This presentation very briefly describes how people first migrated throughout the Americas and then discusses how the first U.S. land claims.

1. The United States of
America
Land and Expansion
Part I
People Arrive and
America is Born

2. America’s First Humans
• Exactly
when the
first humans
migrated
from Asia to
the
Americas is
still hotly
debated
today

3. America’s First Humans
• Traditionally, Native Americans are
believed to have descended from
northeast Asia, arriving over a land
bridge between Siberia and Alaska
some 12,000 to 30,000 years ago and/or
by boat across the Pacific Ocean. Then,
migrating across North and South
America.

4. First Known Europeans
• Vikings from Northwestern Europe
settled in Greenland and parts of
Canada around 1000 A.D.

5. First Known Europeans
• Settlements lasted more than 300 years
• The Norse Vikings’ settlements didn’t
last

6. A New Age
• Europe’s desire to cut out the cost of
the Silk Road to obtain the riches of
the East sent them sailing into the
unknown…

7. A New Age
• Spain sent an Italian named
Christopher Columbus west across
the Atlantic to find a water route to
Asia

8. A New Age
• He never knew it but Columbus didn’t
reach Asia
Columbus accidentally landed on the
shores of undocumented land…

9. A New Age
…and Europe would dominate the world
for nearly the next 500 years

10. It was the year 1492
Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of
wonder, emerged from their villages onto the
island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look
at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his
sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking
oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought
them food, water, gifts. Zinn 1

12. He (Columbus) later wrote of this in his log:
They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton
and spears and many other things, which they
exchanged for the glass beads and hawks'
bells. They willingly traded everything they
owned... .

13. They were well-built, with good
bodies and handsome features....

14. They do not bear arms, and do not
know them, for I showed them a
sword, they took it by the edge and
cut themselves out of ignorance.

15. They have no iron. Their spears are made
of cane... .
They would make fine
servants....

16. Zinn 1

17. Spanish in the Americas
• Columbus and the
Spanish set the
precedent of slavery,
thievery, slaughter,
and forced
indoctrination in this
“newly discovered”
land that would
become known as
America

18. Europeans in the Americas
• "..new and more deadly forms of
smallpox and bubonic plague had
arisen in Europe.. Passed on to
those the Europeans met, these
diseases helped Europe conquer
the Americas and, later, the
islands of the Pacific"
(Loewen and Schuster44).

19. Europeans in the Americas
• The Spanish got a
big head start on
the European
competition but
the French, Dutch,
Portuguese,
Russians, and
British weren’t too
far behind.

20. The First English Land Seizer
• England’s first permanent settlement
was Jamestown, Virginia in the year 1607

21. The First English Land Seizer
• Next, the Pilgrims settled Plymouth,
Massachusetts in 1620
• Puritans, seeking to practice their strict
religious beliefs also settled
Massachusetts

22. English Land Claims on the
Eve of Revolution

23. A New Nation is Born
• With the Treaty of
Paris of 1783 a
new nation was
born
• And it was one big
baby of a nation

24. The Earliest Land Claims of
the United States of America
• claims included land east from
the banks of the mighty
Mississippi to…

25. The Earliest Land Claims of
the United States of America
…the vast shoreline of the Atlantic
Ocean

26. Earliest Land Claims of
the United States of America
• When the new nation was in its
infant stages it included
– 13 states, loosely united
– The Northwest Territory
– Controversies and disputes over land
in the northeast, northwest and the
south

27. Earliest Land Claims of
the United States of America
• The Northwest
Territory
included
thousands of
natives in dozens
of tribes who were
determined to
resist the
devastation of
their people

29. The United States Grows
• The young nation wouldn’t take long
to have a growth spurt
• In 1803 something big
happens; something major
that sets the nation looking
further and further west
toward the setting sun…

30. Opportunity Knocks on a
Young Nation’s Door…
and Opportunity’s name
is Napoleon Bonaparte
• To Be Continued…