Wise men tell us that even before our country was occupied by the savage, barbarous, and half-civilized Indians, whose way of living has just been described, it had been inhabited by their ancestors or by an older race of men. We know they existed, because people have dug up their bones. These have been found principally inside huge earthen mounds of very queer shapes. The mounds were evidently built by those early inhabitants, who are hence known as the mound builders. Trees hundreds of years old now grow upon these mounds, which are found in most parts of the eastern Mis-sis-sip´pi valley, especially in O-hi´o.
In one place you can see a big mound representing a snake one thousand feet long, his body lying in graceful curves along the ground. This snake's mouth is wide open, and he looks as if trying to swallow an egg-shaped mound, which is one hundred and sixty-four feet long, and hence a pretty big mouthful. As this mound is so odd, it has been inclosed in a park, where it is to be kept just as it is, to remind people of the mound builders who lived here so long ago.
No one now knows exactly why these queer mounds were made, but learned men have dug into about two thousand of them, and as they have generally found bones, stone arrowheads and axes, beads, mortars, hammers, tools for spinning and weaving, pottery, baskets, and coarse cloth, they think the mounds must have been intended principally as burying places. The beads found in them are very like those which the barbarous Indians called wampum and used as money. Indians wore these beads in strings around their necks, or wove them into belts, using beads of different colors to form very pretty patterns.
Wampum.
IV. WHERE THE NORTHMEN WENT.
As you have seen in the first chapters of this book, America was once a very different country from what it is to-day. Now you are going to learn how it changed, little by little, from the wild land where Indians roamed about in the huge forests covering the greater part of the country, into a civilized country.
We are told that in all the wide territory now occupied by the United States, there were, four hundred and fifty years ago, about two hundred thousand Indians. These were very few inhabitants for so big a country, for now there are many cities here which count many more citizens.
The Indians then little suspected that on the other side of the great ocean there was another country, occupied by a race of white men, who knew much more than they did, and who were soon coming to take possession of their land.
But the people in Europe, wise as they were, did not know many things which everybody knows now. That was not their fault, however, for they had been trying for several centuries to learn all they could. In the middle of the fifteenth century Europe was already an old country, where long series of kings and queens had ruled over the people. There were then in Europe cities more than two thousand years old, ancient temples and castles, and many of the beautiful Christian churches which people still admire, because none finer have ever been built.
The people in Europe had long been great travelers by land and sea, although it was not so easy to get about then as it is now. Indeed, on land they could go only in wagons, in litters, on horseback, or on foot; and on the water they used nothing but rowboats or sailboats, because no one had yet imagined that one could use steam or electricity. On the sea, even the boldest sailors did not dare venture far out of sight of land, for fear they would not be able to find their way back.
The best seamen in Europe were the Northmen, or vik´ings. Already in the eighth century they used to sail out of the viks, or bays, in Nor´way, every spring, to go in search of adventures. These Northmen, Norsemen, or Normans, little by little explored the coast of the North Sea, and of the Atlantic Ocean, and finally came to the Strait of Gi-bral´tar. Passing through this opening, they came to the beautiful Med-i-ter-ra´ne-an Sea, where they cruised about, even visiting the Greek islands and the renowned city of Con-stan-ti-no´ple.
As you will see by looking at your maps, this was a very long journey for men who had nothing but sailboats or rowboats, such as very few sailors would dare to use nowadays. But the Northmen were afraid of nothing, and when the wind blew, and the great waves tossed their little vessels up and down like cockleshells, they held tight to the rudder and steered on, singing one of their famous songs.
Sometimes, however, the tempest raged so fiercely that they were driven far out of their course. Thus, in the middle of the ninth century, one of these hardy seamen, after tossing about on the stormy seas several days, landed on an island which he had never seen before.
A Viking.
This new place was Ice´land, and he was so pleased with his discovery that he sailed home and persuaded his family and friends to go back there with him to settle down. In a few years other Northmen came to live in Iceland, sailing across the Atlantic from time to time to visit their old homes and friends. Soon the colony grew so large that its seamen kept up a lively trade with different ports in Europe.
One of these Ice-lan´dic seamen, Gunn´biorn, on his way home, was once overtaken by a violent storm. It drove him far out of his course, and finally brought him in sight of a new land, covered with snow, which he called the White Land. When he reached home he told the Ice´land-ers what he had seen; but no one cared then to go and see if there really was a land west of Iceland, as he had said.
About a hundred years later another man, Er´ic the Red, was driven out of Iceland for murder. Remembering what Gunnbiorn had said, he sailed westward, and went to settle in the new country, which he called Greenland, so as to attract other settlers. A number of them soon joined him there, and began to trade with the Es´ki-mos, a race of Indians who lived in the coldest part of the country, where they hunted white bears and fished for cod and seals.
V. THE NORTHMEN IN AMERICA.
After Eric the Red had settled in Greenland, he sent word to one of his friends, Biar´ni, to come and visit him. Biarni gladly accepted the invitation, and although he had none of the instruments which sailors now use to guide them safely over the seas, he set out boldly, steering his course by the stars.
Unfortunately for Biarni, a storm soon came up. The stars could no longer be seen, and his ship was driven far out of its way. When the skies cleared Biarni saw land before him, and fancied he had reached Greenland. So he sailed slowly along the coast, looking for Eric's settlement; but, as he could not find it, he soon turned around and went back to Iceland.
Of course he told his adventures to his friends, and Leīf the Lucky, hearing him describe the land he had seen, set out in search of it, in a large ship manned by a number of men. Sailing westward, Leif coasted along Lab-ra-dor´ and No´va Sco´tia, came to Cape Cod (map, page 189), and landed, it is thought, somewhere in Rhode Island, in the year 1001.
Although Biarni and Leif did not know it, they had been the first white men to see North America, which, as you will see, did not receive this name till many years later. Leif the Lucky found so many wild grapes in this region that he called the country Vine´land, and loading his ship with timber and grapes, he went home. But he, with another Northman, soon came back to spend a winter in the new country, where the climate was much milder than in Iceland or Greenland.
For some years ships sailed from Norway to Iceland, from Iceland to Greenland, and from Greenland to North America, where a Northman finally settled with about one hundred and forty men and women. Snor´ri, the son of this