Early Norse Visits to North America
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This compilation © Phoenix E-Books UK SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOLUME 59, NUMBER 19 EARLY NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA WITH TEN PLATES BY WILLIAM H. BABCOCK (PUBLICATION 21 38) CITY OF WASHINGTON PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 1913 CONTENTS PAGE 1. The New World Prelude I 2. The Old World Prelude 7 16 3. The Mythical Islands of the Atlantic 4. The Problem of Great Ireland 26 5. The Colonization of Greenland 30 6. The Voyages of Madoc and the Zeno Brothers 35 7. Are There Norse Relics in North America ? 43 8. Certain Collateral Items of Evidence 54 9. The Three Sagas and Their Relative Status 64 10. The Most Authentic Wineland History 76 11. The Story of the First American Mother 81 12. Leif and His Voyages 87 13. With Thorfinn and Gudrid to the Bay of Fundy 96 14. Their W ineland Voyage Interpreted 106 15. The Expedition to Hop 124 16. Concerning the Natives 139 17. Review of Dr. Nansen s Conclusions 159 18. General Survey 169 Notes 1 76 Partial Bibliography 179 Index.. 191 ILLUSTRATIONS PLATES FACE PAGE 1-2. Parts of Map of Pizigani Brothers, 1367 16 16 3. Part of Catalan Map, 1375 16 4. Part of Map of Battista Beccaria, 1435 22 5. Part of Map of Matheus Prunes, 1553 62 6. Map of Sigurdr Stefansson, 1570. 100 7-8. The Gokstad Ship s 106 9. Route Map of Thorfinn Karlsefni Expedition 10. Map of Alount Hope Bay 136 991.0 1 6 EARLY NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA. BY H. WILLIAM BABCCCK; j (WITH TEX PLATED) , In the rather long continued labor of preparing this monograph, the author has had occasion to recognize gratefully the kindly willingness of scientific men and of scholars generally to extend a helping hand. He would especially mention the philological assistance of Mr. Juul Dieserud and his patient oral translation of the writings of Dr. Nansen others before their in criticism and appearance English ; the helpful of Prof. E. Olson the the my manuscript by Julius ; explanation by late Dr. W J McGee of the observed progressive changes of level along our seaboard by glacial recession and resultant continuing crustal wave action a theory since corroborated by other authorities which affords a reasonably trustworthy conception of the American Atlantic coast line and its conditions about the year 1000 A. D., and thus throws new light on the regions and special places intended by the names in the the efficient aid of Mr. in Gaelic saga ; James Mooney and Indian and the interest of Mr. David problems ; sympathetic Hutcheson who has furnished a copious supply of data on the subject supplemented by some personal field-work near one possible Hop of the Norsemen. i. THE NEW WORLD PRELUDE Concerning the discovery of America before Columbus, there are and claims but two visits be many theories, fancies, ; only can considered historic, namely, those of Leif Ericsson and Thorfinn Karlsefni. The Wineland or Vinland of these explorers has been so greatly misunderstood and has been made the basis of so much elaborate and contradictory explanation during the past three cen turies that only the hope of clearing matters a little by patient research would perhaps justify one in adding to its volume. The importance SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS, VOL. 59, No. 19 2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 and permanent interest of the topic really demand the careful applica tion of every available test. narrative from Obviously we must aim to distinguish the true as less reliable accretions and competitors. We must also ascertain of American shoreline at the nearly as possible the condition the These are the period to which the statements of the sagas apply. throw on prime requirements, a;nd yet whatever else may any light the matter should not be neglected. the A preliminary glance is perhaps needful at what preceded appearance of the Norsemen in the New World. In a fundamental " " sense the title New World is deserved, for science and the most venerated writings agree in ascribing priority of human life to the other hemisphere, though their reasons differ widely. Most anthro first walked over to America from Eu pologists believe that man ; * rope as Dr. Brinton supposed, from Asia as many others have claimed but in either case the route was at one, if not both, of the far northern corners of the continent. The crossing is indeed occa sionally made in winter at the present day on the ice at Bering 2 Straits, as reported to Dr. Dall, and in summer by boat almost at will. However, no traces have yet been discovered of such passage from Iceland or any other possible stepping stone on the eastern 3 side. But even the