United States of America

Variant name of place

America

Geographic position

40.0000° N, 100.0000° W

Sources

http://www.ushistory.org/us/. http://www.nps.gov/revwar/about_the_revolution/american_indians.html.

General note

The United States is a country that occupies the middle part of the North American continent. It stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and includes the states of Hawaii in the south pacific and Alaska in northwest North America. The United States also includes a number of territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. Starting as early as the 16th century, European powers began colonizing the land that would become the United States of America, often subjugating the Indigenous peoples who inhabited the continent. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, European powers including the Dutch, Spanish, French, and British settled in the land and fought amongst themselves and with Native Americans for control of it. Successful in these wars and battles, the British claimed lands from the east coast through western Pennsylvania. Following many grievances concerning the British management of the colonists in North America, a large group of colonists (though not the majority) known as the Patriots took action to assert their own political agency, voicing objections to British rule and forming colonial militias. After the British attempted to quell colonial violence, the colonists revolted and the American Revolution began. Representatives of the Patriot cause penned the Declaration of Independence in 1776, enumerating their reasons for secession and declaring the United States of America a separate political entity from Great Britain. Some Native Americans strategically allied themselves with the British as a means of maintaining Indian land, while others sided with the colonists, hoping that their ideals of freedom would extend to Native Americans as well as former colonists after the War. Colonists managed to defeat the British with the help of the French, who entered the War in part because of the long-standing rivalry with its European neighbor. The War ended in 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, in which the British signed over the land east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes (which comprised the United States of America at that time). The Treaty did not consider the role of the Native Americans who occupied the land, especially those who allied with the British. The former colonists quickly forgot their Native American allies and would go on to dispossess Native peoples of their land.