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Lee Nellis's avatar

Yes! So, the question I ask, is why were those bounteous resources not everyone's natural heritage to be shared? The people who were there before operated an economy of sharing for generations without depleting the resources. Then, suddenly, those resources were mostly gone within one generation. I see no sense in assigning personal blame to men like Joe (I do assign some to the philosophers who stood behind them, John Locke should have known better). They were creatures of their culture and the times and were often fair and generous within their context. But of all the things the settlers brought (disease, violence, etc) the worst was the story that the forest (etc) was a resource, not a relative.

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David Lehnherr's avatar

Interesting, albeit sad, read. Prior to the arrival of European invaders (or the other native American tribes pushed west by those Europeans) Illinois was significantly peopled. Would have been interesting to see the character of the area before Europeans had much impact in North America.

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