Extra Class - USA History - Part II

Colonial period

Main article: Colonial history of the United States

In the 16th century, Europeans brought horses, cattle, and hogs to the Americas and, in turn, took back to Europe maize,potatoes, tobacco, beans, squash, and slave natives, many of whom died enroute.After a period of exploration by people from various European countries, Spanish, Dutch, English, French, Swedish, andPortuguese settlements were established. Although Leif Ericson was the first European to arrive in North America, Christopher Columbus is credited as the first European to set foot on what would one day become US territory when he came to Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493, during his second voyage.

Spanish exploration and colonization

See also: New Spain

Coronado Sets Out to the North (1540) by Frederic Remington, oil on canvas, 1905.

Spanish explorers came to what is now the United States beginning with Christopher Columbus' second expedition, which reached Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493.^[7] The first confirmed landing in the continental US was by a Spaniard, Juan Ponce de León (1474–1521), who landed in 1513 on a lush shore he christened La Florida.^[8]

The Catholic church built in 1733 in Santa Cruz, New Mexico

Within three decades of Ponce de León's landing, the Spanish became the first Europeans to reach the Appalachian Mountains, the Mississippi River, the Grand Canyon^[9] and the Great Plains. In 1540, Hernando de Soto undertook an extensive exploration of the present US and, in the same year, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado led 2,000 Spaniards and Native Mexican Americans across the modern Arizona–Mexico border and traveled as far as central Kansas.^[10] Other Spanish explorers include Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón, Pánfilo de Narváez, Sebastián Vizcaíno, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, Gaspar de Portolà, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca,Tristán de Luna y Arellano and Juan de Oñate. The Spanish sent some settlers, creating the first permanent European settlement in the continental United States at St. Augustine, Florida in 1565, but it was in such a harsh political environment that it attracted few settlers and never expanded. Much larger and more important Spanish settlements included Santa Fe, Albuquerque, San Antonio, Tucson, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Most Spanish settlements were along the California coast or the Santa Fe River in New Mexico^[11]

British colonization

Main article: British colonization of the Americas

In 1607, the Virginia Company of Londonestablished the Jamestown Settlement on the James River, both named after King James I

The strip of land along the eastern seacoast was settled primarily by English colonists in the 17th century, along with much smaller numbers ofDutch and Swedes. Colonial America was defined by a severe labor shortage that employed forms of unfree labor such as slavery and indentured servitude,^[14] and by a British policy of benign neglect (salutary neglect) that permitted the development of an American spirit distinct from that of its European founders.^[15] Over half of all European migrants to Colonial America arrived as indentured servants.^[16]

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.^[17] During the Georgian era English officials exiled 1,000 prisoners across the Atlantic every year.^[18] 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,^[19] although the Yamasee War may have been bloodier.^[20]

The Plymouth Colony was established in 1620. New England was initially settled primarily by Puritans who established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630.^[21] 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, withGeorgia Colony the last of the Thirteen Colonies established in 1733.^[22] Several colonies were used as penal settlements from the 1620s until the American Revolution.^[23] Methodism became the prevalent religion among colonial citizens after the First Great Awakening, a religious revival led by preacher Jonathan Edwards in 1734.^[21]