Jacques Cartier founded the first French settlement in Canada, along the St. Lawrence River, though the settlement failed due to disease, weather, and Native conflicts.
Spain, at the urging of Bartolomé de Las Casas, implemented the Leyes Nuevas—the “New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians.” The New Laws were intended to protect Indians from enslavement and maltreatment by Spanish colonists, but they had little effect as colonists refused to abide by them.
Ferdinand Magellan led a fleet that circumnavigated the globe for the first time, between 1519 and 1522, although Magellan himself was killed in the Philippines.
Sir John Hawkins made the first of three voyages carrying slaves from West Africa to Hispaniola, but Queen Elizabeth disapproved, and English involvement discontinued until Elizabeth’s death in 1603.
Native American populations in New England, with no immunity to European diseases, were nearly eradicated by a mysterious epidemic—likely smallpox. Between 1616 and 1619, the population of the Massachusett and other Algonquin tribes was reduced by as much as 90 percent by disease.
Spanish explorer Vasco Nuñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and became the first European to cross the American landmass to reach the Pacific Ocean.