"Jolliet and Marquette Travel the Mississippi"

Reprinted in Eyewitness to America

Published in 1997

"As we were descending the river we saw high rock with hideous monsters painted on them, and upon which the bravest Indians dare not look."

The Spanish dominated southwestern and southeastern North America until the late seventeenth century. While Franciscan friars colonized New Mexico, other members of their order began a large-scale missionary effort in Florida in 1595. By 1655 they had created a chain of thirty-eight missions from south of Saint Augustine, northward to South Carolina, and westward to Alabama. Within twenty years, however, Spanish influence declined as a result of English expansion into South Carolina and Georgia. Native Americans came to rely on English trade goods and formed alliances with the English against the Spanish...