Paul Jones

American Pageant Chapter 1

1. Marco Polo
Marco Polo (c. 1254 – January 8, 1324) was a merchant from the Venetian
Republic who wrote Il Milione, which introduced Europeans to Central Asia and
China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo,
voyaged through Asia and met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice and
were reunited with Marco. The three of them embarked on an epic journey to
Asia, returning after 24 years to find Venice at war with Genoa; Marco was
imprisoned, and dictated his stories to a cellmate. He was released in 1299,
became a wealthy merchant, married and had 3 children. He died in 1324, and
was buried in San Lorenzo.
1. Francisco Pizarro
Francisco Pizarro González, 1st Marqués de los Atabillos (c. 1471 or 1476 –
26 June 1541) was a famous conquistador of the Crown of Castile, conqueror of
the Incan Empire and founder of Lima, the modern-day capital of Peru. Pizarro
was born in Trujillo, Extremadura, modern Spain. Sources differ in the birth year
they assign to him: 1471, 1475–1478, or unknown. He was an illegitimate son of
Gonzalo Pizarro Rodríguez de Aguilar (senior) (1446-1522) who as colonel of
infantry served in the Italian campaigns under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba,
and in Navarre, with some distinction. His mother was Francisca González
Mateos, a woman of slender means from Trujillo, daughter of Juan Mateos, of
the family called Los Roperos, and wife María Alonso, labradores pecheros from
Trujillo. His mother married late in life and had a son Francisco Martín de
Alcántara, married to Inés Muñoz, who from the beginning was at the Conquest
of Perú, where he then lived, always at his brother's side, who held him always
as one of his most trustful men.[1] Through his father, Francisco was second
cousin to Hernán Cortés, the famed conquistador of Mexico.
2. Juan Ponce de Leon
Juan Ponce de León (1474 – July 1521) was a Spanish explorer. He became
the first Governor of Puerto Rico by appointment of the Spanish Crown. He led
the first European expedition to Florida which he named. He is associated with
the legend of the Fountain of Youth reputed to be in Florida.
3. Montezuma
Moctezuma (c. 1466 or c. 1480 – June 1520), also known by a number of
variant spellings including Montezuma, Moteuczoma, Motecuhzoma and referred
to in full by early Nahuatl texts as Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin and similar, was the
ninth tlatoani or ruler of Tenochtitlan, reigning from 1502 to 1520. It was during
Moctezuma's reign that the episode known as the Spanish conquest of the Aztec
Empire began.
The portrayal of Moctezuma in history has mostly been coloured by his role as
ruler of a defeated nation, and many sources describe him as weak-willed and
indecisive. The biases of some historical sources make it difficult to understand
his actions during the Spanish invasion.
During his reign the Aztec Empire reached its maximal size. Through warfare,
Moctezuma II expanded the territory as far south as Xoconosco in Chiapas and
the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and incorporated the Zapotec and Yopi people into
the empire. He changed the previous meritocratic system of social hierarchy and
widened the divide between pipiltin (nobles) and macehualtin (commoners) by
prohibiting commoners from working in the royal palaces. The famous Stone of
Tizoc, a sacrificial stone decorated with carvings representing Tizoc,
Moctezuma's predecessor as tlatoani, was also elaborated during his rule.
4. Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus (c. 1451 – 20 May 1506) was a Genoese navigator,
colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general
European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere.
Although not the first to reach the Americas from Europe—he was preceded by
the Norse, led by Leif Ericson, who built a temporary settlement 500 years earlier
at L'Anse aux Meadows[1]— Columbus initiated widespread contact between
Europeans and indigenous Americans. With his four voyages of discovery and
several attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, all
funded by Isabella I of Castile, he initiated the process of Spanish colonization
which foreshadowed general European colonization of the "New World." (The
term "pre-Columbian" is usually used to refer to the peoples and cultures of the
Americas before the arrival of Columbus and his European successors.)
His initial 1492 voyage came at a critical time of growing national imperialism
and economic competition between developing nation states seeking wealth from
the establishment of trade routes and colonies. In this sociopolitical climate,
Columbus's far-fetched scheme won the attention of Isabella I of Castile.
Severely underestimating the circumference of the Earth, he estimated that a
westward route from Iberia to the Indies would be shorter and more direct than
the overland trade route through Arabia. If true, this would allow Crown of Castile
entry into the lucrative spice trade — heretofore commanded by the Arabs and
Italians. Following his plotted course, he instead landed within the Bahamas
Archipelago at a locale he named San Salvador. Mistaking the North-American
island for the East-Asian mainland, he referred to its inhabitants as "Indios".
5. Hernan Cortes
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca; 1485
– December 2, 1547) was a Castilian conquistador who led an expedition that
caused the fall of the Aztec empire and brought large portions of mainland
Mexico under the King of Castile, in the early 16th century. Cortés was part of the
generation of Spanish colonizers that began the first phase of the Spanish
colonization of the Americas.
