America

North America, Central America, South America

Men entered the American continents from Siberia over a temporary land link during the
final stages of glaciation. If it is accepted that East Africa was the place where our
ancestors first became differentiated from their cousins the great apes, and this view of
the family tree of man appears to be the correct one, then it makes the trek on foot from
there to Tierra del Fuego a journey of epic proportions. The Indian tribes living on the
bleak and rocky tip of South America are among the most primitive people on the planet.
They survive and in their folklore survive traces of the mythology that the first settlers
brought into this part of the world so many millennia ago. The Yahgan and Ona tribesmen
of Tierra del Fuego, fishermen and hunters respectively, have maintained an initiation
ceremony remarkable for its anti-feminine character. Although there is disagreement
about the origin of this curious attitude, a primitive parallel of the Fall, the ascendancy of
the male is unquestioned and reflected in the sex of the creator deity. Their text might
well be the words of Yahweh to Eve: ‘I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy
conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy
husband, and he shall rule over thee.’

The warrior was the central figure in the majority of pre-Columbian societies. The
Aztecs, the dominant people of Central America on the arrival of Hernando Cortés and
his Spanish soldiers in 1519, were excessively puritanical. It was evil for a warrior to
exhibit any interest in women, since a diversion of attention from the practice of arms
might have weakened the Aztec supremacy. Adultery was a shameful crime punishable
by death: yet to die in battle was the supreme purification. While other tribes did not
share the rigour of the Aztecs, the importance of the brave cannot be gainsaid. The Plains
Indians of North America, for example, insisted upon both fasting and sexual continence
before a band of warriors set out for either hunting or war.

In the seventeenth century, when the systematic settlement of North America from
Europe was beginning, there existed more than 2,000 independent Indian tribes. Many of
these people were sworn enemies, a state of affairs the European immigrants turned to
their own advantage, so that no effective resistance could be organized. The Plains
Indians took readily to horses and guns, but the diversity of the Indian peoples
themselves precluded a grand alliance. The scattered tribes had reached stages of
civilization ranging from simple hunters and fishermen to advanced town-dwellers with
elaborate social divisions. The humble Menomini on the shores of the Great Lakes, a
tribe which subsisted by gathering wild rice, had little in common with their maize-
growing Iroquois neighbours: yet both these peoples appear nomadic in comparison with
the Pueblo in Colorado, where the cultivation of maize sustained large hilltop settlements
and perhaps the most developed mythology in North America. Today the 300 surviving
Indian tribes live on reserves. The process of concentration and betrayal started in earnest
during the nineteenth century, when railways linked the coast of the Atlantic Ocean with
that of the Pacific and farmers destroyed the natural flora and fauna of the Great Plains.
The tribes which were not farmers have seen the greatest changes in their way of life: just
as the buffalo no longer roams beyond the pen of the zoological gardens, so the Indian
hunting party now tracks little more than the route to the reservation supermarket.

Before the Indian tribes of North America became the object of tourist curiosity that they
are today, they possessed a remarkable variety of mythologies. Most fascinating are the
beliefs of the peoples living along the northern coast of the Pacific Ocean. Renowned for
their predilection towards tribal rivalry, whether it took the form of kidnapping raids or
ceremonial display, the Haida, Snohomish, or Quinault tribes also surprised the first
Europeans with the range of their cosmological ideas. The mysterious Coyote falls into
perspective when it is remembered that these people believed that animals were the
original inhabitants of the land, and that they were exactly like men except in two
instances. They were much bigger and they could put on and take off their fur like
clothes. When human beings were created by the changer god Kwatee, he turned these
colossal animal people into the ancestors of present-day animals, birds, and fish. The
Quinaults say that he changed things in order to prepare the world for the men he was to
make from his own sweat and from dogs. Although potent deities such as Kwatee
approach the status of a supreme being, there is no tendency towards monotheism outside
the traditions of the Maidu in California, the Algonquins of the Middle West, and the
Selish in Canada. These tribes, however, would seem to be of great antiquity.

Even older civilizations existed in Central and South America. When for some unknown
reason the aggressive Olmecs abandoned their settlements on the Gulf of Mexico about
400 BC, this represented the end of an occupation lasting nearly 1,000 years. Meanwhile
the Mayas of the great peninsula, the Yucatan, had started to build with stone, under the
influence of the Olmecs, and soon to arise were their extensive ceremonial centres: the
complexes of courtyards, pyramids, and temples, all richly decorated. Somewhat remote
from the centre of cultural development, which was situated on the high Mexican plateau,
the Mayas evolved a distinct civilization of their own, though in the tenth century either
refugees or adventurers from the Toltec city of Tollan appear to have founded a new state
in north-west Yucatan. The fall of the Toltecs about 980 was due to a dynastic dispute and
the insurrection of subject tribes. The Toltec nobles seem to have retreated from Tollan
with their last ruler, Quetzalcoatl, and taken ship to Mayan territory, where they built the
city of Chichen Itza. After its overthrow in the thirteenth century, and a period of
complicated political strife, the Toltec and Maya nobility combined to set up another
capital at Mayapan, the first walled city in that area. In terms of religion, the coming of
the Toltecs meant the introduction of new deities, beliefs, and ceremonies, especially the
large-scale practice of human sacrifice. Antonio de Herrera, the official historian of the
Indies for the King of Spain, wrote in 1598 that ‘the number of people sacrificed was
great. And this custom was brought into Yucatan by the Mexicans.’

