Christopher Columbus is credited with discovering the Americas in 1492, but this is a bit of a misnomer because there were already people living in the Americas when he arrived. During four separate trips that started with the one in 1492, Columbus landed on various Caribbean islands that are now the Bahamas as well as the island later called Hispaniola. He also explored the Central and South American coasts, but he never set foot in North America, which was already inhabited by Native Americans, and he never thought he had found a new continent. Columbus brought back small amounts of gold as well as native birds and plants to show the richness of the continent he believed to be Asia.

It is important to note that the idea of "discovery" is Eurocentric and frames future narratives of the event so described. The people who really deserve to be called the first Americans came here from Asia probably "no later than about 15,000 years ago". The Vikings also visited what is now Canada about 500 years before Columbus set sail.