of Mobility in a Hierarchical Society 242

❚
❚
The Planters’ World 246
Slave Life and Labor 249
13
The Contested West, 1815-1860 315
❚ Slave Culture and Resistance 252
❚ Summary 257 ❚ The West in the American Imagination 317
Legacy for a People and a Nation: Reparations for ❚ Expansion and Resistance in the Old
Slavery 257 Northwest 320
❚ The Federal Government and Westward Expansion
325
Links to the World: Gold In California 327
11 ❚ The Southwestern Borderlands 330
The Modernizing North, 1815–1860 261 ❚ Migration to the Far West 335
❚ The Politics of Territorial Expansion 340
❚ Or Is It the North That Was Distinctive? 262 ❚ Summary 342
❚ The Transportation Revolution 265 Legacy for a People and a Nation: Descendants of Early Latino
❚ Factories and Industrialization 269 Settlers 343
Links to the World: The United States as a Developing
Nation 270
❚ Consumption and Commercialization 273
❚ Families in Flux 276
❚ The Growth of Cities 277
14
Slavery and America’s Future: The Road
❚ Summary 285 to War, 1845–1861 346
Legacy for a People and a Nation: A Mixed Economy 285
❚ The War with Mexico and Its Consequences 348
❚ 1850: Compromise or Armistice? 352
❚ Slavery Expansion and Collapse of the Party
System 357
12 Links to the World: Annexation of Cuba 360
Reform and Politics in the Age of ❚ Slavery and the Nation’s Future 362
Jackson, 1824–1845 289 ❚ Disunion 364
❚ From Revival to Reform 291 ❚ Summary 370
❚ Communitarian Experiments 294 Legacy for a People and a Nation: Terrorist or Freedom
Fighter? 370
❚ Abolitionism 296
Links to the World: The International Antislavery
Movement 298
❚ Women’s Rights 300
❚ Jacksonianism and Party Politics 301 15
❚ Federalism at Issue: The Nullification and Bank Transforming Fire: The Civil War,
Controversies 304
1861–1865 373
❚ The Whig Challenge and the Second Party
System 307 ❚ America Goes to War, 1861–1862 375
❚ Summary 310 ❚ War Transforms the South 380
Legacy for a People and a Nation: The Bible Belt 311 ❚ Wartime Northern Economy and Society 383
❚ The Advent of Emancipation 387
viii Contents

❚ The Soldiers’ War 391

❚
❚
1863: The Tide of Battle Turns 393
Disunity: South, North, and West 394
18
❚ 1864–1865: The Final Test of Wills 399
The Machine Age, 1877–1920 465
Links to the World: The Civil War in Britain 400 ❚ Technology and the Triumph of Industrialization
❚ Summary 404 468
Legacy for a People and a Nation: “Big Government” 405 Links to the World: The Atlantic Cable 469
❚ Mechanization and the Changing Status of
Labor 472
❚ Labor Violence and the Union Movement 476
16 ❚
❚
Standards of Living 480
The Corporate Consolidation Movement 485
Reconstruction: An Unfinished
Revolution, 1865–1877 409 ❚ The Gospel of Wealth and Its Critics 487
❚ Summary 488
❚ Wartime Reconstruction 411 Legacy for a People and a Nation: Technology of Recorded
❚ The Meanings of Freedom 413 Sound 489
❚ Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan 416
❚ The Congressional Reconstruction Plan 418
❚ Reconstruction Politics and Economy in the South
425
❚ Retreat from Reconstruction 429
19
The Vitality and Turmoil of Urban Life,
Links to the World: The Grants’ Tour of the World 431 1877–1920 493
❚ Summary 435
Legacy for a People and a Nation: The Lost Cause 436 ❚ Growth of the Modern City 495
❚ Urban Neighborhoods 500
❚ Living Conditions in the Inner City 503
❚ Managing the City 505
17 ❚
❚
Family Life 509
The New Leisure and Mass Culture 512
The Development of the West,
1877–1900 439 Links to the World: Japanese Baseball 514
❚ Summary 518
❚ The Economic Activities of Native Peoples 441 Legacy for a People and a Nation: Ethnic Food 518
❚ The Transformation of Native Cultures 443
❚ The Extraction of Natural Resources 447
❚ Irrigation and Transportation 452
Links to the World: The Australian Frontier 454
❚ Farming the Plains 456
20
Gilded Age Politics, 1877–1900 522
❚ The Ranching Frontier 459
❚ Summary 461 ❚ The Nature of Party Politics 524
Legacy for a People and a Nation: The Myth of the ❚ Issues of Legislation 525
Cowboy 462 ❚ Tentative Presidents 528
❚ Discrimination, Disfranchisement, and
Responses 529
 Contents ix

❚ Agrarian Unrest and Populism 532

Links to the World: Russian Populism 536
❚ The Depression and Protests of the 1890s 537 23
❚ The Silver Crusade and the Election of 1896 541 Americans in the Great War, 1914–1920
❚ Summary 543 600
Legacy for a People and a Nation: Interpreting a Fairy ❚ Precarious Neutrality 602
Tale 544
❚ The Decision for War 605
❚ Winning the War 607
Links to the World: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 611
21 ❚ Mobilizing the Home Front 612
❚ Civil Liberties Under Challenge 615
The Progressive Era, 1895–1920 548
❚ Red Scare, Red Summer 617
❚ The Varied Progressive Impulse 550 ❚ The Defeat of Peace 619
Links to the World: Workers’ Compensation 553
❚ Summary 622
❚ Government and Legislative Reform 554 Legacy for a People and a Nation: Freedom of Speech
❚ New Ideas in Social Institutions 557 and the ACLU 623
❚ Challenges to Racial and Sexual
Discrimination 559
❚ Theodore Roosevelt and the Revival of the
Presidency 564 24
❚ Woodrow Wilson and the Extension of Progressive The New Era, 1920–1929 627
Reform 569
❚ Summary 571 ❚ Big Business Triumphant 629
Legacy for a People and a Nation: Margaret Sanger, Planned ❚ Politics and Government 630
Parenthood, and the Birth-Control Controversy 571 ❚ A Consumer Society 632
❚ Cities, Migrants, and Suburbs 634
Links to the World: Pan American Airways 636
22 ❚ New Rhythms of Everyday Life 638
❚ Lines of Defense 641
The Quest for Empire, 1865–1914 575
❚ The Age of Play 644
❚ Imperial Dreams 578 ❚ Cultural Currents 646
Links to the World: National Geographic 581 ❚ The Election of 1928 and the End of the
❚ Ambitions and Strategies 582 New Era 648
❚ Crises in the 1890s: Hawai’i, Venezuela, and Cuba ❚ Summary 650
583 Legacy for a People and a Nation: Intercollegiate Athletics
❚ The Spanish-American War and the Debate over 651
Empire 587
❚ Asian Encounters: War in the Philippines,
Diplomacy in China 589
❚ TR’s World 591 25
❚ Summary 596 The Great Depression and the New Deal,
Legacy for a People and a Nation: Guantánamo Bay 596
1929–1941 655
❚ Hoover and Hard Times: 1929–1933 657
❚ Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Launching of the New
Deal 662
x Contents

❚ Political Pressure and the Second New Deal 666

❚ Labor 671
❚ Federal Power and the Nationalization of Culture 28
673 The Cold War and American Globalism,
Links to the World: The 1936 Olympic Games 676 1945–1961 733
❚ The Limits of the New Deal 677 ❚ From Allies to Adversaries 735
❚ Summary 680 ❚ Containment in Action 740
Legacy for a People and a Nation: Social Security 681
❚ The Cold War in Asia 744
❚ The Korean War 745
❚ Unrelenting Cold War 747
Links to the World: The People-to-People Campaign 750
26 ❚ The Struggle for the Third World 751
The United States in a Troubled World, ❚ Summary 757
1920–1941 684 Legacy for a People and a Nation: The National
❚ Searching for Peace and Order in the 1920s 686 Security State 758
❚ The World Economy, Cultural Expansion, and Great
Depression 688
❚ U.S. Dominance in Latin America 691 29
❚ The Course to War in Europe 693 America at Midcentury, 1945–1960 762
❚ Japan, China, and a New Order in Asia 696
❚ Shaping Postwar America 764
❚ U.S. Entry into World War II 698
❚ Domestic Politics in the Cold War Era 768
Links to the World: Radio News 700
❚ Cold War Fears and Anticommunism 770
❚ Summary 703
❚ The Struggle for Civil Rights 773
Legacy for a People and a Nation: Presidential Deception
of the Public 704 ❚ Creating a Middle-Class Nation 776
❚ Men, Women, and Youth at Midcentury 780
Links to the World: Barbie 784
❚ The Limits of the Middle-Class Nation 785
❚ Summary 788
27 Legacy for a People and a Nation: The Pledge of
The Second World War at Home Allegiance 788
and Abroad, 1941–1945 707
❚ The United States at War 709
❚ The Production Front and American Workers 712 30
❚ Life on the Home Front 715 The Tumultuous Sixties, 1960–1968 792
❚ The Limits of American Ideals 718
Links to the World: War Brides 719
❚ Kennedy and the Cold War 794
❚ Life in the Military 721 ❚ Marching for Freedom 798
❚ Winning the War 723 ❚ Liberalism and the Great Society 801
❚ Summary 728 ❚ Johnson and Vietnam 805
Legacy for a People and a Nation: Nuclear Proliferation 729 ❚ A Nation Divided 810
Links to the World: The British Invasion 814
❚ 1968 815
❚ Summary 817
Legacy for a People and a Nation: The Immigration
Act of 1965 817
 Contents xi

31 33
Continuing Divisions and New Limits, Into the Global Millennium: America
1969-1980 821 Since 1992 878
❚ The New Politics of Identity 823 ❚ Social Strains and New Political Directions 880
❚ The Women’s Movement and Gay Liberation 826 ❚ The New Economy and Globalization 883
❚ The End in Vietnam 828 ❚ Paradoxes of Prosperity 887
❚ Nixon, Kissinger, and the World 831 ❚ September 11 and the War on Terrorism 891
Links to the World: OPEC and the 1973 Oil Embargo 833 ❚ War and Occupation in Iraq 894
❚ Presidential Politics and the Crisis of Leadership ❚ Americans in the First Decade of the
834 New Millennium 898
❚ Economic Crisis 838 Links to the World: The Global AIDS Epidemic 903
❚ An Era of Cultural Transformation 841 Legacy for a People and a Nation: The Internet 905
❚ Renewed Cold War and Middle East Crisis 843 ❚ Summary 906
❚ Summary 846
Legacy for a People and a Nation: The All-Volunteer Force Appendix A-1
846 Index I-1

32
Conservatism Revived, 1980-1992 850
❚ Reagan and the Conservative Resurgence 852
❚ Reaganomics 855
❚ Reagan and the World 860
❚ American Society in the 1980s 864
❚ The End of the Cold War and Global Disorder 869
Links to the World: CNN 873
❚ Summary 875
Legacy for a People and a Nation: The Americans with
Disabilities Act 875
Maps

Map 1.1 Native Cultures of North America 6 Map 15.1 Battle of Gettysburg 394
Map 1.2 European Explorations in America 14 Map 15.2 Sherman’s March to the Sea 402
Map 2.1 European Settlements and Indian Tribes in Map 16.1 The Reconstruction 422
Eastern North America, 1650 32 Map 16.2 Presidential Election of 1876 and
Map 3.1 The Anglo-American Colonies in the Early the Compromise of 1877 434
Eighteenth Century 58 Map 17.1 The Development and Natural Resources of
Map 3.2 Atlantic Trade Routes 66 the West 448
Map 4.1 Major Origins and Destinations of Africans Map 17.2 The United States, 1876–1912 452
Enslaved in the Americas 83 Map 17.3 Agricultural Regions of the
Map 5.1 European Settlements and Indians, 1754 111 United States, 1890 457
Map 6.1 The War in the North, 1775–1777 143 Map 18.1 Industrial Production, 1919 467
Map 6.2 The War in the South 148 Map 19.1 Urbanization, 1880 and 1920 497
Map 7.1 African American Population, 1790: Map 20.1 Presidential Election, 1896 543
Proportion of Total Population 162 Map 21.1 Woman Suffrage Before 1920 563
Map 7.2 Western Land Claims and Cessions, Map 22.1 Imperialism in Asia: Turn of
1782–1802 166 the Century 590
Map 9.1 Louisiana Purchase 209 Map 22.2 U.S. Hegemony in the Caribbean and Latin
Map 9.2 Missouri Compromise and the State America 592
of the Union, 1820 225 Map 23.1 American Troops at the
Map 10.1 Removal of Native Americans from Western Front, 1918 610
the South, 1820–1840 241 Map 26.1 Japanese Expansion Before
Map 11.1 Major Roads, Canals, and Pearl Harbor 697
Railroads, 1850 268 Map 26.2 The German Advance 699
Map 11.2 Major American Cities in 1830 Map 27.1 The Pacific War 711
and 1860 278
Map 27.2 The Allies on the Offensive in Europe,
Map 12.1 Presidential Election, 1824 302 1942–1945 724
Map 12.2 Presidential Election, 1828 303 Map 28.1 Divided Europe 742
Map 13.1 Westward Expansion, 1800–1860 318 Map 28.2 The Rise of the Third World: Newly
Map 13.2 Settlement in the Old Southwest and Old Independent Nations Since 1943 752
Northwest, 1820 and 1840 321 Map 29.1 Rise of the Sunbelt, 1950–1960 778
Map 13.3 Western Indians and Routes Map 30.1 Southeast Asia and the Vietnam War 807
of Exploration 326
Map 31.1 The Continued Shift to the Sunbelt in the
Map 13.4 Mexico’s Far North 330 1970s and 1980s 840
Map 13.5 The California Gold Rush 339 Map 32.1 The United States in the Caribbean and
Map 14.1 The Kansas-Nebraska Act and Slavery Central America 861
Expansion, 1854 354 Map 32.2 The End of the Cold War in Europe 871
Map 14.2 The Divided Nation—Slave Map 33.1 The Middle East 896
and Free Areas, 1861 368
Map 33.2 Mapping the United States’s Diversity 899

xii
 Figures

Figure 1.1 Major Items in the Columbian Figure 22.1 The Rise of U.S. Economic Power
Exchange 19 in the World 579
Figure 2.1 Population of Virginia, 1625 43 Figure 23.1 The Federal Budget, 1914–1920 612
Figure 4.1 Regional Trading Patterns: New Figure 24.1 Changing Dimensions of Paid Female
England 88 Labor, 1910–1930 640
Figure 4.2 Regional Trading Patterns: Figure 24.2 Sources of Immigration, 1907
Middle Colonies 89 and 1927 643
Figure 4.3 Regional Trading Patterns: The Figure 25.1 The Economy Before and After the New Deal,
Chesapeake 90 1929–1941 667
Figure 4.4 Regional Trading Patterns: The Figure 25.2 Distribution of Total Family Income
Lower South 91 Among the American People, 1929–1944
Figure 7.1 Depreciation of Continental Currency, (percentage) 671
1777–1780 167 Figure 29.1 Birth Rate, 1945–1964 766
Figure 11.1 Major Sources of Immigration to the United Figure 29.2 Marital Distribution of the Female Labor
States, 1831–1860 281 Force, 1944–1970 781
Figure 14.1 Voting Returns of Counties with Few Figure 30.1 Poverty in America for Whites, African
Slaveholders, Eight Southern States, Americans, and All Races, 1959–1974 805
1860 and 1861 369 Figure 32.1 The United States’s Rising National Debt,
Figure 15.1 Comparative Resources, Union and 1974–1989 857
Confederate States, 1861 376 Figure 32.2 Poverty in America by Race. 859
Figure 18.1 Distribution of Occupational Categories Figure 32.3 Poverty in the United States by Race,
Among Employed Men and Women, 1974–1990 866
1880–1920 474
Figure 33.1 The Growth of the U.S. Hispanic
Figure 18.2 Children in the Labor Force, Population 898
1880–1930 475
Figure 33.4 The Changing American Family 900
Figure 20.1 Consumer Prices and Farm Product Prices,
1865–1913 533

xiii
Tables

Table 2.1 The Founding of Permanent European Table 14.3 Presidential Vote in 1860 (by State)
366
Colonies in North America, 1565–1640 31 Table 16.1 Plans for Reconstruction Compared422
Table 2.2 Tudor and Stuart Monarchs of England, Table 17.1 Summary: Government Land Policy 459
1509–1649 37
Table 18.1 American Living Standards,
Table 3.1 Restored Stuart Monarchs of England, 1890–1910 481
1660–1714 57
Table 24.1 Consumerism in the 1920s 633
Table 3.2 The Founding of English Colonies in North
Table 25.1 New Deal Achievements 666
America, 1664–1681 59
Table 29.1 Geographic Distribution of the U.S.
Table 4.1 Who Moved to America from England and
Population, 1930–1970 (in percentages) 767
Scotland in the Early 1770s, and Why? 85
Table 30.1 Great Society Achievements,
Table 5.1 The Colonial Wars, 1689–1763 109
1964–1966 804
Table 5.2 British Ministries and Their American
Table 33.1 U.S. Military Personnel on Active Duty in
Policies 120
Foreign Countries, 2005 904
Table 14.1 New Political Parties 352
Table 14.2 The Vote on the Kansas-Nebraska Act 357

xiv
 Preface to the Brief Eighth Edition

CREATION OF THE BRIEF EDITION

Nearly three decades have passed since the publication of the first brief edition of
A People and a Nation. In that initial brief edition, as well as each subsequent one, the
intent was to preserve the uniqueness and integrity of the complete work while con-
densing it. This Brief Eighth Edition once again reflects the scholarship, readability,
and comprehensiveness of the full-length version. It also maintains the integration
of social, cultural, political, economic, and foreign relations history that has been a
hallmark of A People and a Nation.
Starting with this edition, a new editor, Dr. Debra Michals, has worked with us,
ensuring that the changes in content and organization incorporated in the full-
length Eighth Edition were retained in the condensation. The authors attained re-
ductions by paring down details rather than deleting entire sections. The Brief
Eighth Edition thus contains fewer statistics, fewer quotations, and fewer examples
than the unabridged version. A sufficient number of quotations and examples are
retained, however, to maintain the richness in style created by the authors.
The Brief Eighth Edition is available in both one-volume and two-volume for-
mats. The two-volume format is divided as follows: Volume 1 contains Chapters 1
through 16, beginning with a discussion of three cultures—American, African, and
European—that intersected during the exploration and colonization of the New
World and ending with a discussion of the Reconstruction era. Volume 2 contains
Chapters 16 through 33, beginning its coverage at Reconstruction and extending the
history of the American people to the present. The chapter on Reconstruction ap-
pears in both volumes to provide greater flexibility in matching a volume to the his-
torical span covered by a specific course.

CHANGES IN THIS EDITION

While the following Preface to the full-length Eighth Edition elaborates on specific
content changes, we note here that the authors paid increased attention to the fol-
lowing: the history of children and childhood; the environment, including the past
impact of hurricanes; the American West, subject of a completely new chapter; and
the social and religious diversity of America’s population, developed through terri-
torial incorporation as well as through immigration. We have further widened our
lens to include more coverage of America’s place in the world. These emphases as
well as the updated scholarship on which they are based, are fully retained in the
Brief Eighth Edition. New to this edition are focus questions that follow each chap-
ter’s introduction to call students’ attention to key issues in the chapter. These ques-
tions are answered at the end of each chapter.
Although each author feels answerable for the whole of A People and a Nation,
we take primary responsibility for particular chapters: Mary Beth Norton,
Chapters 1–8; Carol Sheriff, Chapters 9, 11–13; David Blight, Chapters 10, 14–16;

xv
xvi Preface to the Brief Eighth Edition

Howard P. Chudacoff, Chapters 17–21 and 24; Fredrik Logevall, Chapters 22, 23, 26,
28, and shared responsibility for 30–33; Beth Bailey, Chapters 25, 27, 29, and shared
responsibility for 30–33.

