United States - Early Settlements

People Here Before The Pilgrims

As you can tell by my posts, I like to build arguments or theories through a series of posts.  I have just started one involving God's plan for the United States.  Other times I will provide information that too is building for a conclusion yet the posts are not intentionally designed to be sequential series.  They can be read in their entirety. 

This post is such a post - builds to a theory yet to come and will be material to support God's plan for the United States.  In this post, we will look at early settlements of the United States or people who inhabited the United States earlier than the Pilgrims.  The major reason to look at this part of history will be to ask ourselves, if there were other people to inhabit the United States, then how did 102 people start the United States and lay the ground work for what is undeniably the start of one of the greatest nations in history.

Greatest does not mean better.  Remember, being a Christian puts me in a category that I am not better than anyone nor is the United States a "better" place than anywhere on this earth.  I have traveled to over 30 countries in my life and I am one who will say - there are many great and beautiful places on this earth and places that only God's hand could have made.  One simply has to stand at the top of Mount Titlis in Switzerland and know his hand is mighty and yet very creative.  Maybe someday I will explain how I nearly died on Mount Titlis and two friends, one from South Africa and one from Australia saved my life - but that is a different story. 

No, I simply mean the resources and growth of this country has never been paralleled before in history and may never be equaled again.  There have been many conquering nations who built vast territories of the world, but not one that simply grew without conquering.  Many will argue that we had to conquer the native American Indian to reach our size.  I will give you that and one of those black eyes on a young country.

Let's take a quick walk through the settlement history of the United States.

I am a contributor and believer in WIKI - so many of the facts and stories will come from there along with other sources of information.  When a word is underlined and in blue - it is typically a link and you can follow it to read all of the details.

Paleo-Indians

Paleo-Indians (Paleoindians) or Paleoamericans is a classification term given to the first peoples who entered, and subsequently inhabited, the American continents during the final glacial episodes of the late Pleistocene period. The prefix "paleo" comes from the Greek adjective palaios (παλαιός), meaning "very old". The term Paleo-Indians applies specifically to the lithic period in the Western Hemisphere and is distinct from the term Paleolithic.

Evidence suggests big-animal hunters crossed the Bering Strait from Asia (Eurasia) into North America over a land and ice bridge (Beringia), that existed between 45,000 BCE–12,000 BCE (47,000 – 14,000 years ago). Small isolated groups of hunter-gatherers migrated alongside herds of large herbivores far into Alaska. From 16,500 BCE – 13,500 BCE (18,500 – 15,500 years ago), ice-free corridors developed along the Pacific coast and valleys of North America. This allowed animals, followed by humans, to migrate south into the interior. The people went on foot or used primitive boats along the coastline. The precise dates and routes of the peopling of the New World are subject to ongoing debate.

This is very interesting and worth a read.  I might be somewhat old and a little off my rocker, but I do not remember much of this in my history books.  It is fascinating to me that people who did not have cars, planes, and trains could move around the world as people did some 50,000 years ago - this country is technically only 400 years old - WOW!!!

Vikings - Norsemen

The Norse colonization of the Americas began as early as 10th century AD, when Norse sailors (usually referred to as Vikings) explored and settled areas of the North Atlantic, including the northeastern fringes of North America.

While the Norse colony in Greenland lasted for almost 500 years, the continental North American settlements were small and did not develop into permanent colonies. While voyages, for example to get timber, are likely to have occurred for some time, there is no evidence of enduring Norse settlements on mainland North America.

So here is a culture that was after timber and there must have been vast forests and timbers that existed in this country in 1,000 AD.  So they come, they looked, they stayed for a while, but they did not see anything worth staying for.

For some centuries after Christopher Columbus' voyages opened the Americas to large-scale colonization by Europeans, it was unclear whether these stories represented real voyages by the Norse to North America. The sagas were first taken seriously when in 1837 the Danish antiquarian Carl Christian Rafn pointed out the possibility for a Norse settlement in or voyages to North America. North America, by the name Winland, was first mentioned in written sources in a work by Adam of Bremen from approximately 1075. It was not until the 13th and 14th centuries that the most important works about North America and the early Norse activities there, namely the Sagas of Icelanders, were put into writing.

The question was definitively settled in the 1960s when a Norse settlement was excavated at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland by archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad and her husband, outdoorsman and author Helge Ingstad. The location of the various lands described in the sagas is still unclear however. Many historians identify Helluland with Baffin Island and Markland with Labrador. The location of Vinland is a thornier question. Most believe that the L'Anse aux Meadows settlement is the Vinland settlement described in the sagas; others argue that the sagas depict Vinland as being warmer than Newfoundland and that it therefore lay farther south.

European Settlement

European colonization of the Americas began in 1492, when a Spanish expedition headed by Christopher Columbus sailed west to find a new trade route to the Far East and inadvertently saw the American continent.  It wasn't until five centuries after the Norse settlements that the systematic conquest and colonization of America began with Columbus' discovery of Hispaniola. His first two expeditions (1492–93) further reached the Bahamas and various Caribbean islands, notably Puerto Rico and Cuba. In 1497, sailing from Bristol on behalf of England, John Cabot landed on the North American coast, though English colonization started a century later. In 1498, Columbus's third voyage reached the South American coast.

As the sponsor of the discovery voyage, Spain was the first European power to settle the Americas and colonize the largest areas, from North America and the Caribbean to the southern tip of South America. Spanish cities were founded as early as 1496 with Santo Domingo in today's Dominican Republic or San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1508 or Veracruz (Mexico) and Panama City in 1519. The city of St. Augustine, Florida founded by Spain in 1565 is the oldest continuously inhabited European city in present-day United States.

Other powers such as France also founded colonies in the Americas: in eastern North America, a number of Caribbean islands, and small coastal parts of South America. Portugal colonized Brazil. This was the beginning of a dramatic territorial expansion for several European countries. Europe had been preoccupied with internal wars, and was only slowly recovering from the loss of population caused by the bubonic plague; thus the rapid rate at which it grew in wealth and power was unforeseeable in the early 1400s.

Eventually, the entire Western Hemisphere came under the control of European governments, leading to profound changes to its landscape, population, and plant and animal life. In the 19th century alone over 50 million people left Europe for the Americas. The post-1492 era is known as the period of the Columbian Exchange, a dramatically widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations (including slaves), communicable disease, and ideas between the American and Afro-Eurasian hemispheres following Columbus's voyages to the Americas.

Notice my case is starting to build.  50 million people and great powers were already in the United States - yet 102 Christian Pilgrims developed the true foundation of the United States.  You still think it was accidental?

The Christopher Columbus story by itself is amazing and we will cover that in the next post.   There is some inside information to Christopher's days and what he might have been thinking.  Understanding some of his successes and failures is a major part of the argument as well.

For now, enough for both of us.  

May God open our eyes to his desires for the United States and us Christians.  May his "potential" plan be seen and heard by us all.  May each of you be blessed for even finding this blog and reading it.

Bob,