People have come to America from many countries. Some came in search of work, others for political or religious reasons. The first settlement in North America was made by Spaniards. They came to

People have come to America from many countries. Some came in search of work, others for political or religious reasons. The first settlement in North America was made by Spaniards. They came to Florida in the late sixteenth century.

The first British colony was in Virginia. It started in 1607 and after a little time it became a successful agricultural community. Some people who wanted to come to America fell into debt to those people who paid for their passage. So on arriving in America they had to work for those people for several years. They were almost like slaves until they had paid for their passage. The history of those years knows terrible tragedies of people who came to this land in search of freedom and found themselves in a worse position than ever before.

By 1790 about four million colonists lived in the United States. Half were of English origin, and so the English language and British institutions predominate in the United States today.

Since the foundation of the first colonies in North America the population has been moving westward. In the early days, after explorers and traders had shown the way, settlers came slowly to claim the land and build new homes. The most important migrations were the gold rush and the land rush.

In 1848 gold was discovered in California. By that time the Spanish had explored the region and had given it its name which means “heat of the ovens”. They had established missions along the Western coast, but they had not built cities, and few Americans had settled there. In the after the discovery of gold, however, men rushed across the prairies and crossed the mountains on horseback and with ox-teams. They went to California to make their fortunes there. Some of those found their fortunes, but many lost theirs as soon as they had made them or they did not make them at all.

В 1848 году золото было обнаружено в Калифорнии. К тому времени испанцы изучили территорию (область) и дали ей имя, которое означает «жар в преисподней». Они организовали поселения вдоль западного побережья, но не строили городов, и мало кто из американцев поселился там. После обнаружения золота, люди устремились через прерии и пересекли горы верхом на лошадях и со стадом быков. Они отправились в Калифорнию, чтобы разбогатеть. Некоторые нашли свое счастье, но многие потеряли его, как только нашли или вовсе не смогли его найти.

The land rush was a westward movement of another kind. In 1899 Congress declared that land in the new territory of Oklahoma would be open for settlement at noon on April 22. By the time the hour arrived about a hundred thousand land-seekers were at the border. They had been waiting there since daybreak. At exactly twelve o’clock the rush began. Men galloped their horses at full speed across the open prairies to “stake out a claim” to the land they wanted by planting a stake or a flag on it. The government then gave them the land they had staked out. There was much fighting over the choice pieces of land. The settlement of the West is full of adventure and bravery, of sacrifice and greed, misery and misfortune.

Земельная лихорадка была движением другого вида. В 1899 Конгресс объявил, что земля на новой территории Оклахомы будет открыта для поселения в полдень 22-ого апреля. К назначенному времени на границе собралось около ста тысяч искателей земли. Они находились там еще с рассвета. Точно в 12 часов начался ажиотаж. Люди погнали галопом своих лошадей через открытые прерии, чтобы "застолбить претензии" на землю, в которой они нуждались, устанавливая на нее колышки или флажки. Затем правительство отдало им землю, которую они "застолбили". во время раздела участков земли было множество драк. Заселение Запада наполнено приключениями и храбростью, жертвами и алчностью, страданиями и несчастьями

There are pages in the history of the American Conquest that cannot be ignored. It is a story of the terrible suppression of the American Indians. The treachery, murder, robbery, cruelty and injustice which the American Indians had suffered at the hands of the American whites constitute one of the blackest records in the history of the relations between peoples.

Whole tribes were exterminated, promises and treaties broken. The Indians were forced to leave their native lands and to live on reservations. Little, alas, did they know that in return for their friendship, their land would be stolen and their way of life destroyed.

The Indians were accused of crimes committed against them. For example, history and folklore tell us that the American Indian scalped his victims. What we are not told is that the Indians were taught to take scalps by whites, who offered a bounty for every Indian scalp taken. Thus was the myth of the savage Indian written down in the most important historic American documents. So Americans owe a great debt to the American Indian.

The history of the American conquest is a two-century story of struggle and cruelty, courage and perseverance.

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