Think of a big, beautiful, empty land
with mountains, forests, lakes,
animals and fish, but no people. This
was America 30,000 years ago.
Around that time, the first people
probably arrived in Alaska from
Asia. They travelled south and
became the North American Indians,
and the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas and
other peoples of Central and South
America. Later came the Inuit
(Eskimos) of Canada and the Arctic.
But there are only a few of these early
peoples in America today.
In the sixteenth century Europeans
started to come to America, and soon
after that, they brought workers -
slaves - from Africa. 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. The 'United
States of America'
was not always
united. The 252
million people who
live in its fifty states
are not all the
same. So how was
the USA born?
How did it grow?
And what sort of
country is it now?