This is an extreme nitpick, but the American Indians (most American Indians prefer this name over "Native American," but see Wikipedia for more details on the n

This is an extreme nitpick, but the American Indians (most American Indians prefer this name over "Native American," but see Wikipedia for more details on the name question) weren't entirely happy with how they were living, as of the time of the European colonization... So they fixed it. The parts of the Jesuit Relations dealing with the Jesuits' first missionary work among the Hurons relates how the Hurons weren't particularly interested in accepting or rejecting the Jesuits' religious message; what they were interested in was how to build French-style houses. The Cherokee tribe took this even further than the Hurons, developing a syllabic script, and assimilating completely to the norms of the American South (even to the point of owning African slaves, unfortunately). Personally, my complaint about the wars with the American Indians is not that the United States all but annihilated deadly enemies like the Iroquois and the Sioux (although coexistence with them would have been better, and we're doing a little better that way at present); my objection is that the United States all but annihilated peoples like the Cherokee, who were better Europeans than most of the American frontiersmen who wanted them displaced. Like the American Indian casinos, I try to avoid twenty-dollar bills.