The first settlers in America

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1. The first inhabitants of America

America was inhabited by humans long before the first European set foot on the continent. The beginning of civilization in America occurred during the last Ice Age when - the "Paleo-Indians" - migrated into the current-day continental United States and Canada. Their exact origins, as well as the route and timing of their migrations, are the subject of much scholarly discussion. The question of how, when, and why humans first entered the Americas has been a subject of heated debate for centuries. Several models for the Paleo-Indian settlement of America have been proposed by various academic communities. While there is general agreement that America was first settled from Asia over the course of millennia by people who migrated across Beringia, their pattern of migration, timing, and place of origin in Asia remains unclear. The chronology of migration models is currently divided into two general approaches. In the first, known as the short chronology theory, the first movement beyond Alaska into the New World occurs no earlier than 14,000 - 17,000 years ago, followed by successive waves of immigrants.

The First American Civilizations

After the migration or migrations, it was several thousand years before the first complex civilizations arose. One of the earliest identifiable cultures was the Clovis culture, with sites dating from some 13,000 years ago. The Clovis culture ranged over much of North America and also appeared in South America. It is not clear whether the Clovis people were one unified tribe or whether there were many tribes related by common technology and belief. As early Paleo-Indians spread throughout the Americas, they diversified into many hundreds of culturally distinct tribes. Paleo-Indian adaptation across North America was likely characterized by small, highly mobile bands consisting of approximately 20 to 50 members of an extended family. These groups moved from place to place as preferred resources were depleted and new supplies were sought.

As time went on, many of these first immigrants developed permanent settlements. With permanent residency, some cultures developed into agricultural societies while others became pastoral. The North American climate stabilized around 8000 BCE to a climate that we would recognize today. Due to the vastness and variety of the climates, ecology, vegetation, fauna, and landforms, ancient peoples migrated and coalesced separately into numerous separate peoples of distinct linguistic and cultural groups. Some of these cultures developed innovative technology that encouraged cities and even empires. Comparative linguistics -- the study of languages of different tribes -- shows fascinating diversity, with similarities between tribes hundreds of miles apart, yet startling differences with neighboring groups

2. Ways of American Indians life

Native Americans or Indians were the first people to live in the New World. They had been living there long before the first Europeans arrived.

In 1492, Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to find a shorter and faster route to India. When he landed on an island near the American coast he thought he had reached India, so he called the people he met there Indians.

Many historians think that the first Indians came to the American continent from Asia over 20,000 years ago. At that time it was very cold and ice covered most of the northern part of our world. Indian tribes wandered across the Bering Strait and spread down to the southern part of South America.

Indians lived in different ways and had different cultures that depended on the climate and their surroundings.

Family Life

Most Indians concentrated on the important things in life: getting food, making clothes and building houses.

Food

Indians ate many different kinds of food. Those who lived on the plains of the Central United States ate the meat of buffalo. The Pueblos of the south-western part lived on corn, beans and squash. Indians in Alaska and Canada were fishers and hunted deer and other wild animals in the forests. Most Indians ate berries and collected nuts.

Indians cooked their food in ovens that they made with hot stones. They preserved meat by smoking or drying it in the sun.

Many Indians married at an early age - girls between 13 and 15, boys between 15 and 20. In some Indian tribes parents chose husbands and wives for their children. Some Indian tribes allowed men to have more than one wife. After a man died his wife often lived with his brother's family.

Most Indian families were small because many children died at birth or at an early age. When boys got older they were tested for theirstrength and bravery. Many had to live alone in the wilderness for a long time.

In many areas, Indians lived in big families called clans. These clans were a group of relatives who had one common ancestor.

Clothing

Many Indians made clothes from animal skins and furs. Buffalo skin and rabbit fur were especially popular. They also used bird feathers to decorate their heads.

Indians of the tropical regions only wore simple skirts. Some tribes wore no clothes at all

Houses and Homes

Indians built many different types of homes because they lived in different climates and didn't have the same building materials. Some groups built large houses with many rooms where many families could stay together, others had small dwellings in which only very fewpeople lived.

The Inuit of Canada built snow houses during the winter and in summer they lived in tents made of animal hides.

In some parts of America, Indians built wigwams that were covered with leaves. Some tribes built houses into the earth that they coveredwith leaves and grass.

