This applies to most of the American lore about “Indians” as well. The people that nearly all European descent settlers encountered were many generations on from an utter cataclysm of continental plagues that nearly eradicated them, and certainly destroyed what advanced civilization they had pre-Columbus.
The white people didn’t know they were devastating the native Americans, but they were super off-base to judge them as savages when it’s far more accurate to say that the natives who did contact and conflict with the young USA and Canada were more like post-nuclear-holocaust survivors.
The white people didn’t know they were devastating the native Americans, but they were super off-base to judge them as savages when it’s far more accurate to say that the natives who did contact and conflict with the young USA and Canada were more like post-nuclear-holocaust survivors.