The US in 1789   We have taken the years 1600 and 1800 as benchmarks of the Colonial Period for easy reference, balancing those two centuries with the approximately two centuries of an independent US to the present. Verrazano and Roanoke still fell in the previous century, while Gosnold naming Cape Cod in 1602 falls within our time frame.

At the other end, the year 1800 is only an approximation, and 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence, was only a beginning. The most accurate measurement of the start of the United States is the year 1789, when on March 4 the US Constitution came into affect, as shown on this map as of that date of the States & Territories of the USA.

This transition point is the best place to take a “family photograph”. Old changes are here, such as those colonies that have already subdivided, and new changes, such as further subdivisions, are still on the horizon. Actually, the last decade of the 1700’s and first couple of the 1800’s had a flurry of changes resulting from independence, still making the year 1800 a satisfactory benchmark.

Our prime boundaries of the Colonial Period remain, specifically the east coast from Canada to the northern border with Florida, and west to the Lower Mississippi and Ohio. However, those colonial territorial claims beyond the Ohio to the UPPER Mississippi still have to be considered, since this area was not “foreign” territory, as were others.

Let’s now put it all together, starting with the successful settlement areas on the four bays, where it all started. I find it very useful and properly descriptive to refer to these as the Bay Settlements, which developed into the Northeast Corridor of major cities. Indicated below are (a) the date of arrival; (b) the bay(s); (c) the ship(s); (d) the nationality of the settlement, although in most cases there were multiple nationalities present among the settlers; (e) the location of the first landing and subsequent settlement, plus any further development in the area; (f) other major Northeast Corridor cities developing from this bay area (not in linear order).

THE BAY SETTLEMENTS

(a) 1607; (b) Chesapeake Bay; (c)Susan Constant, Godspeed, Discovery; (d) British; (e) Cape Henry, then Jamestown (center of activity later moved to Williamsburg, then Richmond); (f) Baltimore, Washington

(a) 1620; (b) Cape Cod Bay (& Massachusetts Bay); (c) Mayflower; (d) British; (e) “Provincetown” Harbor, then Plymouth (center of activity later moved to Boston); (f) Providence, New Haven

(a) 1624; (b) New York Bay; (c) Nieuw Amsterdam; (d) Dutch, later British; (e) Governor’s Island, then New Amsterdam (became New York); (f) Newark, Trenton

(a) 1638; (b) Delaware Bay; (c) Kalmar Nyckel; (d) Swedish, later Dutch, later British; (e) Fort Christina (became Wilmington); (f) Philadelphia

The influence of the four Bay Settlements spread from Virginia to Maine, inclusive, developing into ten of the colonies that signed the Declaration of Independence, and fourteen contemporary states.

COLONIAL EXPANSION SOUTH

There was then a jump in time in the Colonial Period to 1663-5 when Carolina was chartered, and largely settled overland from Virginia. Other than internal expansion and development within the colonies of the Bay Settlements, this was the first new colony. It subsequently subdivided still within the colonial period into three further colonies, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, bringing the total number of colonies singing the Declaration to thirteen. This one colony, becoming three colonies, became six states between Virginia and Florida, to the Mississippi. In sum, then, limiting ourselves to just the established pre-Declaration colonial region and no further expansion areas whatsoever, thirteen colonies later became twenty states.

US INTERNAL EXPANSION & DEVELOPMENT

The validity of the 1789 post-colonial map above extends from March 4, when the Constitution came into affect, until August 7. This was a time of reorganization within the new country when, in exchange for the federal government assuming their Revolutionary War debt, most states ceded their sea-to-sea claims of territory to it. Most significantly, Virginia ceded its claim to the territory beyond the Ohio River (to the Upper Mississippi and Great Lakes). Here it’s shown as unorganized territory, but after August 7, the date of congressional affirmation, because it lay northwest of the Ohio River, it was renamed the Northwest Territory, included within the US, but not within any state. This map shows its northwestern relationship with the US at the time, and should not be confused with the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington) at a later date. It wasn’t until 1800 the Connecticut yielded its claim to its Western Reserve, at which point it was added to the Northwest Territory.

