Chronology of American Indian History

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brought to his people, an Algonquian tribe on the
York River in present-day Virginia, a year earlier
by Don Luis himself. He had been picked up by a
Spanish ship traveling the river in about 1560 and
had spent the next decade receiving instruction in
Cuba and Spain. A retaliatory force will invade
the homeland of Don Luis’s tribe in 1572 and kill
some 40 Indians.

1576

English mariner Martin Frobisher kidnaps
Baffin Island Inuit.
With a license from Elizabeth I of England, ex-
plorer Martin Frobisher sails west on the first of
three expeditions to the Canadian Arctic in search
of the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans. Frobisher captures several
of the Inuit he meets on the coast of Baffin Is-
land. The explorer takes them to London, where
they become objects of fascination among the
English public. Probably due to exposure to non-
Indian disease, all of the captives soon die in the
foreign city.

1577

The Florentine Codex escapes destruction
by the Spanish Inquisition.
Enforcing a 1559 order from the Inquisition, the
Spanish Crown issues a decree that all books in
New Spain about Indian people must be sent to
Spain. Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sa-
hagún is excommunicated when he refuses to give
up his 13-volume General History of the Things of
New Mexico, a history of traditional Aztec life (see
entry for ca. 1430 TO 1521) and the Spanish inva-
sion of their empire (see entries for 1519 and for
1521), based on the Indians’ remembrances. Con-
vinced that the Inquisition will destroy his work,
which is highly critical of the Spanish conquest,
Sahagún gives a copy to a Franciscan who is sup-
posed to transport it to Seville. The book instead is

taken to Florence, Italy, where it becomes known

as the Florentine Codex. The history will become

an important source of information on the Aztec

and their early contact with the Spanish.

“[The Aztec] were all prudence,

industry, and craftsman-

ship. [They were] feather

workers, painters, masons, gold

workers, metal casters, carpen-

ters, stone cutters, lapidaries,

grinders, stone polishers, weav-

ers, spinners; they were adroit

in speech, distinctive in food

preparation, elegant with

capes, with clothes, offers of

incense. They were brave, able

in war, takers of captives,

conquerors.”

—Bernardino de Sahagún in the

General History of the Things

of New Mexico

1579

Francis Drake meets California Indians.

English adventurer Francis Drake explores the

Pacific coast in an unsuccessful search for the

Northwest Passage—a water route connecting the

Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. During the voyage,

Drake anchors off the coast of what is now north-

ern California, where he and his crew encounter the

Miwok. The English spend five weeks among the

tribe, exchanging gifts. The Miwok treat the sail-

ors with reverence. The Englishmen assume that

the Indians consider them gods. More likely, the

Miwok are awed by the visitors because they sailed

to their lands from the west, where the tribe believes

the land of the dead is located.