![]() Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca made inroads through Florida and Texas between 15, while ruthless Hernando de Soto cut throughout the South a pitiless swath of destruction and slaughter of natives. While the Spanish were claiming the Caribbean, Mexico and Peru, Ponce de León, a veteran of Columbus’s second voyage, struck Daytona Beach in 1513 and named the land La Florida. ![]() Next, the author studied the mixed-up voyages of Columbus, whose ignorance of the globe led him to believe that the eastern Bahamas, where he first landed, was the Orient. ![]() Horwitz sought out the probable descendants of these natives, the Micmac, who invited him to a cleansing ceremony in their sweat lodge. The Vikings arrived first around 1000 CE, when Leif Eiriksson settled for a spell in Newfoundland, enjoying the grapes and mild weather before being run off by the native Skraelings. What do Americans really know about the discovery of their continent? Visiting the sadly puny Plymouth Rock prompted this energetic, likable author to delve into the historic record and sniff out the real story behind America’s creation myth, from one section of the country to the other. ![]() ![]() Irreverent, effervescent reexamination of early exploration in the Americas by peripatetic, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Horwitz ( The Devil May Care: 50 Intrepid Americans and Their Quest for the Unknown, 2003, etc.). ![]()
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