LEARNING AND TEACHING AIDS

This edition of A People and a Nation includes a number of useful learning and teach-
ing aids. These ancillaries are designed to help students get the most from the course
and to provide instructors with useful course management and presentation tools.

Website Tools
The Instructor Website features the Instructor’s Resource Manual written by
George C. Warren of Central Piedmont Community College. For each chapter, there
is a brief list of learning objectives, a comprehensive chapter outline, ideas for class-
room activities, discussion questions and several suggested paper topics, and a lec-
ture supplement. Also available on the Instructor Website are primary sources with
instructor notes in addition to hundreds of maps, images, audio and video clips,
and PowerPoint slides for classroom presentation created by Barney Rickman of
Valdosta State University. The HM Testing™ CD-ROM provides flexible test-
editing capabilities for the Test Items written by George Warren.
HistoryFinder, a new Houghton Mifflin technology initiative, helps instruc-
tors create rich and exciting classroom presentations. This online tool offers thou-
sands of online resources, including art, photographs, maps, primary sources,
multimedia content, Associated Press interactive modules, and ready-made Power-
Point slides. HistoryFinder’s assets can easily be searched by keyword, or browsed
from pull-down menus by topic, media type, or by textbook. Instructors can then
browse, preview, and download resources straight from the website.
The Student Website contains a variety of tutorial resources including the
Study Guide written by George Warren, ACE quizzes with feedback, interactive
maps, primary sources, chronology exercises, flashcards, and other interactivities.
The Website for this edition of A People and a Nation features Audio Summaries,
audio files that are downloadable as MP3 files. These audio summaries help students
review each chapter’s key points.
Please contact your local Houghton Mifflin sales representative for more infor-
mation about these learning and teaching tools in addition to the Rand McNally
Atlas of American History, WebCT and Blackboard cartridges, and transparencies
for United States History.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Author teams rely on review panels to help create and execute successful revision
plans. For the revision of this Brief Eighth Edition, we were guided by the many his-
torians whose thoughtful insights and recommendations helped us with the prepa-
ration of the full-length Eighth Edition. Their names appear in the preface to that
edition that follows.
Finally, we want to thank the many people who have contributed their thoughts
and labors to this work, especially the talented staff at Houghton Mifflin.

For the authors, Mary Beth Norton, coordinating author.

 Preface to the Full-Length Eighth Edition

I n this eighth edition, A People and a Nation has undergone both reorganization
and revision, while still retaining the narrative strength and focus that have made
it so popular with students and teachers alike. In the years since the publication
of the seventh edition, new materials have been uncovered, new interpretations
advanced, and new themes have come to the forefront of American historical schol-
arship. All the authors—joined by one new member, Carol Sheriff—have worked
diligently to incorporate those findings into this text.
Like other teachers and students, we are always re-creating our past, restructur-
ing our memory, and rediscovering the personalities and events that have influenced
us, injured us, and bedeviled us. This book represents our continuing rediscovery of
America’s history—its diverse people and the nation they created and have nurtured.
As this book demonstrates, there are many different Americans and many different
memories. We have sought to present as many of them as possible, in both triumph
and tragedy, in both division and unity.

ABOUT A PEOPLE AND A NATION

A People and a Nation, first published in 1982, was the first major textbook in the
United States to fully integrate social and political history. From the outset, the au-
thors have been determined to tell the story of all the people of the United States.
This book’s hallmark has been its melding of social and political history, its move-
ment beyond history’s common focus on public figures and events to examine the
daily life of America’s people. All editions of the book have stressed the interaction
of public policy and personal experience, the relationship between domestic con-
cerns and foreign affairs, the various manifestations of popular culture, and the
multiple origins of America and Americans. We have consistently built our narrative
on a firm foundation in primary sources—on both well-known and obscure letters,
diaries, public documents, oral histories, and artifacts of material culture. We have
long challenged readers to think about the meaning of American history, not just to
memorize facts. Both students and instructors have repeatedly told us how much
they appreciate and enjoy our approach to the past.
As has been true since the first edition, each chapter opens with a dramatic
vignette focusing on an individual or a group of people. These vignettes introduce
key themes, which then frame the chapters in succinct introductions and sum-
maries. Numerous maps, tables, graphs, and charts provide readers with the neces-
sary geographical and statistical context for observations in the text. Carefully
selected illustrations—many of them unique to this book—offer readers visual
insight into the topics under discussion, especially because the authors have written
the captions. In this edition, as in all previous ones, we have sought to incorporate
up-to-date scholarship, readability, a clear structure, critical thinking, and instruc-
tive illustrative material on every page.

xvii
xviii Preface to the Full-Length Eighth Edition

THEMES IN THIS BOOK

Several themes and questions stand out in our continuing effort to integrate politi-
cal, social, and cultural history. We study the many ways Americans have defined
themselves—gender, race, class, region, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation—and
the many subjects that have reflected their multidimensional experiences. We high-
light the remarkably diverse everyday lives of the American people—in cities and on
farms and ranches, in factories and in corporate headquarters, in neighborhoods
and in legislatures, in love relationships and in hate groups, in recreation and in
work, in the classroom and in military uniform, in secret national security confer-
ences and in public foreign relations debates, in church and in voluntary associa-
tions, in polluted environments and in conservation areas. We pay particular
attention to lifestyles, diet and dress, family life and structure, labor conditions,
gender roles, migration and mobility, childbearing, and child rearing. We explore
how Americans have entertained and informed themselves by discussing their mu-
sic, sports, theater, print media, film, radio, television, graphic arts, and literature, in
both “high” culture and popular culture. We study how technology has influenced
Americans’ lives, such as through the internal combustion engine and the computer.
Americans’ personal lives have always interacted with the public realm of poli-
tics and government. To understand how Americans have sought to protect their dif-
ferent ways of life and to work out solutions to thorny problems, we emphasize their
expectations of governments at the local, state, and federal levels; governments’ role
in providing answers; the lobbying of interest groups; the campaigns and outcomes
of elections; and the hierarchy of power in any period. Because the United States has
long been a major participant in world affairs, we explore America’s participation in
wars, interventions in other nations, empire-building, immigration patterns, images
of foreign peoples, cross-national cultural ties, and international economic trends.

WHAT’S NEW IN THIS EDITION

Planning for the eighth edition began at a two-day authors’ meeting at the
Houghton Mifflin headquarters in Boston. There we discussed the most recent
scholarship in the field, the reviews of the seventh edition solicited from instructors,
and the findings of our own continuing research. For this edition, we added a new
colleague, Carol Sheriff, who experienced the intellectual exhilaration and rigor of
such an authors’ meeting for the first time. Sheriff, a member of the History Depart-
ment at the College of William and Mary, has written extensively on antebellum
America, especially in the north, and she has taken on the responsibility for those
chapters in the eighth edition.
This edition builds on its immediate predecessor in continuing to enhance the
global perspective on American history that has characterized the book since its first
edition. From the “Atlantic world” context of European colonies in North and South
America to the discussion of international terrorism, the authors have incorporated
the most recent globally oriented scholarship throughout the volume. Significantly,
the eighth edition includes an entirely new chapter on the American west in the years
before the Civil War and the discussion of the west has been expanded throughout.
The treatment of the history of children and childhood has been increased, as
has the discussion of environmental history, including the devastating impact of
 Preface to the Full-Length Eighth Edition xix

hurricanes in North America and the Caribbean from the earliest days of European
settlement. As in the seventh edition, we have worked to strengthen our treatment of
the diversity of America’s people by examining differences within the broad ethnic
categories commonly employed and by paying greater attention to immigration, cul-
tural and intellectual infusions from around the world, and America’s growing reli-
gious diversity. We have also stressed the incorporation of different peoples into the
United States through territorial acquisition as well as through immigration. At the
same time, we have integrated the discussion of such diversity into our narrative, so
as not to artificially isolate any group from the mainstream. We have added three
probing questions at the end of each chapter’s introduction to guide students’ read-
ing of the pages that follow.
As always, the authors reexamined every sentence, interpretation, map, chart,
illustration, and caption, refining the narrative, presenting new examples, and bring-
ing to the text the latest findings of scholars in many areas of history, anthropology,
sociology, and political science. More than one-third of the chapter-opening
vignettes are new to this edition.

“LEGACIES” AND “LINKS TO THE WORLD”

Each chapter contains two brief feature essays: “Legacies” (introduced in the sixth
edition) and “Links to the World” (introduced in the seventh edition). Legacies fol-
low chapter summaries and offer compelling and timely answers to students who
question the relevance of historical study by exploring the historical roots of con-
temporary topics. New subjects of Legacies are: Kennewick Man/Ancient One, Blue
Laws, women’s political activism, the township and range system, descendants of
early Latino settlers, “Big Government,” the Lost Cause, the Cowboy myth, recorded
music, Guantanamo Bay, atomic proliferation, and the all-volunteer military.
Numerous other Legacies have been updated.
“Links to the World” examine both inward and outward ties between America
(and Americans) and the rest of the world. The “Links” appear at appropriate places
in each chapter to explore specific topics at considerable length. Tightly constructed
essays detail the often little-known connections between developments here and
abroad. The topics range broadly over economic, political, social, technological,
medical, and cultural history, vividly demonstrating that the geographical region
that is now the United States has never lived in isolation from other peoples and
countries. New to this edition are Links on smallpox inoculations, the Amistad case,
Russian Populism, European influence on American workers’ compensation, and
National Geographic. Each Link highlights global interconnections with unusual and
lively examples that will both intrigue and inform students.

SECTION-BY-SECTION CHANGES IN THIS EDITION

Mary Beth Norton, who had primary responsibility for Chapters 1 through 8 and
served as coordinating author, augmented her discussion of the age of European
expansion with new information on Muslim power and the allure of exotic spices;
she also expanded the treatment of Spanish colonization and settlements in the
Caribbean. She incorporated extensive new scholarship on early Virginia into
Chapter 2. In addition to reorganizing part of Chapter 3 to bring more coherence
xx Preface to the Full-Length Eighth Edition

to the discussion of the origins of slavery in North America, she added demographic
information about enslaved people (both Indians and Africans) and those who
enslaved and transported them, stressing in particular the importance of African
women in South Carolina rice cultivation. She added material on transported
English convicts, Huguenot immigrants, Acadian exiles, iron-making, land riots, the
Stono Rebellion, the Seven Years’ War in western Pennsylvania, the experiences of
common soldiers in the Revolution, Shays’s Rebellion, and the Jay Treaty debates. In
Chapter 8 she created new sections on Indians in the new nation and on revolutions
at the end of the century, including among them the election of Thomas Jefferson.
Carol Sheriff completely reorganized the contents of Chapters 9, 11, and 12,
clarifying chronological developments and including much new material. Chapter 9
now covers politics through 1823 in order to emphasize the impact of the War of
1812 in accelerating regional divisions. It has expanded coverage of popular political
practice (including among non-voters), the separation of church and state, the
Marshall Court, the First and Second Barbary Wars, and the incorporation of the
Louisiana Territory and its residents into the United States. Chapter 11, retitled
“The Modernizing North,” consolidates information previously divided between
two chapters and augments it with new discussions of daily life before commercial
and industrial expansion, rural-urban contrasts, children and youth culture, male
and female common laborers, and the origins of free-labor ideology. Chapter 12
focuses on reform and politics in the age of Jackson, with expanded attention to
communitarian experiments, abolitionism (including African Americans in the
movement), women’s rights, and religion, including revivalism in general and the
Second Great Awakening in particular. The entirely new Chapter 13, “The Contested
West,” combines material that was previously scattered in different locations with a
great deal of recent scholarship on such topics as the disjunction between the ideal
and reality of the West, exploration and migration, cultural diversity in the West,
cooperation and conflict among the West’s peoples, and the role of the federal gov-
ernment in regional development. In all her reorganized chapters she relied on a base
created by David M. Katzman, an original member of the author team who had
responsibility for this section in the seven earlier editions.
David W. Blight, who had primary responsibility for Chapters 10 and 14
through 16, extensively reorganized Chapter 10 (previously Chapter 13), on the
South, in part to reflect its new chronological placement in the book. The chapter
now covers material beginning in 1815 rather than 1830 and contains a section on
Southern expansion and Indian removal. In his chapters he has added material on
the Taos revolt, enslaved children, “Bleeding Kansas,” Harriet Scott, Louisa May
Alcott, union sentiment in the South, the conduct of the war, and economic and
social conditions in the postwar North and South. He has revised Chapter 16 to
emphasize economic as well as political change in the era of Reconstruction.
Howard P. Chudacoff, responsible for Chapters 17 through 21 and 24, has in-
creased the coverage of Indians, Exodusters, and Hispanics in the West, and of west-
ern Progressivism. His treatment of popular culture now stresses its lower-class,
bottom-to-top origins. He added information on the history of childhood, vaude-
ville, and the movies; and he revised discussions of monetary policy, Progressivism,
Populism, and urban and agrarian protests. He also has included more coverage
 Preface to the Full-Length Eighth Edition xxi

of racism and those who combated it, such as Ida B. Wells, and on women and the
Ku Klux Klan. Business operation and regulation receive new attention in his
chapters, as do Calvin Coolidge, consumerism, and baseball.
Fredrik Logevall, with primary responsibility for Chapters 22, 23, 26, and 28,
continued throughout his chapters to work to establish the wider international con-
text for U.S. foreign affairs. He added considerable new material on the Middle East
(especially in Chapter 28) and incorporated recent scholarship on the Vietnam War.
He also updated the treatment of the Spanish-American War with new information
on the sinking of the Maine and on the Philippine insurrection. His discussion
of World War I now includes consideration of the antagonistic relationship of
Woodrow Wilson and V.I. Lenin; and he has given more attention to American eco-
nomic and cultural expansion in the 1920s and 1930s. He has furthermore expanded
his treatment of American reactions to the Spanish Civil War.
Beth Bailey, primarily responsible for Chapters 25, 27, and 29, added informa-
tion on women, the left, and popular culture (especially film and the production
code) during the 1930s. She expanded coverage of the European front in World
War II and of divisions within the United States during the war. In Chapter 29, she
thoroughly reorganized the section on civil rights to clarify the chronology and key
points of development, and she also included new information on emerging coun-
tercultures and the beats, union activities, and the Eisenhower administration.
Bailey and Logevall shared responsibility for Chapters 30 through 33. In Chap-
ter 30 Freedom Summer is given enhanced attention and the section on civil rights
has been reorganized to emphasize a clear chronology. These chapters contain new
material on the women’s movement and the barriers women faced before 1970s re-
forms, recent immigration, neoconservatism, anti-Vietnam War protests, Nixon’s
presidency, the Supreme Court, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and the 1991
Iraq War. Chapter 33 in particular has been thoroughly revised to include the latest
demographic data on Americans and their families, along with discussions of the
struggles over science and religion, hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration’s
domestic policies, and especially the Iraq War.

TEACHING AND LEARNING AIDS

The supplements listed here accompany the Eighth Edition of A People and a Nation.
They have been created with the diverse needs of today’s students and instructors
in mind.

FOR THE INSTRUCTOR

● Houghton Mifflin’s HistoryFinder is a new online tool developed to help
instructors create rich and exciting presentations for the U.S. history survey
class. HistoryFinder offers thousands of online resources, including art, photo-
graphs, maps, primary sources, multimedia content, Associated Press interac-
tive modules, and ready-made PowerPoint slides. HistoryFinder’s assets can
easily be searched by keyword topic, media type, or by textbook chapter. It is
then possible to browse, preview, and download resources straight from the
website into the instructor’s own PowerPoint collection.
xxii Preface to the Full-Length Eighth Edition

● The Instructor Website, at HM HistorySPACE(tm), includes a variety of re-

sources that will help instructors engage their students in class and assess their
understanding inside and outside the classroom. The Instructor Website
includes the Instructor’s Resource Manual, written by George C. Warren, of
Central Piedmont Community College. For each chapter, there is a brief list of
learning objectives, a comprehensive chapter outline, ideas for classroom activ-
ities, discussion questions and several suggested paper topics, and a lecture
supplement. Also available on the Instructor Website is a complete set of
PowerPoint slides created by Barney Rickman of Valdosta State University,
to assist in instruction and discussion of key topics and materials for each
chapter.
● The HM Testing™ CD-ROM provides flexible test-editing capabilities for the
Test Items written by George Warren of Central Piedmont Community Col-
lege. Included in the Test Bank are multiple choice, identification, geography,
and essay questions.
● Houghton Mifflin’s Eduspace Course for A People and a Nation offers a cus-
tomizable course management system powered by Blackboard along with
homework assignments that engage students and encourage in-class discus-
sion. Assignments include gradable homework exercises, writing assignments,
primary sources with questions, and Associated Press Interactives. Eduspace
also provides a gradebook and communication capabilities, such as live chats,
threaded discussion boards, and announcement postings. The Eduspace
course also includes an interactive version of A People and a Nation with direct
links to relevant primary sources, quizzes, and more.

FOR THE STUDENT

● The Student Website, at HM HistorySPACE™, contains a variety of review
and self-assessment resources to help students succeed in the U.S. history sur-
vey course. ACE quizzes with feedback, interactive maps, primary sources,
chronology exercises, flashcards, and other activities are available for each
chapter. Audio files provide chapter summaries in MP3 format for download-
ing and listening to at any time.
● Study Guides (Volumes I and II), written by George Warren, provide learning
objectives, vocabulary exercises, identification suggestions, skill-building
activities, multiple choice questions, essay questions, and map exercises in
two volumes.
Please contact your local Houghton Mifflin sales representative for more infor-
mation about these learning and teaching tools in addition to the Rand McNally
Atlas of American History, WebCT and Blackboard cartridges, and transparencies
for United States History. Your sales representative can also provide more informa-
tion about BiblioBase for U.S. History, a database of hundreds of primary sources
from which you can create a customized course pack.
 Preface to the Full-Length Eighth Edition xxiii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank the following persons for their assistance with the
preparation of this edition: Shawn Alexander, Marsha Andrews, Edward Balleisen,
Philip Daileader, Katherine Flynn, John B. Heiser, Danyel Logevall, Daniel Mandell,
Clark F. Norton, Mary E. Norton, Anna Daileader Sheriff, Benjamin Daileader
Sheriff, Selene Sheriff, Seymour Sheriff.
At each stage of this revision, a sizable panel of historian reviewers read drafts of
our chapters. Their suggestions, corrections, and pleas helped guide us through this
momentous revision. We could not include all of their recommendations, but the
book is better for our having heeded most of their advice. We heartily thank:
Marynita Anderson, Nassau Community College/SUNY
Stephen Aron, UCLA and Autry National Center
Gordon Morris Bakken, California State University, Fullerton
Todd Forsyth Carney, Southern Oregon University
Kathleen S. Carter, High Point University
Robert C. Cottrell, California State University, Chico
Lawrence Culver, Utah State University
Lawrence J. DeVaro, Rowan University
Lisa Lindquist Dorr, University of Alabama
Michelle Kuhl, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh
Martin Halpern, Henderson State University
John S. Leiby, Paradise Valley Community College
Edwin Martini, Western Michigan University
Elsa A Nystrom Kennesaw State University
Chester Pach, Ohio University
Stephen Rockenbach, Northern Kentucky University
Joseph Owen Weixelman, University of New Mexico
The authors once again thank the extraordinary Houghton Mifflin people who
designed, edited, produced, and nourished this book. Their high standards and
acute attention to both general structure and fine detail are cherished in the pub-
lishing industry. Many thanks, then, to Patricia Coryell, vice president, publisher,
history and social science; Suzanne Jeans, publisher, history and political Science;
Sally Constable and Ann West, senior sponsoring editors; Ann Hofstra Grogg, free-
lance development editor; Jeff Greene, senior development editor; Jane Lee, senior
project editor, Katherine Bates, senior marketing manager; Pembroke Herbert, photo
researcher; Jill Haber, art and design manager, Charlotte Miller, art editor; and
Evangeline Bermas, editorial assistant.

