文档介绍：An Outline of American History
Chapter One: Early America
1. The First Americans
The Bering Sea
Beringia; the Siberian coast
2. The First Europeans:
The first Europeans to arrive in North America -- at least the first for whom there is solid evidence -- were Norse, traveling west from Greenland , where Erik the Red
had founded a settlement around the year 985. In 1001 his son Leif is thought to have explored the northeast coast of what is now Canada and spent at least one winter there.
In 1497, just five years after Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean looking for a western route to Asia, a ian sailor named John Cabot arrived in Newfoundland on a
mission for the British king. Although fairly quickly forgotten, Cabot's journey was later to provide the basis for British claims to North America. It also opened the way to the rich fishing grounds off e's Banks, to which European fishermen, particularly the Portuguese, were soon making regular visits.
Columbus never saw the mainland United States, but the first explorations of the continental United States were launched from the Spanish possessions that he helped establish.
With the conquest of Mexico in 1522, the Spanish further solidified their position in the Western Hemisphere.
Among the most significant early Spanish explorations was that of Hernando De Soto, a veteran conquistador who had panied Francisco Pizzaro during the conquest of Peru.
Leaving Havana in 1539, De Soto’s expedition landed in Florida and ranged through the south-eastern United States as far as the Mississippi River in search of riches.
Another Spaniard, Francisco Coronado, set out from Mexico. His travels took him to the Grand Canyon and Kansas. Coronado’s party left the peoples of the region a remarkable gift: enough horses escaped to transform life on the Great Plains.
While the Spanish were pushing up from the south, the northern portion of the present-day United States was slowly being revealed through the journeys of men