Existing comment:
Conquest:
Despite the myth that North America lay "empty" and available for the taking, European explorers encountered over 200 different cultures whose ancestors had lived on this continent for thousands of years.
Through armed conflict, Europeans seized the land and claimed it for settlement. This often entailed enslaving, subjugating, or removing native peoples to reservations against their will. Disease was an unintended instrument of conquest -- millions of Native Americans died from foreign viruses to which they had no resistance. |