M.B.N.
C.S.
D.B.
H.C.
F.L.
B.B.
This page intentionally left blank
 Chapter 1

Three Old Worlds

Create a New 1492–1600

Chapter Outline
American Societies
North America in 1492
African Societies
European Societies

F ive years later, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca still recalled

the amazement he encountered in northern Mexico in
mid-February 1536. “I reached four Christians on horseback
who registered great surprise at seeing me so strangely dressed
Early European Explorations
Voyages of Columbus, Cabot, and Their
Successors
Spanish Exploration and Conquest
and in the company of Indians. They . . . neither spoke to me nor The Columbian Exchange
dared to ask anything.”
Europeans in North America
Cabeza de Vaca, two Spaniards, and an enslaved North
African named Estevan had just walked across North America. LINKS TO THE WORLD:
They, along with about six hundred others, left Spain in June Maize
1527 on an ill-fated expedition. After exploring near Tampa Summary
Bay, eighty of the men, including Cabeza de Vaca, were ship- LEGACY FOR A PEOPLE AND
wrecked in late 1528 on the coast of modern Texas. Most of the A NATION: Kennewick
survivors—alternately abused, aided, and enslaved by local Man/Ancient One
Indians—died. Cabeza de Vaca reached the mainland, where
he survived as a traveling trader, exchanging seashells for hides
and flint.
In January 1533 he stumbled on the other three. Guided by
Indians, they walked south in September 1534; turned inland
and headed north, exploring the upper reaches of the Rio
Grande; then walked almost to the Pacific before turning south
once more. Vaca described the diets, living arrangements, and
customs of many villages, thus providing modern historians
and anthropologists with an invaluable record of native cul-
tures as they first encountered Europeans. For thousands of
years before 1492, human societies in the Americas developed in
isolation from the rest of the world. That ended in the Christian
fifteenth century. As Europeans sought treasure and trade, peo-
This icon will direct you to interactive
ples from different cultures came into contact for the first time activities and study materials on
and were profoundly changed. Their interactions over the next A People And A Nation, Brief Edition
350 years involved cruelty and kindness, greed and deception, website: www.cengage.com/history/norton/
trade and theft, sickness and enslavement. The history of the peoplenationbrief8e

1
2 CHAPTER 1 THREE OLD WORLDS CREATE A NEW, 1492–1600

C h ro n o lo g y
12,000–10,000 B.C.E. Paleo-Indians migrate from Asia to 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divides land claims between
North America across the Beringia land Spain and Portugal in Africa, India, and South
bridge. America.
7000 B.C.E. Cultivation of food crops begins in 1496 Last Canary Island falls to Spain.
America. 1497 Cabot reaches North America.
ca. 2000 B.C.E. Olmec civilization appears. 1513 Ponce de León explores Florida.
ca. 300–600 C.E. Height of influence of Teotihuacán. 1518–30 Smallpox epidemic devastates the Indian popula-
ca. 600–900 C.E. Classic Mayan civilization exists. tion of the West Indies and Central and South
America.
1000 C.E. Ancient Pueblos build settlements in
modern states of Arizona and New 1519 Cortés invades Mexico.
Mexico. 1521 Tenochtitlán surrenders to Cortés; Aztec Empire
1001 Norse establish a settlement in Vinland. falls to Spaniards.
1524 Verrazzano sails along Atlantic coast of the United
1050–1250 Height of influence of Cahokia.
States.
Prevalence of Mississippian culture in
modern midwestern and southeastern 1534–35 Cartier explores the St. Lawrence River.
United States. 1534–36 Vaca, Estevan, and two companions walk across
1300s Aztecs rise to power. North America.

1450s–80s Portuguese explore and colonize islands 1539–42 de Soto explores the southeastern United States.
in the Mediterranean Atlantic and São 1540–42 Coronado explores the southwestern United
Tomé in Gulf of Guinea. States.
1477 Publication of Marco Polo’s Travels, 1587–90 Raleigh’s Roanoke colony vanishes.
describing China. 1588 Harriot publishes A Briefe and True Report of
1492 Columbus reaches the Bahamas. the New Found Land of Virginia.

colonies that would become the United States must be seen in this context of
European exploration and exploitation.
The continents that European sailors reached in the late fifteenth century had
their own histories, which the intruders largely ignored. The residents of the
Americas were the world’s most skillful plant breeders; they developed vegetable
crops more nutritious and productive than in Europe, Asia, or Africa. They invented
systems of writing and mathematics. As in Europe, their societies rose and fell as
leaders succeeded or failed in expanding their power. But the arrival of Europeans
immeasurably altered Americans’ struggles with one another.
After 1400 European nations tried to acquire valuable colonies and trading posts
around the world. Initially interested in Asia and Africa, Europeans eventually fo-
cused on the Americas. Even as Europeans slowly achieved dominance, their fates
were shaped by Americans and Africans. In the Americas of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries, three old worlds came together to produce a new.
● What were the key characteristics of the three worlds that met in
the Americas?
● What impact did their encounter have on each of them?
● What were the crucial initial developments in that encounter?
 AMERICAN SOCIETIES 3

AMERICAN SOCIETIES
Human beings originated on the continent of Africa, where humanlike remains
about 3 million years old have been found in what is now Ethiopia. Over many mil-
lennia, the growing population dispersed to other continents. Because the climate
was far colder than it is now, much of the earth’s water was concentrated in huge
rivers of ice called glaciers. Sea levels were lower, and land masses covered a larger
proportion of the earth’s surface. Scholars long believed that the earliest inhabitants
of the Americas crossed a land bridge known as Beringia (at the site of the Bering
Strait) approximately 12,000 to 14,000 years ago. Yet new archaeological discoveries
suggest that parts of the Americas may have been settled earlier, possibly in three
successive waves beginning 30,000 years ago. When, about 12,500 years ago, the
climate warmed and sea levels rose, Americans were separated from the connected
continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe.

The first Americans are called Paleo-Indians. Nomadic

Ancient America hunters of game and gatherers of wild plants, they spread
throughout North and South America, probably as bands of
extended families. By about 11,500 years ago the Paleo-Indians were making stone pro-
jectile points, which they attached to wooden spears to kill and butcher bison (buffalo),
woolly mammoths, and other large mammals. But as the Ice Age ended and the human
population increased, all the large American mammals except the bison disappeared.
Consequently, by approximately 9,000 years ago, the residents of what is
now central Mexico began cultivating food crops, especially maize (corn), squash,
beans, avocados, and peppers. As knowledge of agricultural techniques improved,
vegetables proved a more reliable food source than hunting and gathering. Most
Americans adopted a sedentary life so they could tend fields regularly. Some
established permanent settlements; others moved several times a year among fixed
sites. They cleared forests through controlled burning, which created cultivable lands
by killing trees and fertilizing the soil with ashes and also opened meadows for deer
and other wildlife. Although they traded such items as shells, flint, salt, and copper,
none of the American cultures became dependent on other groups for survival.
Wherever agriculture dominated, civilizations flourished. With steady supplies
of grains and vegetables, such societies could broaden their focus from subsistence
to trade, accumulating wealth, producing ornamental objects, and creating elabo-
rate rituals. In North America, the cultivation of nutritious crops seems to have led
to the development of all the major civilizations: first the large city-states of
Mesoamerica (modern Mexico and Guatemala) and then the urban clusters known
collectively as the Mississippian culture (in present-day United States). Each later
collapsed after reaching the limits of its food supply.

Scholars know little about the first major Mesoamerican

Mesoamerican
civilization, the Olmecs, who about 4,000 years ago lived
Civilizations
in cities near the Gulf of Mexico. The Mayas and
Teotihuacán, which developed approximately 2,000 years later, are better recorded.
Teotihuacán, founded in the Valley of Mexico about 300 B.C.E. (Before the Common

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4 CHAPTER 1 THREE OLD WORLDS CREATE A NEW, 1492–1600

Era), became one of the largest urban areas in the world with 100,000 people in
the fifth century C.E. (Common Era). Pilgrims traveled long distances to visit
Teotihuacán’s impressive pyramids and the great temple of Quetzalcoatl—the feath-
ered serpent, primary god of central Mexico.
On the Yucatán Peninsula, in today’s eastern Mexico, the Mayas built urban cen-
ters containing pyramids and temples, studied astronomy, and created an elaborate
writing system. Their city-states engaged in near-constant warfare with one another,
which, combined with inadequate food supplies, caused the collapse of the most
powerful cities by 900 C.E. and ended the classic era of Mayan civilization.

Ancient native societies in what is now the United States

Pueblos and
learned to grow maize, squash, and beans from
Mississippians
Mesoamericans. The Hohokam, Mogollon, and ancient
Pueblo peoples of the modern states of Arizona and New Mexico subsisted by com-
bining hunting and gathering with agriculture in an arid region with unpredictable
rainfall. Hohokam villagers constructed extensive irrigation systems, but relocated
when water supplies failed. Between 900 and 1150 C.E., Chaco Canyon, at the junc-
ture of perhaps 400 miles of roads, served as a trading and processing center for
turquoise. Yet aridity caused the Chacoans to migrate to other sites.
Almost simultaneously, the unrelated Mississippian culture flourished in what is
now the midwestern and southeastern United States. Relying largely on maize,
squash, nuts, pumpkins, and venison, the Mississippians lived in settlements organ-
ized hierarchically. Their largest urban center was the City of the Sun (now called
Cahokia), near modern St. Louis. Located on rich farmland near the confluence of the
Illinois, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers, Cahokia was a focal point for religion and
trade. At its peak (in the eleventh and twelfth centuries C.E.), the City of the Sun cov-
ered more than 5 square miles and had a population of about twenty thousand—small
by Mesoamerican standards but larger than other northern communities or London.
The sun-worshipping Cahokians developed an accurate calendar. The city’s
main pyramid, today called Monks Mound, remains the largest earthwork ever built
in the Americas. Yet following 1250 C.E. the city was abandoned, and archaeologists
believe that climate change and the degradation of the environment, caused by over-
population and the destruction of nearby forests, contributed to its collapse.

Aztec histories tell of its peoples’ migration into the Valley

Aztecs of Mexico during the twelfth century. They record that
their primary deity, Huitzilopochtli—a war god represented
by an eagle—directed them to establish their capital on an island where they saw an
eagle eating a serpent. That island city became Tenochtitlán, the center of a society
composed of hereditary classes of warriors, merchants, priests, common folk, and slaves.
The Aztecs (who called themselves Mexica) conquered their neighbors, forcing
them to pay tribute in textiles, gold, foodstuffs, and human sacrifices to
Huitzilopochtli. They also engaged in ritual combat for further sacrificial victims. In
the Aztec year Ten Rabbit (1502), at the coronation of Motecuhzoma II (the
Spaniards mispronounced his name as Montezuma), thousands were sacrificed by
having their hearts torn from their bodies.
 NORTH AMERICA IN 1492 5

NORTH AMERICA IN 1492

Over the centuries, the Americans who lived north of Mexico adapted their once-
similar ways of life to different climates and terrains, thus creating the diverse cul-
ture areas that the Europeans encountered (see Map 1.1). Scholars often refer to such
culture areas by language group (such as Algonquian or Iroquoian). Bands that lived
in environments not suited to agriculture followed a nomadic lifestyle typified by
the Paiutes and Shoshones, who inhabited the Great Basin (now Nevada and Utah).
Because finding sufficient food was difficult, hunter-gatherer bands were small, usu-
ally composed of one or more related families. Where large game was plentiful, as
in present-day central and western Canada and the Great Plains, bands were some-
what larger.
In favorable environments, larger groups like the Chinooks of present-day
coastal Washington and Oregon combined agriculture with gathering, hunting,
and fishing. Residents of the interior (for example, the Arikaras of the Missouri River
valley) hunted large animals while cultivating maize, squash, and beans. The peoples
of contemporary eastern Canada and the northeastern United States combined
hunting, fishing, and agriculture.

Societies that relied primarily on hunting large animals,

Gendered Division
such as deer and bison, assigned that task to men, allot-
of Labor
ting food preparation and clothing production to women.
Before acquiring horses from the Spaniards, women—occasionally assisted by dogs—
carried the family’s belongings whenever their band relocated. The sexual division of
labor was universal among hunting peoples. Yet agricultural societies assigned work
in divergent ways. The Pueblo peoples defined agricultural labor as men’s work. In
the east, clusters of peoples speaking Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Muskogean lan-
guages allocated most agricultural chores to women, although men cleared the land.
In farming societies, women gathered wild foods and prepared food for consump-
tion or storage, where men were responsible for hunting.
Almost universally, women cared for young children, while older youths learned
adult skills from their same-sex parent. Children enjoyed a lot of freedom. Young
people chose their own marital partners, and in most societies couples could easily
divorce. Infants and toddlers were nursed until the age of two or older, and taboos
prevented couples from having sexual intercourse during that period.

Similarly, southwestern and eastern agricultural peoples

Social Organization lived in villages, sometimes with a thousand or more in-
habitants. The Pueblos resided in multistory buildings
constructed on terraces along the sides of cliffs or other easily defended sites.
Northern Iroquois villages (in modern New York State) were composed of large, rec-
tangular, bark-covered structures, or long houses; the name Haudenosaunee, which
the Iroquois called themselves, means “People of the Long House.” In the present-
day southeastern United States, Muskogeans and southern Algonquians lived in
large thatched houses. Most of the eastern villages were surrounded by wooden pal-
isades and ditches to fend off attackers.

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6 CHAPTER 1 THREE OLD WORLDS CREATE A NEW, 1492–1600

ait
g S tr GREENLAND
rin
Be

ARCTIC

Da
Baf
fi n
v is
Isla Str
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t
ARCTIC
SUB-ARCTIC
NOR
THWE
ST COAST

SUB-ARCTIC

PLATEAU

PACIFIC
OCEAN GREAT
PLAINS
GREAT
BASIN NORTHEAST
PRAIRIES ATLANTIC
OCEAN
CA
LIF
OR

SOUTHEAST
NI
A

SOUTHWEST

NORTHEAST
MEXICO

CARIBBEAN

MESOAMERICA
Primary mode of subsistence:
Agriculture
Hunting
Hunting-gathering
Fishing

Map 1.1 Native Cultures of North America

The natives of the North American continent effectively used the resources of the regions in which they lived.
As this map shows, coastal groups relied on fishing, residents of fertile areas engaged in agriculture, and
other peoples employed hunting (often combined with gathering) as their primary mode of subsistence.
 NORTH AMERICA IN 1492 7

Jacques Le Moyne, an artist accompanying the French settlement in Florida in the 1560s, produced some of the first Euro-
pean images of North American peoples. His depiction of native agricultural practices shows the gendered division of
labor: men breaking up the ground with fish-bone hoes before women drop seeds into the holes. But Le Moyne’s version
of the scene cannot be accepted uncritically: Unable to abandon a European view of proper farming methods, he erro-
neously drew plowed furrows in the soil. (Collection of Mary Beth Norton)

In all agricultural societies, each dwelling housed an extended family defined

matrilineally (through a female line of descent). Mothers, their married daughters,
and their daughters’ husbands and children lived together. Matrilineal descent did
not imply matriarchy, or the wielding of power by women, but denoted kinship and
linked extended families into clans. The nomadic bands of the Prairies and Great
Plains were most often related patrilineally (through the male line).

Long before Europeans arrived, residents fought one an-

War and Politics other for control of the best hunting and fishing territo-
ries, the most fertile agricultural lands, or the sources of
essential items, such as salt (for preserving meat) and flint (for making knives and
arrowheads). Bands of Americans protected by wooden armor literally stood face
to face in battle, because their clubs and throwing spears were only effective at close
quarters. They began to shoot arrows from behind trees only when they confronted

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8 CHAPTER 1 THREE OLD WORLDS CREATE A NEW, 1492–1600

European guns. Captives were sometimes enslaved, but slavery was never an impor-
tant labor source in pre-Columbian America.
Political structures varied considerably. Among Pueblos, the village council,
composed of ten to thirty men, was the highest political authority; no government
structure connected the villages. The Iroquois had an elaborate system incorporat-
ing villages into nations and nations into a confederation. A council comprising rep-
resentatives from each nation made the crucial decisions of war and peace. Women
more often assumed leadership roles among agricultural peoples than among no-
madic hunters. Female sachems (rulers) led Algonquian villages in what is now
Massachusetts, but women never became heads of hunting bands. Iroquois women
did not become chiefs, yet older women chose the village chief and could both start
wars (by calling for the capture of prisoners to replace dead relatives) and stop them
(by refusing to supply warriors with foodstuffs).

All the American peoples were polytheistic, worshiping a

Religion multitude of gods. The major deities of agricultural peoples
like the Pueblos and Muskogeans were associated with
cultivation, and festivals centered on planting and harvest. The important gods of
hunters like those on the Great Plains and Prairies were associated with animals.
Women held the most prominent religious positions in agricultural societies where
they were also the chief food producers, whereas in hunting societies men took the
lead in religious and political affairs.
A variety of cultures, comprising more than 10 million people speaking over one
thousand different languages, inhabited America north of Mexico when Europeans
arrived. The hierarchical kingdoms of Mesoamerica bore little resemblance to the
nomadic hunting societies of the Great Plains or to the agriculturalists of the North-
east or Southwest. They did not consider themselves one people, nor did they think
of uniting to repel European invaders.

AFRICAN SOCIETIES
Fifteenth-century Africa housed a variety of cultures. In the north, along the Mediter-
ranean Sea, lived the Berbers, who were Muslims, or followers of the Islamic religion.
On the east coast of Africa, Muslim city-states engaged in extensive trade with India, the
Moluccas (part of modern Indonesia), and China. Sustained contact and intermarriage
among Arabs and Africans created the Swahili language and culture. Waterborne com-
merce passed between the eastern Mediterranean and East Asian city-states; land com-
merce followed the Silk Road, the long land route across Central Asia.
South of the Mediterranean coast in the African interior lie the great Saharan
and Libyan Deserts. The introduction of the camel in the fifth century C.E. made
long-distance travel possible, and as Islam expanded after the ninth century, com-
merce controlled by Muslim merchants helped spread similar religious and cultural
ideas throughout the region. Below the deserts, the continent is divided between
tropical rain forests (along the coasts) and grassy plains (in the interior). South of
the Gulf of Guinea, the grassy landscape came to be dominated by Bantu-speaking
peoples, who left their homeland in modern Nigeria about two thousand years ago.
 AFRICAN SOCIETIES 9

West Africa was a land of tropical forests and savanna

West Africa (Guinea) grasslands where fishing, cattle herding, and agriculture
supported the inhabitants for at least ten thousand years
before Europeans arrived in the fifteenth century. The northern region of West Africa,
or Upper Guinea, was heavily influenced by the Islamic culture of the Mediterranean.
Trade via camel caravans between Upper Guinea and the Muslim Mediterranean was
sub-Saharan Africa’s major connection to Europe and West Asia. In return for salt,
dates, silk, and cotton cloth, Africans exchanged ivory, gold, and slaves.
Upper Guinea runs northeast-southwest from Cape Verde to Cape Palmas. The
people of its northernmost region, the so-called Rice Coast (present-day Gambia,
Senegal, and Guinea), fished and cultivated rice in coastal swamplands. The Grain
Coast, the next region to the south, was thinly populated and, with only one good
harbor (modern Freetown, Sierra Leone), was not easily accessible from the sea. Its
people concentrated on farming and raising livestock.
In Lower Guinea, south and east of Cape Palmas, most Africans were farmers
who practiced traditional religions. Believing that spirits inhabited particular places,
they developed rituals intended to ensure good harvests. With individual villages
linked into hierarchical kingdoms, decentralized political and social authority char-
acterized the region at the time of initial European contact.

