THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT JOHN CABOT SEBASTIAN CABOT CAPE COD: That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabitable shore of PEOPLE OF Labrador gave the English no just title to New England, or to the CAPE COD United States generally, any more than to Patagonia. His careful biographer (Biddle) is not certain in what voyage he ran down the coast of the United States, as is reported, and no one tells us what he saw. RICHARD BIDDLE SEBASTIAN CABOT CAPE COD: The French trail is distinct. They went measuring and PEOPLE OF sounding, and when they got home had something to show for their CAPE COD voyages and explorations. There was no danger of their charts being lost, as Cabot’s have been. SEBASTIAN CABOT HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT CAPE COD: So far as inland discovery was concerned, the PEOPLE OF adventurous spirit of the English was that of sailors who land CAPE COD but for a day, and their enterprise the enterprise of traders. Cabot spoke like an Englishman, as he was, if he said, as one reports, in reference to the discovery of the American Continent, when he found it running toward the north, that it was a great disappointment to him, being in his way to India; but we would rather add to than detract from the fame of so great a discoverer. Samuel Penhallow, in his History (Boston, 1726), p. 51, speaking of “Port Royal and Nova Scotia,” says of the last, that its “first seizure was by Sir Sebastian Cobbet for the crown of Great Britain, in the reign of King Henry VII.; but lay dormant till the year 1621,” when Sir William Alexander got a patent of it, and possessed it some years; and afterward Sir David Kirk was proprietor of it, but erelong, “to the surprise of all thinking men, it was given up unto the French.” SEBASTIAN CABOT CAPE COD: Probably Cape Cod was visited by Europeans long before PEOPLE OF the seventeenth century. It may be that Cabot himself beheld it. CAPE COD SEBASTIAN CABOT “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project John and Sebastian Cabot HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT 1450 From this year until 1535, the Sforzas would be in control of Milan. At about this point Giovanni Caboto was born in Italy (he would sign his name as “Zuan Chabotto” and is known today in Spanish as Juan Caboto, in French as Jean Cabot, and in English as John Cabot). NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT John and Sebastian Cabot “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT 1474 At about this point Sebastian Cabot was born (in Bristol, England or Venice, Italy). Paolo Toscanelli (1397-1482) had constructed by 1440 a map of the Ocean Sea which positioned China and Japan some hundred degrees east of their correct position and thus narrowed the empty waters between Japan and the Canary Islands to but 3,000 miles. In this year he forwarded this map to the Portuguese canon Ferdinando Martini, who would pass it on to Christopher Columbus. On this basis Columbus, ever the optimist, ever delusional, would re-estimate that he had but 2,400 miles to travel after the Canaries dropped off the horizon behind him before he would be able to secure new supplies along the coast of Japan — rather than the correct and fatally enormous figure of 10,000 miles. CARTOGRAPHY DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. John and Sebastian Cabot “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT 1476 March 28, Thursday (Old Style): The name of John Cabot appeared in the archives of Venice, for having completed 15 years of residence; he was being granted the rights of a citizen. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project John and Sebastian Cabot HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT 1495 It is known that at this point John Cabot was, and probably had been for years, an English subject, residing at Bristol (he was presumably Venetian by birth, since his wife was Venetian and since he had been described as “Kabotto, Venecian” in the charter of 1498). Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673. Sebastian Cabota the first that attempted to discover the North-west passage at the charge of Henry the Seventh. From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent. Henry Tudor of the House of Lancaster, who had become King Henry VII of England, paid £50 for a marble and alabaster monument in the garden of Greyfriars in Leicester, in memory of King Richard III. CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT John and Sebastian Cabot “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT 1496 March 5, Saturday (1495, Old Style): King Henry VII of England patented the Venetian navigator known locally as “John Cabot” and his three sons including Sebastian, their heirs or assigns, to discover a new trade route to Asia by searching for islands, provinces, or regions, in the eastern, western, or northern seas and, as vassals of the king, occupying the territories that might be found, with an exclusive right to their commerce on paying the king a 5th part of all profits. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project John and Sebastian Cabot HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT 1497 During the late 1500s and early 1600s, the natives known as the Massachuset or “Those of the Great Hills” (since, in Algonquian, “massa” meant great and “wadschuasch” meant hills and “et” meant at) were allied in conflict against the Narragansett confederacy. Eastern Massachusetts groups were located at the endpoint of extensive trade network involving the French, Micmac, Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, and Eastern Abenaki. In about this period John and Sebastian Cabot would have been passing offshore, as they sailed down along the northeastern coasts of America. Such voyages financed by private merchant groups were not necessarily intended for public review, as the object was to find secret trade routes and trading sites to be exploited for profit, so the extent and exact dates of their voyages are in dispute, but probably Sebastian Cabot in the later voyages would get as far south as Virginia or North Carolina. This is what an 1893 textbook for kiddies alleged that John Cabot saw: HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT King Henry VII of England commissioned an Italian sea-captain, Giovanni Caboto of the Matthew out of Bristol harbor, a classic 15th-Century caravelle, to sail west and claim new lands for England. The voyager would blunder upon an unexpected new land — not the Orient, as Caboto had anticipated, but the eastern coast of an immense new-found continent. His map has not survived. CARTOGRAPHY Caboto would go down in history as John Cabot, the explorer who claimed the “New Founde Land” for a British King. Cabot planted the English flag on what is now Cape Bauld, Newfoundland. On a subsequent voyage in 1498, Cabot would enter Hudson Bay at 64°N. THE FROZEN NORTH HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT The Micmac and the Beothuk tribespeoples on Newfoundland were probably the 1st native Americans to have regular contact with Europeans. Arguably, Cabot wasn’t the 1st European to arrive on these shores, as Basque cod fishermen seem to have been visiting the Grand Banks even before Christopher Columbus’s voyage in 1492 — but had been keeping exceedingly mum about where it was that they were finding all their marvelous finny fish.1 At least four centuries earlier even than that, 11th-Century Norse Vikings may well have landed at L’Anse aux Meadows, and legend has it that an Irish monk, St. Brendan, landed in Newfoundland four centuries before those Vikings. Whatever, John Cabot’s voyage for King Henry VII in 1497 did mark the beginning of an era — British colonization of the New World. The 1st interracial contact presently of record was made in this year by Captain John Cabot who would take three Micmac with him when he returned to England. It may well be that the Micmac did not appreciate the captain’s services as a tour guide, since in the same area during his 2d voyage a few years later this explorer would disappear from our radar scopes. 1. The Atlantic cod Gadus morhua, is a demersal gadoid species distributed in the Northwest Atlantic from Greenland to North Carolina. Sexual maturity is attained between ages 2 to 4 and spawning occurs during winter and early spring. The cod is an omnivorous feeder and commonly attained lengths up to 51 inches and weights up to 55 to 77 pounds. Maximum age can be in excess of 20 years, although due to severe overfishing young fish (ages 2 to 5) now generally constitute the bulk of a catch. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT Chronological observations of America Christopher Columbus his third voyage to the to the year of Christ 1673.