Spanish and Dutch Ancestry

The first nationals to lay claim to substantial portions of American soil were the Spanish conquistadores who penetrated the southwestern sector of what was to become part of the United States and who established settlements on the Florida peninsula.

Unlike the British who were to follow, the Spaniards mingled extensively with the native populations and frequently cohabited with Indian women. They left an indelible impression upon southwestern and Floridian culture. Their descendants, the Hispanos of mixed Spanish and Indian ancestry, are still to be found in the Southwest, especially in New Mexico.

Had the Spaniards remained in power, intergroup problems, attitudes toward minority populations, and patterns of discriminations would undoubtedly have assumed characteristics different from those that now exist. But this was not their destiny.

After the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, rival nations began to establish and develop territories in the Western Hemisphere. Under the auspices of the West India Company the Dutch established trading posts in both North and South America—on the coast of Brazil, in the Antilles, at the estuary of the Hudson River (New York nee New Amsterdam), and northward along its banks (Fort Albany).

Holland's control over these territories was short-lived, but the Dutch legacy lingers on, especially in the folklore and history of New York State and in the names of many famous families—Roosevelt, Vander Heuvel, Rensselaer, VIiet. (Moreover the Dutch left the English with a label—"Yankees"—an anglicized version of "Jan Kees," a sort of bumpkin). In 1654 Holland lost her foothold in Brazil and, only a decade later, New Netherlands and Delaware became British possessions.

French and wasp Ancestry

France, too, had colonial ambitions in America and sent explorers and missionaries to stake out new lands. Eastern Canada and the huge Louisiana Territory came under French domination.

Bitter warfare brought an end to French rule over Canada; the Louisiana Purchase (1803) ended French control over the Mississippi Valley and the Northwest territories.

Yet, French nationalism powerfully persists in the Canadian province of Quebec where the majority of citizens are Roman Catholic, speak the French language, and retain many French customs.

In the United States today, thousands of French-Canadians reside in New England, especially in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, and many of their transplanted relatives, variously called Acadians or "Cajuns", still live in Louisiana.

There the imprint of France is seen in architecture and festivals such as the famed Mardi Gras.

Moreover, the contributions of French intellectuals, including descendants of the Huguenots, is still apparent.

But it was England that became the supreme colonial power in North America.

The English colonists consisted of tradesmen and fortune seekers, civil administrators and political refugees, religious dissenters and petty criminals. For the first time a large group of common folk crossed the Atlantic to settle here.

Unlike the early explorers from Spain and France, they came in family groups, often with others from their home towns. In several cases entire communities moved from the British Isles to America.

The establishment of British America was a struggle: diseases, hunger, Indian attacks.

Religious prejudices were transplanted from the mother country to New England and the mid-Atlantic colonies. Colonists often were set against one another in their desire to maintain their particular brand of Christianity.

Fighting the imaginary blasphemy, heresy, and sin, colonists perpetrated persecutions as acts of faith, the victims often being of minority sects - Quakers, Unitarians, Roman Catholics, and others.

Despite the immigration of millions of southern and eastern Europeans and thousands of Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans in the late years of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century, and of thousands more Asians and Latin Americans since 1965, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants still constitute the most powerful element in the population of the United States.