In my reality when I play Sid Meier's Colonization the fact that illnesses aren't simulated in the game don't help them much. Every time I cannot resist to disrupt their culture by sending missionaries, bribing and making allies with weak to get rid of the strong and eventually taking out weak one by one. They help fight other Europeans as well (few times I managed to get Spanish into war with three tribes at the same time, too bad Spanish always win, because they're good in fighting locals). When I'm done, it's Natives-clean territory.

I'm not sure if co-exisitng with Natives is even possible in Colonization, they're overprotective of their territory and quite fast become a problem for expansion. When you're on the peak of your power it's hard to resist not to wipe them out.

While you might be right on a few accounts you are also not looking at the grand picture.  You know why Bison roamed the USA?  Because a lot of USA is grassland territory.  What keeps a grassland a grassland? Fire  

I suggest you come to Texas where it is supposed to be short grass prairie and see what the fire policies of the past 100 years has done to the land.  Now there are many shrubs taking over most ranches in Texas (Juniper, Mesquite, etc).  So instead of a just a few bushes you have a shitload due to putting fires out.  A grassland is supposed to burn every 5-15 years.  If you let some shrubs grow too high even fire or top killing the tree/shrub won't work (some can sprout from the "dead" trunk).  So the fire is only effective against these species when the plants are young and very small.  Why do you think we are now finally going back to controlled burnings?  Probably because physically removing the trees/shrubs is such a pain in the ass and very costly.  Seems like your mindset on fire is dated back to the early 1900s.  Why do you think California has such problems with fires?  Because they live in a chaparral that is supposed to burn every 10 or so years.  They keep putting out the small fires and let all the dead material build up.  Then you have an out of control fire that has tons of fuel.

Bottom two pics are original bison range and later reduction in range.  They have suffered the same fate as Prairie Dogs which should be an endangered species or at least protected (but many ranchers don't want that and when there was talk about adding them many ranchers killed them off of their property so they wouldn't have to worry, most don't like them because cattle can break their legs in their holes)...  There used to be bears in Texas but not anymore...  There also used to be a decent wolf population in USA.  I wonder why there are so many damn white tailed deer (overpopulation)...  Hmm.. maybe it is the reduction in predators.  I can go down the list of animals that have been affected greatly since Europeans have came to settle, and don't get me started on feral pigs introduced by Europeans.

About the land ownership... Sure there were plenty of tribes that had their own territory.  I was mainly referring the tribes that followed the bison around.  They might of viewed it as their territory but they knew it was really Gods.  Just like Christians believe God created nature.  However, most of them don't respect nature that much even when they believe it was a gift from God.

Were the Native Americans perfect?  No, but they treated the land (for the most part) a lot better than most races.  The ones that did totally mistreat nature paid their own price (aka the Mayans with their mass deforestation to build monuments) or the Indians that lived in New Mexico area (at the time during Middle Ages was one of the highest concentration of people) farmed an area that eventually turned to desert (probably accelerated due to their farming) into oblivion.

I could have worded my stance better but I was in a very dark mood that day.

pretty much the same, but it was more like, the human was wiped by a alien diseases ....

My point is they didn't respect nature, because they burned the shit out of it... including the forests... so there would be more bison.   Because they loved bison.

http://books.google.com/books?id=vSCra8jUI2EC&pg=PA286&dq=Rather+than+the+thick,+unbroken,+monumental+snarl+of+trees+imagined+by+Thoreau&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Ov6ZT9_YK6Xy2QXAuICVDw&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Rather%20than%20the%20thick%2C%20unbroken%2C%20monumental%20snarl%20of%20trees%20imagined%20by%20Thoreau&f=false

Bison all the way to Georgia.

Burning forests down for Bison is actually probably worse treatment of the land then burning down forests for Cattle.  Afterall Cattle needs much less room then free range bison.  I think your mistake is you are comparing Western cultures treatment of the land TODAY vs Native American Treatment of the land back then.  (Which again, argueably worse.)

My point is that fire is good for grasslands. Fire is a very important part of nature. Fire doesn't destroy nature (it allows it to grow by releasing vital nutrients into the soil).  How are we treating the land better with pesticides, genetically modified crops, factory farms (mass runoff pollution into rivers) and having cows stand in their own shit while they eat food that has newspaper chicken droppings in it (it is legal for chicken farmers to sell their newspapers laden with shit for cattle feed in USA)? Native Americans probably didn't destroy thousand of acres of wetlands which is an ecosystem that produces more than rain forest. Why do you think hurricanes destroy so much these days (especially Gulf Coast)? Because we built on top of wetlands that were natural barriers against the storm surge. You can come up with a few examples of Native Americans mistreating the land and I can come up with hundreds of examples of whites mistreating the land.

And all of them all seem like they are going to be from a time after the Native Americans were forced on to reservations.  Sorta pointless in that regard, no?

Native American's weren't really any better or worse then anybody else.  They changed nature how they saw fit, to the way they best thought fit them... period.  Even if it meant burning down a bunch of forests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_savannas_of_North_America

I get your point about grasslands... except... How do you think a lot of those came to place in the first place?

If Native Americans still had North America.... they'd be doing the exact same stuff you are complaining about!

The thought that werent' is based on old outdated historical ideas made by the colonials at the time and there "Savage Native" mentality.  What you mentioned about Christians and not respecting the land?  That's the Native Americans as well.

They had Agirculture like everybody else... they weren't "Hunters and Gatherers" like some people claim.... they actually had VERY complicated Agriculture.

In reaity... The native Americans were doing an impressive job of altering the flow of nature LONG before we were... at by the way HUGE levels.   Since the population of North America was a LOT bigger then you'd expect.  North America had their own version of the Black Plague before Europeons got there, except it was WAY worse. 

Worth noting considering you were talking about overpopulation... they were FAR more overpopulated then Europe at the time.  (Before the horrible plague).

They only looked like conservators of nature to the colonials because they didn't know what nature was supposed to look like... and the Natives had cleared land for hundreds of years...  and suddenly they only had 20 people for every 100 they previously had.  Bison were so prevelant when Europeons got here, not because of the Natives love of nature, but because they had planned on ten times the people eating them.

I imagine if 80% of "Whites" were to disapear off the face of the Earth today, there wouldn't be much changed in the ecosystem and in fact nature would reclaim a lot of land s well.

I think it may be time to stop watching Avatar.

@Kasz, what I am seeing on that map is a lot of understory fires (which means everything under the trees burning not necessarily the trees). Forest is good for cover but there isn't that much that grows under big trees (the sunlight being blocked). So forest aren't really that productive when it comes to food for animals. Forest mainly just provides cover from the elements for most animals and some habitat (owls, etc).

"A savanna, or savannah, is a grassland ecosystem characterized by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of grasses."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savanna

So would you rather have a bunch of trees covering the entire canopy blocking out light to prevent grass and shrubs growing?  Or would you rather have something that provides a little cover with actual food for animals. Old growth forest are important but they don't really provide anything but cover.

I have a BS (bullshit) degree in Wildlife Management..  I might not know everything but I believe I know more about nature than you.

Yea, I am not too proud of that.  I wasn't in a very good mood at the time.  However, that is how I feel.  I don't see humans serving that much purpose on this planet.