They definitely had the possibility to choose different strategies, some more or less like that, but the power imbalance was such that either way, the prospects were pretty bad.
Hard to say. Consider the Cherokee Indians, who made a quite valiant attempt to ‘close the gap’, settling and inventing a written script and everything, only for things to go pear-shaped. But on the other hand, the Cherokee still seem to be around as a bunch of coherent groups, which is more than a lot of Native Americans from that time period could say.
Do you think this is an option that was meaningfully available to Native Americans in the early 19th century?
They definitely had the possibility to choose different strategies, some more or less like that, but the power imbalance was such that either way, the prospects were pretty bad.
Hard to say. Consider the Cherokee Indians, who made a quite valiant attempt to ‘close the gap’, settling and inventing a written script and everything, only for things to go pear-shaped. But on the other hand, the Cherokee still seem to be around as a bunch of coherent groups, which is more than a lot of Native Americans from that time period could say.