❖ Around 10,000 years ago, another group of Asian people came to the northern part of North America, and they were the ancestors of the later Eskimos.
❖ The English king appointed many of the colonial governors, but they all had to rule in cooperation with an elected assembly. Voting was restricted to landowning white males.
❖ In 1492, Columbus persuaded the queen of Spain to finance his voyage to Asia, but he reached America at last, and he called the native people “Indians.”
Colonial Era
❖ The U.S. never had a feudal aristocracy. Land was plentiful and labor was scarce; every free man had an opportunity to achieve economic independence.
❖ One group of English Puritans crossed the Atlantic in the ship Mayflower and settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. A much larger Puritan colony was established in the Boston area in 1630.