I don’t think there’s any evidence for genocide, but my pet peeve for this is how the indigenous people of the Americas are held up purely as victims, as if the concept of violence didn’t exist until Columbus arrived. When the Europeans first arrived in North America, the tribal villages they encountered were surrounded by fortified wooden palisades. Those weren’t just there as decorations. Everyone sucks.

I have yet to encounter this explicitly where someone would say that Native Americans were “purely victims”. At best, they aggregate and dehistoricize all tribes into a conglomerate term, “Native Americans”. I’m sure there are some who cling to the “n{now savage” trope, but I don’t see it these days.

What ever intertribal conflicts happened, they never reached the level of disease spread, displacement, and systematic violence aimed at cultural erasure. The unprecedented scale of violence unleashed by colonialism, which led to devastating consequences for these communities is important and to flatten the intertribal violence along side the colonial conquest is narrow minded. They may have sucked, but some far more than others.

What ever intertribal conflicts happened, they never reached the level of disease spread, displacement, and systematic violence aimed at cultural erasure

Not because they were noble savages though, just because they lacked the ability to do that to their enemies.

That’s a huge statement. Do you have equally damning evidence to support that statement?

Do I have damning evidence that humans are humans and behave the way humans always do?

I don’t accept your framing. Its defeatist and rooted in modern projects.