5 CHAPTER ONE EUROPEANS COME TO AMERICA In 1492 Italian explorer Christopher Columbus thought he had discovered a new world He had sailed from Spain across the Atlantic Ocean He had spent the last five weeks at sea His crew grew restless afraid that they would never make landfall and return home again But then the crew started to see birds flying and vegetation floating in the water These were signs that land was nearby Columbus’s Columbus’s first voyage across the Atlantic consisted of three ships the Niña the Pinta and the Santa María
Mystery at Roanoke The first would-be English colonists landed on the coast of North Carolina in 1584 The English tried to settle on Roanoke Island But tensions with the local Native Americans and lack of supplies forced the settlers to leave The English tried to settle Roanoke again in 1587 The second expedition to Roanoke Island met with a mysterious end When a ship bringing provisions returned to the colony in 1590 the settlement was deserted Some historians think hostile Native Americans wiped out the group Others think the group left to live among the Native Americans But to this day no one knows for sure what happened to the Lost Colony 6 ships sighted land on October 12 Columbus had hoped to find a faster route to India and China He didn’t find it Instead he landed in modern-day Haiti in the Caribbean Sea The world he found was new only to Europeans Native peoples had inhabited the land for centuries They had their own beliefs and customs that were unfamiliar to the Europeans These differences and the European desire for
land would eventually lead to conflicts and in some cases war Columbus’s arrival in 1492 laid the groundwork for the period known as Colonial America It was a time of great change European powers including England Spain and France established colonies in what would one day become the United States of America European colonists pushed many Native Americans off their land More Native Americans died from violence and disease Settlers continued to pour across the Atlantic Crossing the Atlantic The trip across the Atlantic Ocean took between one and six months depending on weather and the sailing experience of the crew Ships sometimes traveled just five miles 8 km in a day There were no private cabins for the colonists They slept on the floor Dinner was salted beef and a dry biscuit and those might be infested with bugs Drinking water got contaminated It was too dangerous to have a fire on the ship for 7
