Элисон Бакстер (Alison Baxter)CHAPTER ONE
In the beginning
Think of a big, beautiful, empty land with mountains, forests, lakes, animals, and fish, but no people. This was America 16,000 years ago. Around that time, the first people probably arrived in Alaska from Asia. They travelled south and became the Native Americans of North America and the Maya, Aztecs, Inca and other peoples of Central and South America. The Inuit (Eskimos) came to Canada and the Arctic the same way. But there are only a few of these peoples in America today.
In the sixteenth century Europeans started to come to America, and soon after that, they brought slaves from Africa to work for them. Large numbers of immigrants continued to arrive from all over the world until the middle of the twentieth century. The empty land was now full of people, speaking different languages and with different ideas. There are just three countries now in North America - Canada, Mexico and the USA - but there were nearly several more. And the 300 million people who live in the fifty states of the United States are not all the same. About 67 per cent are white, 13 per cent Hispanic (Spanish-speaking), 13 per cent black, 4 per cent Asian and just 1 per cent Native American. Most of them speak English, but it is not the same English as people speak in Britain, and many Americans speak Spanish as their first language.
So how was the USA born? How did it grow? What kind of country is it now? This book will try to answer those questions, and many more.
CHAPTER TWO
The Pilgrim Fathers
The name 'America' comes from an Italian businessman called Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed to South America between 1499 and 1502. But he was not the first European to make the dangerous journey across the Atlantic. The Vikings came to 'Vinland' (probably Canada or New England) from Scandinavia around AD 1000, but they did not stay. Then, in 1492, a brave Italian sailor called Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean while he was looking for a sea route from Europe to India. Columbus called the Native Americans 'Indians' because he thought that he had reached India. When Columbus returned to Europe he told people about his adventures and other sailors like Cabot and Cartier followed him across the Atlantic. Europeans came to fish the rich seas of America too.