A land of Immigrants I

The first settlers of the new continent were:

•  Spanish explorers who established in the south during the 16th century;

Christopher Columbus, 1492

Motives for exploration: wealth, religion and power

• French fur traders who travelled down from Canada to the Mississippi establishing trading posts.

• British settlers: 

They are the most numerous group. They left the country for religious reasons

The arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers aboard the Mayflower in 1620

Puritans : radical Protestants who wanted to purify the Church of England, or Anglican Church, of its remaining Catholic practices. The Puritans who came to America were of two types. Some remained within the Church of England, and others, called Separatists, formed their own churches, so as not to be corrupted by the established church.

But both groups were harassed by the government to the point where they felt they had to leave England. The Separatists, or Pilgrim fathers as they came to be called, left for the New World in 1620, on the Mayflower.