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America’s first immigrants walked here. Some 15,000 or more years ago, they walked over land that used to connect Asia and North America. That land has since sunk under the ocean. For thousands of years, their children and their children’s children moved east and south. Eventually, there were people on two whole continents.
Then in 1492, Europeans “discovered” those continents and claimed them for their own. The European colonization of America started with a drop. A few settlers came over looking for a better life in a new land. Soon the drop became a trickle. Boatloads of immigrants arrived from Spain, France, and Britain. Eventually the trickle became a stream. Then the stream turned into a flood. In the 40 years between 1880 and 1920, around 25 million immigrants entered the United States. The flood of immigration slowed down for a while, but the river has never stopped. Every day, new immigrants show up, looking for a better life than they had in their native country.
▲ Immigrants were pushed to go to the United States in many ways. Family and friends who had already made the trip sent letters. Steamship companies looked for passengers in European cities. Sometimes they gave emigrants a place to stay while they waited for ships. Western states wanted new settlers. They sent people to eastern ports to convince immigrants to go west. Railroad companies also encouraged immigrants to go west.
▲ The Chinese were the first Asians to come to the U.S. in large numbers. About 300,000 came to the West Coast between 1850 and 1882. Many went to work in the goldfields. When the Gold Rush ended, they took jobs laying railroad tracks. Thanks to Irish, Norwegian, and Chinese immigrants, western railroads got built. But in 1882, racism led to the Chinese Exclusion Act. It prevented Chinese people from coming to the U.S. for 10 years.
Check It Out!
From which nation do more Americans claim ancestry than any other?
According to government figures, more Americans claim German ancestry than any other.
“At Ellis Island, I was born again.”
—Edward G. Robinson, actor
▲ Many of Virginia’s first English settlers were indentured servants. That means they had to work for their masters for many years before they could be free. After about 1660, England slowed down emigration to the colonies. Too many laborers were leaving. But the English did send some 50,000 criminals to the colonies. It was cheaper to kick them out than to pay for them in jails.
▲ Africans were first brought to North America in 1619. They were made to work in Virginia’s tobacco fields. When people saw that cotton grew well in hot, humid areas, the slave trade took off. Millions of Africans were brought to the U.S. against their will. The slave trade was banned in 1807. But illegal slave trading kept going. Eventually the Civil War ended slavery in the United States.
◀ Europeans left home for many reasons. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, better conditions made Europe’s population rise. That meant each family member inherited less land. Peasants who couldn’t make a living from small plots of land moved to cities. But cities didn’t have enough work for everyone. Emigration offered the hope of making money. When Ireland’s potato crop went bad in the late 1840s, more than a million people died. About that same number emigrated. In Russia in the 1800s, the government allowed violent attacks on Jews. So a huge number of Russian Jews left.
▲ The earliest European immigrants arrived on sailing ships. Those boats took from one to three months to cross the Atlantic. In the 1860s, steam power became common. The trip became just a 10-day event. Tickets got cheaper, and the risk of dangers from bad weather dropped. There was also a lower chance of getting diseases on the ships.
Illustrious Immigrant
Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922)
Born in Scotland, Bell emigrated with his parents to Canada. While teaching in Boston, he experimented with sound. That led to him inventing the telephone in 1876. All his life, Bell tried to make life better for the deaf and hearing-impaired. He made friends with Helen Keller when she was young. He supported her work for the rest of his life. In 1898, he became president of the National Geographic Society.
