Who colonised United States of America?
Technically (in the sense that bacteria colonise a wound) anyone who was born or arrived there. Who truly cares? I once had an argument with a man in Mexico City who was telling me he hated Christopher Columbus. I asked him, if Columbus had not come to America, what difference would it have made. He had to admit that it would have been someone else, probably someone very similar. This man was clearly of some Spanish descent, yet he prefered to be angry rather than ponder on his links with the arrival of Spaniards. We go on about this as though it affects us. The only people it truly affects are the so-called Native Americans who make a big deal and a lot of money and power from the idea that they were the first arrivals on the continent. Hey didn’t they kill off most of the animals too?
Spain, France, Netherlands, Russia and even Sweden colonized America. Spain held Florida, California, Texas, New Mexico and other portions of the southwestern United States. France held Louisiana and the land bordering the Mississippi river, collectively known as the “Louisiana Purchase” which Thomas Jefferson, as president, purchased from Napoleon. The Netherlands held New York and explored the Hudson River. Russia originally held Alaska. Sweden also colonized a particular area, however, I forget which. These were the Europeans who arrived after Columbus. Anthropologists believe that there were pre-Colombian colonists from Europe, perhaps Irish and Viking sailors. There were also some settlers from the South Pacific, Asia (across the land bridge over the Bering Strait). Traces of several different waves of pre-Colombian colonists have been found and not all of them have been assigned to places of origin by anthropologists.
I take it you meant the geographical area that is now the United States of America. Firstly, the “native Indians” appear to have entered North America from what is now Russia perhaps ten thousand years and to have progressively migrated South. Archaeological evidence shows that the Vikings reached America, mainly Newfoundland but also the North East of what is now the USA, in the first millenium AD. The Basques fished for Cod which they brought back to Europe, to the Basque country that they would not thank you for calling Northern Spain, in mediaeval times. They brought it back salted, and it is thought likely they landed in America (again, probably Newfoundland) for this purpose. The suggestion is that they kept this secret for commerical reasons. The Chinese may have landed on the Western coast of America during the early fifteenth century. After the “discovery” of America by the Europeans, various nations set up small colonies. These included the Spanish, in California and later in
