Quite true. But it's shameful because we violated our own laws and principles. What happened here is what has always happened whenever a primitive people comes into contact with a more advanced one.
William Penn showed that it was possible to live peacefully side-by-side if affairs were conducted fairly.
True, in the short term. In the long run, the exploding white settler population would eventually want the land of the Indians, who were declining in number. The only way to prevent them from taking it would be by means of an absolute monarchy which would protect the Indians.
Does anyone think there was some scenario by which white settlement could have been permanently stopped at the Appalachians or Mississippi? If the US had done so, it still wouldn't have saved the Indians, as the unprotected land would have been settled by some other white nation.
The Walking Purchase shows the Indians from Penn's era were willing to sell more land - but were shafted by Penn's heirs.
I do agree that what happened with the Indians was typical of contact with indigenous peoples in the past. Doesn't mean it should be sugarcoated, though.
***William Penn showed that it was possible to live peacefully side-by-side if affairs were conducted fairly.***
Yet even then Indians still raided and killed many in Pennsylvania.
I am thinking of the Pensylvanya School House Massacre where the Indians wiped out a school and all the children in it.
The Quaker legislature refused to supply men and arms to protect the settlers. In one instance the Indian caused murders in Pennsylvania got so bad the citizens took there murdered dead and piled them in the legislative building forcing their Quaker representitives to walk over the dead to conduct their pacificistc business.
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