Like American society, West African societies assigned dif-

Complementary
ferent tasks to men and women. In general, the sexes
Gender Roles
shared agricultural duties. Men also hunted, managed
livestock, and did most of the fishing. Women were responsible for childcare, food
preparation, manufacture, and trade. They managed local and regional networks
through which families, villages, and small kingdoms exchanged goods.
Lower Guinea had similar social systems organized on the basis of what anthro-
pologists have called the dual-sex principle. Each sex handled its own affairs: male po-
litical and religious leaders governed men; females ruled women. Many West African
societies practiced polygyny (one man’s having several wives, each of whom lived sep-
arately with her children). Thus few adults lived permanently in marital households,
but the dual-sex system ensured that their actions were scrutinized by their own sex.
Throughout Guinea, religious beliefs stressed complementary male and female
roles. Both women and men served as heads of the cults and secret societies that
directed village spiritual life. Young women were initiated into the Sandé cult, young
men into Poro. Although West African women rarely held formal power over men,
female religious leaders governed their sex within the Sandé cult, enforcing con-
formity to accepted norms.

West African law recognized individual and communal

Slavery in Guinea land ownership, but men seeking wealth needed labor—
wives, children, or slaves—who could work the land. West
Africans enslaved for life were vital to the economy. Africans could be enslaved for
criminal acts, but more often slaves were enemy captives or people who enslaved
themselves or their children in payment for debts. An African slave owner had the
right to the products of a slave’s labor, although slave status did not always descend

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10 CHAPTER 1 THREE OLD WORLDS CREATE A NEW, 1492–1600

to the next generation. Some slaves were held as chattel, and whatever they produced
belonged entirely to slave owners; others could trade in products raised in their spare
time, retaining a portion of their profits; and still others achieved prominent politi-
cal or military positions. All, however, could be traded at the will of their owners.
West Africans were agricultural peoples, skilled at tending livestock, hunting,
fishing, and manufacturing cloth. Both men and women enjoyed an egalitarian
relationship and worked communally in family groups or with members of their sex.
Carried as captives to the Americas, they became essential laborers for European set-
tlers who showed little respect for their traditions.

EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
In the fifteenth century, European society was also largely agricultural. In the hierar-
chical European societies, a few families wielded autocratic power over the majority.
English society was organized as a series of interlocking hierarchies; that is, each person
(except those at the very top or bottom) was superior to some, inferior to others. At the
bottom were people held in bondage. Although Europeans were not subjected to
perpetual slavery, Christian doctrine permitted the enslavement of “heathens” (non-
Christians) and serfdom, which tied some Europeans to the land or to specific owners.
In short, Europe’s kingdoms resembled those of Africa or Mesoamerica but differed
from the more egalitarian societies found in America north of Mexico.

Most Europeans, like most Africans and Americans, lived

Work, Politics,
in small villages. European farmers, called peasants,
and Religion
owned or leased separate landholdings but worked the
fields communally. Because fields had to lie unplanted every second or third year
to regain fertility, a family could not be assured of food unless all villagers shared the
work and the crops. Men did fieldwork; women helped at planting and harvest. In
some regions men concentrated on herding livestock. Women’s duties consisted pri-
marily of childcare and household tasks, including preserving food, milking cows,
and caring for poultry. If a woman’s husband was a city artisan or storekeeper, she
might assist him in business. Because Europeans kept domesticated animals (pigs,
goats, sheep, and cattle) for meat, hunting had little economic importance and was
primarily a sport for male aristocrats.
Men dominated European society. A few women—notably Queen Elizabeth I of
England—achieved power by birthright, but most were excluded from positions of
political authority. They also held inferior social, religious, and economic positions,
yet wielded power over children and household servants. European children were
tightly controlled and subjected to harsh discipline.
Christianity was the dominant European religion. In the West, authority rested
in the Catholic Church, based in Rome and led by the pope, who directed a male
clergy. Although Europeans were nominally Catholic, many adhered to local belief
systems that the church deemed heretical. Still, Europe’s Christian nations from the
twelfth century on publicly united to drive nonbelievers (especially Muslims) from
their domains and from the holy city of Jerusalem, triggering a series of wars known
as the Crusades. Nevertheless, in the fifteenth century Muslims dominated the
 EUROPEAN SOCIETIES 11

commerce and geography of the Mediterranean, especially after they conquered

Constantinople (capital of the Christian Byzantine empire) in 1453. Few would have
predicted that Christian Europeans would ever pose a challenge.

When the fifteenth century began, European nations were

Effects of Plague
recovering from the devastating Black Death epidemic,
and Warfare
which seems to have reached Europe from China, brought
by traders. The disease recurred with severity in the 1360s and 1370s. Although the
impact of the Black Death varied regionally, the best estimate is that one-third of
Europe’s people died. A precipitous economic decline followed, as did severe social,
political, and religious disruption.
As plague ravaged the population, England and France waged the Hundred
Years’ War (1337–1453), initiated because English monarchs claimed the French
throne. The war interrupted overland trade routes connecting England and Antwerp
(in modern Belgium) to Venice, a Christian trading center, and thence to India and
China. Needing a new way to reach their northern trading partners, eastern Mediter-
ranean merchants forged a maritime route to Antwerp. Using a triangular, or lateen,
sail (rather than square rigging) improved ships’ maneuverability, enabling vessels
to sail from the Mediterranean and north around the European coast. The perfec-
tion of navigational instruments like the astrolabe and the quadrant allowed sailors
to estimate their position (latitude) by measuring the relationship of the sun, moon,
or certain stars to the horizon.

After the Hundred Years’ War, European monarchs con-

Political and
solidated their political power and raised revenues
Technological Change
through increased taxation of an already hard-pressed
peasantry. In England, Henry VII in 1485 founded the Tudor dynasty and began
uniting a previously divided land. In France, Charles VII’s successors unified the
kingdom. Most successful were Ferdinand of Aragón and Isabella of Castile; in 1492
they defeated the Muslims, who had lived in Spain and Portugal for centuries, and
established a strongly Catholic Spain by expelling Jews and Muslims.
The fifteenth century also brought technological change to Europe. Movable type
and the printing press, invented in Germany in the 1450s, made information more ac-
cessible, including information in books about fabled lands across the seas. The most
important was Marco Polo’s Travels, published in 1477, which recounted a Venetian
merchant’s adventures in thirteenth-century China and described that nation as bor-
dered on the east by an ocean. That led Europeans to believe they could reach China by
sea. A transoceanic route, if it existed, would allow northern Europeans to circumvent
the Muslim and Venetian merchants who controlled their access to Asian goods.

Technological advances and newly powerful national

Motives for
rulers made possible the European explorations of the
Exploration
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Each country craved
easy access to African and Asian goods—silk, dyes, perfumes, jewels, sugar, gold, and
especially spices, which were desirable for seasoning food and as possible medicines.

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12 CHAPTER 1 THREE OLD WORLDS CREATE A NEW, 1492–1600

Their allure stemmed largely from their rarity, their extraordinary cost, and their mys-
terious origins. They passed through so many hands en route to London or Seville
that no European knew exactly where they came from. Acquiring products directly
would improve a country’s income and its standing relative to other countries.
Spreading Christianity around the world supplemented the economic motive.
Fifteenth-century Europeans saw no conflict between materialistic and spiritual
goals. Explorers and colonizers—especially Roman Catholics—sought to convert
“heathen” peoples and also hoped to increase their nation’s wealth via direct trade
with Africa, China, India, and the Moluccas.

EARLY EUROPEAN EXPLORATIONS

To reach Asia, seafarers also required knowledge of the sea, its currents and winds.
Wind would power their ships. But where would Atlantic breezes carry their square-
rigged ships, which needed the wind directly behind the vessel?

The answers would be found in the Mediterranean

Sailing in the
Atlantic, the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean south and west
Mediterranean Atlantic
of Spain and bounded by the Azores (on the west) and the
Canaries (on the south), with the Madeiras in their midst. Europeans reached all
three sets of islands during the fourteenth century. Sailing to the Canaries from
Europe was easy because strong Northeast Trade winds blew southward along the
Iberian and African coastlines. The voyage took just a week.
The Iberian sailor attempting to return home from the Canaries, however, faced
a major obstacle: the winds now blew directly at him. Rowing and tacking back and
forth against the wind were tedious and ineffectual. So, mariners began sailing
“around the wind”—literally, sailing as directly against the wind as possible without
being forced to tack. In the Mediterranean Atlantic, a mariner would head northwest
into the open ocean until—weeks later—he reached the winds that would carry him
home, the so-called Westerlies.
This solution became the key to successful exploration of both the Atlantic and
the Pacific Oceans. Faced with a contrary wind, a sailor just sailed around it until he
found a wind to carry him in the proper direction.

During the fifteenth century, Iberian sailors regularly vis-

Islands of the
ited the three island groups. The uninhabited Azores were
Mediterranean Atlantic
settled by Portuguese migrants who raised wheat for sale
in Europe and sold livestock to passing sailors. By the 1450s Portuguese colonists
who settled the uninhabited Madeiras were employing slaves (probably Jews and
Muslims brought from Iberia) to grow sugar for export. By the 1470s Madeira had
developed into a colonial plantation economy. For the first time in history, a region
had been settled explicitly to cultivate a valuable crop—sugar—for sale elsewhere. Be-
cause the work was so backbreaking, only a supply of enslaved laborers (who could
not quit) could ensure the system’s success.
The Canaries had indigenous residents—the Guanche people, who traded ani-
mal skins and dyes with Europeans. After 1402 the French, Portuguese, and Spanish
sporadically attacked the islands. The Guanches resisted but were weakened by
 EARLY EUROPEAN EXPLORATIONS 13

European diseases. The seven islands fell to Europeans, who carried Guanches as
slaves to the Madeiras or the Iberian Peninsula. Spain conquered the last island in
1496 and devoted it to sugar plantations.

For other Europeans, the islands of the Mediterranean At-

Portuguese Trading
lantic were stepping-stones to Africa. In 1415 Portugal
Posts in Africa
seized control of Ceuta, a Muslim city in North Africa (see
Map 1.2). Prince Henry the Navigator, son of King John I of Portugal, dispatched
ships southward along the African coast, attempting to discover an oceanic route
to Asia. Not until after his death did Bartholomew Dias round the southern tip of
Africa (1488) and Vasco da Gama finally reach India (1498), where at Malabar he
located the richest source of peppercorns in the world.
Although West African states resisted European penetration of the interior, they
let the Portuguese establish trading posts along their coasts. The African kingdoms
charged the traders rent and levied duties on imports. The Portuguese gained, too,
profiting from transporting African gold, ivory, and slaves to Europe. By bargaining
with African masters to purchase slaves and carrying those bondspeople to Iberia,
the Portuguese introduced black slavery to Europe.

In the 1480s the Portuguese colonized São Tomé, an

Lessons of Early
island in the Gulf of Guinea. With Madeira at its sugar-
Colonization
producing capacity, the soil of São Tomé proved ideal, and
plantation agriculture there expanded rapidly. Planters imported large numbers of
slaves to work the cane fields, thus creating the first economy based primarily on the
bondage of black Africans.
By the 1490s, Europeans had learned three key colonization lessons in the
Mediterranean Atlantic. First, they learned how to transplant crops and livestock to
exotic locations. Second, they discovered that native peoples could be conquered
(like the Guanches) or exploited (like the Africans). Third, they developed a model of
plantation slavery and a system for supplying many such workers. The stage was set
for a pivotal moment in world history.

VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS, CABOT, AND THEIR SUCCESSORS

Christopher Columbus understood the lessons of the Mediterranean Atlantic. Born
in 1451 in the Italian city-state of Genoa, this self-educated son of a wool merchant
was by the 1490s an experienced sailor and mapmaker. Drawn to Portugal and its
islands, especially Madeira, he voyaged at least once to the Portuguese outpost on
the Gold Coast, where he became obsessed with gold and witnessed the economic
potential of the slave trade.
Like all accomplished seafarers, Columbus knew the world was round. But he
thought that China lay only 3,000 miles from the southern European coast. Thus, he
argued, it would be easier to reach Asia by sailing west. Experts scoffed, accurately
predicting that the two continents lay 12,000 miles apart. When Columbus in 1484
asked the Portuguese rulers to back his plan, they rejected what appeared to be a
crazy scheme.

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14 CHAPTER 1 THREE OLD WORLDS CREATE A NEW, 1492–1600

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1519 –1521 ST 149
IND us
Tenochtitlán IES umb
(Mexico City) Col
CENTRAL 02
s 15
AMERICA mbu
Caribbean Colu 49 9
Sea ci 1
puc
Ves

8
Balboa 9
PACIFIC OCEAN 14
1510 –1513 Columbus
Pizarro 1530 –1533
SOUTH AMERICA

Map 1.2 European Explorations in America

In the century following Columbus’s voyages, European adventurers explored the coasts and parts of the
interior of North and South America.

Jealous of Portugal’s successes in Africa, Ferdinand and

Columbus’s Voyage Isabella of Spain agreed to finance Columbus’s risky voy-
age. In part they hoped the profits would pay for a new
expedition to conquer Muslim-held Jerusalem. On August 3, 1492, in command of
three ships—the Pinta, the Niña, and the Santa Maria—Columbus sailed from the
Spanish port of Palos.
Just over two months later, the vessels found land approximately where Columbus
had predicted (see Map 1.2). On October 12, he and his men landed on an island in
the Bahamas, which its inhabitants called Guanahaní but he renamed San Salvador.
Later he explored the islands now known as Cuba and Hispaniola, which their resi-
dents, the Taíno people, called Colba and Bohío. Because he thought he had reached
the East Indies, Columbus referred to the inhabitants as Indians.

Three themes predominate in Columbus’s log. First, he in-

Columbus’s
sistently asked the Taínos where he could find gold, pearls,
Observations
and spices. They replied (via signs) that such products
were on other islands, on the mainland, or in interior cities. He came to mistrust
such answers, noting, “They will tell me anything I want to hear.”
 VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS, CABOT, AND THEIR SUCCESSORS 15

Second, Columbus wrote about the strange and beautiful plants and animals.
His interest was not soley aesthetic. “There are many plants and trees here that could
be worth a lot in Spain for use as dyes, spices, and medicines,” he observed and
planned to carry home “a sample of everything I can” for experts to examine.
Third, Columbus described the people, seizing some to take back to Spain. The
Taínos were, he said, handsome, gentle, and friendly, though they told him of fierce
people on nearby islands who raided their villages. Columbus believed the Taínos to
be likely converts to Catholicism and potentially “good and skilled servants.” Thus
the records of the first encounter between Europeans and America revealed themes
that would be of enormous significance for centuries. Europeans wanted to extract
profits from the Americas by exploiting natural resources—plants, animals, and peo-
ple. Columbus made three more voyages to the region, and until his death in 1506,
he mistakenly believed he had reached Asia. Because the Florentine Amerigo
Vespucci, who explored the South American coast in 1499, was the first to publish
the idea that a new continent had been discovered, Martin Waldseemüller in 1507

This map, produced in 1489 by Henricus Marcellus, represents the world as Christopher Columbus knew it, for it
incorporates information obtained after Bartholomew Dias, a Portuguese sailor, rounded the Cape of Good Hope at
the southern tip of Africa in 1488. Marcellus did not try to estimate the extent of the ocean separating the west coast
of Europe from the east coast of Asia. (© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved, Add. 15760, f.68–f69v)

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16 CHAPTER 1 THREE OLD WORLDS CREATE A NEW, 1492–1600

labeled the land America in his map (reproduced on page 00). By then, Spain,
Portugal, and Pope Alexander VI had signed the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494),
confirming Portugal’s dominance in Africa—and later Brazil—in exchange for Spanish
preeminence in the rest of the Americas.

About the year 1001, Leif Ericsson and other Norse people
Norse and Other
sailed to North America across the Davis Strait, which sep-
Northern Voyagers
arated their Greenland villages from Baffin Island (located
northeast of Hudson Bay; see Map 1.1) by 200 nautical miles, settling at a site they
named Vinland. Attacks by residents forced them out after a few years. In the 1960s,
archaeologists determined that the Norse had established an outpost at what is now
L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, but Vinland was probably located farther
south.
Some historians argue that in the 1480s European sailors probably located the
rich fishing grounds off the Newfoundland coast but kept the information secret.
Fifteenth-century seafarers voyaged between the European continent, England,
Ireland, and Iceland. The mariners who explored the region that would become the
United States and Canada built on their knowledge.
The winds that the northern sailors confronted posed problems on their out-
bound journeys. But mariners soon learned that the strongest winds shifted south-
ward during the winter and that, by departing from northern ports in spring, they
could steer northward to catch easterly breezes. Thus, those taking the northern
route usually reached America along the coast of what is now Maine or the Canadian
Maritime Provinces.

The European generally credited with “discovering”

John Cabot’s
North America is Zuan Cabboto, known today as John
Explorations
Cabot. More precisely, Cabot brought to Europe the first
formal knowledge of the northern continental coastline and claimed the land for
England. Like Columbus, Cabot was a master mariner from the Italian city-state of
Genoa. Calculating that England, which traded with Asia through a network of in-
termediaries, would be eager to sponsor exploratory voyages for a possible alterna-
tive route, he gained financial backing from King Henry VII. He sailed from Bristol
in late May 1497, reaching his destination about a month later. Scholars disagree
about the location of Cabot’s landfall but recognize the importance of his month-
long exploration of the coast of modern Newfoundland.
The voyages of Columbus, Cabot, and others brought the Eastern and Western
Hemispheres together. The Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral reached Brazil
in 1500; Cabot’s son Sebastian landed in North America in 1507; France financed
Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 and Jacques Cartier in 1534; and in 1609 and 1610
Henry Hudson explored the North American coast for the Dutch West India
Company. All were hoping to find the legendary, nonexistent “Northwest Passage”
through the Americas, an easy route to Asia’s riches. Although they did not plant
colonies in the Western Hemisphere, their discoveries interested European nations
in exploring North and South America.
 SPANISH EXPLORATION AND CONQUEST 17

SPANISH EXPLORATION AND CONQUEST

Only Spain began colonization immediately. On his second voyage in 1493, Columbus
brought to Hispaniola seventeen ships loaded with twelve hundred men, seeds,
plants, livestock, chickens, and dogs. The settlement named Isabela (in the modern
Dominican Republic) and its successors became the staging area for the Spanish
invasion of America.

