But this imagines a level of political unity and coordination that never existed among American aboriginals. Although guns, germs, and steel certainly helped Eu

But this imagines a level of political unity and coordination that never existed among American aboriginals. Although guns, germs, and steel certainly helped European colonists conquer Native civilizations, internal disunity and politics played as large a role, and likely larger. European colonists everywhere took advantage of this fragmentation, regularly playing different states and ethnicities against each other in the Americas (and later elsewhere). All too often it was advantageous for a government or politician to make a deal with Europeans for temporary individual benefit against older enemies, at the cost of the entirety of "Native Americans" (a category that didn't exist until 1492, and an identity that most of its members didn't consider themselves until centuries later).