Part One The Early American Literature

Chapter 1 The Immigration to the Americas and the English Settlement

1.1 The Immigration to the Americas

It is generally agreed that the Americas were first peopled possibly 20,000 years ago by the immigrants from Asia,habitually called the Paleo-Indians,though the place(s) of their origin in Asia remains (remain) unclear.These early migrants,in search of new hunting grounds or of refuge from pursuing enemies, first arrived in North America from the North Asian Mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge (now the Bering Strait and possibly along the coast) which had formed between western Alaska and northeastern Siberia due to the lowering of sea level during the Last Glacial Maximum.They had expanded south of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and rapidly throughout the Americas by 14,000 years ago,and thus began the prehistory of the Americas.By Christopher Columbus’voyage in 1492,around ten to twenty million people the Italian explorer and navigator mistakenly called Indians had inhabited the Americas.The Paleo-Indians were the ancestors of today's American indigenous peoples(i.e.,the pre-Columbian peoples of the Americas and their descendants).They are generally believed to have been isolated from peoples of the Old World until the coming of Europeans in the 10th century from Norway and Columbus’voyages at the end of the 15th century.Hence the alternative terms of Precontact Americas,Pre-Colonial Americas or Prehistoric Americas, denoting the entire history (in the pre-Columbian era) of indigenous American cultures, which ranged from the simple to the complex,from the primitive tribal to the advanced or civilized like the Aztecs,the Incas,the Maya,the Mississippian,and others.These cultures were later either exterminated or diminished or extensively altered by the Europeans,largely within decades or centuries after Columbus’first landing.

In 1492,after continually lobbying at the Spanish court and two years of negotiations, Columbus finally got funded from the Spanish government and made his voyage westward from Europe.Believing he reached Asia like Marco Polo (1254-1324),Columbus,ironically,landed on one of the Bahama Islands in the Caribbean Sea and discovered the New World.This voyage,along with the following three between 1493 and 1503,marked the beginning of the European exploration and colonization of the Americas and the second migration to the New World.After Columbus’voyages,the Spanish,the Portuguese,the English,the French,the Swedish and the Dutch successively made colonial expeditions and explorations there,conquering and settling the discovered lands.The Spanish colonized most of the American Continent from today's Southwestern United States, Florida and the Caribbean to the southern tip of South America;the Portuguese occupied mostly today's Brazil; the English established colonies on the Eastern coast of today's United States and the North Pacific coast, and in most of Canada as well; the French settled in Quebec and other parts of Eastern Canada and an area in today's central United States,the Swedish along the Delaware,and the Dutch along the Hudson.This led to a transformation of the cultural and physical landscape in the Americas.Although all the early European settlers contributed to the forming of the American civilization, the colonies that became the first United States were for the most part sustained by English traditions,ruled by English laws,supported by English commerce,and named after English monarchs and English lands—Georgia,Carolina,Maryland,New York,New Hampshire and New England.

1.2 The English Settlement

In spite that they were actually the last to explore the Americas, the English knew from the Spanish and French experiences that,besides exploration,permanent settlement and colonization were equally necessary for creating a successful empire in the New World.The European context,characterized by such new and powerful social forces as the development of capitalism, the Renaissance and the Reformation, incited the desire of the English merchants and/or religious radicals to seek economic opportunities and/or religious bulwark outside Europe, and the New World thus became their first choice.On the one hand, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603) from 1558 to 1603, the English trading companies were beginning to carry on a worldwide trade and the English merchant-capitalists came to (and some of them settled in) America, which seemed to fit well into their plans—goods could be sold to the settlers in America whose natural resources could be sold back in England and Europe.On the other hand, since the Reformation, there appeared intense contradictions between different religious sects and,with the single-church idea disappearing,religious persecution heightened on the European Continent.At the turn of the 17th century,not just the English Protestants but also many English Catholics began migrating to North America.While the former aimed to seek a sanctuary where they could practice their new faith in peace,the latter wished for a new land where they could practice their old faith without having dissent Protestant voices to contend with.These Protestants and Catholics as well as the merchant-settlers—the English immigrants from a variety of social and religious groups, including adventurers, soldiers, farmers tradesmen, and even some aristocrats—gradually established the early thirteen colonies, which would become the United States of America, including the Jamestown Colony,the Plymouth Colony,the Massachusetts Bay Colony,and the Maryland Colony, to name just a few.

The Jamestown Colony,Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.It was founded in 1607 by the London Company,one of whose leaders was John Smith,with a charter from the English King James I (1566-1625,king 1603-1625).Harsh weather, lack of food and water, the surrounding swampy wilderness, and attacks from local Indians would have destroyed the colony had Smith not trained the first settlers to farm and work.Saved from early devastation,Jamestown survived and eventually flourished,with tobacco as its first profitable export, the production of which had a significant impact on the society and settlement patterns.The Plymouth Colony was founded just to the south of Massachusetts Bay by a group of English Puritans (later known as Pilgrims),who migrated to the New World on the Mayflower in 1620.The core group were part of a congregation led by William Bradford.Unlike many of the settlers of Jamestown who were entrepreneurs,a significant proportion of the citizens of Plymouth sailed far away from England to seek to preserve their cultural identity and attain religious independence.The social and legal systems of the colony therefore became closely tied to their religious beliefs,as well as to the English custom.Many of the people and events surrounding the Plymouth Colony have become part of the American folklore,including the North American tradition known as Thanksgiving and the monument known as Plymouth Rock.The first settlement of the colony was at New Plymouth,which served as the capital of the colony and developed as the modern town of Plymouth,Massachusetts.At its height,the Plymouth Colony occupied most of the southeastern portion of the modern state of Massachusetts.On the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay was the Massachusetts Bay Colony,the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as the Province of Massachusetts Bay.The colony was founded in 1628 by the owners of the Massachusetts Bay Company and was a great success with about 20,000 people migrating to New England in the 1630s.John Winthrop, one of the leading figures,led the first large wave of immigrants from England in 1630 and served as governor or deputy governor of the colony till his death in 1649.The population of the colony was strongly Puritan and its leadership exhibited intolerance to other religious views,including Anglican,Quaker and Baptist theologies.Unlike the aforementioned ones,the Maryland Colony was founded by the Catholics in 1632,led by the second Lord Baltimore (1605-1675),who wished to create a haven for English Catholics in the New World.Although Maryland was an early pioneer of religious toleration in the English colonies, religious strife among Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics and Quakers was common in the early years,and Puritan rebels briefly seized control of the province.Despite early competition with the colony of Virginia to its south and with the Dutch colony of New Netherlands to its north,the Province of Maryland developed along very similar lines to Virginia.Its early settlements and population centers tended to cluster around the rivers and other waterways that empty into the Chesapeake Bay and, like Virginia, Maryland quickly became centered on the cultivation of tobacco to develop its economy.

As thus,Mammon and God worked hand in hand to encourage English exploration, colonization and permanent settlement in the New World,and the establishment of the thirteen English colonies along the east coast began the main stream of what we recognize as the American national history.