Peoples

THIS chapter recounts some aspects of the histories of the native peoples of America and Australia. Theme described the history of the Spanish and Portuguese colonisation of South America. From the eighteenth century, more areas of South America, Central America, North America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand came to be settled by immigrants from Europe. This led to many of the native peoples being pushed out into other areas.

The European settlements were called ‘colonies’. When the European inhabitants of the colonies became independent of the European ‘mother-country’, these colonies became ‘states’ or countries. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, people from Asian countries also migrated to some of these countries. Today, these Europeans and Asians form the majority in these countries, and the number of the native inhabitants are very small.

They are hardly seen in the towns, and people have forgotten that they once occupied much of the country, and that the names of many rivers, towns, etc. are derived from ‘native’ names (e.g. Ohio, Mississippi and