> sheer immense amount of vast, mostly unused ,fertile land available in north America

it was not "available", it only became "available" after we killed off nearly all the inhabitants and stole their land

This exaggerated lie always gets posted, but it's entirely inaccurate.

The Indians were nomadic hunter-gatherers who were sparsely distributed around the US and moved seasonally. Diseases killed the majority. Inter-tribal warfare was the second leading cause of death (tribes that had been fighting for generations with rocks and sticks got access to horses, steel blades and guns and became much more lethal) and deaths attributable to European settlers were negligible compared to the first two causes.

	▲	insane_dreamer a day ago \| parent [-]
		stop whitewashing it yes, diseases killed the majority, but the diseases didn't come out of nowhere, they came from the European occupiers. and inter-tribal warfare killed plenty. but we're talking about theft of "available" land: the Europeans took the land from the remaining inhabitants, killing those who resisted, and deceiving those who submitted through treaties which they repeatedly broke, leaving the natives, by design, with the worst, most infertile land in the country don't try to gloss it over and hand-wave it away -- yes, the natives were greatly diminished through the causes you mentioned, I never said the European occupiers killed them all, but it was genocide to finish them off and take all the land from anyone who resisted, effectively destroying their civilization and stop calling them "settlers", they did not "settle" the land, they took it by force and deception