earliest coming, however remote, must have been rather late in the history of our race, an unannored, ill-equipped off spring of the tropics, which had a long way to travel by slow de grees. The immigration may have been in a small way and often repeated. Whoever came first to America, however, or whence they came, or when, we have in the present inquiry to deal only with the Eskimo and their southern neighbors. When Europeans finally lifted the Atlantic curtain, the Eskimo were found as far south as the upper end of to the sea-shore almost Newfoundland ; they clung everywhere. Below these Innuit along the coast, and behind their southeastern wing in Labrador, as well as nearly everywhere throughout the temperate parts of the continent, there were other uncivilized men 1 D. G. Brinton: The American Race, (1901), p. 32. 2 W. H. Dall: The Origin of the Innuit; in The Tribes of the Extreme Northwest, p. 97. 3 C. R. Markham : Origin and Migrations of the Greenland Eskimo; in Arctic Papers for Expedition of 1875, p. 166. See also W. H. Holmes : Some Problems of the American Race. Amer. Anthrop., vol. 12, no. 2 (1910). p. 178 Cf. A. Geike: Fragments of Earth Lore, p. 263. NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 3 in various stages of development, whom we habitually call Indians " " 1 by misnomer, although Amerind has won a place in scientific writing. These, or the dominant racial elements of them, appear to have come into North America from the regions near and behind 2 these natural crossing-places above Japan, where tribes are yet found, chiefly in mountainous insulated or nearly insulated homes of refuge, so like our wild native people that we should call them Indian without question if bodily shifted here. Whether this eastward human wave or the Eskimo what their preceded, followed, accompanied ; reciprocal action and relations may have been until the first known distribution established and whether the tribes of of races and territory was ; Saghalien and Kamchatka above referred to were left behind or have forced their way through the Eskimo and across the sea to their 3 present seats, are matters debatable which need not concern us here. These Indians could not have been on the ground for a very great number of centuries or the population would have been denser, the linguistic stocks more plentiful. In the immense area between the Arctic Ocean, the Rocky Mountains, the Gulf of Mexico, and the 4 Atlantic there were barely a half dozen principal linguistic families the Athapascan, Shoshonean, Algonquian, Siouan, Iroquoian, and Muskogean. These people, however, had undergone varied experi 3 ences therefore differed here and there : were ; they widely yet they enough alike to give us the accepted ideal Indian of our coinage. These few vigorous groups have made nearly all of North American history on the Indian side. The long list of languages in North America, so often insisted on, include some that appear to be but of minor flecks and patches on the western border of our linguistic map, resembling nothing so much as the debris of waves that had struck without force to pass on, and of human fragments in the mountain nooks above the Isthmus. They all have their own abundant interest, but it does not concern our 1 Other substitutes will hardly do. Red Indian, for example, has meant Beothuk specifically. Even American Indian means Passamaquoddy, but not Micmac, on Grand Manan. 2 C. H. Hawes: In the Uttermost East, p. 35. Cf. Geo. Kennan : Tent Life in Siberia, p. 171. Also his Siberia and the Exile System vol. 2. p. 400; and Mythology of the Koryak (Jochelson). Amer. Anthrop. (1904). vol. 6, p. 413. 3 A. F. Chamberlain: Origin of American Aborigines. Linguistics. Amer. Anthrop. (1912), vol. 14, p. 55. 4 See map in Bulletin 30, pt. i, Bureau of American Ethnology. 5 See Notes to Chapter 16. 4 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 of the semi- present inquiry; nor does the much debated problem to Chile civilizations, extending in a long line from central Mexico looks down the uplands of that front of our double continent which ever toward the primal Asian centers of human culture. of Excepting at or near its narrowest part, the two sea-shores North America were as two different worlds. There was never anything even semi-civilized along either of these shores in the latitudes much above stark near that Wineland ; nothing savagery portion of the Atlantic shore, even with a liberal inclusion of territory to the southward. Population was indeed almost unbelievably scanty. No other part of that region was quite so bountifully supplied by 1 Nature as Powhatan s domain near the Chesapeake, yet Strachey s miniature census, river by river and town by town, has a really 2 ridiculous, though pathetic, look.