European countries colonized other lands in the 1500s due to lack of natural resources and overpopulation in Europe. Colonizing the Americas allowed countries like England, France, Portugal, and Spain to gain new lands and opportunities, but it resulted in the genocide and enslavement of Native Americans, with millions being killed, enslaved, or forced off their lands. European colonization, especially in the Americas, was one of the bloodiest periods in human history.

1. One reason many European countries colonized other
lands and peoples is because many European countries
were running out of natural resources.

2. In Europe by the 1500's and on, there was much
deforestation and poverty, and the population was
becoming too great for the land and government to handle.

3. By colonizing the Americas, for example, English, French,
Portuguese, and Spanish colonists were able to have new
lands and opportunities, but in the process millions of
Native Americans were killed, enslaved, intermarried, or
forced to leave their land.

4. Indeed, the European colonization of the Americas was
perhaps the bloodiest and most horrific time in human
history.

5. Besides the genocide of Native Americans, European
colonists brought Africans slaves to the Americas to work ,
especially after finding out that Native Americans would just
die in slavery.

6. Imagine this: men who you've never seen before, come to
your house and your neighbors house and they all have as
much weapons as they can carry.

7. Then they start killing or enslaving you, your family, and
your neighbors.

8. And you and your family and your neighbors fight back but
are crushed by the men's superior weapons.

9. And soon, you and most of your family and your neighbors
are gone--killed, enslaved, intermarried, or forced to live
somewhere else.

10. This is what colonialism is: it is death, it is slavery; it is the
end of one group and the expansion of another group.