At first, Spanish explorers fanned out around the

Cortés and Other
Caribbean basin. In 1513 Juan Ponce de León reached
Explorers
Florida, and Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus
of Panama to the Pacific Ocean, followed by Pánfilo de Narváez and others who
traced the Gulf of Mexico. In the 1530s and 1540s, conquistadores explored other re-
gions claimed by Spanish monarchs. Francisco Vásquez de Coronado journeyed
through the southwestern portion of what is now the United States while Hernán de
Soto explored the Southeast. Francisco Pizarro, who ventured into western South
America, acquired the richest silver mines in the world by conquering the Incas. But
the most important conquistador was Hernán Cortés, who in 1521 seized control of
the Aztec Empire.
Cortés landed a force on the Mexican mainland in 1519 to search for rumored
wealthy cities. Near the coast, local Mayas presented him with young enslaved women.
One of them, Malinche (whom the Spaniards baptized as a Christian and renamed
Doña Marina), became Cortés’s translator, bore him a son, Martín—one of the first
mestizos, or mixed-blood children—and eventually married one of his officers.

Traveling toward the Aztec capital, Cortés, with

Capture of
Malinche’s help, recruited peoples whom the Aztecs had
Tenochtitlán
long subjugated. The Spaniards’ strange beasts (horses,
livestock) and noisy weapons (guns, cannon) awed their new allies. Yet the Spaniards,
too, were awed. Years later, Bernal Díaz del Castillo recalled his first sight of
Tenochtitlán: “We were amazed . . . on account of the great towers and cues [temples]
and buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry.”
The Spaniards also brought smallpox to Tenochtitlán, transporting an epi-
demic that had begun on Hispaniola. The disease peaked in 1520, fatally weakening
Tenochtitlán’s defenders. Largely as a consequence, Tenochtitlán surrendered in
1521, and the Spaniards built Mexico City on its site while Cortés seized a treasure of
gold and silver. Thus, the Spanish monarchs controlled the richest, most extensive
empire Europe had known since ancient Rome.

Spain established the model of colonization based on

Spanish Colonization three major elements that other countries would later im-
itate. First, the Crown sought tight control over the
colonies, imposing a hierarchical government that allowed little autonomy to
American jurisdictions. That included carefully vetting and limiting prospective

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18 CHAPTER 1 THREE OLD WORLDS CREATE A NEW, 1492–1600

emigrants and insisting that colonies import all manufactured goods from Spain.
Roman Catholic priests attempted to ensure their religious conformity.
Second, men constituted most of the first colonists. Although some Spanish
women later immigrated to America, the men took primarily Indian—and later,
African—women as wives or concubines, a development often encouraged by colo-
nial administrators. They thereby began the racially mixed population that charac-
terizes much of Latin America today.
Third, the colonies’ wealth was based on the exploitation of the native popula-
tion and slaves from Africa. Spaniards took over the autocratic rule once assumed by
native leaders, who exacted labor and tribute from their subjects. Cortés established
the encomienda system, which granted Indian villages to conquistadors as a reward
for service, thus legalizing slavery in all but name.
In 1542, after an outcry from sympathetic Spaniards, a new legal code forbade
the conquerors from enslaving Indians while still allowing them to collect money and
goods from tributary villages. That, combined with the declining Indian population,
led the encomenderos to import Africans as their controlled labor force. They employed
Indians and Africans primarily in gold and silver mines, on sugar plantations, and
on horse, cattle, and sheep ranches. African slavery was more common in the Greater
Antilles (the major Caribbean islands) than on the mainland.
Many demoralized residents of Mesoamerica accepted the Christian religion
brought to New Spain by Franciscan and Dominican friars. Spaniards leveled cities,
constructing Roman Catholic cathedrals and monasteries on sites once occupied by
Aztec, Incan, and Mayan temples. Indians were exposed to European customs and re-
ligious rituals designed to assimilate Catholic and pagan beliefs. Friars juxtaposed
the cult of the Virgin Mary with that of the corn goddess, and the Indians melded as-
pects of their world-view with Christianity, in a process called syncretism. Thousands
of Indians embraced Catholicism, at least partly because it was the religion of their
new rulers.

The New World’s gold and silver, initially a boon, ulti-

Gold, Silver, and
mately brought about the decline of Spain as a major
Spain’s Decline
power. China gobbled up roughly half of the total output
of New World mines. In the 1570s, the Spanish dispatched silver-laden galleons an-
nually from Acapulco (on Mexico’s west coast) to trade at their new settlement at
Manila, in the Philippines, which gained them easy access to luxury Chinese goods,
such as silk and spices.
This unprecedented wealth led to rapid inflation, which caused Spanish prod-
ucts to be overpriced in international markets and imported goods to become
cheaper in Spain. The once-profitable Spanish textile-manufacturing industry col-
lapsed, as did many other businesses. The seemingly endless income from American
colonies emboldened Spanish monarchs to spend lavishly on wars against the Dutch
and the English.
Late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century monarchs repudiated the state
debt, wreaking havoc on national finances. When the South American gold and
silver mines faltered in the mid-seventeenth century, Spain’s economy crumbled,
ending its international importance.
 THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE 19

THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

A mutual transfer of diseases, plants, and animals (called the Columbian Exchange
by historian Alfred Crosby; see Figure 1.1) resulted directly from the European voy-
ages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and Spanish colonization. Many large
mammals, such as cattle and horses, were native to the connected continents of
Europe, Asia, and Africa, but the Americas had no domesticated beasts larger than
llamas. Vegetable crops of the Americas—particularly maize, beans, squash, cassava,
and potatoes—were more nutritious and produced higher yields than those of
Europe and Africa. In time, native peoples learned to raise and consume European
livestock, and Europeans and Africans planted and ate American crops. The diets of
all three peoples were enriched, helping the world’s population to double over the
next three hundred years. About three-fifths of all crops cultivated worldwide today
were first grown in the Americas.

Diseases carried from Europe and Africa devastated the

Smallpox and Other
Americas. Indians fell victim to microbes that had long in-
Diseases
fested other continents, killing hundreds of thousands of
Europeans but leaving survivors with some immunity. When Columbus landed on

Cattle, horseryse, ,pigs,

wheat,
and other diseases
smallpox
NORTH
EUROPE
AMERICA Corn, potatoes, tobacco,
squash, peppers, cacao, beans,
s y p h i li s ASIA

Sugar Sugar

Malaria
AFRICA

SOUTH C assava
AMERICA

r
Suga

Figure 1.1 Major Items in the Columbian Exchange

As European adventurers traversed the world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they initiated the
Columbian Exchange of plants, animals, and diseases. These events changed the lives of the peoples of the
world forever, bringing new foods and new pestilence to both sides of the Atlantic.

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20 CHAPTER 1 THREE OLD WORLDS CREATE A NEW, 1492–1600

Hispaniola in 1492, approximately half a million people resided there. Fifty years
later, there were fewer than two thousand native inhabitants.
Although measles, typhus, influenza, malaria, and other illnesses severely af-
flicted native peoples, the greatest killer was smallpox. Historians estimate that over
time, alien diseases could have reduced the precontact American population by
as much as 90 percent. The epidemics recurred at twenty- to thirty-year intervals,
appearing either in tandem or in quick succession. Large numbers of deaths further
strained native societies, rendering them more vulnerable to droughts, crop failures
or other challenges. A great epidemic, probably viral hepatitis, swept through the
coastal villages north of Cape Cod from 1616 to 1618, wiping out up to 90 percent
of the population. Because of this dramatic depopulation, a few years later English
colonists were able to establish settlements virtually unopposed.
The Americans, however, probably gave the Europeans syphilis, a virulent vene-
real disease. The first recorded European case occurred in Barcelona, Spain, in 1493,
after Columbus’s return from the Caribbean. Although less likely than smallpox to
be fatal, syphilis was debilitating. Carried by soldiers, sailors, and prostitutes, it
spread through Europe and Asia, reaching China by 1505.

The exchange of three commodities significantly altered

Sugar, Horses,
Europe and the Americas. The ravenous European demand
and Tobacco
for sugar, a luxury foodstuff, led Columbus to take Canary
Island sugar canes to Hispaniola in 1493. By the 1520s, plantations in the Greater An-
tilles worked by African slaves regularly shipped sugar to Spain. Half a century later,
Portugal’s Brazil colony (founded in 1532) was producing sugar for the European
market on a larger scale, and after 1640, sugar cultivation became the crucial compo-
nent of English and French Caribbean colonization.
Horses—which Columbus brought to America in 1493—fell into the hands of
North American Indians during the seventeenth century. Through trade and theft,
horses spread among the peoples of the Great Plains by 1750. Lakotas, Comanches, and
Crows, among others, used horses for transportation and hunting, calculated their
wealth in number of horses owned, and waged war primarily on horseback. After ac-
quiring horses, their mode of subsistence shifted from hunting various animals, com-
bined with gathering and agriculture, to one based almost entirely on buffalo hunting.
In America, Europeans encountered tobacco, which at first they believed to be
medicinal. Smoking and chewing the “Indian weed” became a European fad after it
was planted in Turkey in the sixteenth century. Despite the efforts of King James I of
England, who in 1604 pronounced smoking “hatefull to the Nose, harmfull to the
brain, [and] dangerous to the Lungs,” tobacco’s popularity climbed.

EUROPEANS IN NORTH AMERICA

Europeans were initially more interested in exploiting North America’s natural re-
sources than in establishing colonies. John Cabot reported that fish were plentiful
near Newfoundland, so the French, Spanish, and Portuguese rushed to take advan-
tage of abundant codfish, which were prized in European markets. In the early
1570s, the English joined the Newfoundland fishery, selling salt cod to the Spanish
 Links to the World
Maize
aize, to Mesoamericans, was a gift from Quetzal-
M coatl, the plumed serpent god. Cherokees told of
an old woman whose blood produced the prized stalks
after her grandson buried her body in a field. For the
Abenakis, the crop began when a beautiful maiden or-
dered a youth to drag her by the hair through a burned-
over field. The long hair turned into silk, the flower on
corn stalks. Both tales’ symbolic association of corn and
women supports archaeologists’ recent suggestion that—
in eastern North America at least—female plant breeders
were responsible for substantial improvements in the
productivity of maize.
Sacred to the Indian peoples who grew it, maize was a
main part of their diet. They dried the kernels; ground into
meal, maize was cooked as a mush or baked as flat cakes,
the forerunners of modern tortillas. Although European
invaders initially disdained maize, they soon learned that
it could be cultivated under many conditions—from sea
level to twelve thousand feet, from regions with abun-
dant rainfall to dry lands. So Europeans, too, came to rely
on corn, growing it in their American settlements and
their homelands.
Maize cultivation spread to Asia and Africa. Today
China is second only to the United States in corn produc-
tion, and corn is more widely grown in Africa than any
other crop. Still, the United States produces 45 percent
of the world’s corn, and it is the nation’s single largest
crop. More than half of American corn is consumed by
livestock. Much of the rest is processed into syrup used as
a sweetener or into ethanol, a gasoline additive that re-
duces both pollution and dependence on fossil fuels. Of
the ten thousand products in a modern American grocery The earliest known European drawing of maize, the American plant
store, about one-fourth rely on corn. Currently this crop that was to have such an extraordinary impact on the entire world.
provides one-fifth of all the calories consumed by the (Typ 565.42.409 F[B], Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Houghton Library,
earth’s peoples. Harvard University Library)

in exchange for Asian goods. The English became dominant in the region, which by
century’s end was the focal point of valuable European commerce.

Fishermen quickly realized that they could increase prof-

Trade Among Indians
its by exchanging cloth and metal goods, such as pots and
and Europeans
knives, for native trappers’ beaver pelts, used to make

21
22 CHAPTER 1 THREE OLD WORLDS CREATE A NEW, 1492–1600

fashionable hats in Europe. Initially, Europeans traded from ships along the coast.
Later, male adventurers set up outposts on the mainland.
Indians similarly desired European goods that could make their lives easier and
establish their tribal superiority. Some bands concentrated entirely on trapping for
the European market and abandoned their traditional economies. The Abenakis of
Maine, for example, trapped beaver to sell to French traders and became partially
dependent on food supplied by their southern neighbors, the Massachusett tribe. In
exchange, the Massachusetts sought European metal tools which they preferred over
their handmade stone implements. The pelt trade wiped out beaver in some regions.
The disappearance of their dams led to soil erosion, which later increased when
European settlers cleared forests for farmland.

In the mid-sixteenth cen-

Contest Between
tury, English “sea dogs” like
Spain and England
John Hawkins and Sir Fran-
cis Drake raided Spanish treasure fleets from the
Caribbean. Their actions helped foment a war that
in 1588 culminated in the defeat of the Spanish
Armada off the English coast. English leaders started
to consider planting colonies in the Western
Hemisphere, thereby gaining better access to trade
goods while preventing Spain from dominating the
Americas.
The first English colonial planners hoped to re-
produce Spanish successes by dispatching to America
men who would exploit the native peoples for their na-
tion’s benefit. In the mid-1570s, a group that included
Sir Walter Raleigh promoted a scheme to establish
outposts that could trade with the Indians and provide
bases for attacks on New Spain. Approving the idea,
Queen Elizabeth I authorized Raleigh to colonize
North America.

After two preliminary expe-

Roanoke ditions, in 1587 Sir Walter
Raleigh sent 117 colonists
to the territory he named Virginia, after Elizabeth, the
Virgin Queen. They established a settlement on
A watercolor by John White, an artist with Raleigh’s
Roanoke Island, in what is now North Carolina, but in
second preliminary expedition (and who later was
governor of the ill-fated 1587 colony). He identified his 1590 a resupply ship found the colonists had vanished,
subjects as the wife and daughter of the chief of leaving only the word Croatoan (the name of a nearby
Pomeioc, a village near Roanoke. Note the woman’s island) carved on a tree. Recent tree-ring studies have
elaborate tattoos and the fact that the daughter carries shown that the North Carolina coast experienced a se-
an Elizabethan doll, obviously given to her by one of the
vere drought between 1587 and 1589 that may have led
Englishmen. (© Trustees of the British Museum)
colonists to abandon Roanoke.
 SUMMARY 23

The reason becomes clear in Thomas Harriot’s A Briefe and

Harriot’s Briefe and
True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, published in
True Report
1588. Harriot, a noted scientist traveling with the second
voyage to Roanoke, revealed that, although explorers depended on villagers for food,
they needlessly antagonized them by killing some of them for what Harriot admitted
were unjustifiable reasons.
Harriot advised later colonizers to treat the native peoples more humanely. But
his book’s description of America’s economic potential demonstrated why that ad-
vice would rarely be followed. Harriot stressed three points: the availability of famil-
iar European commodities, such as grapes, iron, copper, and fur-bearing animals;
the potential profitability of exotic American products, such as maize and tobacco;
and the relative ease of manipulating the native population. Should the Americans
resist, Harriot asserted, England’s disciplined soldiers and superior weaponry would
quickly deliver victory.
Harriot’s Briefe and True Report depicted for English readers a bountiful land of
profitable opportunities. The people residing there would, he thought, “in a short time
be brought to civilitie” through conversion to Christianity, admiration for European
superiority, or conquest—if they did not die from disease. But European dominance of
North America was never fully achieved as Harriot and his compatriots intended.

Summary
Initial contact among Europeans, Africans, and Americans that ended near the close of
the sixteenth century began approximately 250 years earlier when Portuguese sailors
explored the Mediterranean Atlantic and the West African coast. Those seamen estab-
lished commercial ties that brought African slaves first to Iberia and then to the islands
the Europeans conquered and settled. The Mediterranean Atlantic and its island sugar
plantations nurtured the mariners. Except for the Spanish, early explorers regarded the
Americas primarily as a barrier blocking them from their goal of an oceanic route to
the riches of China and the Moluccas. European fishermen were the first to realize that
the northern coasts had valuable products of fish and furs to offer.
The Aztecs experienced hunger after Cortés’s invasion, and their great temples
were destroyed as the Spaniards used their stones (and Indian laborers) to construct
cathedrals. The conquerors employed first American and later, enslaved African
workers, to till the fields, mine the precious metals, and herd the livestock that gen-
erated immense profits.
The initial impact of Europeans on the Americas proved devastating in just
decades. Europeans’ diseases killed millions, and their livestock, along with other im-
ported animals and plants, irrevocably modified the American environment. Europe,
too, was changed: American foodstuffs like corn and potatoes improved nutrition,
and American gold and silver first enriched, then ruined, the Spanish economy.
By the late sixteenth century, fewer people resided in North America than had
lived there before Columbus’s arrival. The Indians, Africans, and Europeans who
lived there inhabited a new world that combined in unprecedented ways foods, reli-
gions, economies, ways of life, and political systems that had developed separately
for millennia. Understandably, conflict permeated that process.

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 Le ga c y fo r a Pe o p le a n d a N a ti o n

Kennewick Man/Ancient One States.” Led by the Umatillas, area tribes prepared to re-
claim and rebury the remains. But eight anthropologists
filed suit in federal court, contending that bones of such
n July 28, 1996, Will Thomas, a college student
O wading in the Columbia River near Kennewick,
Washington, felt a skull underfoot. Shocked, Thomas ini-
antiquity were unlikely to be linked to modern tribes and
requesting access to them for scientific study.
Although the U.S. government supported the tribes’
tially believed he had found a recent murder victim. Soon claims, in late August 2002 a federal judge ruled in favor
the skeleton was determined to be about 9,200 years old. of the anthropologists, in a decision upheld on appeal
During the next decade, the skeleton, dubbed Kennewick two years later. He declared that the Interior Department
Man (by the press) or Ancient One (by local Indian tribes), had erred in concluding that all pre-1492 remains found in
was featured on television news shows and in magazines. the United States should automatically be considered
The oldest nearly complete skeleton found in the Native American. The Umatillas protested, contending
United States, the remains became the subject of a major that he clearly contradicted Congress’s intent in enacting
federal court case. At issue was the interpretation of the NAGPRA. In June 2006 Umatilla leaders visited the
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act bones at a Seattle museum to honor and pray for them.
(NAGPRA), adopted by Congress in 1990 to prevent the The debate over the skeleton reveals one facet of the
desecration of Indian gravesites and to provide for the continuing legacy of the often-contentious relationship
return of bones and sacred objects to native peoples. It between the nation’s indigenous inhabitants and later
defined the term Native American as “of, or relating to, a immigrants.
tribe, people, or culture that is indigenous to the United

Chapter Review
American Societies
What led to the development of major North American civilizations in
the centuries before Europeans arrived?
Paleo-Indians were the first known people on the North American continent about
11,000 years ago. When the Ice Age ended, and the prevalence of mammals decreased,
many native peoples in what is now central Mexico began cultivating food crops for
survival, including maize (corn), squash, beans, avocados, and peppers. As agricultural
methods improved, vegetables became a more reliable and nutritious food source,
leading most early Americans to abandon nomadic ways and settle to tend crops.
Agricultural success facilitated the rise of civilizations, since with steady food supplies,
people could broaden their focus from farming to trade to accumulating wealth.
Food supply, however, was so keenly linked to a civilization’s success that the first
large city-states of MesoAmerica and Mississippian culture later collapsed from lack of
adequate food.

24
 CHAPTER REVIEW 25

North America in 1492

What were the gender dimensions of native cultures?
Like Europeans, Native American societies assigned various tasks and re-
sponsibilities to members along gender lines. Societies that were predominantly
hunting assigned women to making food and clothing. Agricultural peoples var-
ied in their gendered division of labor; some, like the Pueblos, defined farming
as men’s work, while others, like the Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Muskogean,
gave women most agricultural chores, and men hunted and cleared the land.
Women just about everywhere raised children. Agricultural families were defined
matrilineally, through the female line of descent, and women assumed more lead-
ership roles than in nomadic hunter peoples. They never became chiefs, but older
women chose chiefs and could start or stop wars.