Of the Olmec religion we know very little. There is no firm evidence to suggest that
human sacrifices were made to the earth goddess, even in her terrifying alligator form,
nor are the jaguar masks of her consort proof of ritual killing. Sacrifices may have taken
place in this ancient, and almost lost, civilization but, on surviving data, the first people
to institutionalize the practice were the Toltecs, who dominated the high plateau from
about 750 till 980. Yet the Toltecs seem lukewarm in comparison with the fierce Aztecs,
when the annals tell us proudly of the tens of thousands of victims whose hearts were torn
out on solemn occasions. In Tenochtitlan, the amazing island-city the Aztecs created on
floating rafts in Lake Texococo, human sacrifice formed an integral part of daily life. The
origin of the builders of Tenochtitlan, ‘cactus rock’, which had a million inhabitants,
remains obscure, but their impact upon Central America in the century of their
ascendancy was profound. Wars against rival cities had the objective of providing
captives for sacrifice: they were known as ‘flower wars’. The ‘blossoming heart’ and
blood of the victim had to be offered to the gods, in particular the sun god Tonatiuh, who
needed all the strength that men could give him. According to the Aztecs, man was
responsible for the maintenance of the cosmos—by feeding the gods with blood and by
observing a strictness bordering on madness in social behaviour. A primitive people when
they arrived on the Mexican plateau, the Aztecs exaggerated the brutality in the
indigenous religion they inherited and submerged the spiritual striving that so patently
disdained the flesh. Nevertheless, a deep sense of unfitness pervaded Tenochtitlan, whose
inhabitants inflicted upon themselves severe punishments: bodies were lacerated with
cactus thorns, ears and tongues pierced with osiers, and hearts cut out of not unwilling
victims. Compulsion and fear sustained the despotic Montezuma, the Aztec Emperor, on
the landing of Hernando Cortés, but so did the fanatical belief of his own people. The
swift collapse of the empire, and the virtual annihilation of the Aztecs, were connected as
much with fatalism as fire-arms. Cortes was divine Quetzalcoatl returned to claim his
own.

At the same time as the Aztecs commenced the series of campaigns that laid the
foundation of their power, high in the Andes the Incas were putting together a state which
in area was comparable with the Roman Empire. About 1438 the city of Cuzco was
nearly sacked by a rival people: desperate street fighting ensued, and the man of the hour,
Pachacuti, a young prince, assumed the Inca crown. He set out to conquer and annex not
only the territory of the defeated attackers, but the whole of the rest of the Pacific coast.
Under his vigorous direction, and that of his son Topa Inca Yupanqui, who ruled from
1471 to 1493, Cuzco was transformed into the capital city of a far-flung empire. In spite
of their ignorance of the wheel and an elementary script the Incas succeeded in the
administration of numerous provinces and peoples. The nobility was expanded by the
incorporation of noble families belonging to conquered tribes so as to provide additional
officials and military officers, while the Inca army received into its ranks defeated
warriors and fresh recruits. A policy of population removal did much to diminish old
antagonisms and foster new loyalties.

The origin of the Inca dynasty is wreathed uncertainly in the mists of legend. At the end
of the eleventh century it is said that three men and a woman came into the mountains,
climbing up the steep slope from the jungles of the Amazon. Arriving in the hills above
Cuzco, this small group camped and placed on the ground a wedge of gold, which they
claimed had been entrusted to them by their father, the sun. They had been told that
where the wedge sank into the ground was the place for them to live. This happened in
Cuzco itself. Two of the brothers then transformed themselves into sacred rocks and for
several generations of brother-sister marriage, the Inca family ruled as a petty dynasty.
The assault on the city occurred when the other tribes living in the vicinity appreciated
the growing pretensions of the Incas. The consequence of the struggle was establishment
of Inca authority throughout the Andes mountains.

Archaeology has made it apparent that the Incas were late comers in the history of pre-
Columbian Peru. For two millennia before their seizure of Cuzco, Indian peoples had
been farming, weaving cloth, worshipping in impressive temples, making elaborate
pottery, and working metal. The Mochica culture, whose main sites are situated near the
Ecuadorian border, flourished between 100 BC and AD 800. It has bequeathed a startling
array of artefacts to museums, but the absence of a native record of historical events
leaves the mythologer with scant information concerning beliefs. For this reason the pre-
Columbian civilizations of South America are inevitably represented by Inca religion.

Our knowledge of the Incas derives from Spanish observers of Francisco Pizarro's
conquest, which was complete in 1525. Only remnants of the Inca army held out for
another fifty years on the Atlantic slope of the Andes, where the tropical forest aided
guerrilla warfare. Their last refuge, the abandoned city of Machu Picchu, was not
discovered till 1911. What stands out in the account of Inca religion is the divine mission
of the ruler. Both his person and his authority were manifestations of the beneficent sun
god Inti. From pity of men's poverty and backwardness Inti had sent down to earth his
children, the Incas.

