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 traveled south and
became the North America Indians, and the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas and other people of central and South America. Later came the Inuit (Eskimos) of Canada and 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?