In the three following decades, there was a flurry of internal reorganization and expansion. The “foreign” territory of Vermont became the 14th state in 1791. New York ceded its claim to the Erie Triangle to the US, who sold it to Pennsylvania in 1792. The westernmost part of Virginia, Kentucky, became the 15th state in 1792. North Carolina ceded its westernmost area to the US, and for a while, it was called the Southwest Territory (!!!). Then, after a short while of some of its eastern counties attempting to become the State of Franklin, the whole area became Tennessee, the 16th state, in 1796.

Also in 1796, the “foreign” dispute about West Florida was settled, and it went to the US. (This is actually the first external, not internal, expansion of the US.) In 1798, Georgia finally ceded its westernmost area to become the Mississippi Territory, later subdivided into Mississippi and Alabama, but without their southern panhandles. These were only added in 1812 from the two central portions of West Florida (the two outside portions went to [East] Florida and Louisiana). Mississippi became the 20th state in 1817 and Alabama the 22nd in 1819. These were the last two states developing from the original colonial area (other than the Civil War phenomenon of West Virginia, years later).

US EXTERNAL EXPANSION

It is also within these first three decades after the 1789 map that external expansion started into the “foreign” areas indicated in gray. West Florida was the first step, and Spain ceded [East] Florida to the US in 1819. Earlier than that was the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. But the acquisition of any new territories further west waited until mid-century—as did West Virginia statehood in 1863.

Commemorations   The travel cynic speaketh periodically, reasserting recently that due cynicism will be expressed where justified. This will be a discussion of the commemoration, or perhaps the misguided commemoration, of recently discussed events, particularly Columbus and the so-called “Pilgrims”, especially where the memory of those people is burdened down with the fairy tale of Plymouth Rock. The reader may disagree and see this as just fireworks, and I don’t mean like those for the Fourth of July, whose commemoration is proper, and duly justified.

People in the Americas might want to commemorate the arrival of European settlers. They might also want to celebrate a harvest festival. These are the two topics of discussion, and we’ll divide the region as before: first the settlement to the south, the Caribbean and beyond, then the settlement to the north, Canada, third the settlement in the center, the US.

THE CARIBBEAN & BEYOND We can’t speak of a harvest festival here due to the lack of a harvest season, since people harvest all year long in the tropics. But we can review how they celebrate European settlement, assuming that such a celebration is not an insult to the native populations whose land the Europeans took over. In other words, the topic in modern eyes everywhere can be a hot potato.

Columbus’s ships, known to all by their Spanish names, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María, brought Spanish language and culture to this area which is today to a large extent mixed-race. On the same day Columbus day is celebrated, for better or for worse, in the US, much of Spanish America celebrates Día de la Raza. The word “raza” does mean “race”, but by calling it Day of the Race is the race referred to the blend of heritages we call hispanic or latino, or are some latinos emphasizing celebrating instead the native populations only?

Although many Latin American countries use the above name, there are variations. In Costa Rica it’s Día de las Culturas / Day of the Cultures, and in Uruguay it’s Día de las Américas / Day of the Americas. But there is also some friction apparent in Venezuela’s name, Día de la Resistencia Indígena / Day of Indigenous Resistance. Attempting to celebrate ethnicity is climbing a slippery slope, and celebrating just European settlement even moreso. But if anyone at all might have reason to celebrate Columbus’s bringing Spanish language and culture to the Americas, it would logically be the Spanish-speaking areas.

CANADA Canada and the US enjoy a symbiotic relationship, perhaps similar to the one between New Zealand and Australia. As with brothers, there are many similarities, yet still differences. Yet in too many situations the US comes off as being out of step, not only with Canada, but with other major nations. Perhaps the US is the popular campus jock who likes to act as a maverick, while Canada is the nerdier younger brother in the math club, but the one who just seems to frequently do things the “right way”, and just like all the other kids do. Let me digress to give a (rather long) series of examples before we get back to commemorations.

Let’s start with health care. The US still has no universal health care program, but Canada has an exemplary one, just like all the other kids on the block—that is to say, all the other major industrialized countries.

Pharmaceuticals? Canada, like the other kids, has a program with reasonable prices, while some seniors from the US have to try to cross the border to purchase pills they can afford.

Metric system? Don’t get me started. Canada converted in 1970 along with most other English-speaking countries at that time. There are now only three countries in the world where the metric system is not official: Liberia, Myanmar (Burma)—and the United States. Some company the US keeps.

