Different Outcome?

Jake Thibodeau

As we were talking about the wars, I couldn’t help but feel that it was somewhat of a miracle that the Europeans (England and France) were able to defeat the Native Populations. It seems they underestimated the Natives ability to fight and overestimated their ability to wipe out the Indians. The examples that Tai gave of the fort that the natives took over during a ball game because the French came out to watch and how General Braddock bumbled his way through the country without Indian allies, illustrates how inept they were at fighting the natives. I feel that if the Native people would have been more unified they would have easily defeated the Europeans. They had the knowledge of the land and they did not fight in the manner that the Europeans did. The Europeans fought in a very ritualistic manner where each side lined up and faced each other, which caused large amount of casualties. In contrast, the Natives used what were considered guerilla tactics. These were by far more effective. However, the Europeans were able to win because they had more people and resources and they were fighting smaller tribes of Indians, instead of a large unified force. By the time the Indians realized that they needed to be unified, it was too late. Their numbers were reduced through years of war and disease and even worse, there were now many more colonists that were willing to fight against them. I guess for me, I think if the Indians had had the foresight to unify early on in the war, they might have been able to thwart the colonists, but that might be a little unrealistic for anyone to see that far ahead.