June 3, 1540 – De Soto Discovers Gold North of Florida

Conquistador Hernando de Soto had been born to a poverty-stricken area of Spain and left to seek his fortune, which he did in the New World.  He sailed to Panama in 1514 and accompanied Pizarro on the expedition to conquer the Inca in 1532.  De Soto, who had proven himself as an able, cunning, and ruthless commander, returned to Spain in 1534 with vast wealth from his share of the plunder.  He married and petitioned the king to return to the New World as governor of Guatemala so he could explore further into the Pacific Ocean, but Charles V awarded him Cuba instead with an order to colonize Florida to the north.  Ponce de Leon had discovered the vast lands to the north in 1521, but attempts colonize up the coast over the next decade had all failed due to disease, lack of supplies, and hostile natives.

In 1539, de Soto put together a 600-man expedition with ample provisions and livestock for an ongoing expedition to discover gold.  He studied the stories of Cabeza de Vaca, one of the four survivors of the ill-fated Narváez expedition into North America in 1527, which suffered endless attacks from natives, shipwreck, enslavement, and finally fame among natives for healing techniques.  Upon their arrival in Florida, the de Soto expedition came upon Juan Ortiz, who had been dispatched years before to find the lost Narváez and was captured by locals.  De Soto took on Ortiz as a guide and friend to local Indians, which served the expedition much more smoothly than the natives Narváez had captured and forced to be guides, resulting in them leading his men in circles through the roughest territories possible with ample ground for ambushes. 

After months of exploring up the Florida peninsula, the expedition wintered in Anhaica, the greatest city of the Apalachee people, whom Narváez had been falsely told were wealthy with gold.  Rumors now said there was gold “toward the sun’s rising.”  They traveled inland through the spring, northeasterly across a number of rivers and through several realms of native peoples.  Finally among the Cofitachequi, they met “The Lady of the Cofitachequi”, their queen.  She treated the well armed men kindly with gifts of pearls, food, and, at last, gold.  Rather than being native gold, however, the men recognized the items as Spanish, most likely abandoned from the nearby failed settlement by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón that lasted only three months in 1526.  Disturbed by the bad luck with gold, the expedition departed, bringing the Lady with them as an involuntary escort as they came through the lands of the Joara, what she considered her western province.  There they found the “Chelaque”, who were described in the later annuals translated by Londoner Richard Hakluyt, as eating “roots and herbs, which they seek in the fields, and upon wild beasts, which they kill with their bows and arrows, and are a very gentle people. All of them go naked and are very lean.”  The civilization was rudimentary at best, "the poorest country of maize that was seen in Florida."  De Soto wanted to go further into the mountains and rest his horses there, but he determined to rest first using supplies ransomed for the Lady.  During the month-lost rest, many of his soldiers searched ahead for gold, while at least one stayed and taught agricultural techniques to the locals.

During a plowing session using a horse, which the natives had never seen before, they struck a large yellow rock.  The natives worked to free it and throw it away, but the conquistador recognized it as a 17-pound gold nugget.  De Soto was shocked by the find, as were the natives, who had never considered the inedible metal worth anything.  He immediately built a fort and dispatched men back to Cuba for reinforcements.  Meanwhile, de Soto and the bulk of his force captured the Lady of the Cofitachequi again and seized her kingdom.  The Spanish built a settlement at the mouth of the Santee River called Port Carlos (for Charles V) as well as another farther inland, where mining of the placer deposits of gold began.  Other deposits of gold were discovered in the region, spurring a gold rush to the area.  A short-lived war broke out with King Tuscaloosa in the west, but the area was quickly depopulated of natives due to disease from the Columbian Exchange.

De Soto’s gold fields proved to be shallower than he hoped, but the Spanish presence in Florida was affirmed.  Plantations grew up as planters experimented with what grew best, eventually settling on tobacco as a cash crop.  With the seventeenth century, the English began to block the spread of Spanish influence with colonies in Virginia and Plymouth, eventually assigning a border along the James River.  The French challenged Spanish control over the Mississippi River and dominated much of Canada until the Seven Years’ War caused Britain to annex Canada and force France to give the Louisiana to the Spanish, dividing North America between the Spanish and British Empires.

Due to heavy taxation following the war, Enlightenment ideals caused many in the American Colonies to call for resistance and even independence.  However, with a strong Spanish bastion just to the south, the outcry never spread beyond the Boston Insurrection.  Instead, the American Union would gain marginal self-rule, which would be successfully tested with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.  The expansive state of Florida, meanwhile, would undergo a bloody fifteen year war of independence from Spain.

