yes they discovered land just like the illegal Mexicans are discovering land, that affords them better opportunities. And to answer you question no I don't blame them, I would try to go somewhere that where more prosperous if I could. But just like the Indians tempers are starting to flair, it would only take a few incident to light that match and atrocities would be committed on both sides. Are the Mexicans the victims? They are the ones moving in. If the white man looses was he the peaceful victim?

The reason I being up the Mexicans is because we see this occurrence happen through history and it usually ends up in a violent confrontation that both parties excite. The Indians and white settlers are no exception to the same occurrences we see in modern history. If you think the Indians where sitting around baking bread and then all of the sudden for no reason whitey started killing them then you have a very warped sense of revisionist history.

Just read the story of Daniel Boone's son and how they butchered (and when I say butchered I mean butchered) him and it will give you some perspective as to why the pilgrims started to war with the Indians. I mean everyone wants to make whitey the baby killers and here we are with documented accounts of multiple occasions of Indians butchering men's entire families (even the little babies) as revenge and intimidation tactics.

I we did the same to some illegal Mexicans you could be sure that they would want revenge for such atrocities. And once a populist attitude of indiference ot another race or culture has set in it is verry hard to reverse course, whch eventual leads to the total destruction of one of the two cometing cultures.

Israel and the middle east is a good example of this unrepentant attitude. As ws Kosovo, this is history as usual so please don't try to rewrite it to fit you own world view. It is as it is, human nature is as it is and you just have to accept it, until you and others do you are doing everyone a disservice, as solutions need to be derived from real problems and not once idea of what the problem should have been. You are denying the Indians their history and their plight for survival by making them wimps that where just the victims.

I'm a little amused by this exchange, since ideologically I'm probably somewhere between the two of you. There was indeed a wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of the native populations in America during the 1800s, and by today's standards, much of it would be considered unconscionable.

But mostly, I'm interested in the facts of history, so I should point out that the "illegal" Mexicans are "discovering" land which used to be theirs in the first place. The current United States western and southwestern were already occupied by Mexico, up until the Mexican-American War, which ended with the United States forcibly buying the land from Mexico for a rather cheap sum.

It's also worth pointing out that the United States government probably already had an inkling of the natural value of California; the great California gold rush began less than a year later, and had that territory still been occupied by Mexico, it would have dramatically changed the balance of power in the Americas.

My point was that settling for prosperity as well as refugees was natural part of human history and that usually when two cultures clash it is not a peaceful event.

If one would not blame the Mexicans today for their peaceful search for a better life (which could latter turn violent on both sides), then why would they blame the pilgrims? Just because they are white?

When the story is told by someone whit a bent the white man had murderous intent from the second he set out from Europe and that is the furthest from the truth. The fact of the matter is that most where refugees and the impoverished looking for a better life, in a land that (to them) had a lot of vacant space.

My point is not that the Indians where the devil and that White man where saints, it has been that history is history and it has no room for revision and when you see someone taking different views for the same event with different parties being the actors, you can be sure that they have an agenda. A very popular one is the white man butchered the Indians and robbed them of their land. While also being a supporter of the Mexican migration.

The Mexicans may have not been the best example, as they would be an example of someone who has a more legitimate gripe about white Americans than the Indians.