Spanish, Dutch, and French Colonization

Spanish explorers were the first Europeans with Christopher Columbus' second expedition, which reached Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493; others reached Florida in 1513.[8] Quickly Spanish expeditions reached the Appalachian Mountains, the Mississippi River, the Grand Canyon[9] and the Great Plains. In 1540, Hernando de Soto undertook an extensive exploration of Southeast. Also in 1540 Francisco Vásquez de Coronado explored from Arizona to central Kansas.[10] The Spanish sent some settlers, mostly to New Mexico. Small Spanish settlements that eventually grew to become important cities include San Antonio, Texas, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Tucson, Arizona, Los Angeles, California, and San Francisco, California. [11]

European territorial claims in North America, c. 1750

France

Great Britain

Spain

New Netherland was the 17th-century Dutch colony centered on present-day New York City and the Hudson River Valley, where they traded furs with the Native Americans to the north and were a barrier to Yankee expansion from New England. The Dutch were Calvinists who built the Reformed Church in America, but they were tolerant of other religions and cultures. The colony was taken over by Britain in 1664. It left an enduring legacy on American cultural and political life, including a secular broadmindedness and mercantile pragmatism in the city, and a rural traditionalism in the countryside typified by the story of Rip Van Winkle. Notable Americans of Dutch descent include Martin Van Buren, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Frelinghuysens.[12]

New France was the area colonized by France from 1534 to 1763. There were few permanent settlers outside Quebec and Acadia, but the French had far-reaching trading relationships with Native Americans throughout the Great Lakes and Midwest. French villages along the Mississippi and Illinois rivers were based in farming communities that served as a granary for Gulf Coast settlements. The French...