The first European town in the New World was established by Christopher Columbus after his second voyage across the Atlantic, in 1494.
Samples of galena, a silver-bearing lead ore, and worked pieces of lead recovered from the archaeological dig at La Isabela. Photo Credit: James Quine
Fifteen hundred souls traveled with him and settled on the north shore of the island of Hispaniola at a town--complete with plaza, royal compound (for Columbus, of course) and stone structures. One of their primary goals was to find and test the potential for precious metals--gold and silver--in the New World. But the colony failed, faced with hurricanes, crop failures, and residents who didn't take kindly to the intruders.
Evidence for the metallurgical testing completed by Columbus and his men has been found at La Isabela; but detailed scientific analysis of the remainder of a metal processing feature tells a very different tale, that of desperation and failure.
- Christopher Columbus's Failed Outpost: The First European Colony in the New World
- La Isabela (Dominican Republic), details on the site itself
- Christopher Columbus, a biography from Melissa Snell, Medieval and Renaissance History
- La Isabela, from the Florida Museum of Natural History
By the way, the very first non-Native American settlement (but hardly a town) that we know of in the Americas is, of course, the failed Scandinavian colony of L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, settled by the Norse almost exactly 500 years earlier, in 998 AD.
Comments