Settling and Populating the Americas

1. Native societies and the Columbian Exchange

In plain words: millions of people already lived in the Americas, and contact with Europe changed both sides of the ocean.

Millions of people lived in the Americas before 1492. They lived in hundreds of nations with different languages and ways of life:

• The Aztec Empire ruled central Mexico from its capital, Tenochtitlan.
• The Inca built roads and cities across the Andes Mountains.
• In North America, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy united several nations under a shared council.
• The Pueblo peoples farmed in the Southwest.
• The Mississippian city of Cahokia once held thousands of people.

Columbus sailed in 1492. After that, the Columbian Exchange began. It was a two-way swap of plants, animals, people, and germs. Think of the food on your plate: tomatoes in Italian sauce and potatoes in Irish stew both came from the Americas.

Look at the figure: the exchange ran in both directions.

Effects:

• American crops helped Europe's population grow.
• Horses transformed life on the Great Plains.
• But European diseases caused the greatest population collapse in recorded history. Native people had no immunity — natural protection — against them. Many Native communities lost half or more of their people.

Example: a GED graph might show a Native population falling steeply after 1520. The expected explanation is epidemic disease, not warfare alone.

2. Three empires, three approaches

In plain words: Spain wanted gold and converts, France wanted furs, and England wanted land for farms.

Spanish conquistadors — soldier-explorers — conquered huge empires. Hernán Cortés defeated the Aztecs (1519–1521). Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca (1530s). The French built a trading network rather than large farm colonies. The English sent the most settlers. Those settlers wanted land. That created constant conflict with Native nations.

The timeline puts these events in order:

Example: A passage describes a colony with few settlers who traded furs with Native partners. It is most likely describing New France.

3. The 13 colonies and slavery

In plain words: the English colonies grew in three regions, and the South came to depend on enslaved labor.

Jamestown, Virginia (1607) was the first permanent English colony. It survived by growing tobacco, a cash crop — a crop grown to sell, not to eat.

Two key firsts came in 1619:

• Virginia's House of Burgesses became the first elected assembly in English America.
• The first recorded Africans arrived in the colony.

In 1620, the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact. They agreed to make and obey their own laws. The colonies formed three regions:

Georgia (1732) was the last of the 13. Over time, Southern planters replaced indentured servants with enslaved Africans. Colonial laws made slavery a permanent status that passed from parent to child.

The triangular trade linked Europe, Africa and the Americas. Through it, about 12.5 million Africans were forced onto ships bound for the Americas. Roughly 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage, the deadly ocean crossing. About 400,000 were brought directly to mainland North America. Most went to the Caribbean and Brazil. A federal ban on importing enslaved people took effect in 1808. But slavery inside the country kept growing until the Civil War.

Look at the figure: follow the three legs of the triangle.

4. Westward expansion and Manifest Destiny

In plain words: the United States spread west across the continent, and Native nations and Mexico paid a heavy price.

The young United States grew quickly:

• 1803 Louisiana Purchase — bought from France; doubled the nation's size.
• 1830 Indian Removal Act — forced Southeastern nations west. The Cherokee's Trail of Tears (1838–1839) killed thousands.
• 1845 Texas annexed; editor John L. O'Sullivan named the idea of Manifest Destiny.
• 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain; 1848 Mexican Cession after the U.S.–Mexican War (California and the Southwest).
• 1849 California Gold Rush; 1862 Homestead Act (160 acres to settlers who farmed the land for five years); 1869 transcontinental railroad completed.

Supporters of Manifest Destiny believed expansion spread liberty and was God's plan. Critics, then and now, point to the costs:

• war with Mexico;
• the forced removal of Native nations;
• the destruction of the buffalo herds that Plains nations depended on.

Expansion also reopened a hard question: would slavery spread west?

Example: A GED question might give you this line from the Homestead Act (1862)—"any person who is the head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of twenty-one years … shall … be entitled to enter one quarter section … of unappropriated public lands." It might ask whom the law encouraged to move west. The answer: ordinary farm families.

5. Waves of immigration

In plain words: immigrants came in waves, pushed by hard times at home and pulled by jobs and freedom here — but some laws tried to keep them out.

• 1840s–1850s ("old" immigration): Irish (Potato Famine, 1845–1849) and Germans. Many Irish settled in Eastern cities. Many Germans farmed in the Midwest.
• 1850s–1880s: Chinese workers came to California for the Gold Rush. They helped build the transcontinental railroad. The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) suspended the entry of Chinese laborers. It was first for 10 years, and later made permanent until 1943. It was the first major U.S. law to bar a group by nationality.
• 1880s–1920s ("new" immigration): Italians, Poles, Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe, and others. Ellis Island (1892) processed millions. Immigrants filled factory jobs and crowded city neighborhoods. Some faced nativism — hostility toward newcomers.
• 1924 Immigration Act: quotas based on national origin sharply cut immigration from southern and eastern Europe. The law also banned most immigration from Asia.

The timeline shows how the waves and the laws overlap:

In 1883, Emma Lazarus wrote "The New Colossus," a poem later placed on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." It expressed the welcoming side of the story. Exclusion laws expressed the other side.

Push and pull factors explain most of these movements:

• Push (reasons to leave home): famine, poverty, persecution.
• Pull (reasons to come here): jobs, land, freedom.