Families and whole clans joined together to form tribes. Hundreds of tribes lived in America when Columbus arrived in 1492. Each tribe lived in its own area, shared the same language and had its own religion. The leader of the tribe was called a chief. Decisions were made at meetings of the tribal council. Members were important people of many different families.

Warfare

Indians often fought against other tribes because it was sometimes the only way to settle disputes.

The bow and arrow was the most common weapon of the Indians. Some tribes put poison on the arrowheads. Many Indians fought with spears and tomahawks.

When an Indian defeated his enemy he often took his scalp as a prize to show to others. Killing an enemy tribesman often made awarrior famous and respected.

When white people came to North America, Indians bought guns and other new weapons from them.

Arts and Crafts

Native Americans worked in many arts and crafts. They created beautiful pottery, made baskets to carry food and wove cloth intoblankets and rugs.

Indians also painted their pottery with colourful patterns. Some made wall paintings of important ceremonies or everyday life.

3. Europe's first explorers

According to the Sagas of Icelanders, Norse sailors (often called Vikings) from Iceland first settled Greenland in the 980s. Erik the Red explored and settled southwesternGreenland, which he named to entice potential Icelandic settlers, eventually establishing the Eastern and Western Settlements, which were abandoned around 1350.

The Viking voyages did not become common knowledge in the Old World, and Europeans remained ignorant of the existence of theAmericas as a whole, until the first decades following the year 1492. Many expeditions were launched from European nations in search of a Northwest Passage to East Asia (or "the Indies" as the region was called) in order to establish a shorter trade route to China than the Silk road, a trade route which had become desperately needed and yet exacerbated by the Fall of Constantinople. Also, the Castilian crownneeded an alternative to the Portuguese controlled eastern maritime trade route around Africa to India and East Asia.

On August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from the newly los Reyes Catуlicos coordinated Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, in present day Spain, financed by Queen Isabella I of Castille. Columbus's Letter on the First Voyage of his discovery of the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola spread the news across Europe quickly. Columbus rediscovered and explored much of the Lesser Antilles in his second voyage then discovered both Trinidad and Tobago on his third voyage whilst skirting the northern South American coast. His fourth voyage was spent scanning the Central American coast, searching for a strait to the Pacific Ocean. The Voyages of Christopher Columbus opened the New World.

Italian navigator and explorer Giovanni Caboto (known in English as John Cabot) is credited with the discovery of continental North America on June 24, 1497, under the commission of Henry VII of England. Though the exact location of his discovery remains disputed, the Canadian and United Kingdom governments' official position is that he landed on the island of Newfoundland. The English presence through Giovanni Caboto was signaled in Juan de la Cosa`s map of 1500.

4. Spanish settlements

Spain initially sought to populate its far-flung northern frontier in America less by settling Spanish or mestizo people than by transforming the indigenous population into Hispanicized and loyal subjects of the Spanish Crown. Unlike New England, where Indians were killed or displaced in order to open lands for European settlement, New Spain (Mexico) sought to use the Catholic church to evangelize the Indians and make them into gente de razуn ("people of reason"): Spanish-speaking, Catholic, peasant farmers who followed Euro-Christian practices of work and sexual discipline.

To this end, the Spanish settlements in what is now the United States were of three mutually reinforcing types: the mission, the presidio (fort), and the pueblo (town). The importance of each varied from place to place depending on the terrain; the receptiveness of the Indians; the behavior of the priests and soldiers; and the aggressiveness of the Crown's enemies, whether Indian or European. Ideally, the mission would instruct the Indians in European ways and religious beliefs; the presidio would protect priests and the neophyte Christians from adversaries and rebellions; and the Hispanicized Indians would join settlers in the pueblos. Although rarely functioning in this ideal fashion, such institutions embodied Spain's strategy for peopling Florida, Texas, New Mexico, southern Arizona, and the California coast.

5. English settlements

Before the arrival of the English, the Spanish influence in the New World extended from the Chesapeake Bay to the tip of South America. Spanish possessions included the developing cities of Mexico, Peru, and Cuba. Along the northern edge of Spain's land were small missions and “presidios” or fortresses that stretched from the Atlantic coast, ran along the Gulf of Mexico and extended into the plains of Texas and the Rio Grande River valley. In 1585, Sir Walter Raleigh took on one of the first English settlement attempts. He set up a colony of about 100 men on the east coast of North America, on land he named Virginia after Queen Elizabeth I, who being unmarried, was known as the “Virgin Queen.” These settlers only lasted for a year before returning home. Then, in 1587, Raleigh made a second attempt at settling a colony at Roanoke, Virginia. The supply ships sent to the colony never arrived and in 1590 when help did come, evidence of the existence of the entire colony had disappeared except for the word “Croatan” inscribed on a post.

