Dutch Americans
While the Netherlands was a small country, the Dutch Empire was quite large so emigrants leaving the mother country had a wide variety of choices. New Amsterdam was not high on their list, especially because of the Native American risk. The major Dutch cities were centers of high culture, but they still sent immigrants. Most new arrivals were farmers from remote villages who, on arrival, in America scattered into widely separated villages with little contact with one another. Even inside a settlement, different Dutch groups had minimal interaction. With very few new arrivals, the result was an increasingly traditional system cut off from the forces for change. The people maintained their popular culture, revolving around their language and their Calvinist religion. The Dutch brought along their own folklore, most famously "Sinterklaas" (the foundation of the modern day Santa Claus) and created their own as in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". They maintained their distinctive clothing, and food preferences and introduced some new foods to America, including beets, endive, spinach, parsley, and cookies.
Pennsylvania Dutch Country
The term "Dutch" is from an archaic sense of the English word "Dutch", which once referred to any people speaking a non-peripheral continental West Germanic language on the European mainland. The German-speaking settlers came from a variety of countries and religious backgrounds, but most became assimilated to Anglo-American language and culture beginning in the later 19th century with English language evangelism efforts and the outlawing of German language schooling. The assimilation process continued soon after the turn of the 20th century with World War I, consolidated schools, and the advent of mandatory public education until the age of 16, with added pressures from increased mobility, the influence of English-language media, communications, and urbanization. Also, many German-Americans hid their ethnicity with the spread of Anti-German sentiment and negative propaganda against the German people.