first settlers in the us

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FIRST SETTLERS IN THE US

Pre-Columbian era

It is not definitively known how or when the Native Americans first settled the Americas and thepresent-day United States. The prevailing theory proposes that people migrated from Eurasia

across Beringia, a land bridge that connected Siberia to present-day Alaska, and then spread

southward throughout the Americas. This migration might have begun as early as 30,000 years ago

and continued through to about 10,000 years ago, when the land bridge became submerged by the

rising sea level caused by the ending of the last glacial period. These early inhabitants, called

Paleoamericans, soon diversified into many hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes.

The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the

Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents,

spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European

colonization during the Early Modern period. While technically referring to the era before

Christopher Columbus' voyages of 1492 to 1504, in practice the term usually includes the history of

American indigenous cultures until they were conquered or significantly influenced by Europeans,

even if this happened decades or even centuries after Columbus' initial landing.

Colonial period

After a period of exploration by people from various European countries, Spanish, Dutch, English,

French, Swedish, and Portuguese settlements were established. In the 16th century, Europeans

brought horses, cattle, and hogs to the Americas and, in turn, took back to Europe maize, potatoes,

tobacco, beans, and squash. The disease environment was very unhealthy for explorers and early

settlers. The Native Americans became exposed to new diseases such as smallpox and measles anddied in very large numbers, usually before large-scale European settlement began.

Spanish, Dutch, and French colonization

Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to arrive in what is now the United States with

Christopher Columbus' second expedition, which reached Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493;

others reached Florida in 1513. Quickly Spanish expeditions reached the Appalachian Mountains,

the Mississippi River, the Grand Canyon and the Great Plains. In 1540, Hernando de Soto undertook

an extensive exploration of Southeast. Also in 1540 Francisco Vázquez de Coronado explored from

Arizona to central Kansas. The Spanish sent some settlers, creating the first permanent European

settlement in the continental United States at St. Augustine, Florida in 1565, but it attracted few

permanent settlers. Much larger and more important Spanish settlements included Santa Fe,

Albuquerque, San Antonio, Tucson, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

New Netherland was the 17th century Dutch colony centered on New York City and the Hudson

River Valley, where they traded furs with the Native Americans to the north and were a barrier to

Yankee expansion from New England. The Dutch were Calvinists who built the Reformed Church in

America, but they were tolerant of other religions and cultures. The colony was taken over by

Britain in 1664. It left an enduring legacy on American cultural and political life, including a secular

broadmindedness and mercantile pragmatism in the city, a rural traditionalism in the countryside

typified by the story of Rip Van Winkle, and politicians such as Martin Van Buren, Theodore

Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt.



New France was the area colonized by France from 1534 to 1763. There were few permanent

settlers outside Quebec and Acadia, but the Wabanaki Confederacy became military allies of New

France through the four French and Indian Wars with the British colonies who were allied with the

Iroquois Confederacy. During the French and Indian War, New England fought successfully against

Acadia and the British removed Acadians from Acadia (Nova Scotia) and replaced them with New

England Planters. Eventually, some Acadians resettled in Louisiana, where they developed adistinctive rural Cajun culture that still exists. They became American citizens in 1803 with the

Louisiana Purchase. Other French

villages along the Mississippi and

Illinois rivers were absorbed when

the Americans started arriving after

1770. British colonization

The strip of land along the eastern

seacoast was settled primarily byEnglish colonists in the 17th

century, along with much smaller

numbers of Dutch and Swedes.

Colonial America was defined by a

severe labor shortage that employed

forms of unfree labor such as slavery

and indentured servitude, and by a

British policy of benign neglect

(salutary neglect) that permitted the

development of an American spirit

distinct from that of its Europeanfounders. Over half of all European

immigrants to Colonial America

arrived as indentured servants.

The first successful English colony was established in 1607, on the James River at Jamestown. It

languished for decades until a new wave of settlers arrived in the late 17th century and established

commercial agriculture based on tobacco. Between the late 1610s and the Revolution, the British

shipped an estimated 50,000 convicts to their American colonies. One example of conflict between

Native Americans and English settlers was the 1622 Powhatan uprising in Virginia, in which Native

Americans had killed hundreds of English settlers. The largest conflict between Native Americans

and English settlers in the 17th century was King Philip's War in New England, although theYamasee War may have been bloodier.

New England was initially settled primarily by Puritans who established the Massachusetts Bay

Colony in 1630, although there was a small earlier settlement in 1620 by a similar group, the

Pilgrims, at Plymouth Colony. The Middle Colonies, consisting of the present-day states of New

York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, were characterized by a large degree of diversity.

The first attempted English settlement south of Virginia was the Province of Carolina, with Georgia

Colony the last of the Thirteen Colonies established in 1733. The colonies were characterized by

religious diversity, with many Congregationalists in New England, German and Dutch Reformed in

the Middle Colonies, Catholics in Maryland, and Scotch Irish Presbyterians on the frontier The First

Great Awakening. Many royal officials and merchants were Anglicans. Religion expanded greatly

after the First Great Awakening, a religious revival in the 1740s led by preachers such as Jonathan

Edwards. American Evangelicals affected by the Awakening added a new emphasis on divine



outpourings of the Holy Spirit and conversions that implanted within new believers an intense love

for God. Revivals encapsulated those hallmarks and forwarded the newly created evangelicalism

into the early republic, setting the stage for the Second Great Awakening beginning in the late

1790s.

first settlers in the us

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