Just as the dense forest of the Amazon basin provided natural cover for the Inca refugees
in the sixteenth century, so it has offered protection to the indigenous Indian tribes till the
last few decades of our time. The movement into the interior of Brazil is a recent event.
Little was known about the Amazonian peoples before the 1940s, and these tribesmen
knew even less about modern civilization. The arrival of prospectors, settlers, and
anthropologists has changed much, but even today there remain bands that have only the
slightest contact with outsiders. Brazil's drive westwards encountered a strange and
significant set-back in the conversion of the Villas Boas brothers to the Indian way of life.
These three adventurers were overwhelmed by the beauty and cultural richness of the
tribes of the Xingu River. They stayed in the jungle, lived with the Indians, and did their
utmost to protect them from speculators, politicians, missionaries, and disease. They
argued that until ‘civilized’ people created conditions among themselves for the
integration of the Indians, any attempt to integrate them would be the same as introducing
a plan for their destruction. Whether or not the work of the Villas Boas brothers will
appear to future generations as a useless gesture remains to be seen, but from the point of
view of the mythologer it is exemplary. This respect for the values and ideas of the Indian
has stimulated at least the collection of folklore and myth.

In 1540 the voyage of Francisco Orellana up the ‘river of the Amazons’ had confirmed
earlier rumours of an island inhabited by rich and warlike women, who permitted
occasional visits from men, but endured no permanent residence of males among them.
The Spaniards found themselves under attack from groups in which woman acted as
leaders and took the foremost place in the fight. These Amazons were ‘very tall, robust,
fair, with long hair twisted over their heads, skins round their loins, and bows and arrows
in their hands’. Although the skirmish was enough to give the longest river in the world
its name, there can be little doubt that the myth had no firmer basis than the practice of
certain tribes whose women bore arms. Even in the Caribbean Sea the landing parties
from the ships of Christopher Columbus had met female islanders who fought bravely
alongside their husbands and brothers.

Today the islands of the Caribbean are populated by peoples of European and African
descent. The massive transportation of black slaves to the New World in order to work on
plantations and the reckless use of the native Indians by the conquistadores in their
pursuit of riches has brought about this great change. The original Caribs appear to have
possessed traditions like those of the Arawak tribes of South America—their supreme
being was a remote sky god who ‘lived in the sun’—but for the mythologer these poorly
recorded legends of the past are less significant than the living cults of the ex-slaves, the
best known of which is the Voodoo of Haiti. Zombi, a soulless body, has passed into the
English language, yet till the last few decades it was the custom to dismiss Haitian beliefs
as a species of degenerate magic, especially as its deities appear in living form by taking
possession of devotees. Thanks to the labours of one or two scholars we can now
appreciate that Voodoo, primarily an African faith in origin, has absorbed diverse
elements without loss of its own inner consistency. Saints and symbols have been fused
with Voodoo mythology to such an extent that Christian missionaries are helpless. This
remarkable occurrence may have been due to the capture and transportation of hougans,
‘spirit masters’, the priests and adepts of West African religion. They would have
provided the continuity of doctrine that otherwise a mixture of displaced persons, thrown
into a new environment, must have forfeited.
Often used to refer solely to the United States of America, the term has far richer
connotations. The most positive of these centre upon liberation, purity, novelty, and
separation. A minority of early Spanish writers viewed orderly pre-Columban polities as
signs of the uniformity and wholeness of natural creation. However, displacement of
indigenous peoples, and the creation of independent republics across most of the
continent following wars of liberation between 1775 and 1830, made America
synonymous, in the nineteenth century, with the ideal of republican government within
open frontiers. For tens of millions of Europeans, chafing at urban industrialism and
autocratic rule, free migration and expanding American agriculture permitted some
realization of this ideal, most of all in Canada, the United States, and the southern states
of Latin America. But the ideal of liberation was always denied by widespread slavery
and coerced labour affecting many millions of Africans and native Americans, while that
of purity, wilderness, or naturalness also came under stress in the twentieth century as
urbanization and unprecedentedly energy-intensive and consumerist patterns of
industrialization took hold and frontiers closed. American claims to novelty and
separation from a corrupt Old World wore thin. Already, in 1893, Oscar Wilde could jibe
that ‘the youth of America is their oldest tradition’.

As the United States emerged as the dominant economic, military, and political power in
the world, the notion of America became associated with the aggressive promotion of the
interests of the United States through its economic and foreign policy. These policies
were justified as measures to promote freedom, peace, and democracy; but could also be
seen as a modern imperialism. The Vietnam War, the propping up of the Shah of Iran in
the 1970s, and the attempt to undermine the Sandinista government of Nicaragua
(amongst other examples) exposed the United States to charges of misplaced intervention
with bloody consequences. The advocacy of capitalism and free trade could also be seen
as self-serving; directed towards opening up markets for American corporations and
ensuring cheap supplies of raw materials. Anti-Americanism became a focus for groups
including anti-globalization protestors and those opposed to US policy in the Persian Gulf
and its support for Israel (see also West).
The thirteen colonies later formed the United States of America. All except Georgia,
founded in 1732, resulted from 17th-cent. crown grants, mainly to companies or
proprietors. Most were eventually taken under crown control, so that by 1750 they had
similar institutional and political systems. The original Indian inhabitants were gradually
dispossessed and marginalized by aggressive settlers.

In the south, Virginia (1607) became a royal province in 1624. Its neighbour, Maryland
(see baltimore), was taken under royal control, but reverted to proprietary rule in 1715.
Tobacco, a major export crop, shaped the development of both colonies. The demand for
labour was met by indentured servants from the British Isles, who worked for a term of
years in return for a free passage. After about 1680 African slaves gradually displaced
them. In South Carolina (1663) rice became the great export crop; here slavery was more
concentrated and harsher. South Carolina and North Carolina became royal colonies. In
Georgia, founded by humanitarians as a refuge for poor persons, attempts to ban slavery
and strong drink failed; it developed as a plantation-based society.

