Left-wingers: When America was being legally colonized by European immigrants, was that a good or bad thing for the natives?

Lili

Legally? Whose law decided that the colonization was legal? Basically, Europeans just came over here and decided the land was theirs. However, as a historian, I'm not gong to quibble with that, since human migrations and conquests had been going on for millennia, without recourse to any settled international "law," since there wasn't any. No, it wasn't a good thing for a natives, for a variety of reasons. They evntually got turfed off lands they'd lived on and hunted for centuries, their way of life was decimated, many died from disease or in skirmishes with settlers. Ultimately, you can say they lost, and even after that, they were badly treated for a long time, too.

Anonymous

The Spaniards did that. The Pilgrims were too poor to be militant. Diaries and journals kept at the time show, they used barter over bullets. Most of the massive die off of America's early peoples was by diseases at a time when nobody knew about them. Later, the trains were often derailed or made late thanks to bison. The rail bosses just had passengers shoot them to thin the herds near tracks. Who knew there'd be so many tracks and so many people, the buffalo would nearly be eliminated .

Anonymous

Legally colonized? There were no laws in place to determine that. Now let's see! Being faced with a militant group who slaughtered your people to take what was yours? Only a disgusting pig would find this acceptable.

Doc Awesome

Democrats don't remember those years very well, they were too busy raping and killing the First Nation Peoples.

Hombre Sin Nombre AKA Oggmeista

bad.. what's your point? Although i'd use the term "legally" extremely loosely, basically the Europens had the power and they had the greed and malevolence, not sure legal comes into it.. FYI Atheist Euro Liberal..