In the fifteenth century, the richest European countries wanted to find new water routes to Asia because they wanted to trade-buy or sell things-with other countries and become richer. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of spain sent explorers-men looking for new lands and routes for ships-across the oceans to find a western route to Asia. One of these men was the explorer Christopher Columbus, born in Italy, but who worked for the Spanish king and queen. He arrived in the Bahamas, islands southeast of Florida, on October 12,1492. There he met people who painted their bodies and wore animal skins. He called the native people "Indians" because he thought he was in India, and they continued to be wrongly called Indians for more than four hundred years. Today they are called Native Americans.
seven years later, in 1499, another Italian explorer working for the Spanish sailed along the coast of South America. His name was Amerigo Vespucci, and this is where the name "America" comes from.
In 1609, an Englishman called Henry Hudson became the first explorer to sail up a river that is now the Hudson River in New York City. He worked for a large trading company called the Dutch East India Company, and soon after this Dutch people began to settle on the new continent.
At the same time, Europeans also went to Africa to buy people. These people were then shipped to North and South America and sold to farmers. When the Africans arrived, they became slaves people without freedom who had to work for no money and do what they were told. They had to work very hard on the coffee, tobacco,cotton, and sugar plantations, which were very large farms. Some worked in white people is houses, where they cooked, cleaned, and took care of children. More than ten million Africans were shipped to America over three hundred years. Families could not stay together, and so husbands lost wives and parents lost children. The slaves did not go to school, so most of them could not read or write. Their lives were very hard. Some slaves were owned by people who were kind, but many were not.
People went to North America for different reasons. One hundred and two people left England for the new continent because they wanted religious freedom. These people were known as Pilgrims and they arrived in 1620, on a ship called The Mayflower.
The place where they first arrived became a very important symbol in the history of the country is fight for freedom. The rock that they first walked on, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is called Plymouth Rock. Life for the Pilgrims was difficult. The weather was very cold and there were dangerous wild animals. Many people died. But the Pilgrims could own land and live better lives than they had in Europe. At the end of the first year, the local people the Native Americans and the English settlers celebrated with a large meal together to give thanks that they were still alive.
At first, the Native Americans were happy to help the settlers. They taught them how to grow native plants for food and medicine, where to find wild animals for meat, and how to use animal fur for clothes. But the relationship between the Native Americans and settlers changed when more and more settlers arrived and took more land. There were terrible wars between the Native Americans and the settlers.
In 1624, the Dutch settled New Amsterdam on the Hudson River. Later, in 1664, King Charles of England gave orders to his men to take New Amsterdam from the Dutch. The Dutch settlers were unhappy with the Dutch government, so they did not fight very hard when King Charles is brother, the Duke of York, took the settlement from them. He then changed its name to New York.
In the eighteenth century, there were thirteen colonies on the east coast of the continent. England, at that time the richest and strongest country in the world, ruled these colonies. The thirteen colonies later became these states Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
By 1763, King George the Third and his British government expected the colonists to help British soldiers living in the colonies. The colonists had to give the soldiers food and a bed. This was expensive, and the colonists were very unhappy. The British government also expected the colonists to pay taxes on tea, coffee, wine, and sugar.
on December 16, 1773, about one hundred colonists decided to show King George what they thought of his tax on tea. They went to Boston Harbor at night, where there were there British ships full of tea. The men dressed as Native Americans and threw all of the tea into the water. In American history, this important event is known as the Boston Tea Party. King George was angry and he closed Boston Harbor. The colonists began to prepare for war against England.
One colonist, Thomas Jefferson, wrote a very famous document, called the Declaration of Independence. In it, he said that the colonies were a new and independent country. On July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and some other men signed the Declaration of Independence at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote, "All men are created equal" and he wrote about man is right to life, liberty (freedom), and happiness. Men on horses took the document to colonial towns and read it to the people. Now King George was angrier than even with the colonists, and he sent more soldiers with guns across the Atlantic Ocean to New York. General George washington and his army of colonists were waiting for them. France and spain joined Washington and the colonists in the long American war of Independence against Britain.
Many people died in the American War of Independence. But in 1783, the war ended and a new country was born the United States of America.The people were no longer colonists; they were Americans. Some colonists who did not want independence, and who fought with the British army against their colonial neighbors, escaped to Britain or Canada.
George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and other important colonial leaders wrote the Constitution of the United States of American in 1787. The Constitution is the government document that said that the new government was a democracy, a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people .” George Washington became the first president, and John Adams was his vice-president.