Relatively to their numbers, they have shown themselves far more to be dreaded than the Zulus or even the Maoris.
Their presence has caused the process of settlement to go on at unequal rates of speed in different places; the flood has been hemmed in at one point, or has been forced to flow round an island of native population at another.

Had the Indians been as helpless as the native Australians were, the continent of North America would have had an altogether different history.

It would not only have been settled far more rapidly, but also on very different lines.

Not only have the red men themselves kept back the settlements, but they have also had a very great effect upon the outcome of the struggles between the different intrusive European peoples.

Had the original inhabitants of the Mississippi valley been as numerous and unwarlike as the Aztecs, de Soto would have repeated the work of Cortes, and we would very possibly have been barred out of the greater portion of our present domain.