Immigration flowed toward America in a series of continuous waves. Every new migration gathered force, built momentum, reached a crest and then merged imperceptibly into the great tide of people already on our shores.
The name “America” was given to this continent by a German mapmaker, Martin Waldseemüller, to honor an Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci. The three ships which discovered America sailed under a Spanish flag, were commanded by an Italian sea captain, and included in their crews an Englishman, an Irishman, a Jew and a Negro.
Long before the colonies were settled, the Spanish and French explorers left evidences of their visits on great expanses of the American wilderness: the Spanish in a wide arc across the southern part of the country, from Florida, where they founded St. Augustine, our oldest city, in 1565, through Texas and New Mexico, to California; the French, up and down the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. Spanish influence can be seen today in our architecture, in the old missions, in family names and place names such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento; the French influence is apparent in many towns and cities still bearing the names of the original settlements, such as Cadillac, Cham-plain and La Salle.
The first wave of settlement came with the colonists at James-town in 1607 and at Plymouth in 1620. It was predominantly English in origin. The urge for greater economic opportunity, together with the desire for religious freedom, impelled these people to leave their homes. Of all the groups that have come to America, these settlers had the most difficult physical environment to master, but the easiest social adjustment to make. They fought a rugged land, and that was hard. But they built a society in their own image, and never knew the hostility of the old toward the new that succeeding groups would meet.
The English, the numerical majority of the first settlers, gave America the basic foundation of its institutions: our form of government, our common law, our language, our tradition of freedom of religious worship. Some of these concepts have been modified as the nation has grown, but the basic elements remain. Those who came later built upon these foundations. But America was settled by immigrants from many countries, with diverse national ethnic and social backgrounds.
There were both indentured servants and profit-seeking aristocrats from England. There were farmers, both propertied and bankrupt, from Ireland. There were discharged soldiers, soldiers of fortune, scholars and intellectuals from Germany. The colonies welcomed all men, regardless of their origin or birth, so long as they could contribute to the building of the country. The Dutch settled Nieuw Amsterdam and explored the Hudson River. The Swedes came to Delaware. Polish, German and Italian craftsmen were eagerly solicited to join the struggling Virginia colonists in Jamestown. The Germans and Swiss opened up the back country in Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia and the Carolinas. French Huguenots took root in New England, New York, South Carolina and Georgia. The Scots and the Irish were in the vanguard that advanced the frontier beyond the Alleghenies. When Britain conquered Nieuw Amsterdam in 1664, it offered citizenship to immigrants of eighteen different nationalities.
At one time it seemed the continent might ultimately divide into three language sections: English, Spanish and French. But the English victories over the French and the purchase of territories held by the French and Spanish resulted in the creation of an indivisible country, with the same language, customs and government. Yet each ethnic strain left its own imprint on the new land.
Thus the very name of our country, The United States of America,” was borrowed from “The United States of the Netherlands.” Many “typical American” activities are Dutch in origin. The immigrants from Holland brought to this country ice-skating, bowling, many forms of boating and golf (which they called kolf); they gave us waffles, cookies and that staple of the American menu, the doughnut (originally kruller). To our folklore they contributed the figure of Santa Claus and his reindeer, and the many tales of the Hudson Valley. Examples of their architecture can still be seen on the banks of the Hudson today.
French colonial immigration had two main sources. The Protestant Huguenots came here in considerable numbers after persecution resumed as the result of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The Catholic “Acadians” came here after their exile from Nova Scotia in 1755 when that land fell under British rule.
The Huguenots settled in the larger trading towns of New England, later spreading down through Pennsylvania and Virginia, and in South Carolina. A Huguenot family presented Faneuil Hall, a shrine of American liberty, to the city of Boston. Many of the beautiful houses which make Charleston so picturesque today were built originally by Huguenots.
The Acadians, relatively few in numbers, scattered mostly along the Eastern seaboard. But a colony of them settled in Louisiana, along the bayous to the west and north of New Orleans. They were relatively isolated, and as they grew in number, they kept their language, their customs, their faith and folklore, even abiding by the Napoleonic Code rather than English law. Today, sometimes known as “Cajuns,” they provide one of the most distinctive ethnic elements on the American scene.
During and after the French Revolution of 1789, French musicians, dancing masters, tutors and wigmakers, once employed by the now deposed aristocrats, added a touch of grace to the homespun life of the new nation. They introduced the French art of cooking, as well as the cotillion, the waltz and the quadrille French-Spanish émigrés from the West Indies made New Orleans into a great cultural and social center. The first opera to be given in America was produced in that city. The only major American city built according to a systematic plan, Washington, D.C., was designed by the French Army engineer Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant.