Detail from Girolamo Ruscelli’s world map of 1561.
To begin at the beginning, here is the very first thing ever written about New Angouleme:
“Once we were anchored off the coast and well sheltered, we did not want to run any risks without knowing anything about the river mouth. So we took the small boat up this river to land which we found densely populated.
“The people were almost the same as the others [seen elsewhere], dressed in birds’ feathers of various color and they came toward us joyfully, uttering loud cries of wonderment, and showing us safest place to beach the boat.
“We went up this river for about half a league [2km], where we saw that it formed a beautiful lake, about three leagues [12km] in circumference.
“About 30 small boats ran to and from across the lake with innumerable people aboard who were crossing from one side to the other to see us.
“Suddenly, as often happens in sailing, a violent unfavorable wind blew in from the sea, and we were forced to return to the ship, leaving the land with much regret on account of its favorable conditions and beauty; we think was not without some properties of value, since all the hills showed signs of minerals.”
That was on Tuesday March 1st 1524 in the land of Francesca (March 11th on the Gregorian calendar). The harbour was named New Angouleme after King Francis I of France, formerly known as the Count of Angouleme.
New Angouleme was an obstacle:
“My intention on this voyage was to reach Cathay [China] and the extreme eastern coast of Asia, but I did not expect to find such an obstacle of new land as I have found; and if for some reason I did expect to find it, I estimated there would be some strait to get through to the Eastern Ocean. […] Aristotle supports this theory by arguments of various analogies …”
Aristotle back then was the last word in science.
In 1525, on a second visit, the “lake” was found to be the mouth of a river, which they named the San Antonio River. New Angouleme’s part of Francesca was named the Land of Esteban Gomez.
In 1529 New Angouleme appeared on a world map for the first time. It had that name throughout the 1500s.
In 1664 it became the possession of an English duke and has been named after him ever since: New York. Francesca is the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Nova Scotia. The San Antonio River is now named the Hudson, after someone who arrived in the same harbour 85 years later, also looking for a shortcut to China.
New York harbour in 3978 as played by Point Dume Beach in Malibu, California in 1968.
The writer is Giovanni da Verrazzano – spelled with two z’s, not one, like the bridge that now crosses where he once sailed. He was a warmed-over pirate from Florence who sailed for France.
The account is the first written account we have of the Delaware Indians, long before the settler colonialists of Anglo America stereotyped them as “merciless Indian Savages” and their land as virgin wilderness.
– Abagond, 2017.
Sources: mainly Verrazzano (1524) and the New York Map Society (2008).
See also:
- Delaware Indians
- New York
- Anglo Americans
- the three pillars of White American racism
- settler colonialism
- the term “savage”
- The Virgin Wilderness Myth – one of the lies they teach at US high schools
- settler colonialism
- the three pillars of White American racism
- Guanahani – another first contact story
- the science of the time:
- Valladolid Debate – would Aristotle wipe out the Indians?
- Gregorian calendar
591
“…we were forced to return to the ship, leaving the land with much regret on account of its favorable conditions and beauty; we think was not without some properties of value, since all the hills showed signs of minerals.””
There they were on someone else’s land for less than a week——–and already thinking about what they could steal.
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