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A beginner's history

Chapter 139: INTRODUCTION
By William H. Mace
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About This Book

Aimed at young readers, this illustrated school history surveys early exploration, colonization, colonial life, and the nation’s political development through concise biographical sketches and episode-based narratives. Chapters recount voyages, settlement patterns, and the foundations of several colonies, then address leaders and events that shaped independence and national institutions. Pedagogical features include study questions, leading facts, and suggested readings to support classroom use, while the preface and concluding material stress moral lessons of perseverance, civic responsibility, and the nation’s mobilization and role in the recent world war.

WHERE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND THEIR CIVILIZATION CAME FROM

INTRODUCTION

First settlers from a built-up Europe

253. Why Boys and Girls Should Know about Europe. In the part of the book just studied, you have become acquainted with men and women who have been great American leaders. Did you ever stop to think that the early settlers in this country, from whom most of our great men sprang, came from countries in Europe already built up? What the settlers gave to this country they got from people who had lived a long time ago. Therefore in many ways their habits and institutions were different from ours now. They had their own ways of living, their own schools, churches, and forms of government.

The rulers

In most European countries kings and queens ruled the people. Next to the king stood the lords, who were great men and owned acres and acres of land. They had their own soldiers and many servants to do their work and to wait on them.

From an early 14th century psalter

SERFS OF THE MIDDLE AGES

The serfs

Below the lords, who spent their time in war, in the chase, and in going to see play-battles, called mock-fights, were the common people. In some countries these people were not free, as you are, but lived in huts in small villages on the great man's land. They had to work on his land, and were only a little better off than slaves. These people were called serfs.

In the few large cities there lived at that time rich merchants who traded in slaves, or went on long journeys to buy and sell their wares. In the cities, too, lived workers in wool, cotton, brass, iron, wood, and other materials. After a time the workers of a given class gathered into a sort of union called a guild, to protect themselves.

The roots of our civilization

But in neither country nor city did the common man have the many rights and privileges he has now-a-days in America.

These people, so different from us, got their habits and their ways of doing things from still older nations in Asia, in Africa and in Europe.