[34] Westward expansion integrated the French-speaking Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanos of the American Southwest, who brought close contact with the culture of Mexico.

Large-scale immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from Eastern and Southern Europe introduced a variety of new customs.

[45] Europe is the largest continent that Americans trace their ancestry to, and many claim descent from various European ethnic groups.

[46] The Spaniards were among the first Europeans to establish a continuous presence in what is now the continental United States in 1565 in San Agustín, La Florida then a part of New Spain.

1587) in Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina, was the first child born in the original Thirteen Colonies to English parents.

The Spaniards also established a continuous presence in what over three centuries later would become a possession of the United States with the founding of the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1521.

[b][59][60] Hispanic and Latino Americans are not considered a race in the United States census, instead forming an ethnic category.

[61][62][63][64] People of Spanish or Hispanic and Latino descent have lived in what is now United States territory since the founding of San Juan, Puerto Rico (the oldest continuously inhabited settlement on American soil) in 1521 by Juan Ponce de León, and the founding of St. Augustine, Florida (the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the continental United States) in 1565 by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.

In the State of Texas, Spaniards first settled the region in the late 1600s and formed a unique cultural group known as Tejanos.

[67] According to the Office of Management and Budget, the grouping includes individuals who self-identify as African American, as well as persons who emigrated from nations in the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa.

[59] The majority of the population (55%) lives in the South; compared to the 2000 United States census, there has also been a decrease of African Americans in the Northeast and Midwest.

[71] Most African Americans are the direct descendants of captives from Central and West Africa, from ancestral populations in countries like Nigeria, Benin, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, and Angola,[72] who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States.

[74] Montinaro et al. (2014) observed that around 50% of the overall ancestry of African Americans traces back to the Niger-Congo-speaking Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria and southern Benin (before the European colonization of Africa this people created the Oyo Empire), reflecting the centrality of this West African region in the Atlantic slave trade.

[83] However, slavery would persist in the southern states until the end of the American Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Although Americans with roots in West Asia were once classified as "Asian", they are now excluded from the term in modern census classifications.

[99][100][101] While Asian Americans have been in what is now the United States since before the Revolutionary War,[102][103][104] relatively large waves of Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese immigration did not begin until the mid-to-late 19th century.

[109] In 2014, the United States Census Bureau began finalizing the ethnic classification of people of Middle Eastern and North African ("MENA") origins.

The groups felt that the earlier "white" designation no longer accurately represents MENA identity, so they successfully lobbied for a distinct categorization.

[148] Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States who is biracial- his mother is white (of English and Irish descent) and his father is of Kenyan birth-[150][151] only self-identifies as being African American.

[156] Mestizo is not a racial category in the United States census, but signifies someone who has both European and American Indian ancestry.

Uncle Sam is a national personification of the United States and sometimes more specifically of the American government, with the first usage of the term dating from the War of 1812.

It has inspired the names of many persons, places, objects, institutions, and companies in the Western Hemisphere and beyond, including the District of Columbia, the seat of government of the United States.

[168] Several insular territories grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by American Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands; Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico.

Religion in the United States has a high adherence level compared to other developed countries and a diversity in beliefs.

The First Amendment to the country's Constitution prevents the Federal government from making any "law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".

A majority of Americans report that religion plays a "very important" role in their lives, a proportion unusual among developed countries.

Still, it was also a consequence of the pragmatic concerns of minority religious groups and small states that did not want to be under the power or influence of a national religion that did not represent them.

[33] Its chief early European influences came from English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish settlers of colonial America during British rule.

Despite certain consistent ideological principles (e.g. individualism, egalitarianism, faith in freedom and democracy), the American culture has a variety of expressions due to its geographical scale and demographic diversity.

Americans have migrated to many places around the world, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.