In regards to history, actions by people tends to have an impact on the area around them, leaving traces, be it from flint shards and bone flutes in caves to rusted weapons buried in desert sands. The impacts can also be cultural, and so we shall focus upon the impacts left on American Culture by the events of the 1500s/1600s.

For starters, the Spanish never setting up permanent colonies further up along the east coast of North America left the area open to eventual colonization by a great many other European nations, and in particular the rising power of England. In the 1600s, religious tensions boiled over in Europe, and there were groups like the dogmatic Puritans and tolerant Quakers who left their native soil to find their place in the ‘New World,’ that being the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions respectively. Meanwhile, the English crown sought to expand its power and agricultural output in the Virginia colony down south. The event in the north lead to religious diversity being established, and the labor needed for Virginia led to an increase in slavery.

The wars, such as King Philips War, between the Native American nations and the newcomers established an unfortunately hostile precedent, one that would lead to centuries of bloody conquest, imperialistic expansion, and the complete or near erasure of native cultures.

On a brighter note, the pre-/early Enlightenment Period brought about new ways of political and philosophical thinking such as the works of the pessimistic Hobbes and the optimistic Locke. It was in fact Locke’s words about “Life, liberty, and property,” which Thomas Jefferson paraphrased when writing the Declaration of Independence a century later.

(These are simply some of the major events from that time that impacts America today, and is by no means and exhaustive list. There is far more to dive into that is beyond the scope of this blog.)