IN A SPIRITED EXCHANGE which appeared in The Literary Review of Canada (1994), historians William J. Eccles and Ramsay Cook debated their disagreement as to the reliability of one of the most revered sources of early Canadian history, Breton navigator Jacques Cartier’s Relations.[1] Similarly, Samuel de Champlain’s narrative of his alleged West Indian voyage of 1599-1601 is also controversial, and several historians have accepted the manuscript almost at face value simply because Champlain’s name appears in its frontispiece.[2] Problems of interpretation increase as we proceed backwards from the 17th century. Indeed, it seems that the less documentary evidence we have, the less we question our few available sources and the more we tend to rely on the written word.

From this point of view, one of the most interesting cases is that of Florentine navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano.[3] Except for the small, albeit significant, new pieces of evidence provided by American librarian Lawrence C. Wroth, British historian David B. Quinn, American historical geographer Norman Thrower, and French historians Michel Mollat du Jourdin and Jacques Habert,[4] all we know about Verrazzano and his 1524 enterprise originates in a short, 11-folio manuscript, discovered in 1909 and now known as the Cellere Codex. This document is the report that Verrazzano wrote to France’s king, Francis I, upon his return from North America.[5] The Cellere Codex is now known inside out, and it is to date our only reliable source on the 1524 voyage. It has been used and cited over and over by scholars of 16th-century North America, who regarded the report, in Wroth’s words, as the "earliest geographical, topographical, and ethnological survey of North America between the Florida peninsula and Newfoundland".[6] Mainly for the lack of other written sources, historians have made too much of this document. Ever since it was discovered, Verrazzano’s report has become a sort of 16th-century encyclopedia from which to pick evidence at random to illustrate navigation problems, vegetation patterns, native customs and European mentalities. Indeed, too much has been taken at face value, especially with regard to Verrazzano’s relations with the aboriginal peoples of North America.

The record of Verrazzano’s first known transatlantic voyage begins on 17 January 1524 at one of the deserted islands southeast of Madeira, at what Europeans had long considered the western end of the Old World. He had left France before the end of December 1523. Verrazzano was a member of a Florentine community active in France, particularly in Lyon and Rouen. His family came from Greve in Chianti, some 28 kilometres from Florence — this being his probable place of birth, the less likely alternative being Lyon. By 1522, when for the first time documents mention his name, Verrazzano must have had some experience of navigation in the Eastern Mediterranean.[7] The 100-ton ship he commanded on its way to North America, the Dauphine, probably a caravel, had a crew of 50 men and provisions for eight months. Verrazzano’s voyage in search of a rapid passage to Cathay "and the extreme eastern coast of Asia" was sponsored by a group of businessmen active in France and approved by King Francis I.[8]

In early March 1524, after about 40 days, the crew sought land near Cape Fear, in present-day North Carolina. During the following 11 or 12 weeks the Dauphine explored the North American coastline. It first went south, towards Florida, until Verrazzano decided that they were getting too close to Spanish waters and headed north. The ship passed Cape Fear again and proceeded along the coasts of present-day Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island. In what he called "Refuge[,] on account of its beauty", probably the peninsula of present-day Newport on Narragansett Bay, Verrazzano and his men rested for 15 days (21 or 22 April to 6 May), their longest period on land during the whole enterprise.[9] They were surprised that the climate was, in May, "somewhat" colder than Rome, the latter being on the same parallel — an observation that was to become all too familiar to northern explorers and settlers. The Dauphine then sailed north again, coasting present-day Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Nova Scotia, possibly Newfoundland too, and then steered for home. No human loss was reported. A kidnapped boy from the Delmarva Peninsula, probably a Nanticoke, had been added to the crew. His destiny is unknown. The vessel reached Dieppe during the first week of July 1524.[10]

