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I don't make the case that the US has been fair with Indians. I am not quite as convinced as other people that we were in all instances wrong, or that a holocaust level series of events took place. And that does seem to be the prevailing idea the media desires to get across. A very interesting book in that regard is, "The Invented Indian" by (or edited by, I can't recall exactly) James Clinton. You might check it out. While I am not defending every action by the US, IMO I have read enough first-hand accounts to say that the word savage was not applied through racisim alone.

Clearly there were depredations on both sides. And the aboriginals fought among themselves before the Europeans ever arrived...For example the Sioux were originally woodland dwellers until conflict with the Chippewa forced them onto the Plains.

That said, if we consider American culture/civilization to be superior, then we should hold ourselves to a higher standard. The moral equivalency argument isn't one that I find compelling.

What happened in the Americas wasn't unique...invasion and conquest is a near-universal human theme, and the more technologically advanced culture ALWAYS supplanst the less advanced one. We could have handled the transition better and more ethically, but maybe that's expecting to much of 16th-19th Century humans (or maybe 21st Century humans for that matter).

We weren't the worst--I think it's indisputable that the Spaniards hold the dubious distinction, although the Russians in Alaska gave them a run for their money--but we weren't the best either.

The Indians probably fared somewhat better under British Colonial rule than in the American nation-state that supplanted it, and there was much less conflict in British Canada than on the American Frontier...so much so that it was possible to maintain order on the Canadian Frontier with a paramilitary police force (the North West Mounted Police, which later became the RCMP) rather than an army of conquest and occupation, as was necessary south of the border.

I would guess of all the colonial powers, the Indians probably fared best under the French, who were generally more interested in trade than in settlement.