In the present-day United States, settlers may have first constructed log cabins by 1638. Historians believe that the first log cabins built in North America were in the Swedish colony of Nya Sverige (New Sweden) in the Delaware River and Brandywine River valleys. Many of its colonists were actually Forest Finns, because Finland was an integrated part of Sweden at that time. New Sweden only briefly existed before it was became the Dutch colony of New Netherland, which later became the English colony of New York. The Swedish-Finnish colonists' quick and easy construction techniques not only remained, but spread