To his contemporaries, Verrazzano’s 1524 voyage was a failure. The passage to Cathay was not discovered or explored, although he reported that he had seen the Pacific Ocean from a place he baptized "Annunciation". In fact, Verrazzano’s false ocean must have been either Pamlico Sound or Albemarle Sound, and the place of his sighting was probably somewhere along the Outer Banks around Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.[11] Verrazzano was the first to report that the American continent was unexpectedly enormous, larger than Europe, Africa or Asia. This was an unwelcome discovery which in fact dispelled any hope of an easy way to the Indies.[12] Furthermore, Verrazzano’s description of the natural and human resources of the new land showed very little that could be of immediate interest to his financial sponsors in Lyon and Rouen or to the king of France. Sparse references to "various types of bird" or to "an enormous number of wild animals" certainly were of no significance to his backers; nor were vague reference to minerals or metals in mountains observed from the sea likely to whet the appetite of anybody comparing them to the riches of Spanish America or, even more likely, to the real Indies in the East.[13]

In contrast to the opinion of his contemporaries, most scholars have considered Verrazzano’s 1524 voyage "a tremendous accomplishment". American anthropologist Bernard G. Hoffman provided the following summary of the navigator’s achievements: "He was the first to explore the gap between the Spanish ventures to the south and the English enterprises to the north; he was the first to establish the continental nature of [the Americas]; and he was the first commander to bring back anything resembling a detailed account of the natives of North America".[14] The overall judgement on Verrazzano’s exploits and personality has always been highly positive. A man of letters and an educated and sophisticated writer, he has been defined as a man and an explorer of the Renaissance, systematically searching for knowledge, able to distinguish hypothesis from fact and to admit there were many things he did not know.[15] Moreover, Quinn defined as exceptional his "intelligent and humane approach to the Amerindian population" and his ability to appreciate "the natural features of the American landscape".[16] This overall praise of Verrazzano’s exploits is confirmed in the two major monographs which contain all one could possibly want to know about the navigator. One is the the magnum opus of a former Director of the John Carter Brown Library, Lawrence C. Wroth, pronounced "definitive" by Quinn, "[u]nless new evidence appears".[17] The other is the work of Mollat du Jourdin and Habert, judged to offer a useful explanation of the French and Florentine background that made the four transatlantic voyages of the Verrazzano brothers possible.[18]

This enthusiastic appraisal of Verrazzano as a good navigator and a honest reporter, however, is based on internal evidence only — that is on what Verrazzano himself wrote of his own accomplishments. He described his voyage, in uncharted waters, as smooth and quick, and he reported no human losses, a rather uncommon occurrence. The view that Verrazzano was a good navigator originates in the short treatise which concluded his report and on counterfactual evidence, that is, the historians’ failure to detect lies in his account. As for Verrazzano’s honesty as a reporter, this is inferred from his own vow to state explicitly the precise limits of his new knowledge. In fact, not only did Verrazzano openly contradict Aristotle’s long held theories on the globe’s geography, "proven false by experience",[19] but he also liked to add to his descriptions of the aboriginal peoples qualifying sentences that convey an overall impression of truthfulness and objectivity. He stated, for example: "We could not learn the details of the life and customs of these people, because of the short time we spent on land, due to the fact that there were few men, and the ship was anchored on the high seas". Such comments as "He saw nothing else", referring to one of his sailors who had gone ashore at Annunciation, and the concluding remark that "the lack of a [common] language" had made it impossible to ascertain the religion and the system of governance of the aboriginal peoples he had met,[20] serve to confirm the long-held view that Verrazzano was an honest and objective reporter.