In the north, no staples dominated. Families rather than indentured servants went to
Massachusetts, and to Connecticut, which received a royal charter in 1662. In both, the
religious convictions of the early settlers helped shape social and political institutions.
Hostilities between congregationalists, baptists, and quakers played a major role in the
development of religious toleration in Rhode Island, settled from 1636. New Hampshire,
first settled by New England congregationalists, was chartered in 1679.

The middle colonies, founded after 1660, became the great receptacles of continuing
white migration. New York was granted to James, duke of York (later James II), in 1664.
From it he granted New Jersey to a number of proprietors. Both territories later came
under direct royal control. Pennsylvania's (see penn, William) early life was dominated
by members of the Society of Friends. Its southern neighbour, Delaware, was formed
from Pennsylvania's three lower counties. New York City and, especially, Philadelphia
became substantial urban centres.

In the 17th cent. the colonies were seen in Britain as receptacles for a surplus population,
but by the end of the century, the need for a large labour force at home was stressed.
Although immigration continued from mainland Britain, its major sources became
northern Ireland and protestant Germany. This led to increasing religious diversity as
Ulster presbyterians (‘Scotch-Irish’) and a variety of German baptists, Lutherans, and
Moravians arrived. Even so, natural increase more than migration fed population growth.
This was formidable, a distinguishing feature in the development of the colonies,
underpinning a burgeoning self-confidence.

British opinion was that the colonies were primarily of value to the development of a
profitable maritime commercial empire. Regulatory measures included various acts of
trade (‘Navigation Acts’) from 1651 onwards in the face of Dutch competition. Foreign-
built and/or -crewed ships were excluded from colonial trade and most exports and
imports were to be carried via English and (after 1707) Scottish ports. In 1696 the
foundation of the Board of Trade provided a focus for colonial administration and
attempts were made to tighten British control, especially during times of war.

These were not continued with any force under Sir Robert Walpole and the duke of
Newcastle, a period characterized as one of ‘salutary neglect’. Only renewed struggles
with Spain and France, and the rise of a group of imperially minded politicians and
colonial governors, created demands for stronger executive control. By this time colonial
political identities were almost fully formed. The original crown charters had conferred
large powers of self-government on the colonies, allowing them representative assemblies
with substantial legislative powers, chosen by wide electorates. These assemblies
assumed fiscal authority and control of local government, a process shaped by the
emergence of élite groups of successful families.

Warfare between France and England in North America in 1754 necessitated co-operation
between a mother country and colonies whose differences were masked by shared
ambitions for victory over a catholic power. British plans for colonial union in 1754
failed in the colonial assemblies. The course of the Seven Years War revealed the jealous
self-interest of the colonial assemblies towards each other and towards London.
Overwhelming advantages in terms of wealth and population enjoyed, for example, by
New York and New England over French Canada, together with the deployment of
British regular troops, failed to bring victory until 1759-60.

Success brought rejoicing for a God- ordained triumph of protestantism and liberty. The
reality was a huge increase in the British national debt, provoking fears that colonial
expansion, no longer checked by the French and their Indian allies, would precipate
expensive new conflicts with the frontier tribes, concerns fed by the Cherokee War (1759-
61) and by a major middle-colony Indian war in 1763. When British ministers introduced
new measures to raise larger revenues from America, colonial political awareness was
stimulated and intercolonial co-operation increased. Resistance and revolution followed.

In Latin America Buddhism has made little headway. In north America and Canada,
however, its impact has been great, particularly in recent decades, and all the major Asian
schools and traditions of Buddhism are now represented. The first Buddhist institution in
north America was a temple built in San Francisco in 1853 in order to serve the needs of
immigrant Chinese labourers. The spread of Buddhism over the next hundred years was
largely due to the arrival of immigrant groups from various parts of Asia, culminating in a
wave of refugees from Indo-China in the wake of the Vietnam War. Many Tibetan lamas
fled to north America following the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, and Tibetan
Buddhism currently enjoys a high profile. Apart from immigrants, many Westerners have
converted to Buddhism and influenced the pattern of its development. This group,
typically white and middle-class, favours democratic as opposed to hierarchical structures
for Buddhist groups and a greater role for women. It is also more concerned with social
and political issues. The number of Buddhists in the United States is currently estimated
at around 3-5 million. The situation overall in north America remains fluid as Buddhism
continues to adapt itself to Western customs.

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Columbia Encyclopedia: America
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[for Amerigo Vespucci], the lands of the Western Hemisphere—North America, Central
(or Middle) America, and South America. The world map published in 1507 by Martin
Waldseemüller is the first known cartographic use of the name. In English, America and
American are frequently used to refer only to the United States.
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Wikipedia: Americas
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia

World map showing the Americas

CIA political map of the Americas in an equal-area projection

The Americas are the lands of the Western hemisphere or New World, consisting of the
continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions.
The Americas cover 8.3% of the Earth's total surface area (28.4% of its land area) and
contain about 14% of the human population (about 900 million people). The Americas
may instead be referred to as America;[1][2] however, America may be ambiguous, as it
can refer either to the entire landmass or to the United

South America broke off from the west of the supercontinent Gondwanaland around 135
million years ago (Ma), forming its own continent.[3] Starting around 15 Ma, the collision
of the Caribbean Plate and the Pacific Plate resulted in a series of volcanoes along the
border that created a number of islands. The gaps in the archipelago of Central America
filled in with material eroded off North America and South America, plus new land
created by continued volcanism. By 3 Ma, the continents of North America and South
America were linked by the Isthmus of Panama, thereby forming the single landmass of
the Americas.[4]

Settlement
Archaeological finds establish the widespread presence of the Clovis culture in North
America and South America around 10,000 BCE.[5] Whether this is the first migration of
humans into North America and South America is disputed, with alternative theories
holding that humans arrived in North America and South America as early as around
40,000 BCE.