Born in Medellín (Spain), to a family of lesser nobility, Cortés chose to pursue
a livelihood in the New World. He went to Hispaniola and later to Cuba, where he
received an encomienda and, for a short time, became alcalde (magistrate) of
the second Spanish town founded on the island. In 1519, he was elected captain
of the third expedition to the mainland, an expedition which he partly funded. His
enmity with the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, resulted in the
recall of the expedition at the last moment, an order which Cortés ignored.
Arriving on the continent, Cortés executed a successful strategy of allying with
some indigenous peoples against others. He also used a native woman, Doña
Marina, as interpreter; she would later bear Cortés a son. When the Governor of
Cuba sent emissaries to arrest Cortés, he fought them and won, using the extra
troops as reinforcements. Cortés wrote letters directly to the king asking to be
acknowledged for his successes instead of punished for mutiny. After he
overthrew the Aztec empire, Cortés was awarded the title of Marqués del Valle
de Oaxaca, while the more prestigious title of Viceroy was given to a high-
ranking nobleman, Antonio de Mendoza. Cortés returned to Spain in 1541 where
he died peacefully but embittered.
6. Francisco Coronado
Francisco Vázquez de Coronado y Luján (1510 – 22 September 1554) was a
Spanish conquistador, who visited New Mexico and other parts of what are now
the southwestern United States between 1540 and 1542. Coronado had hoped to
conquer the mythical Seven Cities of Gold.
7. Ferdinand of Aragon
Ferdinand (the Catholic) was King of Aragon (1479–1516), Sicily (1468–
1516), Naples (1504–1516), Valencia, Sardinia, and Navarre, Count of
Barcelona, de jure uxoris King of Castile (1474-1504) and then Regent (and true
ruler) of that country also from 1508 to his death, in the name of his mentally
unstable daughter Joanna the Mad.
8. Isabella of Castile
Isabella I was Queen of Castile and León. She and her husband, Ferdinand II
of Aragon, laid the foundation for the political unification of Spain under their
grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.
As a key character in completing the Reconquista, establishing the Spanish
Inquisition, sponsoring Christopher Columbus' voyages that led to the discovery
of America, laying the foundations of modern Spain and the Spanish Empire,
Isabella I was one of the most powerful and influential individuals of her time and
is considered to be one of the most important sovereigns in world history.
9. Quetzalcoatl
Quetzalcoatl is a Mesoamerican deity whose name comes from the Nahuatl
language and has the meaning of "feathered-serpent".
10. Bartholomeu Dias
Bartolomeu Dias (1451 – 29 May 1500), a nobleman of the Portuguese royal
household, was a Portuguese explorer who sailed around the southernmost tip of
Africa in 1488, the first European known to have done so, although some
historians credit Herodotus's account of a Phoenician expedition that achieved
the feat under the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II (610 – 595 BC).
11. Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan was a maritime navigator and explorer. Ferdinand
Magellan was born circa 1480 at Sabrosa, near Chaves, in the province of Tras-
os-Montes, one of the wildest districts of Portugal. However, he subsequently
obtained Spanish nationality in order to serve the Spanish Crown, so that he
could try to find a westward route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. He thereby
became the first person to lead an expedition across the Pacific Ocean. This was
also the first successful attempt to circumnavigate the Earth. Although he did not
complete the entire voyage (he was killed during the Battle of Mactan in the
Philippines), Magellan had earlier travelled eastwards to the Spice Islands. So he
became one of the first individuals to cross all of the meridians of the Globe.
12. Great Ice Age
The Great Ice Age, a recent chapter in the Earth's history, was a period of
recurring widespread glaciations. Mountain glaciers formed on all continents, the
icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland were more extensive and thicker than
today, and vast glaciers, in places as much as several thousand feet thick,
spread across North America and Eurasia.
13. Spanish Armada
The Spanish Armada was the Spanish fleet that sailed against England under
the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1588, with the intention of
overthrowing England's Elizabeth I.
14. Conquistadores
Conquistador (meaning "Conqueror" in the Spanish and Portuguese
languages) is the term widely used to refer to the Spanish soldiers, explorers,
and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in
the 15th through the 17th centuries following Europe's discovery of the New
World by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The leaders of the conquest of the
Aztec Empire were Hernán Cortés and Pedro de Alvarado y Contreras.
Francisco Pizarro led the conquest of the Incan Empire.
15. Aztecs
Aztec is a term used to refer to certain ethnic groups of central Mexico,
particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated
large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period
referred to as the Late post-Classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.
Often the term "Aztec" refers exclusively to the people of Tenochtitlan,
situated on an island in Lake Texcoco, who called themselves Mexica Tenochca
or Colhua-Mexica.
16. St. Augustine, Florida
St. Augustine is the county seat of St. Johns County, Florida, in the United
States. It is the oldest continuously occupied European established city, and the
oldest port, in the continental United States.[1] St. Augustine lies in a region of
Florida known as The First Coast, which extends from Amelia Island in the north,
south to Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Palm Coast. According to the 2000
census, the city population was 11,592; in 2004, the U.S. Census Bureau
estimated that its population had reached 12,157.