The Chronological Pattern of Settlement in America

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The Chronological Pattern of Settlement in America The settlement of the New World is better explained by considering a continuous influx of people from Asia. Conventional wisdom says that Native Americans were first to settle in the Americas, and that they are descended from prehistoric hunters who walked from northeast Asia across a land bridge, formed at the end of the Ice Age, to Alaska some 12,000 years ago. American Indians resemble the people of Mongolia, China and Siberia. Even before the English colonies were established disease had devastate Native American tribes. Native Americans had little resistance to European diseases; diseases to which they had no previous exposure. Smallpox was an especially efficient killer; however it was only one of a series of infections that Europeans brought to America. Some estimate that the Native American population of the early colonial period was only half of what it was before contact with Europeans. Hence the chronological pattern of settlement in American started and continued with the British. The English founded the first permanent settlement in America in 1607. The first colony was called Jamestown, situated in today’s Virginia. The colony was named after the English king, James I. The first colonists hoped to find gold in the New World and to get rich quickly. But the settlers had many problems during the first winters and hardly managed to survive. The American colonies were farming land. Colonists grew their own food, basically corn and wheat. They raised cattle that gave them meat, milk and butter and kept chicken and sheep. They also went hunting and fishing. In New England farms had little land, but in the southern colonies farms were much bigger. On these plantations colonists grew tobacco and other products which they sold to England and other colonies. The Native Americans brought them food and taught

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