European colonization
of the Americas

History of the Americas

British colonization

Courland colonization

Danish colonization

Dutch colonization

French colonization

German colonization

Norse colonization

Portuguese colonization

Russian colonization

Scottish colonization

Spanish colonization

Swedish colonization

Decolonization

The Inuit migrated into the Arctic section of North America in another wave of
migration, arriving around 1000 CE.[6] Around the same time as the Inuit migrated into
North America, Viking settlers began arriving in Greenland in 982 and Vinland shortly
thereafter.[7] The Viking settlers quickly abandoned Vinland, and disappeared from
Greenland by 1500.[8]

Large-scale European colonization of the Americas began shortly after the voyages of
Christopher Columbus starting in 1492. The spread of new diseases brought by
Europeans and Africans killed most of the inhabitants of North America and South
America,[9][10] with a general population crash of Native Americans occurring in the mid-
sixteenth century, often well ahead of European contact.[11] Native peoples and European
colonizers came into widespread conflict, resulting in what David Stannard has called a
genocide of the indigenous populations.[12] Early European immigrants were often part of
state-sponsored attempts to found colonies in the Americas. Migration continued as
people moved to the Americas fleeing religious persecution or seeking economic
opportunities. Many individuals were forcibly transported to the Americas as slaves,
prisoners or indentured servants.

Naming

World Map of Waldseemüller which first named America (in the map over Paraguay).
Germany, 1507

The earliest known use of the name America for this particular landmass dates from April
25, 1507. It appears first on a small globe map with twelve time zones, and then a large
wall map created by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in Saint-Dié-des-
Vosges in France. Nearby Strassbourg was energized by the Renaissance Spirit of science
and innovation. Here, the Duke of Lorraine, purchased the latest invention of a printing
press and recruited a think tank of experts to render a new image of earth as a planet,
using the reported findings of European explorers. An accompanying book,
Cosmographiae Introductio, explains that the name was derived from the Latinized
version of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci's name, Americus Vespucius, in its feminine
form, America, as the other continents all have Latin feminine names.[13]

Vespucci's role in the naming issue, like his exploratory activity, is unclear. Some sources
say that he was unaware of the widespread use of his name to refer to the new landmass.
Waldseemüller may have been misled by the Soderini Letter, now thought to be a forgery,
which reports that the New World is populated by giants, cannibals, and sexually
insatiable females and implies it was discovered first by Vespucci.[14] Christopher
Columbus, who had first brought the region's existence to the attention of Renaissance
era voyagers, had died in 1506 (believing, to the end, that he had discovered and
colonized part of India[citation needed]) and could not protest Waldseemüller's decision.
Map of America by Jonghe, c. 1770.

A few alternative theories regarding the landmass's naming have been proposed, but none
of them have achieved any widespread acceptance.

One alternative, first advanced by Jules Marcou in 1875 and later recounted by novelist
Jan Carew, is that the name America derives from the district of Amerrique in
Nicaragua.[15] The gold-rich district of Amerrique was purportedly visited by both
Vespucci and Columbus, for whom the name became synonymous with gold. According
to Marcou, Vespucci later applied the name to the New World, and even changed the
spelling of his own name from Alberigo to Amerigo to reflect the importance of the
discovery.

Another theory, first proposed by a Bristol antiquary and naturalist, Alfred Hudd, in 1908
was that America is derived from Richard Amerike (Richard ap Meurig), a Welsh
merchant from Bristol, who is believed to have financed John Cabot's voyage of
discovery from England to Newfoundland in 1497 as found in some documents from
Westminster Abbey a few decades ago. Supposedly, Bristol fishermen had been visiting
the coast of North America for at least a century before Columbus' voyage and
Waldseemüller's maps are alleged to incorporate information from the early English
journeys to North America. The theory holds that a variant of Amerike's name appeared
on an early English map (of which no copies survive) and that this was the true
inspiration for Waldseemüller.

Demography

Population
Mexico City is the most populous city in the Americas

São Paulo is the most populous city in South America.

New York City is the third most populous city in the Americas

Buenos Aires, Argentina It is the fourth most populous city of the Americas.

Bogotá is the fifth most populous city of Americas.

The total population of the Americas is 858,000,000 people per the United Nations'
Population and Vital Statistics Report, and is divided as follows:

• North America: 2001 with 495 million and in 2002 with 501 million (includes
Central America and Hawaii)
• South America: 2001 with 352 million and in 2002 with 357 million

See also:

• UN population data by latest available Census: 2007

 • List of American countries by population

Ethnology

The population of the Americas is made up of the descendants of eight large ethnic
groups and their combinations.

