The first known Europeans to reach the Americas are believed to have been the Vikings during the eleventh century. They also established several colonies in Greenland and present day Newfoundland. Settlements in Greenland survived for several centuries. By the end of the fifteenth century, the Norse Greenland settlements had collapsed. In 1492, Christopher Columbus reached the Americas, after which European exploration and colonization rapidly expanded. Voyaging through much of the Caribbean region and, early in the 16th century, parts of the North and South America. Although Columbus was not the first European explorer to set foot on the Americas, he was the first to establish the colonies that would grow into the United States of America.
When Columbus arrived on the shores of mainland North America he did not only see sandy beaches, wild fruits, and animal wildlife. As he ventured inland he would come across a race of people who spoke a different language and resembled nothing like the men of the crusade or anyone they had ever known. These were the Native Americans. The people were called “Indians” by Columbus and his men because they did not realize at that time that they had not in fact made it to India but to a new unchartered land.
Columbus's arrival in the Europeans' New World has been viewed from a variety of perspectives.
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Diseases were transferred from Europeans to Native Americans and the other way around. Europeans and Native Americans suffered from diseases that were foreign to them. The common old world diseases were smallpox, measles, malaria, yellow fever, influenza, and chicken pox. Some of the new world diseases were syphilis, polio, hepatitis, and encephalitis. With the large numbers of disease brought by the Europeans to the new world, the Indian population was immensely impacted by these illnesses