There is a need for another American history book, and one that would likely be banned in most of the public high schools in the US.
As Mel Gibson’s movie, The Patriot, was a whole lot different than the little Revolutionary War history that is taught in schools today, the truth of Colonial and early America is that it was a time of savagery, in an age of savagery, and that the colonists had to be exceptionally tough people to not just survive, but prosper.
While the colonists had taken the east coast, they were effectively blocked from moving inland by the northern and southern Indian confederations. And only by extraordinary luck were they able to make the westward expansion.
To start with, before the colonists had arrived, the northern and southern tribes had a horrific war, so murderous that they had made what is now most of the state of Kentucky a gigantic “neutral zone”, that hunting parties could enter but was forbidden to encampment by either confederation. The reason was that Kentucky was strategically vital, for both east-west and north south travel. A great crossroads, that remained so through the later US Civil War.
In any event, the colonists were stuck on the east coast, but just then, the British deported a very belligerent and tough people, the “Scots Borderers” to the colonies. And having no place on the east coast to settle, the colonists sent them to occupy the Kentucky region.
Because it was a neutral zone to the Indians, the Borderers were able to move in and set up forts before either confederation wised up. And then they were tough enough to resist the brutal efforts by the confederations to kick them out. The end result was a passage west from the colonies, the beginning of westward expansion.
Neither the northern or southern tribes were happy with this, and in the North, two ridiculously brutal wars followed: first the French and Indian War, which at times became “no quarters” slaughters; and then, with the British victory, this lead to Pontiac’s Rebellion, which was hideous, but finally broke the back of the northern confederation.
The southern confederation remained intact, and a major threat, until Andrew Jackson, who had formerly allied with the Indians to kick out the French, turned against them an ethnically cleansed them from east of the Mississippi, an event known today as “The Trail of Tears”.
As America expanded West, it fought for every foot of land, against the Plains Indians, and then the western Indians.
In any event, things like these should be available at the high school level, to dispel any notions that committee meetings, hand wringing, and “Kumbaya” achieve more than diddly-squat in the real world.
But this being said, most high schools wouldn’t permit this book anywhere near their libraries.
I tend to emphasize attrition. The settlers just kept coming, with new waves of immigrants pushing on past the graves of the fallen, while the Indians could not replace their losses.
Prior to the Revolution, the British government tried to restrain the westward movement, but the settlers were gradually pushing inland anyhow. After the Revolution, the pace accelerated. The eastern woodland Indians were simply too thin on the ground to resist the spread of an agricultural population.
It is interesting to speculate on what might have happened if the disease wave had not decimated Indian numbers. The Indians who remained when the overland settlers showed up still practiced some agriculture, just not enough to support the numbers required to mount an effective resistance. Little Turtle and Tecumseh are probably the last two Indian leaders to mount a resistance that actually meant much. After them, it was just a long, bloody mop up operation.