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Cliff Hendroval's avatar

One of the things that isn't taught is that some 75% of the natives of what is now Canada and the USA died between 1492 and 1776 without ever seeing or coming into contact with Europeans. (A friend of mine, a Marxist history professor that I went to college with, has said that that the earlier boundary may be set back to 1450 or so, as there is vague evidence that there may have been contact between natives and European fishermen working the Grand Banks, most likely Portuguese, before Columbus arrived in the West Indies.) The natives in the areas of New England and the Canadian Maritimes were almost literally decimated, and plague spread south and west, weakening native tribes, making it easier for Europeans to dominate them, particularly once they ran up against the Europeans' technological advantages (horses, metal smelting, and gunpowder).

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Cliff Hendroval's avatar

I "read" them the best way - listened to her reading the audiobooks.

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