Native peoples shaped European colonial ventures in North America from the beginning of New World exploration deep into the so-called national era. When European colonists planted themselves in the Americas, they did not so much initiate a new era than become swept into an Indigenous current that extended back several millennia. European colonialism in North America is, as a persisting myth has it, a story of forging a new people in a new world but, more immediately, it is a story of European newcomers struggling to understand and control the ancient worlds the Indians had made.