Review: Early America
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In the late 1400s, the King and Queen of Spain gave Christopher Columbus ships, supplies, and other equipment needed to find an ocean path to Asia. Other countries and leaders did the same. For example, approximately 400 years before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in North America, a group of adventurers from the European north visited the early Americas. This group, called the Vikings, were explorers too. They were interested in making discoveries, finding new trade routes, and of course, finding new life. Life during this time in history consisted of farming, hunting, fishing, and trading.
Life for some of the more adventurous was spent exploring and some even started new lives in new places. One Viking, a man named Leif Erikson, was an explorer. During the 10th century (around the year 1000), Erikson explored parts of present-day Canada. And some historians even think he may have ventured into northeastern America. An explorer’s life during this time in history was hard but also very exciting, filled with equal parts adventure, danger, and mystery. We continue this path of exploration with stories from a few interesting explorers that helped shape the history of early America.
Those new regions [America], which we found and explored with the fleet. We may rightly call a New World…a continent more densely peopled and abounding in animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa; and, in addition, a climate milder than in any other region known to us.
Amerigo Vespucci, Describing South America
