So what do you say the settler's motivation was then, to make human sacrifices to the Devil? Did they just like to fill Indians full of holes. So what exactly turned them into evil monsters that wanted to kill kill kill?
My understanding is that they wanted the land, and were prepared to drive other people away to get it. That's what happened - to varying but in all cases significant degrees - in Australia, in the "white highlands" in Kenya, in South Africa, in New Zealand.Alright, so American settlers went west so they could wipe out Indians because they liked killing people so much, and they were all evil! Is that what you are trying to say?
What their moral and political theory was that allowed them to justify this to themselves varied from place to place and epoch to epoch. In the case of the US and Canada, Locke's "labour theory" of property rights is often mentioned, although whether it is better seen as a causal underpinning or a post-hoc rationalisation seems like a reasonable question.
In any event, it's not like there's any shortage of writing by historians on these topics. As [MENTION=6683613]TheCosmicKid[/MENTION] said, I don't think any of them posit as a major explanation of colonisation of the Americas that the colonists didn't know there were people already living there.
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One way to learn where the hunting grounds are is to ask people.Hunting grounds look like unoccupied wilderness, while a farm looks like a farm. How are the settlers supposed to know which are hunting grounds and which are not? If there are no Indians there, there is no one to tell them what is what.
Also, you notion that "a farm looks like a farm" is a bit simplistic. It assumes that all agriculture, animal husbandry etc uses the same technologies that the colonists bring with them and are going to straightforwardly recognise. That assumption is false as far as the history of Australia is concerned; I'd be surprised if it wasn't an oversimplification in the case of the US and Canada also.
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