Our Columbia
1000-1600
I've not been thought of yet, but my land mass is about to be "Discovered"
1000 AD
Leif Erikson Sails to the East Islands of Today's Canada
Leif Erikson's Voyage to Today's North America
Also known as 'Leif the Lucky'
(c. 970s – c. 1018 to 1025)
A Norse explorer who is thought to have been the first European to set foot on continental America around 1000AD, approximately 500 years before all others, according to the sagas of Icelanders, he established a Norse settlement at Vinland, which is usually interpreted as being coastal North America. There is ongoing speculation that the settlement made by Leif and his crew corresponds to the remains of a Norse settlement found in Newfoundland, Canada, called L'Anse aux Meadows, which was occupied approximately 1,000 years ago.
Painting by Hans Dahl
Norwegian Painter
(1849 –1937)
1492
Columbus lands in San Salvador (Caribbean)
Map of Columbus' First Voyage
Christopher Columbus; his name generates no small amount of controversy: the man himself, is reviled by critics who feel Columbus' arrival in the New World opened the doors to hundreds of years of exploitation and genocide.
He wanted to find a new route to China and persuaded Spain to fund this journey. He captained three ships, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. It took him almost two months, and when the Italian explorer landed on a Caribbean island in what's now the Bahamas on Oct. 12, 1492, the "discovery" would put his name in history.
However, Columbus thought he was in the Indies, thus he called the native people Indians. He sailed back to Spain in March, 1493 and was named Admiral of the Ocean Sea by Spain's king and queen. But because of his behavior, and his terribly negative reputation, he was called back to Spain by his sponsors in 1500 and made his 4th, and final voyage to the New World, in 1504.
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) was a navigator, colonizer, and explorer from Genoa, Italy, whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere.
Map by Juan de la Cosa, 1492
This first map is the earliest definitive depiction of the Americas by a European. It was drawn by Juan de la Cosa, a cartographer who accompanied Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to what would soon be known as the "New World." De la Cosa was also the owner of the Santa Maria, the largest ship in Columbus' small fleet.
Map of the 4 Charted Voyages of Columbus, 1492-1504
Image provided by DigitalCommonWealth
1497
Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) is the First to Reach the Coast of Today's North America
John Cabot's Voyage
John Cabot was an Italian navigator and explorer. His 1497 voyage to the coast of 'North America' under the commission of Henry VII, King of England is the earliest known European exploration of coastal North America since the Norse visits to Vinland in the eleventh century.
John Cabot
(Italian: Giovanni Caboto)
c. 1450 – c. 1499
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Mural painting by Giustino Menescardi (1762)
Map of Route to and from New World, 1497
1501-1503
Amerigo Vespucci Sails to Southern and Northern
New World Continents
Vespucci's Voyages
In 1501, during his Portuguese expedition, Vespucci claimed that Brazil was part of a continent unknown to Europeans, which he called the "New World".
In 1502 he pens letter to friend Lorenzo de Medici where he tells him that this was not an “island” but a new continent. In 1503 this same letter gets published and circulates widely ...
The claim inspired cartographer Martin Waldseemüller to recognize Vespucci's accomplishments in 1507 by applying the Latinized form "America" for the first time to a map showing the New World. Other cartographers followed suit, and by 1532 the name 'America' was permanently affixed to the newly discovered continents (plural).
Amerigo Vespucci,
1451 – 1512) was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Florence, from whose name the term "America" is derived.
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Painted 1816. Artist, Charles Willson Peale.
Published
Letter
Excerpt: “... concerning my return from those new regions which we found and explored ... we may rightly call a new world. Because our ancestors had no knowledge of them, and it will be a matter wholly new to all those who hear about them, for this transcends the view held by our ancients, inasmuch as most of them hold that there is no continent to the south beyond the equator, but only the sea which they named the Atlantic and if some of them did aver that a continent there was, they denied with abundant argument that it was a habitable land. But that this their opinion is false and utterly opposed to the truth ... my last voyage has made manifest; for in those southernparts I have found a continent more densely peopled and abounding in animals than our Europe Asia or Africa...”
1507
Martin Waldseemuller Prints First Map with the
New World, now called "Americas" for the First Time.
First use of term, "Americas"
Vaspucci's claim inspired cartographer Martin Waldseemüller (1470-1522) to recognize Vespucci's accomplishments. In 1507 Martin published 1,000 copies of a woodcut world map, made with 12 blocks and compiled from the tradition of Ptolemy and the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci;
Martin named the New World in Vespucci’s honor by applying the Latinized form "America" for the first time to a map showing the New World.
Other cartographers followed suit, and by 1532 the name 'America' was permanently affixed to the newly discovered continents (plural).
Published
Map
