THE SECOND INVASION OF NORTH AMERICA ABOVE MEXICO, THE FIRST NINETY YEARS, Indigenous Americans' Successful Defense against Europeans, 1521 to 1610

In THE SECOND INVASION OF NORTH AMERICA ABOVE MEXICO, THE FIRST NINETY YEARS, Indigenous Americans' Successful Defense Against Europeans, 1521-1610, Americans kept Europeans out of North America above Mexico.

The first invasion occurred ten to forty thousand years ago, most likely from Siberia across the Bering Strait land bridge into Alaska.

In 1492, Columbus landed in the Bahamas.

In 1521, near Fort Myers on Florida's southwest coast, Ponce de Leon launched the first European invasion of North America above Mexico. Calusa drove the Spanish back into the Gulf of Mexico and fatally wounded de Leon.

For the next 90 years, despite repeated European incursions, indigenous Americans held Europeans off.

On June 7, 1610, English withdrew from Virginia.

Europeans were left with outposts only around Quebec City, St. Augustine, and Santa Fe. Less than 1,000 Europeans lived in North America above Mexico.

The cost to Americans had been horrific.

Thousands had been killed in warfare. Tens of hundred thousands had died in epidemics. Many more had been debilitated and their lives disrupted by European diseases for which they had no immunity.

Mi'kmaq, Montagnais, St. Lawrence River Iroquois, Abenaki, Nauset, Powhatan, Roanoke, Joara, Tuskaloosa, Chickasaw, Tula, Guale, Timucua, Calusa, Apalachee, Escanjaques, and Pueblo had contained Ponce de Leon, Lucas Vasquez de Allyon, Panfilo de Narvaez, Jacques Cartier, Hernando de Soto, Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, Jean Ribault, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, Walter Raleigh, Onate y Salazar, Samuel Champlain, and John Smith.

This history is as respectful of indigenous Americans as it is of Europeans. It devotes as much attention to American actions and motives as it does to Europeans'.