Read Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 for Free Online Page A

first at Santa Elena, in the future South Carolina, in 1557, and then in Florida, where Pedro Menendez de Aviles founded St Augustine in 1565 after exterminating a settlement of French Huguenots.37 Five years later, with Menendez's blessing, a party of eight Jesuits set out from Santa Elena under the leadership of Father Juan Bautista de Segura, the vice-provincial of the Jesuit Order in Florida. They had as their guide and translator a young Algonquian chief who had been picked up on an earlier expedition, given the baptismal name of Don Luis de Velasco in honour of the viceroy of New Spain, and taken to Spain, where he was presented to Philip II. Presumably in a bid to return to his native land he encouraged the Jesuits to establish their mission at `Ajacan', whose exact location on the Chesapeake is unknown, but which may have been some five miles from the future Jamestown. In 1571 Velasco, who had made his excuses and returned to live among his own people, led an Indian attack which wiped out the mission. Following a Spanish punitive expedition in 1572 the Ajacan experiment was abandoned. If, as has been suggested, Velasco was none other than Opechancanough, the brother of the local `emperor' Powhatan, Newport and his men had fixed their sights on a land where the ways of Europeans were already known and not admired.38
    In search of a safer landing-place, Newport's expedition moved across the bay and up river, finally putting ashore on 13 May 1607 at what was to be the site of Jamestown, the colony's first settlement. The London Company had named a resident council of seven to govern the colony, and ground-clearing and the construction of a fort began immediately under its supervision. Jamestown, with its deep anchorage, was to be the English Vera Cruz, a base for reconnaissance and for obtaining supplies by sea.
    Here the Indians, like those of Vera Cruz, seemed favourably disposed: `the Salvages often visited us kindly (fig. 5).'39 Newport took a party to explore the higher reaches of the river, and, after passing `divers small habitations ... arrived at a town called Powhatan, consisting of some 12 houses pleasantly seated on a hill'. Beyond this were falls, which made the river unnavigable for their boat. On one of the `little islets at the mouth of the falls', Newport `set up a cross with this inscription Jacobus Rex. 1607, and his own name below At the erecting hereof we prayed for our king and our own prosperous success in this his action, and proclaimed him king, with a great shout.'40 The English, like the Spaniards in Mexico, had formally taken possession of the land.
    In both instances tender consciences might question their right to do so. `The first objection', Robert Gray was to observe in A Good Speed to Virginia (1609), `is, by what right or warrant we can enter into the lands of these savages, take away their rightful inheritance from them, and plant ourselves in their places, being unwronged or unprovoked by them.'41 This was a problem with which the Spaniards had long had to wrestle. Spanish claims to New World dominion were based primarily on the Alexandrine bulls of 1493-4. These, following the precedent set by papal policy towards the Portuguese crown in Romanus Pontifex (1455), gave the monarchs of Castile dominion over any islands or mainland discovered or still to be discovered on the westward route to Asia, on condition that they assumed responsibility for protecting and evangelizing the indigenous inhabitants.42
    Since a favourable reaction of the indigenous population to such a take-over could hardly be taken for granted, their willingness to submit peacefully came to be tested by the formal reading aloud to them of the requerimiento, the notorious legal document drawn up in 1512 by the eminent jurist Juan Lopez de Palacios Rubios, and routinely used on all expeditions of discovery and conquest, including that of Hernan Cortes. The document, after briefly outlining Christian doctrine and the