boundary, where it has been suggested that they were crowded by the advance of a glacial ice sheet from the north. There are now about 325,000 Indians in the United States, including the civilized tribes. Many tribes have died out; others have been almost completely exterminated or assimilated by the whites. The surviving Indians, on their Western reservations or in the government schools, are rapidly learning the ways of the white men. It is to be hoped that their education will be wisely fostered, and that instead of the. billion dollars spent on the forty Indian wars of the nineteenth century a few hundred thousand dollars spent in the twentieth century on Indian schools like Hampton will forever divest the word "Indian" of its associations with the tomahawk, torture, and treachery.1 23. A Prophecy of our Country. The fairest portion of the continent of North America which the Spanish adventurers penetrated in the sixteenth century, and whose edges the explorers of other nations touched, was destined to become the United States of America. It was blessed by nature with a variety of climate, abundant rainfall east of the Rocky Mountains, wonderfully fertile soil, and priceless deposits of coal and metals. It was destined in the second decade of the twentieth century to produce one fifth of the world's wheat, one third of its coal, iron ore, and tobacco, one half of its copper, two thirds of its oil and cotton, and three quarters of its corn. The mines of South Africa and Mexico alone yield larger supplies of gold and silver. Some lands, like France and Italy, have for centuries had a highly civilized population, but have been relatively poor in natural resources; others, like Manchuria and Russia, have been marvelously endowed by nature, while their people have lacked the knowledge and enterprise necessary to exploit their wealth. But in the United States men and material have been admirably matched. As the tide of migration moved slowly westward, across the Alleghenies, across the Mississippi, across the great plains and 1 The Indians, though always a subject of much curiosity, have only recently been studied scientifically. Our government, yielding to the entreaties of scholars who realized how fast the manners and customs of the natives were disappearing, established in 1879 a Bureau of Ethnology, for the careful study of the surviving vestiges of Indian life. To the reports of this bureau and to the researches of scholars and explorers connected with our various museums we are indebted for a great deal of valuable and fascinating information about the Indians. the crests of the Rockies and the Sierras, an intelligent and energetic race of pioneers felled the forests, planted the rich river bottoms, and opened the veins of coal and iron. The process was slow. The early explorers and settlers on the Atlantic coast had no idea, of course, of the vast continent which lay before them. Even beyond the middle of the seventeenth century the French explorers believed that the Mississippi River emptied into the South Sea (the Pacific Ocean). The English settlers on the Atlantic coast did not begin to cross the Alleghenies till far into the eighteenth century. The Rockies were discovered in 1743, and within the next fifty years our Pacific coast was charted by explorers and traders. Finally, in 1805, an expedition sent out by the president of the United States reached the mouth of the Columbia River, linking together for the first time by the feet of white men our Atlantic and Pacific shores. That was more than three centuries after the voyages of Columbus and almost exactly two hundred years after the first permanent English settlement in America, to which we now turn. REFERENCES The Discovery of America: JOHN FISKE, The Discovery of America, Vol. I; E. P. CHEYNEY, The European Background of American History (The American Nation Series), chaps. i-v; I. B. RICHMAN, The Spanish Conquerors (Chronicles of America, Vol. II), chaps. i, ii; ELROY M. AVERY, History of the United States, Vol. I, chaps. v, vii-xv; E. G. BOURNE, Spain in America (Am. Nation), chaps. i-vii; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. I, chap. i; OLSON and BOURNE, The Northmen, Columbus, and Cabot (Original Narratives of Early American History); JUSTIN WINSOR, Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. I, chap. i; Vol. II, chaps. i-ii. A Century of Exploration: FISKE, Vol. II; BOURNE, chaps. viii-xv; Cambridge Modern History, chap. ii; WINSOR, Vol. II, chaps. iv, vi, vii, ix; Vol. III, chaps. i-iii; HODGE and LEWIS, Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States (Orig. Narr.); H. S. BURRAGE, Early English and French Voyagers (Orig. Narr.); WM. WOOD, The Elizabethan Sea Dogs (Chronicles of America, Vol. III), chaps. i-xi; RICHMAN, chaps. iii-vi; A. B. HART, American History told by Contemporaries, Vol. I, Nos. 21-35; EDW. CHANNING, History of the United States, Vol. I, chaps. iii-v; L. FARRAND, Basis of American History (Am. Nation), chaps. v-xvii; ELLEN SEMPLE, American History and its Geographical Conditions, chaps. i, ii; Ellsworth Huntington, The Red Man's Continent (Chronicles of America, Vol. I); AVERY, chaps. ii, xvi-xxii. TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 1. Geographical Knowledge before Columbus: WINSOR, Vol. I, pp. 1–33 ; . FISKE, Vol. I, pp. 256-294; CHEYNEY, pp. 41–78; Avery, Vol. I, chap. v. 2. Columbus's First Voyage: OLSON and BOURNE (Orig. Narr.), pp. 89– 258 (Columbus's Journal); FISKE, Vol. I, pp. 419-446; Old South Leaflets, Nos. 29 and 33 (descriptions of voyage by Columbus and by his son). 3. De Soto's Journey to the Mississippi: HODGE and LEWIS (Orig. Narr.), pp. 129-272; BOURNE, pp. 162-170; WINSOR, Vol. II, pp. 244-254; W. LowERY, Spanish Settlements, pp. 213-252; E. G. BOURNE, De Soto (Trail Makers Series). 4. Raleigh's Attempts to found a Colony in Virginia: BURRAGE (Orig. Narr.), pp. 225–323; Hart, No. 32; WINSOR, Vol. III, pp. 105–116; Old South Leaflets, Nos. 92, 119; WOOD, chap. xi. 5. The American Indians: FISKE, Vol. I, pp. 38-147; FARRAND, pp. 195– 271; HART, Nos. 21, 60, 64, 91; AVERY, Vol. I, pp. 338-368; LowERY, pp. 27-78. CHAPTER II THE ENGLISH COLONIES THE OLD DOMINION 24. European Conditions favoring Colonization. The gorgeous dreams of gold and empire which filled the minds of the explorers of the sixteenth century slowly faded into the sober realization of the hardships involved in settling the wild and distant regions of the New World. To the romantic age of discovery succeeded the practical age of colonization. The motives which led thousands of Europeans to leave their homes in the seventeenth century and brave the storms of the Atlantic to settle on the shores of the James and the Charles, the Hudson and the St. Lawrence, were those which have prompted migration in every age; namely, the desire to get a better living and the desire to enjoy a fuller freedom. Now it happened that both these desires were greatly stimulated by the events of the sixteenth century in Europe. In the first place, the masses of the people, who had lived as serfs on the great feudal estates of the nobles in the Middle Ages, were finding more and more diversified employment as citizens of national states — artisans and mechanics in the towns, free tenant farmers, merchants and traders. In other words, a middle class (a bourgeoisie) was emerging and was beginning to amass money. At the same time the military and civil expenses of the kings, whose responsibilities were growing with their states, made taxes high and land dear. The limitless virgin lands of the New World offered a tempting relief for the hard-pressed. 25. Protestant Revolt from Rome. In the second place, large parts of northern Europe had broken away from the ecclesiastical authority of the Roman Church in the sixteenth century, in the movement known as the Protestant Reformation. State churches were established in England, Germany, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands, with the rulers in authority instead of the Pope; and dissent from the doctrine of these established churches was treated not only as |