Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
effect. The Spanish party was reluctantly welcomed by Montezuma, who believed Cortés to be the return-
ing god Quetzalcoatl. In doing so, the emperor doomed himself and his people, whom Cortés conquered
rather easily despite bloody opposition.
Did God “Shed His Grace” on All of North America? Or Did He Stop at the U.S.
Borders?
With an area of 9,360,000 square miles (about 24 million square km), North America is the world's third-
largest continent. Comprised primarily of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, it includes Greenland
and the Caribbean islands, with the state of Hawaii thrown in for good measure (even though Hawaii legit-
imately belongs with the rest of the Pacific islands of Oceania). Occupying about 16 percent of the earth's
land, and with a total population of more than 530 million people, North America is both the third-largest
and third most populous continent.
Like the other great landmasses, it is an area of huge contrasts, spreading from the polar north of
Canada and Alaska down to the tropics of Mexico and the Caribbean. First settled at least twenty-five
thousand years ago by the Mongoloid people who moved from Asia across the land bridge that was later
covered by the Bering Strait, North America gradually became home to the tens of millions of Native
Americans—later misnamed “Indians” by Christopher Columbus, who thought he had arrived in the West
Indies—who were spread out across the continent when the first Europeans arrived in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. It was that arrival—some call it an “invasion”—that sparked the explosive growth of
North America from largely a rich wilderness into the most powerful agricultural and industrial area in the
world.
Most Americans remain woefully ignorant of the ten neighboring provinces of Canada, the world's
second-largest country in land area. Ironically, the country's name derives from a Huron Indian word,
kanata
, meaning “a small village.” Since the War of 1812, when American forces attacked and burned
York (Toronto), relations between the two countries have remained peaceful, if occasionally testy. Cana-
dians struggle to maintain a national identity in the face of the cultural and economic power of the United
States. But the two countries' shared border remains the longest undefended boundary in the world. Linked
for the most part by a common English language and heritage—with a significant French Canadian minor-
ity begging to differ—and similar political traditions, the two countries form the world's largest trading
partnership. Following the lead of the European Economic Community, nearly all economic restrictions
have been eliminated between the two countries, and the Free Trade Agreement, signed in 1988 (derided
by some in Canada as the “Sale of Canada Act”), ended remaining restrictions by 1999.
Despite Canada's vast physical size, its population is relatively small, about 34 million, with eight out
of ten Canadians living within a hundred miles of the U.S. border.
America's history with its southern neighbor, the United Mexican States, has not been so placid, al-
though Mexico—and perhaps the Caribbean and other Central American nations—will also soon enter the
North American Free Trade arrangement. As with Canada, few Americans have more than a vague sense
of Mexican history, with most of their impressions shaped by racial and cultural attitudes hardened during
two hundred years of stormy, paternalistic, and often militaristic relations. Mexico's image in America has
been further distorted by Hollywood versions of such events and people as the Battle of the Alamo and the
life of the outlaw-soldier Pancho Villa.
Recent archeological discoveries and a new generation of scholars have opened up a radically new vis-
ion of Mexico's pre-Columbian past. While American textbooks usually started off with a little something
about Cortés and Montezuma and the grisly Aztec human sacrifices—sometimes killing as many as ten
