The Only Good Indian is a Dead One

John Smith often wrote of combat with Native Americans. In the 1608 accounts, he writes:

"Anchoring in this Bay, twentie or thirtie went a shore with the Captain, and in coming aboard, they were assalted with certaine Indians, which charged them within Pistoll shot: in which conflict, Captaine Archer and Mathew Morton were shot: whereupon, Captaine Newport seconding them, made a shot at them, which the Indians little respected, but having spent their arrowes retyred without harme."

In the above account Smith gives indication of why the Native Americans are attacking the settlers. He makes racial conflict sound perfectly natural, and ignores the possibility that whites might have offended the Indians somehow.

Productive and peaceful relations with natives are possible. Smith and other whites of the same mindset (Custer) harm themselves and the Indians by assuming war is the only way. In Brazil, Candido Rondon gave violent tribes free tools as gifts. If his party was attacked, he would not return fire and let his troops be killed. If a tribe agreed to negotiate, he offered them jobs helping to construct telegraph lines. One native compared Rondon to Ghandi, saying "their mission was identical, to live for others, altruism." (http://www.vidaslusofonas.pt/candido_rondon2.htm) If Rondon had come three hundred years earlier, he could have been a role model and prevented centuries of bloody extermination.