Soon after England's first colonization efforts, several changes took place that strengthened their ability to colonize America in the early 1600s: the Protestant Reformation, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the changes in the English economy.

In the early 1500s, England and Spain had a strong connection based on their dedication to the Roman Catholic Church and the marriage between Henry VIII of England and Catherine of Aragon. Then, in the 1530s when Henry VIII broke from the Roman Catholic Church so he could divorce Catherine, the efforts of English Protestant reformers gained official support and the once close relations between England and Spain broke down.

Henry VIII wanted to annul his marriage of 20 years to Catherine of Aragon because she had only provided him with female heirs. However, Catherine was the aunt to the King of Spain, Charles V, whose support was vital to the Holy Roman Empire, so the pope refused the annulment. In a political move, Henry severed the connection with Rome, declared himself head of the Church of England, named a new archbishop who granted his annulment, and remarried. Ironically, his new wife did not present him with the male heir he wanted, but instead a daughter named Elizabeth who later reigned from 1558 to 1603.

Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, came to the throne after her father's death and attempted to bring England back into the Catholic fold. Following the unpopular reign of Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth I came to power and embodied both an ambition in world affairs and a strong but pragmatic Protestantism that renewed the tensions between England and Spain. The English, quietly backed by Queen Elizabeth, began to plunder Spanish merchant ships. The most famous “sea dog” was Captain Francis Drake. He captured a Spanish treasure ship and netted profits of about 4,600 percent for his financial backers.

6. The English colonies : new England

The New England Colonies of British America included the colonies of Connecticut, Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Massachusetts, and Province of New Hampshire.

The FOUNDERS of the New England colonies had an entirely different mission from the Jamestown settlers. Although economic prosperity was still a goal of the New England settlers, their true goal was spiritual. Fed up with the ceremonial Church of England, Pilgrims and Puritans sought to recreate society in the manner they believed God truly intended it to be designed.

Religious strife reached a peak in England in the 1500s. When Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church of Rome, spiritual life in England was turned on its ear. The new church under the king's leadership was approved by the English Parliament, but not all the people in England were willing to accept the Church of England. At first, the battles were waged between English Catholics and the followers of the new Church -- the ANGLICANS. The rule of Queen Elizabeth brought an end to bloodshed, but the battle waged on in the hearts of the English people.

7. The middle colonies

Nowhere was that diversity more evident in pre-Revolutionary America than in the MIDDLE COLONIES of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. European ethnic groups as manifold as English, Swedes, Dutch, Germans, Scots-Irish and French lived in closer proximity than in any location on continental Europe. The middle colonies contained Native American tribes of Algonkian and Iroquois language groups as well as a sizable percentage of African slaves during the early years. Unlike solidly Puritan New England, the middle colonies presented an assortment of religions.

Advantaged by their central location, the middle colonies served as important distribution centers in the English mercantile system. New York and Philadelphia grew at a fantastic rate. These cities gave rise to brilliant thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin, who earned respect on both sides of the Atlantic. In many ways, the middle colonies served as the crossroads of ideas during the colonial period.

8. The southern colonies

civilization indian settlement colony

Immediately to Virginia's north was MARYLAND. Begun as a Catholic experiment, the colony's economy would soon come to mirror that of Virginia, as tobacco became the most important crop. To the south lay the Carolinas, created after the English Civil War had been concluded. In the Deep South was GEORGIA, the last of the original thirteen colonies. Challenges from Spain and France led the king to desire a buffer zone between the cash crops of the Carolinas and foreign enemies. Georgia, a colony of debtors, would fulfill that need.

In 1607, Virginia became the first permanent English colony. Early settlers started plantations. Plantation owners grew rich by growing and selling tobacco and rice. Many workers were enslaved Africans. Early settlers built their plantations on the best farmland near the ocean. Later, settlers moved inland. In 1619, Virginia became the first colony to have an elected legislature. This assembly was called the House of Burgesses. Colonists elected the burgesses. Only white men who owned land could vote or be elected. Most of them belonged to the Anglican Church. In 1632, the legislature made this church the official church of Virginia. People who were not Anglican had to leave the colony.

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