• The Indigenous peoples of the Americas, being Amerindians, Inuit, and Aleuts.
• Those of European ancestry, mainly Spanish, British, Irish, Italian, Portuguese,
French, Polish, German, Dutch, and Danish people.
• Mestizos, those of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry.
• Those of Black African ancestry, mainly of West African descent.
• Mulattoes, people of mixed Black African and European ancestry.
• Zambos (Spanish) or Cafusos (Portuguese), those of mixed Black African and
Amerindian ancestry.
• Asians, that is, those of Eastern, South, and Southeast Asian ancestry.
• Those from the Middle East (Middle Easterners).
• Amerasian, those of mixed, usually European, and Asian ancestry.

The majority of the population live in Latin America, named for its dominant languages,
Spanish and Portuguese, both of which are descended from Latin. Latin America is
typically contrasted with Anglo-America, where English (a Germanic language) prevails;
namely, Canada (with the exception of francophone Canada: see Québec and Acadia) and
the United States, both in North America, have predominantly British roots.

Religion

The most prevalent faiths in the Americas are as follows:

• Christianity (North America: 85 percent; South America: 93 percent)[32]

o Roman Catholicism (practiced by 85 percent of Mexican population;
approximately 24 percent of the United States population[33] and more than
40 percent of all of Canadians)[34]
o Protestantism (practiced mostly in United States, where half of the
population are Protestant, and Canada, with slightly more than a quarter of
the population; there is a growing contingent of Evangelical and
Pentecostal movements in predominantly Catholic Latin America[35])
o Eastern Orthodoxy (found mostly in the United States and Canada—0.5
percent of the US citizenry; this Christian group is growing faster than
many other Christian groups in Canada and now represents roughly 3
percent of the population)
o Other Christians and non-denominational Christians (some 1,000 different
Christian denominations and sects practiced in the Americas)
• Atheism (mostly found in North America—atheists make up 16 percent of
Canadians, 12 percent of the U.S. population, and less than 5 percent of
Mexicans; 4 percent of South Americans are atheistic)
 • Judaism (practiced by 2 percent of North Americans—approximately 2.5 percent
of the U.S. population and 1.2 percent of Canadians[36]; 0.23 percent of Latin
Americans—Argentina has the largest Jewish communities in Latin America with
200,000 members[37])
• Islam (1.9 percent of Canadians (600,000 persons)[38], 0.6% percent of the U.S.
population (1,820,000 persons)[33], and 0.2% of Mexicans (<250,000 persons)[39].
Together, Islam constitutes approximately 0.5% of the North American
population. North American cities with high concentrations of Muslims include
Toronto, Philadelphia, Detroit, and New York City.; 0.3 percent of all Latin
Americans)

Other faiths include Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Bahá'í in small numbers, plus
some native animists.

Languages

Various languages are spoken in the Americas. Some are of European origin, others are
spoken by indigenous peoples or are the mixture of various idioms like the different
creoles.

The dominant language of Latin America is Spanish, though the largest nation in Latin
America, Brazil, speaks Portuguese. Small enclaves of French- and English-speaking
regions also exist in Latin America, notably in French Guiana and Nicaragua's Mosquito
Coast, respectively, and Haitian Creole, of French origin, is dominant in the nation of
Haiti. Native languages are more prominent in Latin America than in Anglo-America,
with Nahuatl, Quechua, Aymara and Guaraní as the most common. Various other native
languages are spoken with lesser frequency across both Anglo-America and Latin
America. Creole languages other than Haitian Creole are also spoken in parts of Latin
America.

The dominant language of Anglo-America, as the name suggests, is English. French is

also official in Canada, where it is the predominant language in Québec and an official
language in New Brunswick along with English. It is also an important language in the
U.S. state of Louisiana. Spanish has become widely spoken in parts of the United States
due to heavy immigration from Latin America. High levels of immigration in general
have brought great linguistic diversity to Anglo-America, with over 300 languages known
to be spoken in the United States alone, but most languages are spoken only in small
enclaves and by relatively small immigrant groups.

The nations of Guyana, Suriname, and Belize are generally considered not to fall into
either Anglo-America or Latin America due to lingual differences with Latin America and
geographic and cultural differences with Anglo-America; English is the primary language
of Guyana and Belize, and Dutch is the official and written language of Suriname.

• Spanish – spoken by approximately 320 million in many nations, regions, islands,

