Hello and welcome to a history of the United States. Episode 57, Rowanoke. Today we begin

where it all started. Yes, after 40 episodes away, we are returning to the south.

Carolina has the distinction of being both one of the first and one of the last colonies.

It was indeed the only English colony of the Elizabethan era, but it would also not take its

final form until the latter half of the 17th century. This gave it a quite unusual history during the early colonial period,

which we can begin to get into today. Following the invasion of the New World by Columbus in 1492,

the Europeans began to probe numerous areas. Despite the odd venture by the Portuguese into Brazil, the Americas were immediately

dominated by the Spanish. This was confirmed by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesilis, which gave the Spanish

authority over all of the Americas aside from a bit of Brazil, which belonged to the Portuguese.

As I'm sure you can imagine, a lot of people were not particularly fond of this treaty.

For one, there was the small issue of the people already living there, but they didn't really count as people.

A far more importance at the time was that this upset the other

European powers, France and England. Both of these powers were curious about the new world,

but neither was in a position to do anything about it just yet. The English made probes around the

North American continent, with the expedition of

John Carbert in 1497, and inspired by the voyage of Magellan. Francois I, François I,

France, decided to fund an expedition. Giovanni de Verrazano travelled to the North American landmass,

and on March 21, 1524, he cited land around Cape Fear. Verrazano found the land in good quality,

in what is the first description of what would become North Carolina.

Interestingly, Verrazano made a mistake while in North America, which would go on to confuse

carographers and explorers for the next 150 years. And is something we've dealt with many times, actually. I just haven't been able to find

the origin of the mistake until now. It's been a frequent element in our narrative that Europeans

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