African Societies
What was the nature of slavery in Africa?
Slavery enabled upwardly mobile farmers to expand their labor force and
potentially gain wealth. People became enslaved due to criminal acts, or more
typically, either because they were captured by enemies or agreed to enslave them-
selves or family members to repay debts. Unlike the form of slavery that would
develop in America, slave status did not always pass to the next generation.
African slavery varied from complete chattel to allowing slaves to participate in
trade or even achieve prominent military or political posts.

European Societies
What were the motives behind fifteenth and sixteenth century
European explorations?
While technological advances and powerful rulers facilitated explorations,
the driving force behind them was the quest for a transoceanic trade route that
would provide direct access to African and Asian goods such as silks, dyes, jewels,
sugar, gold, and spices. This would allow northern Europeans to bypass the
Muslim and Venetian merchants who served as middle men for these items.
Rulers also believed that the more they controlled access to these much-desired
products, the better their nation’s standing would be relative to other countries.
The other motivation was to spread Christianity and convert those they consid-
ered to be heathen peoples.

Early European Explorations

What lessons learned during early colonization would influence
future European settlement in the sixteenth century?
By the end of the fifteenth century, Europeans learned how to transport crops
and livestock to their exotic new world conquests. They recognized that native
peoples could be conquered, exploited, and forced to labor. The Portuguese
colony of Madeira was the first in history to be settled to cultivate a cash crop—

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 – Hogy többet ne is irhassak? őrnagy ur?
– Persze… Ugyse válaszolnak… Az ember csak várja a postát… és
nem válaszolnak… Mi?… Nincs idejük… Udvarolnak nekik, hát nem
érnek rá… Mi?
A hadnagy csak mosolygott, befelé, szélesen, a fejét csavargatva,
mint egy nagy bumfordi gyerek.
– Minden nő becstelen dög, – morogta az őrnagy.
– Igenis őrnagy ur, – szólt kis vártatva a hadnagy.
– Nahát.
– De kivételek vannak, őrnagy ur kérem.
– Nincsen kivétel. Mind becstelen dög! Vegye tudomásul. Dög!
Jegyezze meg magának.
– Bocsánatot kérek…
– Dög.
Erre uj csönd lett. A hadnagy ugy nyugtatta az asztalon a két
kezét, mint a kutya, mozdulni sem mert. Vastag kis teste nyomta az
ágyat, mert ő alszik ezen a vackon, hogy az asztalhoz közel legyen, a
telefon miatt… A vekker óra hangosan ketyegett, kint az ajtón tul a
telefonos legény lassan duruzsolt a kagylóba, a gazember valamelyik
pajtásával diskurált s viccelt és fuldoklott a lefojtott nevetéstől, aztán
egyszerre fel-felhangzott a jelentkezése. „Harmadik
zászlóaljparancsnokság.“ Akkor kezdődött ismét, hogy „igen… igen…
igen…“
Aztán megint mély csönd lett. A föld alatt lehangoló némaság
volt, ahogy a három ember mozdulatlanul ült, csak távolról, az
állások felől csattogott be a puskalövöldözések halk nesze.
– Ha valaha hazamegyek és megházasodom, be fogom zárni az
asszonyt! – mondta az őrnagy. – Bizonyisten, azoknak a régi
váruraknak teljes igazuk volt! Tudja mit csináltak azok? Azok
barátom okos emberek voltak. Épitettek egy várat, maga azt hiszi,
hogy az ellenség ellen. Fügét. Azért, hogy a nőstényüket bele
zárhassák. Be kell zárni a bestiákat, hogy ne kószáljanak a világban.
Mi?
– Igenis őrnagy ur.
– Hát nincs igazam?
– De igen, őrnagy ur.
– Na lássa. Maga azt hiszi, a maga Lolája magát nem csalja meg?
A szemük ugy elnéz, ugy elkönnyesedik a távolba, a lelkük ugy
kisugárzik, mint a fényszóró sugarai a számtalan mérföldeken át, a
szivük mind egy-egy villámtelep: ha volna hatodik érzékünk, amely
az érzéseket tudná meglátni, az vakon mehetne át a Kárpátok
bércein, mert ezek a szivek nagyszerü lángokkal világitanak vissza az
egész magyar hazáig s ezeknek a lelkeknek szerelmi fénye ott a
lövészárkoknál éjjel-nappal nem szünő csodálatos fényutat vetnek föl
az égre…
Most a rendkivüli idők, állapotok és feszültségek a férfisziveket
tették ujjá, a férfisziveket kovácsolták át valami egészen ujjá. Azok
az udvarlók, vőlegények és férjek! (férjek is, ha még olyan öreg
férjek, akkor is!) mind egészen uj képességeket nyertek, hogy a
leghalványabb és legcsekélyebb nyomokon nekiinduljanak vadászni a
hölgyük lelki eltávolodása után.
Mert ez a legfontosabb. Kivétel nélkül minden férfi azt érzi ott,
hogy ő ki van vetve a hazából, be van dugva a föld sarába, ki van
téve minden percben a halálnak s a nő, aki párja, éli a régi életet,
vidáman, egészségesen, könnyelmüen s talán boldogan…
S mint bebörtönözött oroszlánok a vasrostélyban le s fel, le s fel
és körbe-körbe járnak és dörmögnek és hörögnek és gondolataikra a
fogukat vicsorgatják, mert a gondolataik szakadatlanul ott
kóvályognak, hogy minden lehetetlenséget kieszelnek hevülő
fantáziával és azonnal készpénznek veszik és azonnal készek amiatt
már itélni… Nem találkoztam egyetlen urral, aki nyugodt és boldogan
megcsillapodott lett volna, ha a nőkről volt szó. Az egész fronton
végig a legingerültebb vitatkozás tört ki azonnal, mihelyt a női hüség
szóba került s ezeknek a vitatkozásoknak nem az ellenmondás volt a
gyujtója, hanem a tullicitálás. Egymást kiabálták tul az urak és
egymást rémitgették még szörnyübb mesékkel. S voltak, akiknek
szavajárása ez volt:
– Á, hogy mennyi válás lesz a háboru után!… Majd meglátjátok,
hogy mennyi válás lesz a háboru után!… Nono…
A másiknak minden szava ez volt:
– A nők mind becstelenek, azokba kérlek nincs hüség, nincs
jóság, minden nő becstelen…
A harmadik azt mondja:
– Kérlek az ezredünket áthelyezték Csehországba s onnan egy
cseh ezredet vittek a mi helyünkre és kérlek… – s tragikus
mozdulattal igy kiált fel – s már eddig kilenc eljegyzés volt a
városunkban a cseh tisztekkel…
Azt a mély elkeseredést és megvetést, azt a hörgő fájdalmat és
sajgó gyülöletet, ami ebben benne volt…
Azt idehaza a hölgyek nem tudják elképzelni.
Nehéz ételeket esznek az urak. Van hus, füstölt husok,
konzervek, sonkák, szalonnák, friss hus, fagyasztott hus, kolbász,
nehéz rostélyosok és szivós párolt husételek és buzából való, de
ugyancsak nehéz emésztésü prófunt…
Mit kell még mondani? Ez maga elég rá, hogy az urak valami
kiválóan szerelemre képesek legyenek.
S van baj, van fáradság, izgalom, felrobbant aknák dörgései,
éjjeli virrasztások, alig két-három órai alvás naponta, szakadatlan
ingerültség az ellenségtől száz-kétszáz lépésre, örökös ágyu- és
puskatűzben s mégis az a legkomiszabb, hogy késik a posta.

23.
KÁRPÁTI EMLÉK.

A fedezék nagyszerüen be volt fűtve, az urak forró tea mellett

üldögéltek, szürcsöltek, diskuráltak. Enyhe téli hangulat, kinn fütyöl
a szél, nagyokat dörög az ágyu és sürün pattog a puskalövés.
Bizalmas, bátorságos érzés: a muszi csendben van, az a kis
ropogtatás csak arra való, hogy ébren tartsák magukat innen is, tul
is.
– Mért köhög kapitány ur?
– Már megszoktam, nem is törődök vele. Parancsolnak még az
urak teát?… Guth, van tea, Guth?
A legény mintha álomból ugrana föl.
– Igenis, kapitány ur.
A kapitány kedvesen, kisfiusan, behuzott nyakkal nevetett.
– Nem is hallja a bitang, mit mondtam! Guth! – s összeszoritotta
a száját, hogy ne látszék rajta a mosolygás, – adnál egy kis befőttet
vörös káposztával?
Guth egy pillanatig némán bámult, aztán észbe kapott:
– Igenis nem, kapitány ur!
– Igy tálalta nekem! A vörös káposztát a befőtthöz tette s
hangosan köhögött a kis nevetéshez.
 Az urak kivárták a kapitány köhögését s egyszerre ketten is
mondták:
– Ez nem jó, ez a köhögés, kapitány ur.
– Tüdőcsucshurut, – mondta a kapitány.
– Mért nem megy szabadságra, kapitány ur?
– Ah, nem megyek… Ha rajtam állana, elmennék, de annyi kérés,
gyanusitások, fölülvizsgálat… És nekem itt van a helyem, itt fogok
maradni… Kérem, urak, a háboru kitörésekor kilencvenhat kiló
voltam, ma hatvannyolc… Guth, bonts egy szardiniát.
– Igenis, kapitány ur.
Mély csöndben maradtak a jól megásott fedezékben, amely
előzőleg ezredparancsnokság uri palotája volt, nyirfaágak szép fehér
szövésével diszes. Mindnyájan magukra gondoltak, a nyirfából
szerkesztett lócákon s székeken, a gyertya enyhe homályán egy
percig tünődő csöndben ültek az urak, volna mindenkinek egy
panaszlani valója: a háboru…
– Lássa, kapitány ur, magának nem is lett volna szabad kijönni a
harctérre.
– Mért kérem? Akkor még nem volt nekem semmi bajom! Én
tizennyolc év alatt nem voltam beteg, ezt a Kárpátokban kaptam.
Nem igen hiszem, hogy énnálam erősebb tiszt lett volna az
ezredben. A bakák panaszkodtak, hogy fáznak és én fürödtem a
Szávában, hogy megmutassam nekik, hogy nincs hideg.
Együtt ült, eggyé főve, a pokoli melegre befütött földi fedezékben
a kis társaság, lelkek oly közel egymáshoz, ahogy csak ott, a harc
terén bajtársak ennyire az emberek. Kapitány és körülötte
hadnagyok és kadettok, a telefonhoz közel egy nagyszakállu
kadetaspirant ül szeliden, szürke szemekkel lesve az urak szemét s
mindannyian tisztelettel és olyan figyelemmel várva ki a kapitány ur
szavát, ahogy csak katonák tudják tisztelni s respektálni a
följebbvalót. Valahogy ugy kölcsönben növelték egymásban a
jóságot: hogyne szeretné egy kapitány ilyen hü és deferáló bajtársait
s hogyne ragaszkodnának meleg szivvel egy ilyen bátor és odaadó,
gondoskodó emberszivü kapitányhoz a subalternek…
– A Kárpátokban szereztem, az uzsoki harcokban, nem volt
nekem addig semmi bajom. Egy éjjel sátort hevenyésztek ugy, hogy
két fa közt kifeszitették a sátorponyvát, azaz három oldalról volt
védve, a negyedik oldalról szabad volt. Széna volt, ág, tüzet
csináltak. Váry kassai tanár, az piromaniákus volt, mindjárt tüzet
rakott.
Kicsit elmosolyodott, visszaélte magát, ahogy gyermekkorára
gondol az ember! Mikor volt az; a kárpáti harcok; egy egész évvel
ezelőtt; hol voltunk még akkor a lövészároképités pompás
tudományában; a lovak egész télen a szabadban, fa alá kötve
dideregtek…
A jó forró fedezékben az urak szinte összehuzták magukat s
összedörzsölték a tenyerüket, ahogy a szabadra, a kint
fagyoskodásra gondoltak… Kint méteres hó ma is és fut a szél az
orosz sikon.
– Meggyult a sátor, óriási füst, majd megfulladtam, olyan dühbe
gurultam, hogy dacára, hogy mondtam, hogy ne csináljanak tüzet
abba a szélbe… Kifüstöltek, mint egy disznót. Összedőlt minden,
Láng is majd megfulladt, köhécseltünk egy óráig.
Az arcéle a melegtől s a tüdőbajtól céklavörösre gyulladt ki s
csillogó barna szemei derüsen hunyoritva néztek maga elé.
– Hát én nem mentem többet a tüzhöz, hanem előhivtam a
legényemet és ásattam vele magamnak egy ágyat. Már akkor két
teljes napja egy pillanatot sem aludtam… tartalékban voltunk s
tologattak bennünket előre-hátra a hegyeken.
– Az a legfinomabb, – szólt bele egy hadnagy szakértően s
áttette sárga lábszárvédős lábát egyikről a másikra, aztán szépen
kefélt hosszu szakállát simogatta.
– Uzsok fölött volt, északnyugatra… Valami nagy biztosságban
sem voltunk, az orosz még is ott volt, dehát az is fázott… Ásattam
magamnak a hóba egy jó mély gödröt. Ágyat. Azt telerakattam
szénával, jó magasan, tizenöt-husz centi, arra sátorponyvát, arra
ráfeküdtem, rám a pokrócomat, arra egy jó réteg szénát, arra
sátorponyvát, ujra szénát.
Az urak a nyirfa-asztal körül vidáman nevettek, az asztal tele volt
rakva mindenféle jó nehéz ételekkel, füstölt holmik, szalonna, kitünő
konzerv, sonka s Guth hozta a friss teát. Derüsen szivták a jó
kincstári cigarettát, amivel a kapitány őket prezentelgeti meg,
érdemeket jutalmazgatva, mert ő nem igen dohányos, nem győzné
elfogyasztani az illetményét, csak a bor hiányzott, hogy a kedv
magasra szökjön. De itt valóban nem mámoros vigság lobog, a
fedezék enyhe vidámsága töltötte el a testet, lelket. A fiatal tisztek,
kik nagyobbrészt csak a nyáron kerültek ki a harctérre, élvező
tisztelettel hallgatták az archeologiai előadást.
– Az inasom elvitte a cipőmet, hogy kitisztitsa s aludtam, mint a
tej. A fejem fölött sátorponyva volt kifeszitve a hó ellen. A Tertsek
barátunk rám hágott többször, mert nem tudta, hogy alatta vagyok,
de annyi széna volt, nem fájt… Egyszer csak hallom, hogy bőg a
Guth; arra ébredtem. Guth! Emlékszel, hogy bőgtél?
Guth a sarokban, mint egy automata pattant föl.
– Igenis, kapitány ur.
– Hát mig egy nagyot aludtam, azalatt beesett a hó. Ez meg nem
lelt meg az erdőben. Hallom, hogy bőg: „Megfagyott a kapitány ur!“
Azt kiáltottad, Guth?
– Igenis, kapitány ur, mert nem láttam a kapitány urat. Hogy a hó
beeste a kapitány urat.
– Azt hittem, hogy talán igaza van. Mozgatom a lábam, nincsen
semmi baj. És csupa viz vagyok az izzadságtól, mintha egy jó
gőzfürdőt vettem volna. De nem birok kimozdulni. Kiáltani akarok,
nem birok kiáltani… Hallom, hogy mondja odafönn Guth: „Hozzatok
egy ásót!“ Igaz, Guth?
– Igenis, kapitány ur.
– Hósipkám is volt, az orromig be voltam huzva, de olyan
melegem volt, hogy itt fázom, de ott nem fáztam. És ezek ott
szaladgálnak és nem lelnek meg s ettől még melegebb lett az ágy…
Idegesen nevet mindenki, az ember megérzi, ha veszélyek
lebegtetik meg szárnyukat az élet fölött.
– Kiásnak aztán; egy méteres hó esett rám az éjjel; megcsip a
hideg. „Add ide a cipőt!“ Elhozza. Próbálom fölhuzni, ugy kong, meg
van fagyva. „Elácsorogtál vele“. „De nem kapitány ur!“ „Eredj vissza,
melegitsd föl ujra“. Elmegy, fölmelegiti, jön vissza, ujra olyan
kemény, mint a csont, nem lehet fölhuzni. Igy volt, Guth?
– Igenis, kapitány ur, de nagyon siettem, kapitány ur kérem.
– Tudom, hogy szoktál sietni! – mosolyodott el a kapitány. – Az
igaz, akkor sietett, mert néztem… Megint olyan mint a jég. Na,
igazad van, mondtam, ezt nem birom fölhuzni, add a papucsot, majd
odamegyek, fölhuzom… Fölállok, ő már akkor kijárta az utat ugy,
hogy nekem csak bele kellett lépegetni a nyomokba. Egyszer csak
megcsuszom, a papucs lemarad a lábamról a hóba, féllábon állva
kikeresem, a kamélhár-szoknim teleszijja magát, lefagy, lehuzódott,
ott is maradt, kitünő harisnya volt, nem sokat kaptam vissza tiz
koronából, most isten tudja mennyibe kerülne! Káromkodtam,
bukdácsoltam, mert tudtam, hogy minden nyavalya onnan jön, nem
akartam reumát, csuzot vénségemre, ezek meg annyit nevettek
rajtam, hogy Szkorka mondta, hogy nem adta volna egy vagyonért,
hogy látott engem ott ugrálni.
Mosolyog rajta s megcsóválja a fejét. A fiatal tisztek
mosolyognak, de nem nevetnek, nekik, akik csak hallják, sokkal
félelmesebb, mint annak, aki akkor résztvett benne.
 – Guth, mi lesz avval a szardiniával?
– Igenis, már hozom, kapitány ur.
– Két-három napra lázam lett, éjjeli izzadások… Pár hét mulva
készen volt a kétoldali tüdőcsucshurut…
– Szép kis kárpáti emlék, – mondja bólintva hadnagy Ladány s
ujra megsimogatja szép állszakállát, amit olyan finyásan visel, mint a
szinész az álszakállt.
– Igazán nagyon rosszul teszi a kapitány ur, hogy nem gondol
magára.
A kapitány kissé elbiggyeszti a száját.
– Őrnagy ur is mondta már, de én nem megyek… Ki legyen itt, ha
nem az aktivok…
A tartalékos hadnagyok és kadettek ránéztek, egy pillanatig mély
csönd volt, az urak gondoltak valamit, de nem szóltak.
– Guth, hozod már azt a szardiniát?
– Igenis hozom, kapitány ur kérem.
A kapitány kerekre nyilt szemmel bámult a legényére, ahogy a
gőzölgő szardiniás-dobozt meglátta a kezében.
– Hát te állat, te mit csináltál?
– Megmelegitettem, kapitány urnak alássan jelentem.
– Fölforralta a konzervet!… Hát nézzék urak, fölforralta a
konzervet!… Hát ez az ember tiz évvel röviditette meg az életemet!…
Amennyit ez már a háboru alatt csinált ilyeneket!… Ha elmenni
szeretnék, csakis azért, hogy ne legyek ennek a baromnak a
gondozására rászorulva… Te, Guth, te, te… Hát hány ezer szardiniát
bontottál már, hát mikor forraltuk föl?… Igy megszégyeniteni engem
az urak előtt… eredj! az ördög vigyen el!…
 – Kapitány urnak alássan jelentem, akkor is azt méltóztetszett
kapitány urnak mondani, hogy melegitsem meg, mert nem
méltóztetszik hidegen megenni… Ott a tüznél, mikor melegedni
tetszett kapitány urnak…
A kapitány kerekre nyilt szemmel bámult a vastuskó legényre.
– Igaza van a gazembernek, – mondta félig magában s aztán
összecsukott szájjal nevetni kezdett.
– Most jut eszébe!… Már egy esztendeje és most eszébe jut!…
S gyöngéden, már megint mindent megbocsátva nézett a tömzsi
kis legényre, aki huncut alázatossággal állott előtte.