and communities throughout both continents.
• English – spoken by approximately 300 million people in the United States,
Canada, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas, Bermuda, Belize, Guyana,
the Falklands and many islands of the Caribbean.
• Portuguese – spoken by approximately 185 million in South America, mostly
Brazil[40]
• French – spoken by approximately 12 million in Canada (majority 7 million in
Québec—see also Québec French), and Acadian communities in New Brunswick
and Nova Scotia); the Caribbean (Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique); French Guiana;
the French islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon; and Acadiana (a Francophone
area in southern Louisiana, United States).
• Quechua – native language spoken by 10–13 million speakers in Ecuador, Peru,
Bolivia, northern Chile, and northwest Argentina.[41]
• Haitian Creole – creole language, based in French and various African languages,
spoken by 6 million in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora in Canada and the United
States.[42]
• Guaraní (avañe'ẽ) – native language spoken by approximately 6 million people in
Paraguay, and regions of Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil.
• Italian – spoken by approximately 4 million people, mostly New England / Mid-
Atlantic in the United States, southern Ontario and Quebec in Canada, Argentina,
Uruguay and Brazil, and also includes pidgin dialects of Italian such as Talian
(Brazil), and Chipilo (Mexico).
• German – Some 2.2 million. Spoken by 1.1 million people in the United States
plus another million in parts of Latin America, such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile,
and El Salvador.
• Aymará – native language spoken by about 2.2 million speakers in the Andes, in
Bolivia and Peru.
• Quiché and other Maya languages – native languages spoken by about 1.9 million
speakers in Guatemala and southern Mexico.
• Nahuatl – native language of central Mexico with 1.5 million speakers. Also was
the language of the Aztec People of Mexico.
• Antillean Creole – spoken by approximately 1.2 million in the Eastern Caribbean
(Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, Saint Lucia) and French Guiana.
• Chinese languages a spoken by at least 5 million people living mostly in the
United States, Canada, and Argentina.
• Javanese is a major language in Suriname
• Tagalog has been present in the continent since the Spanish empire. It is now
spoken by 1.5 million people mostly living in the United States and Canada.
• Vietnamese is spoken by 1 million recent immigrants to the United States.
• Various Indian languages such as Hindi and Punjabi are spoken by Indo-
Carribeans and have huge populations in the United States and Canada.
• Korean has recently become a major language in the United States with about 1
million speakers.
• Japanese was once a major minority language in the United States but has
recently dwindled in terms of population.
• Hmong is an indigenous language in Southeast Asia, whose largest number of
speakers outside Asia is in the United States
 • American Sign Language – An estimated 100,000–500,000 people within the
Deaf Community use ASL as their primary language in the United States and
Canada.[43]
• Mapudungun (or Mapuche) – native language spoken by approximately 440,000
people in Chile and Argentina.
• Navajo – native language spoken by about 178,000 speakers in the Southwest
U.S. on the Navajo Nation (Indian reservation).[44] The tribe's isolation until the
early 1900s provided a language used in a military code in World War II.
• Dutch – spoken in the Netherlands Antilles, Aruba, and Suriname by about
210,000 speakers.
• Miskito – Spoken by up over 180,000 Miskitos. They are Indigenous people who
inhabit the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and the easternmost region of Honduras.
• Pennsylvania Dutch – Some descendants of the Pennsylvania Dutch in the
Northeast U.S. speak a local form of the German language which dates back to
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They number about 85,000.
• Inuit – native language spoken by about 75,000 across the North American Arctic
and to some extent in the subarctic in Labrador.
• Danish – and Greenlandic (Inuit) are the official languages of Greenland; most of
the population speak both of the languages (approximately 50,000 people). A
minority of Danish migrants with no Inuit ancestry speak Danish as their first, or
only, language.
• Cree – Cree is the name for a group of closely-related Algonquian languages
spoken by approximately 50,000 speakers across Canada.
• Nicaraguan Creole – Spoken in Nicaragua by up to 30,000 people. It is spoken
primarily by persons of African, Amerindian, and European descent on the
Caribbean Coast.
• Garífuna (or Garinagu) - native language spoken by the Garífuna people who
inhabits parts of the caribbean coast of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and
Nicaragua. The vast majority of them live in Honduras.
• Welsh – In Argentina, two towns of Trelew and Rawson were settled by Welsh
immigrants in the late nineteenth century and the Welsh language remains spoken
by about 25,000, including the towns' older residents.
• Cherokee – native language spoken in a small corner of Oklahoma, U.S. by about
19,000 speakers. The use of this language has rebounded in the late twentieth
century. It is known to possess its own alphabet, the Cherokee syllabary.
• Gullah – a creole language based on English with strong influences from West
and Central African languages spoken by the Gullah people, an African American
population living on the coastal region of the U.S. states of South Carolina and
Georgia.
• Sranan Tongo, also known as Taki Taki, is the most used spoken language of
Suriname. It is not usually used in its written form. It is a creole language based
on Spanish, English, Dutch, Hindustani, and various other languages.

Most of the non-native languages have, to different degrees, evolved differently from the
mother country, but are usually still mutually intelligible. Some have combined, however,
which has even resulted in completely new languages, such as Papiamentu, which is a
combination of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch (representing the respective colonizers),
native Arawak, various African languages, and, more recently, English. Because of
immigration, there are many communities where other languages are spoken from all
parts of the world, especially in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, and Canada, four
very important destinations for immigrants.

Montreal, North America's largest Francophone metropolis

Terminology
Further information: Americas (terminology)

Subdivisions of the Americas

Map Legend

North America (NA) South America (SA) May be included in

either NA or SA

North America (NA) May be included in NA Central America

Caribbean South America

North America (NA) May be included in NA Northern America

Middle America (MA) Caribbean (may be
included in MA) South America (SA) May be included
in MA or SA
 Anglo-America (A-A) May be included in A-A Latin America (LA)
May be included in LA

The Spanish American colonies at their maximum extent (after the Peace of Paris, 1783)

America/Americas

In many parts of the world, America in the singular is commonly used as a name for the
United States of America; however, (the) Americas (plural with s and generally with the
definite article) invariably refers to the lands and regions of the Western hemisphere.
Usage of America to also refer to this collectivity remains fairly common; for example,
the International Olympic Committee reckons America as one of the five inhabited
continents, which is depicted in the Olympic logo.[45]

While many in the United States of America generally refer to the country as America
and themselves as Americans,[46] many people elsewhere in the Americas resent what they
perceive as misappropriation[47] of the term in this context and, thus, this usage is
frequently avoided.[48][49][50] In Canada, their southern neighbor is seldom referred to as
"America", with the United States, the U.S., or (informally) the States used instead.[49]
English dictionaries and compendiums differ regarding usage and rendition.[51][52][53]

American

Main article: Use of the word American

English usage

Whether usage of America or the Americas is preferred, American is a self-referential

term for many people living in the Americas. However, much of the English-speaking
world uses the word to refer solely to a citizen, resident, or national of the United States
of America. Instead, the word pan-American is sometimes used as an unambiguous
adjective to refer to the Americas.

