Origins of the American Traditions

The origins of the traditions held by the population of American started from the time that this land was first set foot on by the human species and was compounded throughout the rest of time. The immigrants, and slaves expanded up on the traditions of the original settlers. And along with those they brought their own religions and cultures that also added to the traditions of this country.

Long before the Europeans ever set foot on to the fair soil, people from Asia came to the land that now makes up the Americans. They came by crossing the land and ice bridge once located across the Bering Strait between the Alaska and Russia. This location is now submerged by water. The exact date of the first human arrivals in America is unknown but estimated to be range from twenty thousand to fifty thousand years ago. The Asians that made the trip across the land bridge are the predecessors of the Native Americans that were located in the Americas as the Europeans began to arrive. If the features are compared between these two the similarities are striking and the facts behind this theory become ever more prevalent.

The Native Americans that were Descendants of the Asian populated North, Central, and South America creating a large variety of cultures. In the late fifteenth century, there were perhaps 240 distinct Native American cultures just in North America alone with a population estimated at between one to two million people. Although these two million people varied greatly in there social cultures, government, economic systems, and others aspects of their life, they shared between them a common respect for and connection with the natural world. Were as the Europeans encroaching upon their land tended only to look at the natural world as something to be subdues owned and used for personal gain.

The First Europeans to arrive in America are believed to be Norse sailors from Scandinavia. Leif Ericsson, son of Eric the red who settled Greenland, established a brief settlement in current day Canada around the year one thousand. After this brief settlement the Europeans did not return for nearly five hundred years on a misguided voyage not in tended for the Americas but for the Orient. This discovery was made by the Italian Explorer Christopher Columbus, who had the misconception that he had reached India when he had made land fall on the present-day island of th4e Bahamas, henceforth the natives whom he met being called "Indians". Columbus made two more trips across the Atlantic Ocean but died without realizing that he had discovered two continents. The Continents were misnamed "the Americas" by the Europeans because of a German mapmakers mistake who believed that the continents had been discovered by the Portuguese explorer Amerigo Vespucci. After Columbus's initial voyage is when the competition for the land in America began between the powers of Europe. Over the next two hundred years many explorers would set sail to the Americas. Over that time the Spanish, Dutch, English, and French established colonies in North America

For the some two million natives already present on this land the arrivals of the Americas spelled disaster. The European diseases that were brought over along with the people killed millions of natives throughout both that North and South continents of America. This was due to the natives lack of natural immunities to these diseases. And the thousands that were left were either enslaved or driven for there ancestral lands.

The first attempted European settlement after the Norse settlement was in 1587. A group of 117 English settlers led by Sir Walter Raleigh and John White founded a colony on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. After White returned home for supplies in in1590 he returned to find no trace of the colony upon his return. This disappearance still remains a mystery till this time. The Next attempt in colonization was in 1607 at Jamestown, Virginia. Jamestown was the first English settlement to survive. They hope that this settlement would become an established self0sustaining community, but they knew little of the land so were not successful at first. They endured the uncertainty and almost unimaginable hardship, facing fierce weather and little food. The population of the settlement shows the story. In the beginning there was 104 colonists by the end of the first winter there was only 38 colonists who survived John Smith became the leader of the colonists and enforced the famous "he who does not work shall not eat." As with many colonists who came to this country the settlers at Jamestown only survived with the help on the Natives. Jamestown did not develop into a community of small family farms as in New England but they developed the plantation system. The plantation system turned tobacco into a profitable export crop, began the importation of slaves into this country and ultimately would have a large effect upon the course of North American history.

Two other colonies began shortly after the founding of Jamestown and played a decisive role in North American history and literature. The Plymouth Colony founded in1620 and the Massachusetts Bay Colony founded ten years later was Puritan settlements. These settlers, just as the ones in Jamestown, suffer many hardships and survived only with the assistance of the Native Americans. The cores of the settlers in Plymouth were Separatists Puritans who were breaking from the Church of England due the corruptness within it. After venturing around Europe to escape religious persecution they set sail for North America on the Mayflower. They mistakenly landed in Cape Cod after they were blown of course and by means of the Mayflower Compact