World History

There's always that fear that you will get absorbed by or pushed aside by something different. Ideas, people and such.

Visited L'Anse aus Medows in NF, the only known Viking (European) settlement in North America. The first Vikings we not necessarily the best representatives of European peoples. The local Indian tribes basically ran them out of their settlement, probably because they didn't "play nice" with the local population. The Inuit were also suitably hostile to the Vikings settlements in Greenland (and poor relations with them probably contributed to the settlements demise). So it wasn't always a one-sided conflict.

It wasn't all war and conflict when Europeans met the local natives. And it wasn't always a one-sided affair for European dominance. Some Europeans did manage to coexist with the local native populations (William Penn, Conrad Weiser and probably others) but the overall result was not favorable to the native populations in the long run.

The native Americans aren't truly gone, fragments of their existence live on in place names and local stories. Patches of tribes still exist even on the east coast hundreds of years after the Europeans settled here. The story of Natives completely pushed out of their lands is probably not true. Remnant populations remained, sometimes distinct and intermingled, adjusted and overcame. If you listen and look hard enough you will find their shadows still remain.