this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
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And America wasn't actually empty frontier, either. It was full of the native people that had been living there since time imemorial, and the ex-europeans slaughtered and plagued their way through.
@sirblastalot @Ziggurat And it's pretty clear that orcs and goblins and such started out as the stand-ins for those Natives.
Orcs in Tolkien’s work were rather a stand in for German soldiers since he fought them in WW1. Gygax simply sourced monsters from everywhere. Only later they became elevated to sentient beings and a playable race… uh… species now (D&D 2024).
Considering ~95% of the native population died of disease within 50 years of the settlers landing? Yeah you can say it was pretty empty. I'm always fascinated by the willful ignorance of "settlers" in the context of the old west. Journals talk of "miraculous" groves of fruiting bushes and trees or other edible vegetation and how it's clearly a gift from their white god while studiously avoiding any mention of the signs of previous habitation in the area. We're still discovering massive irrigation networks in AZ and NM with satellite LiDAR that no "settler" ever mentioned.
Don't overlook the first genocide of my people by focusing too hard on the second. The Europeans struggled to quell the survivors. I honestly don't think settlers had much of a chance otherwise, even with the difference in technology.
I didn't overlook it, I specifically used the term "plagued" in reference to that.
Except there's about ~200 years between plagues being introduced to the America's and the big westward settling pushes. Again, don't conflate one genocide with another.