The land was inhabited by people far more adapted to it than the European newcomers, although those native tribes were themselves going through upheaval. Early fishermen had brought epidemic diseases, which decimated the coastal tribes and unsettled their economies, politics, and social webs, forcing them to trade and ally with the intruders to shore up their teetering systems. Europeans who previously knew Indians only by word of mouth, or from seeing captives exhibited in cities, discovered that these peoples had sophisticated societies. Settlers had to rely on them for supplies and
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