Part One: Foundations · Before Columbus: Vinland

FROM THE SHORE, the small band of Indians saw the floating island pulled by billowy clouds and the landing of the strangers. Never before had they seen such people. The newcomers looked like animals-monstrous, hairy, and pale skinned, their eyes the color of the sea and their hair the color of the sun. They carried shiny sharp sticks that looked like long, vicious claws. Their foreign speech sounded like gabble. Confused and frightened, the Indians quickly hid beneath their skincovered boats, hoping to appear like three mounds on the beach. They could hear footsteps approaching; suddenly their boats were violently overturned. All but one of them were captured. Paddling away frantically, the lone survivor looked back and saw red stains darkening the beach.¹ Led by Thorvald Eiriksson, son of Eirik the Red, the Vikings had sailed from Greenland to the New World. He had been told about this land by his brother, Leif, who had sailed south from Iceland about the year 1000 and reached a place he called "Vinland," an old Norse term for grassland or pasture. In the wonderful country to the south, Thorvald had learned, the grass tasted "sweet" and the rivers teemed with salmon. "This is a beautiful place," Thorvald exclaimed when he first saw what is now known as Newfoundland. "I should like to build myself a home here." After their initial encounter with the Indians on the beach, Thorvald and his men pitched camp and went to sleep. Suddenly, they were attacked by Indians armed with bows and arrows; Thorvald was wounded. "You.must carry me out to the headland where I thought it would be good to live," the dying leader told his men. "You must bury me there, and put a cross at my head and another one at my feet, and from then on you must call the place Krossanes [ Cross Head] ."²

Among them were Thorfinn Karlsefni and his wife, Gudrid. They found a land of great abundance: "Every stream was full of fish. They dug holes where sea and land met at high tide, and when the sea went down again, there was halibut lying in the holes. There were plenty of animals of all kinds in the forest." Then one day, the colonists were approached by some Indians. "Dark, ugly fellows, with ugly hair on their heads" and "large eyes and broad faces," the Beothuks, also named "Skraelings" by the Vikings, came out of the forest and were frightened by the bellowing of the cattle. "They ran towards Karlsefni's farm and wanted to get into the houses; but Karlsefni had the doors bolted. Neither of the two groups understood the other's language. Then the Skraelings took their packs off and undid their bundles and offered goods for sale; they wanted weapons more than anything else in exchange. But Karlsefni refused to sell any weapons." Instead, he offered them some cheese in exchange for pelts.³ The next year, the Beothuks returned to the site, rowing around the headland from the south. "There were so many of them that it looked as if charcoal had been strewn on the water." They wanted to trade for red cloth and swords. Suddenly, one of the Beothuks was killed as he tried to steal some weapons. During the fierce battle, the Vikings retreated up the riverbank, where they successfully resisted the Beothuk attacks. "Now it's hard to know what to do," Karlsefni said, "because I think they will come back a third time, and then they will come as enemies and there will be very many of them." The following spring, Karlsefni and his fellow Vikings abandoned the colony and returned to Greenland. They realized that, "although this was a good country, there would always be terror and trouble from the people who lived there."⁴ And so this first European settlement in the New World came to an end and remained virtually unknown to the Western world. The Norse people on Greenland had been cut off from their homeland, and when a Norwegian missionary arrived there in 1721, he found only the ruins of farms and churches. Only the Viking sagas, handed down orally and recorded in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, preserved the story of the first encounter. This Viking contact remained unacknowledged until 1960 when, on the northern point of Newfoundland at L'Anse aux Meadows, archeologists found a group of overgrown housesites with ancient Norse tools, and used carbon-14 analysis to date artifacts at about 1000 AD. About five hundred years after Leif Eiriksson's voyage to Vin-

land, Christopher Columbus made his crossing and changed the course of history. Unlike the Viking expeditions, his project was sponsored by the king and queen of Spain and was the focus of immense and wide interest throughout Europe. Moreover, the printing press was now available to spread the exciting news of Columbus's amazing "discovery." The admiral thought he had reached Asia. After he sighted land on October 21, 1492, the explorer wrote in his journal: "I am determined to go to the mainland and to the city of Quisay [Hangchow] and to present Your Highnesses' letters to the Grand Khan." Two days later, he recorded: "I wish to depart today for the island of Cuba, which I believe should be Cipango [Japan], according to the description that this people give me of its size and wealth .... " But Columbus was mistaken; actually, he had encountered a new land between Europe and Asia. This most momentous accident of history opened the way to efforts by Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, and England to colonize the continents that would be named the Americas. Unlike the Vikings, however, the new strangers stayed. ⁵