ShmoopTube

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[Coop and Dino singing]

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America contains lots of different people from lots of different places. [The statue of liberty]

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But they didn't all arrive in America at the exact same time on some big party boat, as

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fun as that would have been. [People dancing on a party boat]

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So how did people get to America?

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Well, the first arrivals showed up somewhere between 16,500 and 13,000 years ago, across

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a land bridge that connected Russia and Alaska.

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At the time, people hunted huge, elephant-like beasts called mastodons, and one day, they [Caveman hunting a mastodon]

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ended up chasing them across the land bridge, right into present day North America.

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In the Americas, these hunters found clean water and lots of great food, so they decided [Hunter finds bottles of water and deer holding a pizza]

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to stick around, becoming the ancestors of the First People.

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Over thousands of years, they divided into many different groups of Native Americans,

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and spread all over the continent.

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And for the most part, everything was super calm and lovely! [Tribe eating pizza]

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But then, a big, big change came in the 1500s, when Spanish and French explorers showed up.

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These European explorers found lots of natural resources in what they called the New World… [European explorers find a pile of gold]

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…y'know, despite the fact that it wasn't very new at all.

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That'd be like going to your friend's house, grabbing his favorite pair of shoes, and calling

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them your new shoes. [Woman picks up pair of shoes]

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Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?

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But the Europeans didn't care too much about sense, or the locals, and in the 1600s, they

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started coming over in huge numbers.

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Different Europeans came for different reasons.

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Some groups, like the Pilgrims, came to escape religious persecution. [Pilgrims walk into church]

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Others came with the hope of building a better life.

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Because if you were poor in seventeenth century Europe…

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…even a big field full of rocks seemed like a step up. [Man in a field of rocks]

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However, not everyone came by choice.

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About twelve million Africans were brought to America in chains…

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…and it took over two hundred years for slavery to be outlawed in the United States. [Lincoln rocking in a chair]

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By the 1800s, most free immigrants came from northern and western parts of Europe…

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…and many came from Asia, too.

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Hey, if you've got two shores, might as well use 'em both.

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After the Civil War, immigration slowed down a bit,

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and around the turn of the century,

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many people were coming from central, southern, and eastern parts of Europe. [Europe highlighted on a map]

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It was this wave of immigration that was responsible for

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all the Little Italys that helped spawn American pizza, so depending on your views of pizza,

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this might be the most delicious wave of immigration. [Gondolier riding in a gondola]

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Immigration also slowed with the World Wars, but after WWII the U.S. government started

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making special exceptions to admit refugees from war-torn Europe and the Soviet Union. [Man jumps over a tall wall]

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Since 1965, the government has changed immigration policies to encourage citizens to sponsor

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relatives…

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…and nowadays, most new immigrants come from Asia and Latin America. [Immigrants flying on a plane]

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They might take planes rather than land bridges, but migration to America is still going strong.

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Mastodon hunting, however, is totally over. [Man running after a mastodon]

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