To be sure, some scholars — mainly literary critics, philosophers and semioticians — would argue that the notion of "honesty" in a colonial reporter such as Verrazzano is of little significance. According to them, one must be wary of the accounts of the early Europeans because what they saw and reported was not "the real thing", but a projection of their own imagination which had been shaped by tradition, experience and expectation. British historian John H. Elliott has expressed this concern in the clearest form: "Even where Europeans . . . had the desire to look, and the eyes to see, there is no guarantee that the image which presented itself to them — whether of peoples or of places — necessarily accorded with the reality". To illustrate his case, Elliott quotes the Verrazzano report: "Verraz[z]ano brilliantly describes the Rhode Island Indians [the Narraganset, possibly the Pokakonet too], with their dark hair, their bronzed colouring, their black and lively eyes. But were their faces really ‘as gentle and noble as those of classical sculptures’, or was it the reaction of a man with a Florentine humanist upbringing, who had already created for himself a mental image of the New World inspired by the Golden Age of antiquity?"[21] Elliott could have used other favorite Verrazzano quotations to prove his case.[22] Witness the case of the Cape Fear natives, described as "dark in color, not unlike the Ethiopians" and "agile and swift runners" like "the Orientals, particularly those from the farthest Sinarian [i.e., Chinese] regions". Or Verrazzano’s remark that the Narraganset "when sowing . . . observe the influence of the moon, the rising of the Pleiades, and many other customs derived from the ancients". Or his description of a terrified Nanticoke in prayer: "worshipping like a monk, pointing his finger to the sky, and indicating the sea and the ship, he appeared to bless us".[23] Elliott’s rather pessimistic view of descriptive sources, however, could be counterbalanced by the following statement of another 16th-century travel specialist, British literary critic Philip Edwards. He admits that "[i]t is difficult, perhaps impossible, to make a clear distinction between writings in which people describe events they participated in, or report, and imaginative writings, or fiction". Still, he concludes, although "[h]istorical truth may be unknowable, . . . there is such a thing as falsehood".[24] According to Edwards, then, historians who still try to use traditional sources such as travel accounts to establish the hard facts of reality — people and places, as Elliott puts it — can still go about their business, although they must take a lot of care.

In spite of Elliott’s warnings, the evidence contained in Verrazzano’s report is used by scholars of 16th-century North America as a matter of course. Through it historians describe the natives’ manner of clothing and hairdressing, the use of fire to build canoes and clear the land, and their circular multi-family houses.[25] Some of the evidence could be of special significance. For example, American historian Neal Salisbury is able to use Verrazzano’s observation that the houses of Narragansett Bay lodged as many as 25 to 30 people to conclude that each family consisted of an average of 7.5 members and that the total population of the region between present-day Saco, Maine, and New Haven, Connecticut, amounted to roughly 135,000 people.[26] Furthermore, according to American historical geographer Carl O. Sauer, Verrazzano had "an eye for the pattern of vegetation"[27] in spite of his poor identification of species and was able to communicate to the modern historian "the true nature of the geography of aboriginal North America". This was not an almost impenetrable primeval forest, but a "landscape mosaic comprised of a biophysical environment greatly altered" by the aboriginal peoples.[28] In many areas, especially from Portland all the way down to New York City, the environment had been patterned into parklike stretches of cleared land and was managed through the regular use of fires. At Narragansett Bay these "champaigns", prairies or savannas (as they are variously called) were deemed to be so large that, Verrazzano observed, they could well accommodate "a large army". Although Verrazzano exaggerated their dimensions, he observed these stretches of cleared land in both New England and in North Carolina. To be sure, forests still constituted the dominant feature of much of the North American seaboard. As Verrazzano noted, north of Portland the forest became less open and its composition changed, the coniferous species becoming its usual feature.[29] As remarked by American historian William Cronon, Verrazzano "quite reasonably attributed the absence of agriculture in the north to a soil which would produce neither fruit nor grain ‘on account of its sterility’".[30]

