The United States of America

Land and Expansion

Part I People Arrive and America is Born

America’s First Humans• Exactly

when the first humans migrated from Asia to the Americas is still hotly debated today

America’s First Humans

• Traditionally, Native Americans are believed to have descended from northeast Asia, arriving over a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska some 12,000 to 30,000 years ago and/or by boat across the Pacific Ocean. Then, migrating across North and South America.

First Known Europeans

• Vikings from Northwestern Europe settled in Greenland and parts of Canada around 1000 A.D.

First Known Europeans

• Settlements lasted more than 300 years

• The Norse Vikings’ settlements didn’t last

A New Age • Europe’s desire to cut out the cost

of the Silk Road to obtain the riches of the East sent them sailing into the unknown…

A New Age

• Spain sent an Italian named Christopher Columbus west across the Atlantic to find a water route to Asia

A New Age

• He never knew it but Columbus didn’t reach Asia

Columbus accidentally landed on the shores of undocumented land…

A New Age

…and Europe would dominate the world for nearly the next 500

years

It was the year 1492Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of

wonder, emerged from their villages onto the

island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look

at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his

sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking

oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought

them food, water, gifts. Zinn 1

He (Columbus) later wrote of this in his log:

They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton

and spears and many other things, which they

exchanged for the glass beads and hawks'

bells. They willingly traded everything they

owned... .

They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features....

They do not bear arms, and do not

know them, for I showed them a

sword, they took it by the edge and

cut themselves out of ignorance.

They have no iron. Their spears are made

of cane... .

They would make fine

servants....

Zinn 1

Spanish in the Americas

• Columbus and the Spanish set the precedent of slavery, thievery, slaughter, and forced indoctrination in this “newly discovered” land that would become known as America

Europeans in the Americas

•  "..new and more deadly forms of smallpox and bubonic plague had arisen in Europe.. Passed on to those the Europeans met, these diseases helped Europe conquer the Americas and, later, the islands of the Pacific" (Loewen and Schuster44).

Europeans in the Americas

• The Spanish got a big head start on the European competition but the French, Dutch, Portuguese, Russians, and British weren’t too far behind.

The First English Land Seizer

• England’s first permanent settlement was Jamestown, Virginia in the year 1607

The First English Land Seizer

• Next, the Pilgrims settled Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620

• Puritans, seeking to practice their strict religious beliefs also settled Massachusetts

English Land Claims on the Eve of Revolution

A New Nation is Born

• With the Treaty of Paris of 1783 a new nation was born

• And it was one big baby of a nation

The Earliest Land Claims of

the United States of America

•claims included land east from

the banks of the mighty Mississippi to…

The Earliest Land Claims of the United States of

America

…the vast shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean

Earliest Land Claims of the United States of

America•When the new nation was in

its infant stages it included – 13 states, loosely united – The Northwest Territory – Controversies and disputes over

land in the northeast, northwest and the south

Earliest Land Claims of the United States of

America• The Northwest

Territory included thousands of natives in dozens of tribes who were determined to resist the devastation of their people

The United States Grows

• The young nation wouldn’t take long to have a growth spurt

• In 1803 something big happens; something major that sets the nation looking further and further west toward the setting sun…

Opportunity Knocks on a Young Nation’s

Door…and Opportunity’s name

is Napoleon Bonaparte

•To Be Continued…