This is my land, this is your land...

It says Europeans wanted to "give to those strange lands the form of our own."
Well, they tried and then a whole bunch of people died. A lot of special traditions and customs were washed away in blood and new countries were forged through greed and oppression. That's okay and all if you like that sort of thing. You know, cultural obliteration, epidemic, murder...
But since it's so easy to be brutal to the European explorers that came to America, (And lets face it, they were coming across that ocean no matter what) why not use our imaginations to think of America had Columbus' boys played a little nicer.
Hmm. What would that have been like? The exchange of information between two highly evolved peoples. On one side you had Eurpoeans that brought fine clothes and glittery words like exploration, commerce and religion. On the other side, there were natives who understood wholly the importance of family, community and earth.
It probably would have been a damn nice combo!
So what I'm trying to get at is all that remains of the legacy of most American Indian and native tribes throughout the Americas are what we read in paperback. I can go to Germany and learn of Germans. I can go to China and learn of the Chinese. I cannot travel to 400 years ago and speak with an Iroquois medicine man about my sniffles.
Before it became the Americas, the land from the Canadien coast down the Atlantic seaboard to the Yucatan and in the Carribbean and finally south of the equator populated by natives thrived as it does now. The exchange between these two very different parts of the world was absolutely inevitable. However, very early on the natives that helped explorers understand the new lands and survive, somehow began to disappear. Their cultures, too. That was not inevitable.
Explorers should have been quick to embrace these people and their ideals of familial and earthly respect.
It surely would have made for a better, more meaningful understanding of agriculture.
I know for a fact that expansion into the West would have been quicker, more efficient.
A stronger governement based on the well being of all men, not just a few; That souds nice, too.
It might have even prevented this whole global warming mumbo jumbo... probably not, but I'd guess an Iroquios man would opt for the hybrid instead of the Hummer.
The Americas were going to happen, but it didn't have to be beaten like a step child as it grew up.