Blood on the River: James Town, 1607 | 
pickAn enjoyable account of the early years of Jamestown from a child's perspective. Carbone shows the tenuousness of the early settlement and both the good and bad of the settlers. Alongside this we get a look into the culture of Powhatan's empire and see the friendships that grew despite the situation. It makes me wonder if there is any scenario in which Europeans arriving in the Americas wouldn't have been a disaster for the people already here.
MegaWhoppingCosmicBookwyrm I don‘t think there is, sadly. The diseases alone that Europeans brought with them and that the Natives had no immunity for, would still have decimated their numbers. 💔 Maybe all the more quickly if we had all been super chummy and close since the beginning... 4y
ImperfectCJ @MegaWhoppingCosmicBookwyrm I have trouble imagining one, too. Eventually the population loss due to disease would have evened out as immunity grew, I think, if the native nations weren't being enslaved, tricked, or stolen from at the same time, but since the Europeans were here primarily for profit and land acquisition and many had a strong sense of superiority, it's difficult to imagine them sharing. 4y
ImperfectCJ @MegaWhoppingCosmicBookwyrm Or maybe it would be more accurate for me to leave out the "many" and say the Europeans had a cultural assumption of superiority and entitlement that overshadowed any individual's inclination towards harmony that might have existed. 4y
MegaWhoppingCosmicBookwyrm Agreed, it would have been much better if the only damage European colonists did was unavoidable pathogen transfer... Guess we weren‘t lucky enough to exist in that corner of the multiverse. 😥 4y
