The Voyage of Verrazzano

American historian Henry Cruse Murphy attempted to show that the claims of discovery made by Giovanni da Verrazzano were unauthentic. Verrazzano was the Italian navigator and explorer for France who was the first European to discover New York and Narragansett bays. In addition, he was the first European explorer to name newly discovered North American locations after persons and places of the Old World. Verrazzano wrote engaging accounts of the lands and inhabitants he encountered though it is believed that these reports were sometimes inaccurate.

In this work, Murphy said that various letters attributed to this explorer were fragmented and distorted, making them unreliable. He added that Verrazzano did not write the descriptions of the people and the land from his personal observations. Therefore, the reality of the Natives remained unnoticed, and what was mentioned of them was untrue. Murphy went on to discredit various other letters by the European explorer.