24.
NEGYVEN HUSZÁR.

Budapest, dec. 21.

Ujvidék alatt. Sár, az Inferno sara. A nagy visszavonulás napjain,
a szerb hegyek fekete sarából. Most egy éve…
A tágas mezők katonanéppel teltek meg. Ágyuk jöttek sárosan,
sárral bevont ágyuk, sáros tüzérekkel, sáros lovakkal. Sáros kezek és
sáros arcok, sáros kedv. Komor szemek és sötét szitkok, fekete
kedvü fáradt katonák. Mintha megindul téli olvadásban a fehér hó a
sötét hegyeken, fekete vizek, barna tócsák, vörhenyes latyak folyt
össze a lapos, téres, tágas lapályon. Szürke katonaság szürke,
mindenbe beolvadó szine még szintelenebbé válva, a földdel
egyszinüen, mint mozgó agyag, mint a földből vétetett ember, amint
legelőször megmozdult az isteni szikra által; legeslegelsőbben, mikor
még nem volt ideje lefürödni magáról a földanya sötét csókját…
Ujvidék alatt a nagy tér megtelt rác földről visszavonuló sereg
zagyva, kivergődő, kedvetlen tömegével.
Kábultan nézték a népek. Káprázó szemmel, könypárásan,
értelem hijján. Csak nézték, ahogy nézi az ember az isten csapását;
ahogy nézi az ember a buzáját jégverés után, ahogy leégett házát,
beomlott várát, köddé vált reményeit, elmult életének szétzüllött
foszlányait nézi az agg ember. Jöttek a katonák, fáradtan,
csüggedten, mogorván; jöttek egymás után baktatva; jöttek lovaikat
hajszolva, szekerüket emelve, tarisznyával hátukon, puskát lógatva
vállukon; mérgesen, szitokkal, fogcsikorgatva… tiz meg tizezeren…
bakák, honvédek, gyalogosok…
És jött negyven huszár.
Negyven honvédhuszár jött, élükön egy fiatal hadnagy.
Nem voltak ezek szinpadi huszárok; nem voltak hetykék, nyalkák,
rikitó-pazarok. Nem pödrött bajszu, csókos kacsintásu, fickó kis
huszárok. Nem voltak ezek parádéból, lepkeségből, csinomjankós
mérmerésből selyembordába szőtt finom kis huszárok. Nótások,
tréfások, lóficánkoltató, réten hajkározó életboldog cifra kis
huszárok.
De emberek, magyarok, lógóbajszu, meglett, erős, vasból vert,
örökös vitézek. Nem néz egy jobbra, nem néz egy balra, mennek
előre, s maguk elé néznek. Rendben van a ló, a szijjazat; lecsatolva
fejükön a csákó, rendben a fegyver, rendben a rend; mennek előre,
párosan, előre, megy a negyven huszár, élükön egy fiatal, egy
rózsásképü, egy ifju hadnagy.
Ha mind gróf, mind herceg, akkor az arcukon ez a tekintet, ez a
vasszin; ez gőg. Ha nincs lelkük, ha ezek mind lélektelen,
állatemberek, akkor az arcukon ez a rendületlen nyugalom: ez
butaság. De ezek nem mágnások, ezek nem páriák: ezek huszárok!
Ahogy ott tartják kezüket a ló fülénél; ahogy a kantárt keményen
megfogják s lágygyöngéden hagyják: abban benne van: „lovam itt
vagyok! együtt megyünk! nincs baj!“ Mint apa a gyerekével, apa, ki
istenre bizza magát s gyermekébe tovább plántálja e bizodalmat s
ugy mennek át az élet veszélyein, élő hittel a szakadék fölött, emelt
fővel a csillagos égbolt alatt. Mennek előre, a negyven huszár s nem
is tartja egy sem a gyeplőt ugy, mint akinek nem kell tartania; sem
erőszak, sem közönyösség: együttélés teljessége van itt, megy a
huszár, ő és a ló; mennek; megy a negyven huszár.
Nem néz egy jobbra, nem néz egy balra, mennek előre, az öreg
csontok; az arcukon ott az elszánt, lehiggadt akarat, ott a kiforrott,
mindenrekész igazság… A baka is megy. De ő engedelmeskedve. De
nála az a benyomás, hogy csorba esett az emberi lélek méltóságán.
Megy a gyalogos, mert mennie kell; megy, mert a sok ezernyi ezer
embert, akinek egyéni hivatása, egyenkénti rendeltetése, hogy mind
külön éljen, menjen, tegyen: egy közös géppé szerkesztették! s ő
most megy e gépben, előre, megy, mint gép, előre, emberi erejét
átadja a gépnek s a gép közereje tartja szinte, ha már az övé
fogyóban. Ám a huszár megy, ez a negyven huszár, s az ember
megérzi, hogy mennek, mert a haza ugy kivánja, de oda mennek, de
ugy mennek, amint az célszerü!… A bakának, ha szemébe nézel, azt
látod: megyek, mert kell! ha muszály, megyek; megyek ahová kell!…
Ez a negyven huszár, ez megy, mert arravaló, mert arra született,
mert ez az ő lelke, mert ő huszár!…
Ő nem engedelmeskedik: ő megy! Megy; nem parancsra: vezető
után! Vezetője van, mert az kell, hogy legyen; följebbvalója van,
mert ez a rend; hadnagya, mert a hadnak feje, kell, legyen. S megy
a negyven öreg huszár, mint egy ember, a negyven vén legény az
egy fiatal kis hadnagya nyomán, előre, ellentállhatatlanul.
A nézők nézik s kitágult szemmel szijják be a negyven huszár
képét. Negyven évesek, egy se fiatalabb, csak a vezetőjük, a
hadnagyocska, aki oly fiatal, tiz kisasszony sem ijedt volna meg tőle
s hogy mén utána az a negyven ördög, negyven hős, negyven
vasember. És nem parancsolójuk, ha száz csillag van gallérjára irva:
csak a vezetőjük; ahogy az anyát, aki elveszti a kulcsait, kis lánya
vezeti s mutatja neki az utat, – isten ments, hogy megbántsa valaki
ezt a kis hadnagyot! de nem parancsolójuk! ha száz irásba adják, ha
őfölsége tulajdon kezével teszi rá a pecsétet, ez mégsem
parancsolójuk! És ők nem engedelmeskednek, de szikrásan ömlik
belőlük a hüség, hogy száz halálba mennek halni véle. S a nézők
nézték kiáradt szivvel, a negyven huszárt, hogy léptetett előre a
hadnagyocska után, nem néz egy jobbra, nem néz egy balra, csak
megy előre a negyven huszár! Csak megy előre, parancsszó nélkül,
egy hangszó nélkül a hadnagyával. Ha az kiáltaná, hogy balra
fordulj… nevetség volna! Ezeknek nem kell szó, a negyven
huszárnak, ezek vele mennek, együtt léptetnek, mintha egy volna a
negyven ember s a negyven mén. Nincsen ott hadnagy, nincs ott
közlegény. Valaki vezet, mintha valaki átvisz a veszett ösvényen;
nem szól, nem szólok, ő megy, én megyek: igy megy a negyven
huszár. Igy megy a főherceg a vezetővel: ez nem parancsol!
Parancsol a paraszt József főhercegnek, ha átvezeti az ingoványon,
hogy ide lépj? Ez nem parancsol, ez akkor is tiszteli… a negyven
huszárnak nem adhat parancsot a hadnagya! Ezek ugy mennek, ugy
mennek tova, mint Egyiptomban, a tizenkét csapásnál, aki kiadta az
isten parancsát, hogy minden elsőszülöttnek el kell vesznie: az isten
angyala.
És néztek nők sugárzó szemmel és férfiak boldog, megnyugvó
szivvel… Vannak emberek, akikre ránézni már rémület. Van ember,
meglátni róla, hogy ez képes ölni; elvadult alak, hogy a kisgyerek
felsir, ha megpillantja. Az nem volt ezekben! Ezek nem vadak! De
süvölt róluk valami félelmes komolyság, hogy tudnak ha kell félkézzel
ölni s tudnak ugyanakkor félkézzel életet menteni. Vannak katonák,
láttam kozákot, elvadult féléket, hogy látni, ez kihasitja az anyát s
lekaszabolja a gyereket: ezek nem, ez a negyven huszár! ez nem
akar ártani, ez huszár, ez hős. Van erős ember, ha rápillantasz, hogy
isten mentsen a markába kerülni: De ezeket nézd, s az a
megnyugtató érzésed, hogy ezeknek az oltalma alatt mennék éjjel-
nappal, tüzön-vizen… Van katona, akiből nem látszik más, csakhogy
egyenruhás gyilkos: ebből süt a jóság, ez nem gyülöl, nem árt,
harcol, mert ugy kivánja a haza, de nem bánt!…
 Volt köztük szőke, volt köztük barna, fekete: de mind hasonlitott.
Össze lehetett téveszteni, ez volt-e aki jobbról ment, vagy az! Hogy
lehet különböző arcokban ily hasonlóság? Ez nem a fegyelem! A
gyalogosban a vasfegyelem közös kényszerü és szomoru közösséget
ad: jobb-bal, jobb-bal, kezet fegyverre… Azoknál, a negyven
huszárnál az akarat egy, az érzés egy, a lélek ugyanaz. Nekik nem
kell parancsszó, nem kell fegyelem: náluk lélekből fakadó fegyelem
az!
Eddig azt hitték, ha kék a nadrág: baka! ha piros a katonán:
huszár! Ezekre, ha szürt adnak, akkor is huszárok! Lóval-egy
huszárok! A ló mind lefogyva, de rendben! Az a szij! Nincs szalmával
cifrára fonva a sörény, de lekefélve a ló, de megfésülve, mint az
eladólány. Ne merj ehhez a lóhoz közeliteni, nem ostorral, de
cukorral, nem fenyegetve, de udvarolva se, mert a huszár levág. Az
embernek az az érzése, hogy képes volna leütni azt, ez a szép
huszár, aki megcsókolja a lovát! S milyen szép maga ez a vén
huszár! Nincs ez gálába, egy sincs parádén, de olyanok, mintha az
isten külön teremtette vón őket. Szép a ruhájuk, de nincs az az
ügyes szabó, aki nem szép ruhát tudna szabni rájuk. Ezeknek jól áll.
Akármi jól áll. Ha zsákba huzzák, abba is huszárok!
A bakán meglátszott szegényen, hogy nehéz napokon ment át.
Borotválatlan, térdig sár, rongyos a ruha, a rüsztung nincs rendbe
kötve, lóg a fegyvere! Ezeknek nagyon jól állt az a sár, az a laza
hanyagság, az a sötét fekete. Nem a ruha tette s nem a sár. Ahogy a
szobron a patina nem piszok, ezen a negyven huszáron a piszok
patinává lett. Nem látszott piszoknak. Imponált. A lélek volt más.
A sorsuk volt más; a sors szerencséjük.
Ment a negyven huszár s ment utánuk a gyalogosok serege;
ment a bakkancs, mentek a véresre dagadt, elfagyott, piszkos lábak,
a manlichert szorongató vörös, püffedt, piszkos kezek; a torzult,
borostás, szőrös, tetves, halálsápadt, lesoványodott piszkos arcok; a
cafatokká rongyolódott, piszokká lett, régen csukaszürke mantlik s a
mantlik alatt halálsejtelmek közt vergődő, halálfélelemben gyötrődő,
iszonyatoktól borzadó, haza vágyódó, családjáért aggódó s a
gyötrelmektől, fáradságoktól elfásult, de mindég becsületes,
kötelességtudó, engedelmes s bátor magyar bakaszivek!… Jött a
komisz baka… Jöttek a bakák… hajh, hányszor mentek tizszeres,
husszoros tulerővel, ezer halállal szembe, hogy mentek annyiszor
rohamra… át nagy sártengereken… át még nagyobb hegyeken, –
uttalan utakon, sziklás szakadékokon, koromsötét, esős, fagyos
éjszakákon, – méteres havakon, gránáttól felszakgatott véres köves
fensikokon, temetetlen hullák ezreinek többhetes, oszló holt
tetemén, gazdátlan kezeken, lábakon, fejeken bukdácsolva, véresen
széttépett emberi testek huscafataiban elsikolva… bömbölő gránátok,
csattogó srapnellek, sivitó golyók fergetegében… szemébe huzott
ellenzővel a sáros, piszkos, havas, véres lövészárok irtóztató,
irtóztató öbléből…
Ah, a nézők elnéztek fölöttük s a negyven huszárra forditották
szemeiket, mint a gazda, kinek az istenitélet minden buzáját leverte,
könnyes szemmel néz a bokor alatt viritó ibolyára…

25.
ÓÉVI LEVÉL.

Kelt levelem 1915. év folyamán,

december utolsó napján, a jó meleg
dekungban.

Dicsértessék a Jézus Krisztus szent neve.

Kedves anya és kedves kis fiam, tisztellek és csókollak
benneteket.
És ez a pár sor irásom az esztendő utolsóján, találjon benneteket
erőben és egésségben, mint nekem van, mert most nekem
hálaistennek nincs semmi bajom, csak az, hogy nem vagyok otthon,
kedves anyukám. Ételem, italom, ruházatom megvan, dolgozni
mindig kell, de munka nélkül ugyse ér az élet semmit, azért nem
zugolódom, ismerősök között vagyok, annak örülök, mert baráti
módon jól el lehet legalább beszélgetni a füstös kis svaromkályha
mellett, mert itt bizony egyéb nem jut az embernek, csakhogy
képeket csinálhat a fejében a régi dolgokról és a jó meleg
dekungban ugy üldögélünk kedves anyukám, a hátunkon a bornyu,
vagy a zsák, az oldalunkon a fegyver, de a tüz füstjében csak a ti
képeteket lássuk kedves anyukám, a tüz füstjében mintha te is
látszódnál kedves anyukám, meg a kedves kis fiam és a többi
magyarok is mind csak ugy vannak vele, mert jobban látunk
benneteket a gondolatoknak szemeivel, mintha csak itt volnátok,
mert az ember testén csak két szem van, de a lelkében ezer szem és
mind itt vagytok velünk kedves anyukám, kinek-kinek maga családja,
gyereke, tehenek, malacok, apró baromfiak, rokonok, sógorok,
adósság, őszi vetés, méhes, csepegő-csorgó ólfedele, minden, mer
látod, irod, hogy becsorog, ha otthon volnék, milyen könnyü volna
azt bealkalmazni, igy meg csak egyre látom, hogy becsorog. Jaj
kedves anyukám, de csipi a szemünket a tüz füstje, de nem attól van
könny a szemünkben, hanem miattatok kedves anyukám, mert
nehéz a ti életetek minálunk nélkül, mert mink csak tudjuk
magunkról, hogy élünk, de nehéz rólatok a sok gondoskodás, osztán
az is hiába. No mán mindegy kedves anyukám, csakhogy az egésség
megvan, az a fő, melyet nektek is kivánok istentől, kedves anyu és
kedves kis fiam.
Mán nem tudok mit irni az esztendő utolsó napján, csak azt, hogy
hálistennek ennek is utána vagyunk kedves anyukám és tisztellek,
csókollak benneteket és üdvözöllek és tisztelem a Nővéredet is a kis
családjával együtt jóegésséggel, hogy éljetek boldogan együtt,
szegény katonánék és tisztelem és csókolom István sógort is a
távolban, jóegésséget és a jóisten segitse őtet is haza mint nevelő
apjukat a családja közé az magas hegyekből, az ágyuknak
keménységéből, az olasz határról és tisztelem és csókolom Farkas
édesapádékat és Agocs Mária édesanyádékat is, akik téged nekem e
világra hoztak, jóerkölcsben felneveltek és kezedet tőlem meg nem
tagadták és mindenkor mindenben csak segitségünkre voltak, jó
egésséget, és tisztelem és csókolom az én kedves kis Mariskámat is,
otthon levő utolsó lányukat, akitől az ádáz sors elragadta szeretett
vőlegényét a muszka fogságba és tisztelem és csókolom a
komaasszonyt is jóegésséggel, kinek süti most a farsangi fánkot és
tisztelem és csókolom a kis keresztfiamat is, siratja-e még az édes
apját, vagy a gyermeki sziv könnyen felejt, kedves komaasszony sok
asszonynak van most ilyen bánata az slapner végett és tisztelem és
csókolom Agocs öregapádékat, akik öreg léttekre meg tudták
magukat fosztani a csendességtől s neked felszántották az őszit
kedves anyukám, és tisztelem és csókolom Agocs Lojzi sógoromat is
a távolban jóegésséggel, várva várom hirét, hogy most előkerül a
szerb fogságból és tisztelem és csókolom a családját is jóegésséggel,
az összes apró népet, mert bizony már a széles családból egy ember
sincs már odahaza kedves anyukám, csak az apróságok, meg az
öregek és tisztelem és csókolom a levéliró szomszédasszonyt is sok
és friss jóegésséggel, hogy szerencsésen irhasson többször is nekem
levelet ugy ahogy az urának szokott a messze távolba és tisztelem és
csókolom a kis családját is jóegésséggel és tisztelem Ferenc
barátomat is az olmüci kórházban friss jóegésséggel és félláb nélkül
is lehet élni kedves szomszédasszony, csak szeressék egymást.
És kedves anyukám tudatom veled, hogy az öt kilós csomagot is
megkaptam, december 20-án délbe és igen jól laktam belőle hálá
istennek, ami elfér az itteni koszt mellé és meg volt benne a pogácsa
és megvolt a kis cipó és megvolt a fehér cukor és megvolt a
sósborszesz és megvolt a dohán és megvolt a két skatulya gyufa és
megvolt a szalonna és megleltem benne a megirott levelet és el is
olvastam és meg is értettem.
Megértettem én, kedves anyukám, hogy édes apámék nem
szólnak hozzátok, meg hogy nem mennek hozzátok, meg hogy nem
nevetnek tifelétek. Csak nektek egésségetek legyen, kedvesem,
gondolom, hogy nem mentek hozzájuk egy darab kenyérér és
kedves kis anyukám, te se ereggy hozzájuk, ha ők nem jönnek és
majd máskor mink is ugy fogjuk őket segiteni, csak engem a
jóistenke haza vigyen má. És azt is megértettem kedves anyukám,
hogy Kis Andrásné, csak az aki volt és tyukja, kakasa, kutyája most
is csak átjár a keritésen és a lyukat nem csinálja be és hogy a szája
jár. Ne törődj ilyenekkel kedves anyukám, de üsd le a tyukját
kedvesem, majd eszreveszi akkor, hogy tisztességesen viselje magát,
ha neki nem volt elég annyi lecke, hogy az urát elvitte a gránát,
magam láttam, egy porcikája nem maradt együtt, sok gonoszságáért
ugy szétvitte, mint a vágott hust, mégse ügyel a felesége se
tyukjára, se a nyelvére, hát mit kiván még a jó istentől, hiszen csak
én volnék otthon, majd máskép kotkodálna, kedves anyukám. És azt
is megértettem, hogy avval az adóssággal se hagynak békét, hiszen
ha én hazamegyek majd elrendezem, mert énrajtam kivül abba senki
se lát bele, mer az mán ugy össze van kavarva, mint ha a töltött
káposztát megforgatják kedves anyukám, ilyen hiábavalóságokkal ne
törődj, ügyvédhuncutság az egész, nem szabad mostan perelni
kedves anyukám, csak tán nem tettek olyat, hogy a népeket mind
elrendelik a harctérre, a végrehajtókat meg otthon haggyák, hogy
licitálják a világot, ha nincs aki elibek álljon, könnyü vóna igy, kedves
anyukám! De az ántiját, ide jöjjenek azok az illetők osztán álljanak
ide mellém a stellungba, majd akkor nem fől a fejük a rosszba. Hát e
miatt te csak ne emésszed magad, ugyis van elég baja annak, akinek
az ura, meg a sógora, testvérje, mind a harctéren, egy testvérje a
muszka fogságba, osztán magának kell megemelni a tengelyt, hogy
az üdős öregapja megkenhesse a szekeret.
Mármost nagyon szépen köszönöm a hozzám való szivességedet
kedves anyukám, hogy megemlékeztél Rólam és tisztellek és
csókollak, még ezidáig minden leveleket, amit küldtél megkaptam,
de milyen jól esik mikor leveleidet olvashatom, tehát kedves
anyukám, csak gyakran irjál levelet és külgyél még ha csak lehet
görhét, mer arra vagyok kiváncsi, egy jó kis olajos görhére.
És most tisztellek és csókollak benneteket és csak legyetek
nyugottak, mikor csak lehet mindig irok, még élek, vagy meg nem
sebesülök, teremtő isten már nálunk csak ugy számitják a sebesülést
is, hogy ötven forintos seb, száz forintos seb, ezer koronás seb az
olyan, amékkel haza küldik az embert, még azt hiszem te is
megadnál egy pár koronát egy ilyenért ugye kedves anyukám. De
ritka az olyan nap, hogy a fényképeteket meg ne nézném, mert
könnyebb a szivemnek, ha megnézhetem, most nem igen vagyunk
veszedelembe, de ha kell menni, menni kell kedvesem, a hazáért a
magyarnak szenvedni kell, hát mink szenvedünk is kedves
angyalom…
Tisztellek és csókollak és még tudatlak, hogy erre mifelénk genge
idő jár, maradok tisztelettel, hü férjed a sirig, isten veled és velünk a
távolban és jobb esztendőket kivánok, mint amilyen most jön még,
hogy ne igy köszönjek hozzátok, de máskép, dehát azt hiszem, most
igy is jó, mert mindig ugy jó a magyarnak, ahogy van! ha máskép
nem lehet! Meg kell nyugodni és el kell viselni mindent kedvesem, ha
máskép nem lehet, fáradságot, éhséget, szomjuságot, hideget,
bánatot, megcsufolást, komisságot, mindent a hazáért, ha máskép
nem lehet. Azt hiszem a jó Jézus Krisztus örömmel néz le mireánk a
magas mennyekből kedvesem, hogy a magyar ember egy zokszó
nélkül mindent ugy csinál, mint ő csinálta szentséges életében, mikor
ő is ugy volt, hogy máskép nem lehetett. De most már ő is fenn
trónol az Atyaistennek jobbján kedvesem és valamikor én is máskép
köszöntök ujévet kedves anyukám és kedves fiam, tisztellek és
csókollak jóegésséggel…
 HADI KIS TÜKÖR.

