HISTORICAL SKETCH OF MARYLAND
Exploration

In 1498, John Cabot, a man of Italian birth employed by
the English, was, in all probability, the first white man to
see Maryland as he sailed along the eastern shore of Wor-
cester County. Twenty-six years later Giovanni Verazzini
another Italian but working for French interests, passed
the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. For half a century after
that the Bay had no explorers. In 1603 Captain Bartholo-
mew Gilbert made a more careful exploration.

The intrepid Captain John Smith, who saw many other
parts of North America, began in 1608 to carry out the in-
structions of the London Virginia Company to "find some
spring which runs the contrary way toward the East India
sea." With fourteen companions in "an open barge of two
tunnes burden". Smith started up the Chesapeake. Every
inlet and bay "fit for harbours and habitations" was en-
tered, and all the islands were inspected. The results were
incorporated in what Smith called "A Map of Virginia",
published in England in 1612. Reprinted many times
shortly thereafter, the map shows that Smith's voyagers
paid close attention to the Eastern Shore, examined the
Potomac carefully, but had a hazy idea of the western head
of the Bay and only a generalized notion of the lower West-
ern Shore. In 1670 Lord Baltimore authorized Augustine
Herman, a cartographer living in the New Netherlands
Colony, to prepare a more detailed map of Maryland.

Aborigines

It is to John Smith, also, that we owe our first knowledge
of the pre-European settlers on the land of what was later
Maryland. Smith's account is bewildering with Indian
names; one soon recognizes the adaptations of these same
queer-sounding names in present-day Maryland. The Vir-
ginia explorer speaks of Yingoteagues, Assateagues, Ma-
rumscos, Annamesses, Wiccomicos, Nanticokes, Conoys,
Trasquakins, Choptanks, Monoponsons, Matapeakes, Ozin-
ies, Tockwoghes, Nattwas, Susquehannocks, Conestogas,
Piscattoways, Chopticos, Mattawomans, Patuxents, Aqua-
socks, Secowocomocos, and others. Despits this multiplicity
of names, these Indians were all of Algonquin stock, save
for the Susquehannocks at the headwaters of the Bay and
the Anacostans on territory around present-day Washing-
ton. Invading tribes made forays from the North and at
times lived on Maryland territory, and these Indians were

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