After Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic and discovered the New World in 1492, sailors from many European nations set out west on voyages of discovery. Europeans were curious about these new lands, but they were also determined to find trading routes that would enable their countries to increase their wealth. In the 1500s the myth of El Dorado, the city of gold, led Spanish and Portuguese soldiers to explore the Aztec and Incan empires in Central and South America. Conquering the native peoples, the Spanish and Portuguese seized enormous amounts of gold and other precious metals and brought shiploads of treasure back to their monarchs. Only in the following century, however, did Europeans begin to learn what potential the North American continent might hold for them.

Although a few French and Spanish explorers and traders came to Florida in the 1560s, the colonization of North America...