Another Day, Another Book

I happened to turn on All Things Considered a couple of months ago, when the common 'tator was interviewing Tony Horwitz about his new book A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World. I happen to love reading nonfiction, particularly those books where an author takes a seemingly narrow subject and reveals its many heretofore unknown facets. In A Voyage Long and Strange Tony Horwitz sets out to explore the century or so of "American history" between the first landing of Columbus in what we know as Haiti, in 1492, and the Pilgrims' arrival at Plymouth in 1620.

Trained as an historian and investigative journalist, Horwitz not only researched the copious writings left behind by the many Europeans who were exploring the "New World", but he literally followed the paths of a number of explorers, talking with locals, descendants of both Europeans and Indians, re-enactors, historians, and archaeologists along the way. The end result was this fascinating and immensely entertaining book.

It's no secret that most of the explorers were looking for cities of gold. There were the Spanish conquistadors: Coranado, who marched up from Mexico into what we know as Arizona and New Mexico, and then penetrated the Great Plains, ending up in what we know as Kansas. Had he gone a little further, he conceivably could have met another band of explorers under the leadership of De Soto, that came from Cuba, skirted the Gulf coast of Florida, then marched through what is now Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Mississippi, before crossing the Mississippi River to Arkansas and heading into the Ozarks. Along the way they raped, pillaged, burned, or enslaved the citizens of just about every indigenous settlement they encountered. [Sarcasm alert] But it's okay, because they carried with them a document called the Requerimiento, sanctified by the Crown and the Pope, which Spanish law required that they read aloud to the natives prior to commencing the slaughter. It basically outlined, in Spanish or Latin, the natives' right to convert to Catholicism before dying. Nice.

Horwitz also explores the Spanish colonial city of St. Augustine, Florida, allegedly the site of Ponce de Leon's "fountain of youth" and founded by Spaniards after they had massacred all of the inhabitants of a French Huegenot settlement just up the coast (in the name of God, of course, and the Spanish Inquisition. Apparently the Huegenots didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition. Why? Let's say it in unison: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.)

From there, Horwitz turns his attention to England's first attempts to colonize Virginia, going to the famed "Lost Colony" of Roanoke and then to Jamestown. He probes the fiction and facts surrounding Pocahontas, and while admitting that Captain John Smith was a bastard (in the modern sense), points out that in many ways he was the true and unsung "founding father" of New England, exploring its rocky coast six years before the Mayflower arrived and changing its name from "the North part of Virginia" to "New England."

I really enjoyed reading this book. We have an extremely interesting history, festering warts and all, and it does no one justice to illuminate only a handful of symbols and iconic figures, while ignoring the rest. I'm looking forward to picking up another book by Horwitz that I've got on hold at the public library (have I mentioned that I support public libraries?) called Confederates in the Attic. I can't wait to read it.