Verrazzano’s vignettes have also been used as evidence to illustrate, in their simplicity, the routine of the earliest encounters between Europeans and aboriginal peoples. On one occasion, at Annunciation, needing water, Verrazzano sent a boat towards the beach, where some natives, probably of the Croatoan nation, were "making various friendly signs". As "enormous waves" made it impossible for the boat to put ashore, a young sailor was instructed to get as close to the beach as possible, to throw to the awaiting Croatoan some presents, and to swim back to the ship. On his way back, he was "tossed about by the waves . . . and carried up onto the beach half dead". The Croatoan "immediately ran up", "carried him some distance away", took off his shoes, stockings and shirt, and "made a huge fire next to him". The destitute sailor and his companions looking from the boat were certain that the Croatoan "wanted to roast him for food", and were amazed when they realized that they only wanted to warm him up and help him regain his strength.[31] On another occasion, at the Delmarva Peninsula, a party of 20 Frenchmen went about two leagues inland "to find that the people had fled in terror into the forests". They only found a very old woman and an 18- to 20-year-old young woman "who had hidden in the grass in fear". They had six children with them, five girls and an eight-year-old boy, who clung to the older woman’s neck. The rest of the story is told by Verrazzano as a matter-of-fact occurrence: "We took the boy from the old woman to carry back to France, and we wanted to take the young woman, who was very beautiful and tall", yet she managed to raise such a fuss that "we decided to leave her behind, and took only the boy". As is well known from other accounts, the kidnapping of natives, and especially of children who might later be used as interpreters, was a common occurrence of all exploration voyages.[32] Finally, in what he called Arcadia (still in the Delmarva Peninsula), a party of some 20 Frenchmen who were ashore met with a native, probably a Nanticoke, who was rather curious, but also suspicious and "ready to fight". To impress the newcomers the Nanticoke showed them "a burning stick, as if to offer us fire". The Frenchmen responded by making "fire with powder and flint" and "fired a shot." According to Verrazzano, the Nanticoke "trembled all over with fear" and "remained as thunderstruck".[33]

The narrative contained in the Cellere Codex is vague at best, and it often presents inaccuracies with which historians and historical geographers have been struggling for the past century or more. Our certainties are in fact few and far between. We know that Verrazzano navigated along the North American coast from present-day North Carolina to Nova Scotia. We also know that Verrazzano’s "little mountain by the sea" is Navesink Highlands, in New Jersey, because it is the only hill on the coast between Florida and New York, and that the "two small but prominent hills" with a "very wide river" in between must be Staten Island to the west and Brooklyn to the east in New York State, with The Narrows in between leading to the Hudson River. The "excellent harbor" is close to Newport, somewhere along Narragansett Bay.[34]

Everything else is more uncertain.[35] For example, historians and other scholars have addressed such major problems as, how Verrazzano could mistake Pamlico Sound for the northwest passage, or miss Chesapeake Bay or the Bay of Fundy altogether. And how could he accomplish his mission by navigating at such a long distance from the coast? They have also been faced by the realization that most places Verrazzano mentions, including dates of arrival and departure, are not accurate and make any uncontested identification impossible.[36] What was the location of his first sighting of land? Close to Cape Fear is our best guess, probably at Myrtle Grove, but some maintain it was at Cape Canaveral, Florida. As for the date, it was sometime between 1 and 7 March — yet we are guessing on the basis of average crossing times. In a marginal note, Verrazzano explains that he first went towards Florida, but then turned north "so as not to meet with the Spaniards". What did he know of their presence in the area, and exactly how far south did he go? We do not know the location of Annunciation, although it most probably is somewhere around Cape Hatteras. As for the possible arrival date, it varies between 25 March and 4 April. Verrazzano had in mind something like the Virginia of the English when he called the land he had discovered around Annunciation "‘Francesca[,]’ after our Francis". Yet we are uncertain whether the intended person is the King of France or his son. After Annunciation, the Dauphine "reached another land which seemed much more beautiful and full of great forests". This is somewhere along the Delmarva Peninsula, whose coast Verrazzano baptized Arcadia "on account of the beauty of the trees". Most historians believe this is either in Worcester County on the eastern shore of Maryland or in the neighbouring Accomac County of Virginia. How can we possibly know? Another distinguished scholar is certain that Arcadia is Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.[37] Verrazzano’s "Lanzone" promontory is either Cape Henlopen in Delaware or Cape May in New Jersey. The "Bonivetto" promontory is either Cape May or Atlantic City, New Jersey. The "largest river" baptized "Vandoma", is most probably the Delaware, but the hypothesis that it is the Hudson River has also been put forward. The triangular-shaped island is likely Block Island, but a similar description could apply to the larger Martha’s Vineyard. The northern country in which the forests became "very dense" was Maine, probably the coastline from present-day Portland to the New Brunswick border — but this does not correspond to Verrazzano’s latitude figures. The three major islands discovered in Maine have variously been identified as, south to north, Monhegan, Matinicus, Metinic, Isle au Haut, Vinalhaven, Swans Island and Mount Desert. We know that Verrazzano steered for home at "the land which the Britons [i.e., Bretons] once found", also described as "the land which the Lusitanians found long ago". Whether this was Cap-Sable or Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, or Cape Fogo or Funk Island in Newfoundland, or somewhere else altogether, remains to be ascertained. Finally, we do not know the exact date of Verrazzano’s return to Dieppe.[38]

