Once wars began, they so thoroughly dominated human history that it is very difficult to believe this earlier peaceful heritage. Every problem has already been solved or is about to be solved. No wonder students lose interest. The result is not happy for textbook scholarship. Very few original sources are quoted directly.
History is furious debate informed by evidence and reason.
Now, about Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims . There must be six different children's books and one famous adult novel that tell this famous myth about how Squanto came out of the woods to help the Pilgrims survive their first year in the wilderness of the New World. White man's diseases, from small pox and typhus to bubonic plague, knocked down the inhabitants of America and destroyed their cultural systems in just a few years. It turns out he had been captured and sold as a slave by a British captain, spent nine years in England and later in Spain, escaped back to England and eventually back to America. The Pilgrim's town of Plymouth was built on the site of Patuxet, Squanto's village.