North America

III

The People

North America was sparsely populated until relatively recent times. With the conspicuous exception of the inhabitants of the Mexican heartland (the plateaux and valleys around present-day Mexico City), the indigenous peoples of the continent were geographically scattered and culturally diverse. The settlement of the continent by Europeans began an almost total change in its human geography; Europeans decimated and displaced the indigenous peoples, and the living patterns of most were greatly altered. The contemporary population of North America is mostly European in background, but the continent's population also contains many other important groups.

A

Ethnography

At least 35 per cent of Canada's inhabitants trace their ancestry to the British Isles, and another one-quarter are of French background; the latter live mostly in Quebec Province. The country also has significant numbers of people of German, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Dutch, and Scandinavian descent. The population of the United States is more diverse than Canada's. In 1990, people of at least part British or part Irish background formed the largest group, with approximately 29 per cent of the country's inhabitants. Blacks, who trace their ancestry to Africa, make up about 12 per cent of the population, Germans about 23 per cent, and people of Hispanic background about 9 per cent. The country also has large numbers of people of Italian, Polish, French, Russian, Dutch, and Scandinavian ancestry. People of Asian origin—primarily Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese, and those from the Indian subcontinent—make up only approximately 2.9 per cent of the population of the United States, but since the 1970s the number of Asians increased significantly through immigration.

Native Americans and Inuit (Eskimo) number about 1.8 million in the United States and about 400,000 in Canada. It is believed that the ancestors of the Native Americans migrated from Asia to North America via a prehistoric land bridge across the modern Bering Strait, off Alaska, in successive waves beginning some 30,000 years ago, and that the forebears of the Inuit migrated from Asia by boat some 6,000 years ago. Some 30,000 Inuit live in Greenland.

About 55 per cent of the people of Mexico are mestizos, people of mixed Native American and European (mainly Spanish) descent. Approximately 30 per cent of the population is of relatively pure Native American ancestry, and some 15 per cent is of unmixed European descent.

B

Demography

Most of the population is concentrated in the eastern half of the United States and adjacent parts of Ontario and Quebec, the US Pacific coast, and the central plateau of Mexico. Nearly 80 per cent of the inhabitants of Canada, the United States, and Greenland are defined as urban, as are about 70 per cent of all Mexicans. The principal urban areas are on the US Atlantic coast from Boston to Washington, D.C., around the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario, at the southern end of Lake Michigan, in northern and southern California, and greater Mexico City. The largest cities include Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey, in Mexico; New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and San Diego, in the United States; and Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Edmonton, in Canada. Away from the metropolitan areas, most of North America has only a sparse to moderate population density. In Mexico the overall population density is approximately 43 people per sq km (111 per sq mi); in the United States, about 27.2 per sq km (70.3 per sq mi); and in Canada, some 2.6 per sq km (6.6 per sq mi). The great majority of Canadians lived in a relatively narrow band along the southern boundary.

In both Canada and the United States the rate of population increase has declined since the 1950s. The Canadian population increased by about 1 per cent per year in the mid 1990s, when the annual growth rate for the United States was also 1 per cent and for Greenland, 1.2 per cent. Mexico, however, had one of the hemisphere's highest rates of population increase, about 1.9 per cent per year, and its crude birth rate (about 26 per 1,000 people in 1996), was almost double that of the rest of the continent. The crude death rate was 4.5 per 1,000 people in Mexico, 13 in Canada, and 8 in the United States.

Intercontinental migration to North America was significant in the 1970s and 1980s, with large numbers of Asians and Europeans going to the United States and Canada. In addition, many people moved from South American and Caribbean countries to the United States. The largest population movements, however, occurred within North America itself, from Mexico to the United States and from the north-eastern United States to southern and western parts of the country.

C

Languages

English is the principal language for some 90 per cent of the people of the United States and for about two-thirds of all Canadians. Spanish is spoken by the majority of Hispanic people in the United States, and French is the chief tongue for about one-quarter of the Canadian population. Many of the indigenous peoples and Inuit of the United States, Canada, and Greenland use their traditional languages. Spanish is the dominant language of Mexico, but several million Mexicans speak a Native American language.

D

Religion

Christianity is the major religion of North America. The great majority of Mexicans are Roman Catholics, and some 45 per cent of Canadians and 26 per cent of US inhabitants profess Roman Catholicism. About 39 per cent of Canada's people are Protestants of which some 11 per cent are Anglicans. In the United States, Protestants comprise 60 per cent of the population. Canada and the United States also have substantial communities of Jews and Eastern Orthodox Christians.