Verrazzano’s inaccuracies regarding people are similar in scope.[39] He reportedly went ashore at least ten times,[40] and on most occasions he made contact with the natives. In fact, he spent very little time with them. At Annunciation information on the Croatoan was gathered mostly through a young sailor who "learned the following about these people: they are dark in color . . . their skin is very glossy, they are of medium height, their faces are more clear-cut, their body and other limbs much more delicate and much less powerful, but they are more quick-witted". (The comparison was with the Cape Fear natives.)[41] At the Delmarva Peninsula they remained for three days "anchored off the coast", but took the time to explore the area for "about two leagues inland". Verrazzano was apparently able to make friendly contact only with what he considered a very old woman. He did not get close to any dwelling, "as they were in the interior of the country", yet he surmised that these were "built of wood and grasses", although many natives slept in the open. In some way, however, he was able to describe their manner of dressing and the fact that their subsistence was based on pulses, vines, hunting and fishing. At Narragansett Bay Verrazzano’s men spent the longest time on land, 15 days, and were well received by two kings, a queen and the Narraganset people in general, with whom they "made great friends". Their physical appearance, clothing and ornaments were abundantly recorded. This time the Frenchmen went "five to six leagues into the interior" and managed to see and describe their dwellings. One wonders, however, how in only 15 days Verrazzano was able to reckon that they "live[d] a long time", "rarely fell sick", and "their end comes with old age". We may concede that the crew might have chanced upon the funeral of an old man whose relatives performed the "the Sicilian lament", a long-lasting mixture, one gathers, of wailing and singing.[42]

In the past two decades scholars have switched from a rather static approach to native cultures to a more dynamic examination of their change over time. Ethnohistorians have shown how to combine archaeological evidence with traditional written documents. Some have applied their new methods to Verrazzano’s report and have assessed the evidence contained in the Cellere Codex.[43] There again, however, the lack of other written evidence has encouraged some to use Verrazzano’s report as supportive evidence in at least two issues of no minor significance. The first issue is the allegedly growing hostility between Europeans and aboriginal peoples. Generally speaking, Verrazzano’s report describes encounters with natives who seem to become less friendly the farther north he went. He does not report any problem at the first three landings (at Cape Fear and Annunciation), but at the fourth one, the place of the kidnapping in the Delmarva Peninsula, "the people had fled in terror into the forests". At New York the local natives, possibly the Mohegans, seemed friendly again, but the Frenchmen could not really verify their attitude because they left in haste due to an impending gale. At Narragansett Bay, according to Verrazzano, the Narragansett were rather "joyful" to meet the Frenchmen, yet they were careful not to let their women "come on board ship", and a "queen and her maidens" were sent "to wait on a small island about a quarter of a league from us". Along the Maine coast the relations between the Penobscot, a nation of the Abenaki confederation, and the Frenchmen were undoubtedly hostile. Although "several visits to their houses" are reported, these took place "[a]gainst their wishes" by armed parties. Trade was performed at a distance, the Penobscot on the top of some rocks offering their wares (probably furs) on a rope, and receiving in the same fashion what they wanted in exchange from the Frenchmen, who were in a boat. The Abenaki were defined as "brute creature[s]" "full of crudity and vices", "barbarous", devoid of "courtesy", showing "no sign of cultivation".[44]