How about currency? Canada, with most countries, prints different denominations in different colors for easier and faster identification. In the US your color choice is green, green, or otherwise, a nice green. In Canada, the two-dollar bill was common for a long time—change for a five was two two’s and a one. In the US, the stubborn public will to this day just not accept and use the two-dollar bill that’s existed forever. Change for a five will be five bulky singles. The US has for years tried to introduce a one-dollar coin to that same stubborn population, to no success. One will receive in change only at US Post Offices the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, which everyone then tries to get rid of. Canada quite successfully issued its $1 coin (called a loonie because of the loon pictured on it) in 1987 and then withdrew its one-dollar bill from circulation entirely. Better still, in 1996 Canada introduced its two-dollar coin (called a toonie, a play on “two” plus “loonie”) and withdrew its two-dollar bills from circulation entirely, so today, that change for a five will get you three coins—but still, not five coins. (There are only five Canadian banknotes issued today, $5, 10, 20, 50, 100. Anything lower is a coin, anything higher is not needed because of today’s use of electronic transactions. Clever, these Canadians.)

It just does seem that the “kid brother” does so many things sensibly, and in tandem with the “other kids on the block” that the “big brother” might do well to reconsider some things. In this vein, now let’s get back to commemorations.

Canada does not celebrate Columbus Day. Why should it? The ships were not the Little Girl, the Speckled One, and the Saint Mary bringing English language and culture to North America, they were la Niña, la Pinta, and la Santa María bringing Spanish to the Caribbean and South America. Also, aside from concern for the feelings of the indigenous population, if Canadians were to celebrate European arrival, which one would it be, English or French? No one would want to go near that one. And given the considerable Ukrainian, Japanese, and other ethnic groups in Canada today, celebrating ethnicity would be difficult, and European settlement highly inadvisable. And they quite sensibly don’t do it.

On the other hand, celebrating a harvest festival is a wonderful thing to do, and Canadians do so by celebrating Thanksgiving. But they do so at a more logical harvest time. Canadian Thanksgiving falls on the second Monday in October, the same day as Columbus Day in the US and Día de la Raza to the south. How very, very clever. That way, Thanksgiving doesn’t crowd Christmas, and is in a sensible harvest season. Furthermore, Canadian Thanksgiving dinner can fall on any day of the three-day weekend, meaning that one might be invited to more than one dinner. Also, that weekend is used to mark the traditional end of summer, to close up the cabin and for resorts to shut down or go into low season. It’s very good timing for such a celebration to occur and it makes a lot of sense. But then, of course, we’re talking about Canadians.

UNITED STATES US commemorations of similar events are more complex. There seems to be a concept of actual history on the one hand, but then “traditional” events on the other, and so much of the latter is just accepted as gospel, where there’s a valid basis for it or not. For instance, European settlement is celebrated both on Columbus Day and is also strangely built into Thanksgiving, which curiously serves two purposes: it’s both a harvest festival and simultaneously celebrates the arrival of the “Pilgrims”.

There is no reason to celebrate Columbus in the US, just as little as in Canada. He didn’t come here at all and didn’t establish any colony here. We also don’t celebrate Ptolemy or Copernicus, who also made great contributions to civilization. If we wanted to, we could celebrate Verrazano, who did come here, just as the Canadians COULD celebrate Cabot/Caboto, but there’s really no need.

There is also the affront to Native Americans. As it is, Alaska, with its large indigenous population, doesn’t recognize Columbus Day. South Dakota celebrates it, but calls it Native American Day. Hawaii calls it Discoverers Day, but the reference is not to Columbus (why should it be?) but to the Polynesian discovers of the islands. Elsewhere, there are frequent protests.

Now consider this other issue in reference to Italian-Americans: if a major French corporation were to hire a Japanese CEO, no one would say it was then a Japanese company. But Italian-Americans have traditionally looked upon Italian-born Columbus, leading a Spanish expedition to the Spanish Caribbean, incredibly, as an Italian event. I hope they don’t think the ships were la Bambina, la Macchiata, and la Santa Maria. There are parades in New York and Boston and perhaps elsewhere celebrating Columbus Day as some sort of Italian-American heritage day. If they want to have some basis for an ethnic celebration based on an explorer, a Verrazano Day (even though he was working for the French) would make a whole lot more sense, since he did actually reach North America!

