Sifting through the ruins of these villages became a preoccupation for Hudson as he recovered his strength, and his discoveries came with a piercing sense of loss. He tried to keep this feeling at bay with two lies that comforted many Europeans in the New World: that the Amerindians’ demise was somehow inevitable, and that the people who had survived disease, war, and exile had been so debased by the ordeal that they no longer resembled their ancestors, who might have deserved respect.
