Tag Archives: New York

EVEN AFTER IT HAPPENED, few people in colonial Boston knew the boy’s name. He was just a barber’s helper, but everyone heard about him on the night of the trouble. On that night he set off an angry mob by pointing his finger at a British guard and the violence that followed became a famous incident in American history. The date was March 5, 1770. Boston was then occupied by British troops. The troops had been brought in to keep order and to force the people to pay taxes they did not want to pay. The people of Boston hated the troops and insulted them at every opportunity. Boys threw snowballs at them and called them “lobsters” because their long red coats were almost the color of boiled lobsters. On the night of the trouble, the barber’s helper started things off by calling a British officer names. He became so insulting that a British soldier on guard duty nearby finally lost his temper and struck the boy on the head with the butt of his rifle. News of the attack spread quickly to shops and taverns. Within an hour small bands of men were roving the streets looking for trouble with the hated redcoats. They met a large band of redcoats who were also out looking for trouble. The badly outnumbered civilians soon took to their heels. To get more people into the streets someone rang a church bell, Boston’s way of sounding the fire alarm. People who came out of their houses to help fight the fire were told about the boy who had been struck down by a British soldier. That was too much. They searched for the barber’s helper and found him. The boy repeated his story, probably exaggerating to win more sympathy from the crowd. He …

“I DID NOT come to till the soil like a peasant,” said Hernando Cortez. “I came to find gold.” His words echoed the thoughts of almost every Spaniard in the New World. The discovery of the sea route to the West had set off a great treasure hunt. Colonizing and slaughtering, building and plundering, the gold-hungry Spaniards won a Spanish Empire of the West. Conquistadores‚ they were called — the conquerors. None of the treasure-hunters was more cunning or ambitious than Hernando Cortez‚ who came to the island of Hispaniola in 1504. It was not until 1519 that the governor of Hispaniola sent him on an expedition to explore the coast of Central America. Cortez sailed with five ships, 500 soldiers, eleven cannon and fifteen horses. The fleet anchored near the coast of the territory called Mexico and the men went ashore to build a settlement. Cortez ordered the ships dismantled so that none of his men could go back to Hispaniola, then set off on a march inland. Mexico was a vast country whose Indians had built a highly organized civilization and Cortez had a force of less than 500 men. He was a skillful leader; besides, he had firearms and horses –and good luck. Not long after he began his march, a horde of Indians swept out of the hills to attack the Spaniards. As soon as the Spanish cavalry appeared, the Indians fled to safety. As one soldier later wrote, the Indians, “who had never before seen a horse, thought that steed and rider were one creature.” One tribe after another surrendered. They had been conquered by the people called the Aztecs and many of them offered to join Cortez in the fight to destroy the Aztec empire. As the Spaniards and their Indian allies pushed on …