Ok but this is like… what most European powers did in North America? Like fire arms was one of the biggest commodities in the various trade networks that developed?
People are so eager to paint these groups as if they had no agency, were niave and helpless in the face of “superior technology”. The reality is that they routinely curb stomped colonial forces for hundreds of years. The europeans were bit players in the grand saga of North America, kept around as a useful supply of certain manufactured good. Isolated little trading outposts at the mercy of native confederacies and empires fighting their own struggles and conflicts that eclipsed the petty squabbles of the Europeans in North America. Spain was the only one with a meaningful presence, and they were getting their asses handed to them by the Nʉmʉnʉʉ and Diné for most of that time. The French and the British getting played off each other like chumps by the Haudenosaunee. For 400 years this was the state of things, only in the 1800s do we see this break down, and yet that is all we remember. That brief period is what is projected backwards, totally ignoring a fascinating and dynamic history.
Ok but this is like… what most European powers did in North America? Like fire arms was one of the biggest commodities in the various trade networks that developed?
People are so eager to paint these groups as if they had no agency, were niave and helpless in the face of “superior technology”. The reality is that they routinely curb stomped colonial forces for hundreds of years. The europeans were bit players in the grand saga of North America, kept around as a useful supply of certain manufactured good. Isolated little trading outposts at the mercy of native confederacies and empires fighting their own struggles and conflicts that eclipsed the petty squabbles of the Europeans in North America. Spain was the only one with a meaningful presence, and they were getting their asses handed to them by the Nʉmʉnʉʉ and Diné for most of that time. The French and the British getting played off each other like chumps by the Haudenosaunee. For 400 years this was the state of things, only in the 1800s do we see this break down, and yet that is all we remember. That brief period is what is projected backwards, totally ignoring a fascinating and dynamic history.