I.

JÁTÉK A SÁNCÁROKBAN.

A nap ugy sütött, mintha külön befűtötték volna, a mieink

izzadtak nagyon a meleg szürkében. Mentek előre, árkon-bokron
keresztül, vidáman, alig nézve a lábuk alá s nagyokat bukdácsolva
egy-egy tökben. Felrugták s tovább haladtak a svaromléniával. Egy
helyen nyul ugrott fel és ijedten menekült előttük.
– Hohó, – kurjogattak a bakák, – Jancsi, Jancsi, itt hagytad a
pipádat!
De a tapsifüles nem jött vissza érte, vitte az irháját. Vitte
szegény, de nem soká, egyik szürke baka megállott, füléhez emelte a
Manlichert s a következő percben a szürke kövér nyul nagyot ugrott
a levegőben, mintha a dörrenéstől ijedt volna meg, aztán buckót
vetett s elmállott a zöld levelek közt.
– Bravó fiam, – kiáltott a főhadnagy, aki maga is nehezen cipelte
a rezervista-pocakot a gyors menetelés alatt, – brávó, ez már
lövés!… Csak az ellenséget is igy szedd le a lábáról.
A hosszubajszu legény csendesen mosolygott a bajusza alatt s
felkapta a nyulat. A bakák ujjongtak, hurrát kiabáltak és egy percre
egészen elfelejtették, hogy hány kilométerre van a hátuk megett az
édes hazánk szép határa.
 De a másik percben messze előttük lövések dörrentek fel válaszul
a vadászlövésre. Éles csattanások s mindjárt utánna golyók furcsa
repülését lehetett hallani.
– Itt a rác!
Még jó, hogy bele nem szaladtak a szájukba.
A főhadnagy szeme kigyult.
– Vigyázz! – kiáltotta, – egyenesbe igazodj!
Aztán rohamot vezényelt. A szeme égett és ugy kimeredt, szinte
kiugrott az üregéből, kereste az ellenséget. A legények is halotti
csendben vágták a sarkukat a puha földbe, amely felfogta a
dobogásukat, még a lélekzetet is visszafojtották. Az arcuk égett,
porosan, izzadtan, nekifeszülve haladtak előre.
Egy árokpartot értek, amely hosszan, egyenesen huzódott a
mezőn keresztül; nem volt mély s ki volt száradva. Már hetek óta
nem volt eső erre sem.
Ebben a percben sortüz robogott fel s meglátták, hogy nem
messze előttük szerb sapkák lapulnak a füben.
– Nieder! – kiáltotta a főhadnagy s egy pillanat alatt ott feküdtek
valamennyien az árokban.
Aztán ők is lőttek. A rácok visszapuskáztak.
A golyók röpködtek, de kárt nem tettek. Egészen felfrissültek tőle
a fiuk. Még el is nyujtózkodtak a jó, füves árokban egy-egy percre s
kirázták fáradt tagjaikat, megropogtatták a csontjaikat. Aztán
igyekeztek mielőbb egy kis sáncot hányni maguk előtt, ami felfogja
az ellenség golyóját.
– No pajtás; mán én itt elheverek estig, – mondta egy legény
vidám képpel.
 – Hát bion magam se hittem vóna, hogy eccer igy kedvemre
legyen a niderözés, – mondta a másik.
– Lőjj! – kiáltott a főhadnagy s ropogtak a puskák. Piff-paff,
jobbra-balra.
Csak az előbbi nyulas vitéz nem pazarolta a drága kincstári
patront. Kiszemelt magának a dudvák közt egy beütött tetejü szerb
csákót, jól célbavette, lőtt, a másik percben egy rác legény feldobta
a két karját a levegőbe s elterült, mint a nyul. A hosszubajszu
megint kikeresett egy szürke vállat, amely kilátszott valahol, célozott,
célozott, lőtt s ujra kevesebb volt eggyel az emberiség.
Ez igy ment jó soká.
Egyszer aztán már unni kezdték a dolgot. A rácok is egyre
kellemetlenebbek kezdtek lenni, ugyhogy még a lábuk is
elgémberedett már a guggolásban, fekvésben.
– Ejnye, a teremtésit, megposhadunk mán itt főhadnagy ur, –
mondta egy tömzsi vig legény. – Gyerünk mán szuronyra!
– Halt! Még nincs itt az ideje… – mondta a főhadnagy.
– Ejnye, – kezdte ujra a kis fekete legény, – mán pedig az én
inamba beléállott a görcs.
– Ájj fel, – szólt kacagva a pajtása, – kapsz egy pengőt.
– Azér nem; de ha egy cigarettát adsz, azér igen.
– Gilt, testvér, megkapod.
Ebben a percben a fiu felpattant és kinyujtózott. Még ásitott is
hozzá.
– Sss… zzz…
Mikor leguggolt, golyó volt a vállában.
Hetykén mondta.
 – No ide a cigarettát testvér.
– Nincsen testvér… Otthon megkapod… Majd ha veszünk.
– Hijnye az ég roggyon a lelkedre, – kiáltott fel a fiu, – pég mán
a nyál is itt van a számba. Olyan jaól esett vaóna!
A főhadnagyuk ott feküdt a harmadik szomszédban. Erre a szóra
felállott s odanyujtotta a cigarettatárcáját. Megkinálta a fiut.
– Alássan megköszönöm főhadnagy uram.
– Sss… zzz…
A főhadnagy karját is golyó furta át.
Sebaj, lefeküdt a legények közé, a másik kezére legyintett s hogy
elterelje a figyelmet magáról, odaszólt a hosszubajuszunak, aki
egyet sem gondolt velük, hanem lelőtte előbb azt, aki a pajtását
eltalálta, azután azt, aki a főhadnagyát megcélozta.
– Mi vagy te civilbe, édes fiam.
A hosszubajszu csendesen mosolygott s azt felelte nagy titkosan:
– Orvvadász… – s már ujra célbavette a maga rác vadját.
(1914. szept.)

II.
SÁRIKA.

A nap lement, de még világos volt az ég.

A fiatal hadnagy a kis domb oldalán állott és a sürü erdő felé
nézett, onnan várták a kozákokat.
 A század lent a domb oldalán pihent és szilvát, almát evett, amit
kosárszámra hoztak nekik a piszkos, szegényes parasztok, a
lengyelek, meg a ruthének. A vidám magyar fiuk nevetgéltek és
tréfáltak az idevalókon, akikről csorgott a piszok és folyt a
szegénység büdös szaga. De ezek hallgattak, egy szót sem értettek,
egy szót sem szólottak, csak azt, hogy „bozsemoj, bozsemoj“ s
csókolták a legények kezét, ruháját, bakkancsát. A gyerekek ugy
hessegették el őket, mint a legyeket, de azt jóizüen megették, amit
hoztak.
A fiatal hadnagy belenézett a patak tulsó partján zugó vaderdőbe
s hazagondolt Sárikára.
Sárika nagyon sirt, mikor elváltak, de takarta a sirását s ugy
nézett a kis hadnagyára, mintha büszke volna rá és nagyon boldog
lenne, hogy csatába megy az ő szürke kis hőse, aki a legkedvesebb
fiu az egész ezredben, mindig tréfál és egy percig sem lehet komoly
mellette az ember.
A kis hadnagy mig a sötét erdőt nézte, ahogy az ember a sötét
végzetet nézi, a Halált, tisztán látta Sárikát, a két piros orcáját,
könnyes kék szemeit, nedves ajkát és szinte minden szót hallott,
olyan tisztán, mintha egy lépésre állanának most is egymástól.
Nagyon meg volt hatva ebben a percben, de azért mosolygott kis
fekete bajusza alatt, mert hallotta a saját hangját, ahogy az utolsó
percben azt mondta Sárikának:
– Azért nem fog valami cibillel kikezdeni, Sárika?
Sárikának tele lett a két kék szeme könnyel s a nagy kövér
könycsepp lebugyogott az arcán. Pedig nevetett, apró fehér fogai
olyan fényesek voltak, mint a gyöngyök…
– Igazán nem? Uri szavára? Fiu szavára mondja? – kérdezte ő
tovább tréfálva.
– Arra hát! – mondta Sárika és összeszoritotta a gyönge
hamvaspiros lányszáját, hogy el ne sirja magát.
 – Nohát akkor Sárika, vegye tudomásul, hogy maga is ott lesz
velem és a századommal a csatában. Mert a legelső esetben, mikor
igazi feladat előtt fogunk állani, a maga nevével megyünk a csatába!
– Hurrá, – kiáltotta Sárika és nem birta tovább. Odaborult a
mamája mellére és kitörő zokogással ölelte át. De nem soká sirt, a
másik percben már kacagott és visszaforditotta huncut arcát az ő
tréfás kis hadnagya felé.
S most, most egész tisztán látta a hadnagy ur azt a csillogó piros
arcot, ezt a siró-nevető arcocskát, pedig a fekete vadon erdőre
nézett az egyre szürkébb, sötétebb éjszakában messze tul a
lembergi hegyeken.
A fiuk lent a domb alatt azt dalolták, hogy:

Raportra vótam a kapitány úrnál,

Még azt kérdi, hogy az este hun vótál?
Nem jöhettem kilenc órára haza,
Mert a babám vállamra vót borulva!

Ők is odahaza jártak gondolatban, mig csöndesen, mert nem

szabad lármát csapni, magukban dudolják az édes otthoni nótát.
Hirtelen lódobogás. Egy szárnysegéd jön. Mindenki fölfigyel. Már
ismerik. Ez hozza a parancsot, mi lesz ma éjszaka.
A fiatal hadnagy fölriad elandalodásából, szalutál. A másik
rózsásképü fiatal tiszt, aki jött, kurtán, katonásan kiadja a parancsot,
hogy a hadnagy és a szakasza át fogják vizsgálni a patak tulsó
partján levő erdőt. Azonnal. Itt a térképe…
A kis hadnagy szalutál, a segédtiszt tovább vágtat.
A legények már maguktól sorakozva várták a hadnagyukat, aki
még egy pillantást vet az erdőre, amely feketén, az éjszakai sötétbe
beleolvadva áll a patakon tul s aztán gyorsan, ruganyosan lejön
közéjük.
 – Négyes sorba sorakozz!
A fiuk összetömörültek.
– Át fogjuk vizsgálni ezt az erdőt… Széltibe fogjuk… Vigyázzatok,
senki se maradjon el egymástól… Olyan csendesen járjatok, mint a
róka, ha tyukot akar lopni… Kiáltani, nem szabad…
– Hát sipolni?
– Nem szabad!… A jelszót kell átadni folyvást egymásnak…
– Mi a jelszó?
A hadnagynak hirtelen megdobogott a szive s érezte, hogy
minden vére az arcába fut.
– Sárika!
A legények mintha vidáman föllélekzettek volna, de persze egy
szó sem volt.
– Csatárláncba oszolj.
Szétoszlottak a patakparton le egyesével s a jelszóra átlépték a
patakot. A vizcsobogással összeolvadva hallotta a hadnagyocska a
Sárika drága kis nevét tovasusogni a szélben s olyan vidám volt,
mint egy mókus, amint átpattant a kis patakon, a nagy mohos
köveken.
Behaladtak az erdőbe. Csunya egy vad hely volt. A fák között tele
galagonyával, kökénnyel s más bokrokkal. Rettenetes vastag fák,
nagy odvakkal. És sötétség. Egy csillag nem látszik és semmi nesz,
csak az ágak recsegnek, ahogy a jó kincstári bakkancsok óvakodva
gázolnak előre. Néha végigsuhog a titokzatos nagy erdőn a Sárika
neve, aztán megint csönd mindenfelé, csak mintha szarvasok
mennének és őzek éjszakai kalandra.
Egy széles csapást érnek. A hadnagy megáll és a zsebéből elővett
kis villamos lámpa fényénél megkeresi a térképen az ut jelzését. Egy
pillantásra látja, hogy egy-két kilométernyire nagy szabad térség van
az erdő közepén.
– Sárika… egyenesen előre! – adja ki jobbra-balra a parancsot s
tovább haladnak a puskával a kézben. Egyszer csak aztán igazán
kiérnek az erdőből.
– Sárika – zárkózz…
Az ég tele van csillaggal s ahogy a kis hadnagy felnéz, mintha
tele marokkal szórnák, egyre-másra futnak lefelé a csillagok. Enyhe,
illatos, pompás erdei éjszaka. Egy-egy madár ijedten rebben fel az
ágak között.
A szakasz összegyült, megolvasta a szakaszvezető őket, egy sem
hiányzott.
Óriási rét, amelynek nem látni a hosszát, végét. A távolban kis
fénypont látszik.
– Török tizedes.
– Jelen.
– Öt embert vigyen magával és vigyázva kémlelje ki, mi az a fény
ott? Gyorsan, óvatosan. A szakasz pihenjen.
Rögtön lehevertek. Olyan nesztelenül, ahogy csak lehetett. A
hadnagy is leült s a térképet tanulmányozta.
– Mán virrad! – mondta az egyik katona.
– Mit beszélsz, – szólt rá suttogva a másik – még éjfél sincs.
– Dehogy nincs. Mikor vót az, hogy a nap lefeküdt! Még akkor tul
vótunk az erdőn, – állitotta a harmadik.
– Hát bizony már jól benne vagyunk az időbe.
– Csend! – szólt a hadnagy s elővette az óráját. – Tiz óra.
 Általános csodálkozással hallották.
– Megállott az hadnagy ur…
Aztán várták a fiukat.
Végre megjött kettő.
– Hadnagy urnak jelentem alássan: kozákok!
– Hol a többi?
– Lesik őket.
– Hányan lehetnek.
– Sokan, de alusznak.
A hadnagy gondolkozott.
– Fegyvert megnézi… Rendben van?… A füben csuszva
megyünk… Vigyázz… Mert megfut… Előre!…
A fiuk reszkettek az örömtől. Még nem kaptak puskavégre soha
ellenséget s ugy kivánták már, mint a csecsszopó az anyja tejét.
Egy darabig gyorsabban, aztán lassan, nesztelenül csusztak a
száraz, magas füben.
Végre meglátták a kozákokat. Már csak száz, már csak ötven
lépésre lehettek. Ott hevertek a fűben, bundákon; az őrök a
lovakhoz támaszkodtak és aludtak.
De a kozákló éberebb, mint a kozák. Elkezdtek nyihogni, kapálni.
Egy elnyeritette magát, arra egy rémes hang felorditott.
– Tüzelj!
Sortüz.
 Még egy szabályos sortüz.
A kozákok amint álmukból felugráltak, mindjárt visszapotyogtak a
fübe. Orditás. Egy-két kozák ellőtte a puskáját, csak ugy vaktába. És
a honvédek fegyvere ropogott, mennydörgött, a lovak megállottak és
remegtek, mig le nem fordultak, az emberek állati hangon orditottak.
Irtóztató volt.
Pár perc mulva már szuronnyal mentek rájuk a magyarok s egy
torokkal sivalkodták, mintegy megbabonázva első csatájuk hosszu
éjszakájának a jelszavát:
– Sárika! Sárika!
Kacagva és diadalmámorral dolgoztak.
A kozák csapat térdre rogyott, aki még élt, feltartotta a kezét s
ugy könyörgött kegyelmet és ők is azt kiáltották:
– Scharrikka, scharrikka…
Vajon mit álmodott ezen az éjszakán a pirosarcu kis lány hófehér
ágyacskájában az ő kis hadnagyáról, aki olyan tréfás fiu, hogy az
ember egy percig sem lehet komoly a társaságában.
(1914. szept.)

III.
HUJ, HUJ.

Mikor a muszkákkal találkoztunk, – beszéli egy sebesült

tizenhatos huszártiszt, – először meg voltunk hökkenve. Fene
gondolta, hogy a XX-ik században lándsákkal fognak ránk támadni,
mint a tatárjáráskor. Nagy süvegük, nagy prémjük, apró lovaik
vannak, beesett szemüek, sápadtak, szakállasok, vicsorgó foguak.
Két ember közt, a harmadik már hátulról ott áll a lován előredöfött
dárdával, akárhogy is nekirohant a huszár, ezt a hegyes vasat mindig
szemközt kapta. S veszettül orditanak, mint a farkasok s mind a
fogával akar harapni, még a lova is.
Hanem kifogtunk rajtuk.
Mikor rohamra mentünk, egyszerre csak, mindjárt a front előtt
ketté vált a sorunk s ment egyik sor jobbról, másik balról neki a
kozáknak. Akkor aztán karddal neki. A jó széles lovassági