Putting “discovery” aside, the other ethnic issue is European settlement. Again, it’s questionable if it’s right-headed to celebrate that in the 21C, but let’s say we want to do it. First, even though Albuquerque NM, Pensacola FL, and Saint Augustine FL were all settled in the 1500’s, Spanish settlement of what is now US territory has traditionally been rejected as the start of the US. As we’ve been reviewing for quite some time, it’s not settlement of the Gulf Coast, but of the East Coast that we accept as the start of the US. Well, then we have our four Bay Settlements, all settled within about three decades of each other. Celebrating those in tandem as a group would be a nice way to go about it. But no, apparently we want to restrict it to just an English settlement, so, OK, Jamestown in 1607 it is, right?

Wrong. For some reason I do not understand, we do not celebrate Jamestown or the Susan Constant those settlers arrived on. Instead we celebrate as the “first” European arrival a group of settlers that founded a satellite English colony to Jamestown, and settlers who were trying to get to Jamestown all along. Does this make sense to anyone? Why do we talk about old families tracing their heritage “back to the Mayflower” as though that were the first ship to bring people? Why do we call those settlers “Pilgrims”, since they weren’t going on a pilgrimage? Americans have to readjust their concept of early history. All the Bay Settlements are significant and people have to understand the history accordingly, and be very wary of this mythology that grows up around the actual facts.

The biggest bit of mythology has grown up around the so-called Plymouth Rock, which is a total bit of nonsense. Anyway, how would you pull up a boat on a beach and then descend from the boat on top of a boulder? Wouldn’t anyone trying that fall in the water? Well, here’s how the fairy tale developed, some taken from general research and some from the very sign in Plymouth next to the rock, which very apologetically explains what apparently happened.

No mention of it whatsoever was made in contemporary journals during arrival in 1620. Even a century after arrival, in 1720, no one had anything to say about it. Finally, two decades after that, in 1741, they were planning to build a wharf in Plymouth harbor, when on the beach the top of a boulder protruded from the sand. At this point, a certain 95-year old church elder claimed that he had spoken years earlier to actual “Pilgrims” who had mentioned a rock on the beach. Of course, a half-buried rock on the beach could merely have been a convenient landmark in the shifting sands, but the issue came to a head and it was decided to try to save the rock from being completely buried, or destroyed. Half of it was excavated and displayed, it was moved over the decades, then the other half was excavated, and finally, in 1921, just after the tricentennial of the landing, the present portico was built in classical style by the famous architects McKim, Meade and White. The portico is in a park at the water’s edge and the two pieces of the rock are cemented together (the original had been much larger still) with the date 1620 chiseled in. The rock remnant is in a basement level of the portico, sitting in the sand, and is open to the tides of the harbor.

Apparently the legend/myth/mystique about this rock must have started at the time of the bicentennial of the landing, in 1820. The orator Daniel Webster spoke at the event, and apparently in the flowery language of the time, he went on that this is the place where Pilgrims feet first trod, blah, blah, blah. Well, to the extent that any sand and driftwood that was on the beach when they landed was by then washed away, yet the half-buried rock was still around, makes the weakest of arguments. Anyway, they landed in Provincetown first, and the others were already in Jamestown! So what’s the big deal?

Some celebrities are famous for their talent, and we can all think of others who are merely “famous for being famous”. Well, those who enjoy history, real history, have to hold their nose when visiting this boulder, which is “famous for being famous” as being the “traditional” site of the disembarkation of the Pilgrims. Just forget Provincetown, and put Jamestown totally out of your mind.

But finally we have to mention our harvest festival, Thanksgiving. This is an excellent American and Canadian festival, and one of the best celebrations of the year. It had started with religious overtones, but today is a secular harvest festival, not based on any church doctrine, and religious only to the extent one wishes to make it so. The only thing is that it has to have all that “Pilgrim” baggage removed from it.

The earliest attested Thanksgiving on American soil was in Saint Augustine, on September 8, 1565. There was also one upstream from Jamestown, when a later group of settlers arrived on December 4, 1619. The one that Americans celebrate is based “traditionally”—there’s that word again--on one the “Pilgrims” had in Plymouth at harvest time of their second year, 1621.

It has come to be celebrated the fourth Thursday in November, as determined during the Second World War by President Roosevelt. However, it would seem to be worth considering that Americans should follow the Canadians’ lead and celebrate it, further away from the Christmas holidays, on the date when Columbus Day is presently celebrated, to serve as a harvest festival really at harvest time as well as a better-placed traditional end of summer. Just a thought.