C AMERICAN HISTORY: COMPRISING HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF THE INDIAN TRIBES, A DESCRIPTION OF AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES, WITH AN INQUIRY INTO THEIR ORIGIN AND THE ORIGIN OF HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, WITH APPENDICES SHOWING ITS CONNECTION WITH EUROPEAN HISTORY: HISTORY OF THE PRESENT BRITISH PROVINCES; HISTORY OF MEXICO; AND HISTORY OF TEXAS, BROUGHT DOWN TO THE TIME OF ITS ADMISSION INTO THE AMERICAN UNION. BY MARCIUS WILLSON, AUTHOR OF SCHOOL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, COMPREHENSIVE CHART NEW YORK: IVISON & PHINNEY, 321 BROADWAY. BUFFALO: PHINNEY & CO. CINCINNATI: MOORE, WILSTACH, KEYS & CO. 1856. EducT 708, 56.870 Educ 7 708,46.5 HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY UL 1 1914 CHARLES ELLIOTT PERKINS ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the www STEREOTYPED BY THOMAS B. SMITH INTRODUCTION. THE design of the following work is to present the histories of all those countaes of North America that are now of sufficient political importance to demand the attention of the scholar, and awaken the interest of the general reader. As an appropriate introduction to such a work, we have given the most important, of what little is known, of the history of the Aborigines of America, together with descriptive sketches of those rude memorials of a former civilization that were once so numerous throughout our own territory; and of others, magnificent even in their desolation, which now strew the plains, and crown the hill-tops, of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America. The probable origin of these antiquities, and of the Indian tribes, has long been a subject of the antiquarian researches of the learned. Of the histories of the several political divisions of North America, that of our own country claims our first attention, and to it we have given an appropriate space in the present work, commensurate with its importance. Its relations with European history, and with the history of England in particular, have been dwelt upon in the several appendices, at considerable length. To the article explanatory of the character and design of those appendices, see page 107, the reader is referred for our farther views on this subject. The third part of the volume, or, as it is called, Book III., gives the history of the present British Provinces in North America, from their earliest settlement to the present period-both under the French and under the English dominion ;-the early history of Louisiana, previous to the purchase of that territory by the United States in 1803;-the history of Mexico, from the conquest by Cortez, to the commencement of the war with the United States in 1846;—and the history of Texas, from its first settlement, to the time of its admission into the American Union. In relation to other features in the PLAN of the work, farther than the general divisions to which we have referred, a few remarks may not be inappropriate.— It is a fact, not universally known, that all the French writers on Canadian history-the writers upon Mexican history-and generally, all Catholic writers, give dates according to the New, or Gregorian Style, subsequent to the year 1582; while cotemporary English writers of American and European history retain the Old Style so late as the year 1751. Hence discrepancies in dates, almost innumerable, are found in the works of those compilers who have either been ignorant of this fact, or have disregarded it. In the following work the author has endeavored to give the dates, uniformly, in New Style. A minute MARGINAL ANALYSIS has been carried throughout the entire workeach subject being opposite that portion of the text to which it refers, and num * See this subject examined in a "Critical Review of American Histories," by the author of this work, published in the Biblical Repository of July, 1845. |