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In reality, de Soto passed over the gold fields of what would be North Carolina and Georgia.  The gold was not discovered in North Carolina until 1799 and Georgia until 1828.  Both discoveries caused gold rushes, pushing the native Cherokee, believed to be decedents of the Chelaque, westward.

June 17, 1579 – Drake Founds New Albion

After pillaging the once-untouchable Pacific towns and sea lanes of the Spanish, Francis Drake and his fleet led by the Golden Hind continued northward. They had captured cargoes estimated at some 37,000 ducats (~$57,000,000), but they had also cut off their escape. To return to England, the fleet would have to slip by numerous Spanish colonies and ships either rounding the Cape of Magellan or through the South Seas, and then return via friendly Portuguese ports. Instead, Drake decided to continue northward and explore where even the Spanish had not yet reached. Far into uncharted territory, he came upon a bay that reminded his crews of home.

Francis Petty, one of Drake’s gentlemen-at-arms, wrote, “Our General called this country Nova Albion, and that for two causes; the one in respect of the white banks and cliffs, which lie towards the sea, and the other, because it might have some affinity with our country in name, which sometime was so called. There is no part of earth here to be taken up, wherein there is not some probable show of gold or silver.” Petty’s prophecy of gold would come true as bad weather forced Drake and his expedition out of their bay and through the Golden Gate into what would become known as Saint George’s Bay. Facing mutinous sailors who did not wish to continue north, Drake decided to conquer their foul spirits by taking some of them with him on expeditions up various rivers to chart the area. In early July, they would find gold flakes and even pebble-sized nuggets simply sitting in the riverbed.

Upon their return to the bay, Drake began construction of a fort to guard the area and solidify the English claim. The local natives were very amiable; French lawyer and historian Jules Verne wrote, citing Drake’s logs, “They appeared to be greatly astonished, and showed us great respect, thinking we were gods, and they received us with a great deal of reverence.” The Indians gave the Englishmen gifts of feathers and tobacco and always set aside their weapons before approaching. Their women stayed at a distance and scratched themselves to the point of bleeding, which Drake eventually learned was a method of sacrifice. With aid from the Indians, Drake completed Fort Elizabeth and staffed it with some of his most trusted advisors, including Petty.

Drake returned to England amid much aplomb in 1580. While the war with Spain had lulled into peace, his feat of circumnavigating the world gained him a knighthood. He became Mayor of Plymouth as well as a Member of Parliament and used his positions to begin the Albion Company, to which Elizabeth would grant a charter for a colony on the western coast of America. A well funded expedition left in 1584, shortly before the national attention would be shifted toward the Spanish Armada. The war would destroy Sir Walter Raleigh’s attempts at creating an English colony in North America on the eastern coast, which would later be settled by Puritans and planters as well as French, Dutch, Swedes, and Scottish.

England’s real hold on the Americas would turn to west. The West Indies and eastern seaboard remained important economic points for triangular trade in the Atlantic, but thousands of settlers would cross the Pacific for Albion, where gold seemed impossibly plentiful. England (and then Britain in 1707) explored the vast ocean, setting up important trading posts through Oceania and soon colonizing Hawai’i. Albion’s population soared as gold-mining served as a base to numerous industries such as logging, fur trading, and agriculture.

In 1776, the culturally diverse Eastern American Colonies rebelled, and a small movement arose in Albion for independence as well, but fears of Spanish incursion determined that the Albionians would remain British. The remoteness of Albion, however, gave the region its own sense, distinguishing their society from Britons, Americans, or Canadians. Albion eventually clarified its frontier into borders stretching from Spanish Baja in the south to Canadian Yukon and Russian Alaska in the north. When the Mexican-American War handed the bulk of Mexico’s northern territory to the land-hungry Americans, war to maintain independence from Manifest Destiny became inevitable. The Utah War involving Mormon settlers and the American Federal Government spilled over into Albion, and Albionian troops marched in support of Governor Brigham Young. Fears of going to war with Britain eventually brought the war to a diplomatic end with an independent Deseret dividing much of the border between Albion and the United States.

By maintaining neutrality in the American Civil War, Albion would return to good relations with the United States, who began to expand southward into the Caribbean in war with Spain. Albion, meanwhile, gained dominion status and began its own expansion across the Pacific, soon running afoul of the Japanese Empire, who would serve as their major nemesis in World War II.


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In reality, Francis Drake explored the Pacific Coast of North America, possibly as far north as Canada, but did not settle. Gold was not discovered there until 1848, when James Marshall spotted it near Sutter’s Mill. The resulting gold rush would make California into one of the most important centers of the United States of America.