@cicerone imposter,
We shouldn't make the mistake of casting Indians as noble savages who only wanted to live in peace with one another and the Land, and who were brutalized and cheated by those nasty White Eyes.
While many Indians were, indeed, brutalized and cheated by nasty White Eyes, not all were, and many of the Indians themselves were quite brutal with Americans, Mexicans and members of their own race and tribes.
It's always a matter of perspective isn't it?
The history of Indian and White relations is far more complex than Evil vs Good (irrespective of who plays which role).
A situation that seems to have been repeated on more than one occassion was that militant Indians came to the conclusion that
a) They could defeat the invaders
or
b) They would rather fight to the death than be pushed off of their land and die in destitute conditions
I appreciate the latter, but don't minimize the former. In the early stages of the European's entry into and spread across North America, the native people most often had the advantage...in numbers if not fighting ability. The prospect of (comparatively) rapid change was not something the Indians could get their heads around. This is somewhat ironic since few cultures have been do dramatically and quickly (from a relative sense) been transformed by a single event then the tribes of the Great Plains. The event: The introduction of the horse.
In any case, it's certainly understandable that many Indians' believed that their early successes, in terms of slaughtering and driving off Europeans, would have a longer shelf life than it did.
On more than one occassion, the Indians who were able to perceive the rapid and powerful change that was upon them not only realized that they could not defeat the White Eyes, they made the bold bet of siding with them against their militant brethern.
Unfortunately for them, more often than not, after the "renegades" were put down, the "peaceful"
Injun allies were made to suffer the same consequences.
These, perhaps, wiser and certainly more pragmatic Indians took a big chance and lost, but we tend to see them as victims (which to a certain degree they were). Imagine how they would be perceived by their fellow Indians, if the militant approach had worked and the White Eyes were driven back into the sea?
There have been massive human migrations throughout our history. That's how the Indians came to be "native" Americans. If there had been some early indigenous people that the migrating Asians had obliterated or consumed would we still consider them victims of a new migration of conquerors or simply part of a cycle?
