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History of America, Chapter 1 — Who Came First?


Your average high school history book awards this idea to the Spanish in the form of Christopher Columbus, who was actually an Italian for Genoa.

The location of the first settlement is actually in Salem New Hampshire at a site known as “America’s Stonehenge.” This site is dated at about 4000 years old. But who occupied the site is unknown. Its contruction leads anthropologists and historians to compare it to the Stonehenge in England. But even in England the builders are unknown. As easily as it could have been Saxons in the area, it could also have been a Nordic people who were regular raiders and occupiers. We just do not know.

Now we need to look at Greenland where it is believed Europeans first settled this island 2500 years ago. Greenland is not that far from eastern Canada and Maine. The waters off those coasts teamed with fish, an important part of the European diet. But again, no one knows who those first settlers were.

The first English permanent settlement in North America Roanoke Island in 1587 under the auspicies of Sir Walter Raleigh. But this settlement is not continuous as it disappeared under unknown circumstances by 1590. The longest continuous settlement is St. Augustine Florida starting in 1565 when the Spanish settled there. The Spanish additionally explored the San Diego California area in 1542 but made no permanent settlements. Curiosly, the French in 1564 settled on the St. John’s River in Fort Caroline Florida. That settlement was unsuccessful after repeated battle losses to the Spanish.

English America got its start in 1607 in Virginia by the Virginia Company. During its early years the Virginia Company fought for its very existance against disease and food shortages. Unlike the New England tribes of that day, the Virginia tribes were warriors and had little interest in aiding the English settlers. In 1609, when the Native leader Powhatan realized the English were not leaving, aid was given the English. However, when it was realized the English did not intend to return aid in kind, wars broke out and again challenged the settlement’s survival. What the natives had given the English was tobacco, unknown to Europeans, which quickly turned the colony around as demand for tobacco skyrocketed. This colony has the ignomonous distinction in bringing the first slaves to America.

In 1620, as is well-known, the Pilgrims made their way to Plymouth. As with their southern neighbors, these colonists struggled to survive their first winter, losing 50% of all settlers that winter. But unlike the Virginia Colony, the Pilgrims were quick to make friends with the Wampanoag tribe and its leader, Squanto. These natives showed the Pilgrims the basics in farming the New England soil.

To the northern, on the Shamut penninsula, today known as Boston, Samuel Maverick in 1624 brought two slaves there. The Puritans did not arrive until 1630. And even though their religion banned slavery, they not only tolerated it, they bought into it. None of the New England colonies had a large number of slaves but every colony had them.

To the north of the New England colonies, the French settled Quebec and New Brunswick. With American domination in mind, the French moved southward over the Michigan penninsula down the Ohio and Mississippi River to New Orleans founding the settlement of St. Louis along the way.

The Spanish interest in North America was in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. But the early years found no conflict between the Spanish and either the English or French.

It is necessary to point out, when discussion who came here first, that African slaves existed in all 13 colonies. To be certain, the black American predates almost every European save the French and English. They must be counted as an original settler. Additionally, although the exact number is not known, between 6 and 7 million slaves were brought here.

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A History of Immigration in the U.S.: Preface


This is the first in a series of posts to tell of the history of immigration to America starting with its earliest instances and continuing to today. I am prompted to do this because of the latest round of xenophobia stoked by the Trump presidency. But Trump is only the latest in a long history of such response.

The United States undoubtedly has citizens who trace their ancestry back to every country in the world today, and, to countries which either no longer exist or have changed their identity.

We are a nation of immigrants with only a very small portion of indigenous peoples, who, according to anthropologists are actually immigrants themselves. The difference is that those immigrants came approximately 10,000 years ago over the frozen bridge between present day Russia and Alaska. But that sort of migration was a ancient form of world population which first began in Eastern Africa a million years ago, possibly longer.

The immigration policies of today in the United States have only existed since 1924 in full force as part of a quota system established by the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. That act had its beginnings in 1917 when the United States tried to stem certain populations from entering the United States. But even 1917 is not the beginning. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, a purely racist act by the westesrn states over fear of white supremicy and racial purity. Those Chinese immigrants first started entering the U.S. in 1848.

The American idea of who was an American came out of the large emigration of people from England in the early years of our country. As other nationalities started to enter the United States, there was a push back against them over fears of these immigrant taking jobs from established residents.

But the American view of who was actually an American was narrowly defined excluding black Americans who first arrived in 1619 in the Virginia Colony but quickly spread to all 13 of the original colonies. Later, when there were threee waves of Irish immigration, more and more the actual signage on stores of “Irish Need Not Apply” were common. What brought this sort of xenophobia was the fact that almost all Irish brought with them Roman Catholocism with them, a challenge to the anti-Papal religions of Protestantism.

But anti-Irish sentiment quickly passed into the background when beginning in the 1890s a wave of southern and eastern Europeans arrived on our shores. These non-English speaking peoples who not only brought more Catholicism with them, also brought Judeism with them. Additonally the southern Europeans brought a darker skinned people who stood out. Nowhere in the United States was this assimilation shown more prominently than in the lower east side of New York City when these peoples settled. Suddenly the English speaking majority’s ears heard Italian, Polish and Yiddish languages which these immigrants clung to. But this shows the short memories of those Americans who had forgotten the German speaking immigrants of the 1880s.

In the following chapters, I will outline how and who grew our population over the decades. But also, with the great immigration of 1890 to 1920 was the beginnings of many reform movements and unionization. Each of these was an anathema to the English speaking conservative Americans. Immigants poured through the ports of New York, Boston and Baltimore unabated until 1924. American industrialists fought that immigration and were behind the 1924 act.

This is an overview of what I will present in the following chapters. American thought today has the unfortunate lack of understanding that we are still a country heavily reliant upon new immigrants, a fact that will undoubtedly continue in the coming decades. Hopefully you will gain an appreciation of “how we got here” when I finish.