Was there not great cities of over a million each all along the amazon? I kinda wished we learned more about them, they probably had an empire to rival Rome before the spread of pox.
Also humans do human things, we are a funky creature between animal and god, we can build fantastic marvels or sow chaos and destruction equally well. Think of the worst monsters humanity has spawned, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Khan, Cortez. As bad as they where, they where all human too. Just like you. You could be worse. It would be better to chance a minefield than to make an enemy of someone who will devote their life to making yours a living hell. You are more dangerous than any loaded gun.
A bit misleading. The second part dates this to the settlers in the now New England area that showed up just after a major epidemic. The natives which were living in many areas suddenly found their population reduced, drastically. So there were literally large swaths of land that were "traditional" lands for tribes that now didn't exist or now had no use for. They agreed to let the new settlers live there for a couple of reasons. First they were afraid of the newcomers gods which they believed to be stronger than their own since the settlers weren't killed off in the sicknesses spreading through the populations. Second, they didn't have the same concept of land that Europeans did. If a tribe needed more land and it wasn't available they just went to war with a neighboring tribe and eliminated them man, woman, and child. They routinely practiced genocide, it was a fact of life for them. They most likely expected the same thing to continue when they regained their numbers
However, by the time they had sufficiently regained their strength it was apparent that the tech advantage of the Europeans was practically insurmountable.
If there hadn't been such a huge reduction of the natives prior to this and there wasn't the fear of the newcomers gods chances are things would have gone drastically different. If the settlers had shown up before the epidemic it's generally agreed that the natives would have just constantly attacked the settlers, who would have been seen as an encroaching tribe. The lament in the second part reflects not just the final outcome but also the loss incurred by the diseases that killed most of those that died.
If there hadn't been such a huge reduction of the natives prior to this and there wasn't the fear of the newcomers gods chances are things would have gone drastically different. If the settlers had shown up before the epidemic it's generally agreed that the natives would have just constantly attacked the settlers, who would have been seen as an encroaching tribe. The lament in the second part reflects not just the final outcome but also the loss incurred by the diseases that killed most of those that died.