The Conquest of a Continent; or, The Expansion of Races in America. Grant Madison

      Ireland has shown a singular power of absorbing its conquerors. The descendants of Danish, Norman, and English settlers consider themselves pure Irish "Celts." It is a strange fact that the English, Scotch, Norman, Danish, and even the French Huguenots who have settled in Ireland have acquired and have handed down an extraordinary temperamental unity. As to language, by the time of Elizabeth the English Pale constituted a part of eastern Leinster, and there English was uniformly spoken. The English language ultimately spread over the whole of Ireland, leaving only a few remnants of Celtic speech in the extreme west.

      From the times of James I to those of William III, large numbers of English and Scotch borderers passed over to the northeast corner of the island into the province of Ulster. They were fervent Presbyterians and hated the native Catholic Irish. It was the sons and grandsons of these immigrants who came to America in the eighteenth century and are sometimes miscalled the "Scotch Irish." They had special grievances of their own against England on account of economic restrictions imposed upon their industries.

      Before this time a large number of Cromwellian soldiers had settled in Leinster, but not having their own women with them they intermarried with the Catholic Irish and their descendants today are most intensely Irish in national feeling. The Reformation never had much hold on Ireland, so that the Catholic Irish today represent the mixed population of Ireland before the sixteenth century, together with numerous converts from the Scotch and English immigrants.

      With this brief survey of the distribution of the Nordic race in Europe down to the time of the discovery of America and the beginning of emigration to the colonies of the New World, we can pass on to one of the most dramatic mass-migrations of man.

      From West Central Asia where it was in contact with the Mongoloids on the east, the Nordic race pushed across Europe to the extreme western coasts. We shall show how it traversed the Atlantic Ocean and then in three centuries subdued a continent. Generation after generation it fought its way westward, until it reached the Pacific Ocean, where today it stands confronting Asia and its immemorial rivals, the Mongols, this time on the west.

² In Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades, by J.K. Wright of the American Geographic Society, p. 320, the author says: "In these authorities we find that the differences between the inhabitants of the northern and southern parts of Italy were fully appreciated in the twelfth century. 'The Lombards,' Gunther says, 'are a keen, skillful, and active people; foresighted in counsel; expert in justice; strong in body and spirit, full of life and handsome to look upon, with slight, supple bodies that give them great power of endurance; economical and always moderate in eating and drinking; masters of their hands and mouths; honorable in every business transaction; mighty in the arts and always striving for the new; lovers of freedom and ready to face death for freedom's sake. These people have never been willing to submit to kings.... But what a contrast the people of Apulia in the south present to the Lombards. Dirty, lazy, weak, good-for-nothing idlers that they are.'"

³ The Spanish popular heroes, Don Rodrigo and the Cid Campeador, were Gothic, to judge by their names, as was the brave crusader, Count Raymund of Toulouse. L. Wilser has called attention to the number of Gothic names still in use in the Iberian peninsula: Alfonso or Affonso, Alonzo (Gothic Athalafuns); Alvaro and Alvarez (Gothic Alavair); Bermuy (Gothic Berimud); Bertran (Gothic Bairhtram); Diego and Diaz (Gothic Thiudareiks, Dietrich); Esmeralda; Fernando and its genitive Fernandez (Gothic Ferdinanths); Froilaz and Fruela (Gothic Fravila); Gelmirez (Gelimer); Gomez (Gothic Guma); Gonzalo and Gonzalez (Gothic Gunthimir, Gundemar); Guilfonso (Gothic Viljafuns); Guzman (Gothic Godaman, Gutmann); Ildefonso (Gothic Hildifuns); Isabella; Marques (Gothic Markja); Menendez (Gothic Herminanths); Mundiz and Munnez (Gothic Mundila); Pizarro (Gothic Pitzas); Ramiro (Gothic Radomir or Ragnimir); Ramon and Renmondez (Gothic Ragnimund); Rodrigo and Rodriguez; Ruiz (Gothic Rudoreiks); Sesnandes (Gothic Sisenand); Vasco and Vasquez (Nordic Wasce); Velasquez (Gothic Vilaskja?). See p. 107, vol. II, of book Die Germanen, by Doctor Ludwig Wilser.

⁴ Describing Camoens, George Edward Woodberry (The Torch, pp. 203-4; New York, 1920) says: "He was of the old blue blood of the Peninsula, the Gothic blood, the same that gave birth to Cervantes. He was blond, and bright-haired, with blue eyes, large and lively, the face oval and ruddy—and in manhood the beard short and rounded, with long untrimmed mustachios—the forehead high, the nose aquiline; in figure agile and robust; in action 'quick to draw and slow to sheathe,' and when he was young, he writes that he had seen the heels of many, but none had seen his heels. Born about the year 1524, of a noble and well-connected family, educated at Coimbra, a university famous for the classics, and launched in life about the court at Lisbon, he was no sooner his own master than he fell into troubles."

⁵ Wilser cites Woltmann's essay, "Have the Goths disappeared in Italy?," which shows that even in the latter part of the Middle Ages many people lived according to Gothic law; that in some cities there even existed Gothic sections; and that many Gothic names can be traced, as Stavila, Nefila, Leuuia, Hermia, Hilpja, Ansefrida, Gilliefredus, Totila, Vila.

⁶ In fact, almost all the names of the Troubadours are Teutonic, says Wilser, giving the following examples of French names, with the Teutonic original in parentheses: Arnaut (Arnold); Aimeric (Emerich); Bernart (Bernhard); Bertrand (Bertram); Gaucelm (Walchelm); Gautier (Walther); Guillem (Wilhelm); Guiraut (Gerold); Gunot (Wido); Jaufre or Joffre (Gotfrid); Raimon (Raginmund); Rambaut (Raginbald); Rudel (Rudolf); Savaric (Sabarich). See p. 107, vol. II, of Die Germanen, by Doctor Ludwig Wilser.

      IV THE NORDIC SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA

       Table of Contents

      Before considering the question of the origin of the English settlers of the Atlantic seaboard, it is important to understand the motives that actuated the newcomers.

      The impelling motive of the settlers who crossed the ocean to America from the earliest Colonial times down to 1880 was land hunger, and just as we speculate in stocks today, so down to one hundred years ago our ancestors speculated in lands on the frontier.

      It is difficult to realize the extent to which the ownership of the land in Europe was monopolized, largely through the exercise of Royal favor, by the upper classes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This established English tradition and practice, brought to America by the early settlers, coupled with the favoritism of the royal governors in land grants, was one of the causes which led to the Revolution. After the American victory much land was confiscated on the plea that the owners were Loyalists.

      The distribution of free land in the United States came substantially to an end about 1880, when the public domain became exhausted. Up to that date, the immigration into America had been assimilated readily. Certain exceptions will be dealt with later. Practically all of it was from northwestern Europe, and the immigrants came mostly of their own volition. It took some degree of enterprise to leave home, cross the Atlantic, and establish oneself in a new country amid strange surroundings. Settling new land meant clearing the forests and destroying the game, as well as buying off or fighting the Indians, whose ideas about land ownership were vague. To the frontiersman in early days, the term "a clearing" was synonymous with "a settlement."

      Religious motives and the desire for political and economic independence, of course, were also great factors in the Pilgrim and Puritan migration to New England from 1620 to 1640.

      The New England Puritans represented only a part and relatively a small part of the exodus from England. They were pure English from the most Anglo-Saxon part of England and consisted largely of yeomen and the lesser gentry, who found the religious and political conditions in England under the Stuarts intolerable for freemen. They were