Free settler

A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established a permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. Settlers are generally from a sedentary culture, as opposed to nomads who share and rotate their settlements with little or no concept of individual land ownership. Settlements are often built on land already claimed or owned by another group. Many times settlers are backed by governments or large countries.

One can witness how settlers very often occupied land previously home to long-established peoples, designated as indigenous (also called "natives", "Aborigines" or, in the Americas, "Indians"). In some cases (such as Australia), as colonialist mentalities and laws change, the legal ownership of some lands is contested by indigenous people, who either claim or seek restoration of traditional usage, land rights, native title and related forms of legal ownership or partial control.

The word "settler" was not originally usually used in relation to free labour immigrants, such as slaves (e.g. in the United States), indentured labourers (such as in Colonial America), or convicts (such as in British America, c. 1615–1775; Australia 1788-1868).

In the figurative usage, a "person who goes first or does something first" also applies to the American English use of "pioneer" to refer to a settler—a person who has migrated to a less occupied area and established permanent residence there, often to colonize the area; as first recorded in English in 1605. In United States history it refers to those people who helped to settle new lands.

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