In addition, many Canadians resent being referred to as Americans because of mistaken

assumptions that they are U.S. citizens or an inability—particularly of people overseas—
to distinguish Canadian English and American English accents.[49]

Spanish usage

In Spanish, América is the name of a region considered a single continent composed of

the subcontinents of Sudamérica and Norteamérica, the land bridge of Centroamérica,
and the islands of the Antillas. Americano/a in Spanish refers to a person from América in
a similar way that europeo or europea refers to a person from Europe. The terms
sudamericano/a, centroamericano/a, antillano/a and norteamericano/a can be used to
more specifically refer to the location where a person may live.

Citizens of the United States of America are normally referred to by the term
estadounidense instead of americano or americana. Also, the term norteamericano may
refer to a citizen of the United States. This term is primarily used to refer to citizens of
the United States, rarely those of other North American countries.[54]

Portuguese usage

In Portuguese, the word americano refers to the whole of the Americas. But, in Brazil and
Portugal, it is widely used to refer to the citizens of the United States. Sometimes norte-
americano is also used, but americano is the most common term employed by people and
media at large, while norte-americano (North American) is more common in books. The
least ambiguous term, estadunidense (used more frequently in Brazil) or estado-unidense
(used more frequently in Portugal), something like "United Statian" or "estadounidense"
in Spanish language), and "ianque"—the Portuguese version of "Yankee"—are also used,
though almost exclusively in academic language.

América, however, is not that frequently used as synonym to the country, and almost
exclusively in current speech, while in print and in more formal environments the US is
usually called either Estados Unidos da América (i.e. United States of America) or only
Estados Unidos (i.e. United States). There is some difference between the usage of these
words in Portugal and in Brazil, the Brazilians being less prone than the Portuguese to
apply the term América to the country. A well-known example of such use is the
translation of the title of Alain Resnais' movie "Mon Oncle d'Amérique": "O Meu Tio da
América".

French usage

In French, as in English, the word Américain can be confusing as it can be used to refer
either to the United States, or to the American continents.
The noun Amérique sometimes refers to the whole as one continent, and sometimes two
continents, southern and northern; the United States is generally referred to as les États-
Unis d'Amérique, les États-Unis, or les USA. However, the usage of Amérique to refer to
the United States, while technically not correct, does still have some currency in France.

The adjective américain is most often used for things relating to the United States;
however, it may also be used for things relating to the American continents. Books by
United States authors translated from English are often described as "traduit de
l'américain".

Things relating to the United States can be referred to without ambiguity by the words
états-unien, étasunien, or étatsunien, although their usage is rare.

Dutch usage

In Dutch, the word Amerika almost always refers to the United States. Although the
United States is equally often referred to as de Verenigde Staten or de VS, Amerika only
extremely rarely refers to the entire continent of the Americas. There is no alternative and
commonly used Dutch word for the Americas. Therefore, in order to stress that
something concerns the Americas as a whole, Dutch uses a combination, namely Noord-
en Zuid Amerika (North and South America).

Latin America is generally referred to as Latijns Amerika or, less frequently, Zuid
Amerika (South America).

The adjective amerikaans is most often used for things or people relating to the United
States. There are no alternative words to distinguish between things relating to the United
States or to the Americas. Dutch uses the local alternative for things relating to elsewhere
in the Americas, such as Argentijns for Argentinian etc.

Russian usage

In the 19th century in Russia the word "America" was used for a traditional continent
such as Europe and Asia. In the 20th century these traditional continents are known as
"parts of the world". Now the term "continent" means any of six large continuous
landmasses (Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, and Australia).
Now the word Ameriсa refers to the United States more often than to America as a "part
of the world". There is no term as "Americas" in Russian.
Countries

Map showing the dates of independence of the countries of the Americas. Black shows
areas not independent.
• Antigua and • Dominica • Panama
Barbuda • Dominican • Paraguay
• Argentina Republic • Peru
• Bahamas • Ecuador • Saint Kitts and Nevis
• Barbados • El Salvador • Saint Lucia
• Belize • Grenada • Saint Vincent and the
• Bolivia • Guatemala Grenadines
• Brazil • Guyana • Suriname
• Canada • Haiti • Trinidad and Tobago
• Chile • Honduras • United States
• Colombia • Jamaica • Uruguay
• Costa Rica • Mexico
• Venezuela
• Cuba • Nicaragua

Overseas regions and dependencies

• Denmark • United Kingdom
o Greenland o Anguilla
o Bermuda
o British Virgin Islands
o Cayman Islands
 o Falkland Islands
• France o Montserrat
o Guadeloupe o South Georgia and the South
o French Guiana Sandwich Islands
o Martinique
o Saint Barthélemy o Turks and Caicos Islands
o Saint Martin

o Saint Pierre and

Miquelon