The second issue in which the Verrazzano report has been used as supportive evidence within the dynamics of contact is the natives’ alleged inability to resist the lure of European manufactures. Near Annunciation the Frenchmen threw to the Croatoan eagerly awaiting on the beach "some trinkets, such as little bells, mirrors, and other trifles". At Narragansett Bay again "a few little bells and mirrors and many trinkets" were thrown at the Narraganset, who already displayed "various trinkets hanging from their ears" or "around the neck", and prized "sheets of worked copper", "little bells, [and] blue crystals". These same Narraganset Natives had no use for silk, gold, steel, iron and mirrors. As for firearms, Verrazzano was astonished to report that they did not "admire" their power, but only "examined the workmanship". In Maine, the Penobscot knew exactly what they wanted: nothing but "knives, hooks for fishing, and sharp metal", although they used "beads of copper in their ears". There again, Verrazzano’s report seems to suggest a progressive change from the naïve and easygoing Cape Fear natives, who prized decorative "trinkets", to the matter-of-fact Penobscot, who wanted utilitarian implements. Some historians have used this change, again from south to north, to show the passage from a native set of values, primarily non-utilitarian and status-oriented, to a new world dominated by European values, utilitarian and market-oriented.[45]

In both cases discussed so far, the main inference is that the southerly natives had not had any previous contact with the Europeans and were candidly joyful at meeting them. The northerly natives, on the contrary, had experienced contact, probably with fishermen, and the latter had spoiled this naïve atmosphere by committing certain crimes, one would suspect mainly by taking advantage of their women. These actions had rendered the natives suspicious, if not overtly hostile. According to Swiss historian Urs Bitterli, who suggests a general framework for cultural encounters between Europeans and non-Europeans in the early modern age, Verrazzano’s experience "follows a pattern which occurs repeatedly in . . . other parts of the world" in which "peaceful behavior on both sides" was the rule, until it was replaced by misunderstandings and eventual collision.[46]

Verrazzano is not responsible for the two theories briefly summarized above, namely, the growing hostility between Europeans and aboriginal peoples and the natives’ inability to resist the lure of European manufactures. Although this is not the place to discuss either theory, a few remarks could be useful to dispel the notion that individual documents, such as the Verrazzano report, can be used at face value as all-purpose evidence. As regards the growing hostility between Europeans and aboriginal peoples, had Verrazzano or somebody else gone farther north, one might surmise that relations with the natives would have been even worse.[47] Not so. Ten years later, in 1534, the Mi’kmaq and the St. Lawrence Iroquoians of Chaleur Bay showed no hostility and insisted on trading with Cartier. Eighty years later the French found the same natives, who by then should have been violently hostile to the Europeans, quite friendly all along the New England shore, the Maritimes and the St. Lawrence River.[48] Evidently, the local natives simply reacted in different ways according to their own experiences, and some had found a way to accommodate the Europeans into their universe. Furthermore, the fact that the various groups showed different material needs and wishes is a far cry from assuming that those who had had more contact with the Europeans had already been hooked into an unavoidable dependence on the Old World’s manufactures. For the aboriginal peoples, to learn how to use European fabrics and metals was often a long process, and there usually was a long interval in which European goods were prized as objects of decoration and status, not for their utilitarian quality. At any rate, as Salisbury well explains, even when these objects became "technological improvements ... easily adapted to the existing culture", "no wholesale transformation [of the local culture] was entailed in their occasional acceptance and use".[49] If the Verrazzano case proves anything, it is that, at least initially, there was no pattern at all. Each nation, or group, acted in their own way according to their own tradition, experience and expectation — just like Elliott’s Europeans.[50]

In sum, while we should be aware of Elliott’s caveat with regard to the reliability of descriptive sources, when assessing Verrazzano’s report we should still look, in the most traditional manner of historical criticism, for evidence of truthfulness and falsehood. This is what Edwards implicitly recommends and, for example, Quinn has practised throughout his long career. Most importantly, however, we must not rely too heavily on the Cellere Codex merely because it still is the only written document we have on certain North American regions during the early 16th century. Rather than await the unlikely discovery of another written source, the full value of Verrazzano’s report is more likely to be established by assessing it against evidence of a different kind, as ethnohistorians have been doing consistently in the past two decades.