Migration and the Unmaking of America

PHIL BELLFY


ANY DISCUSSION of the "Making of North America" must include some discussion of how the existing "North America" was unmade—it must be explained how "free land" became available to new immigrants from Europe. In 1492, the Native people of the Western Hemisphere had a multitude of thriving civilizations, and in the north, a trading network that stretched from at least central Mexico to the Great Lakes. Thousands of autonomous, distinct political nations were extant, and people spoke hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages. Tzvetlan Todorov, in his book, The Conquest of America, relates the story of the Unmaking of Meso-America quite eloquently, most often in the words of Columbus, Cortez, and others, so that story need not be retold here. Also, the depredations of the early New Englanders and the shameful removal of the southeast tribes are histories that are also relatively easy to reconstruct.