alt Hacker NewsIm not American, so my knowledge on the natives, or Indians as I'm told they prefer to call themselves, was based on media made by these colonial powers. I started reading into the subject recently and I find that the only thing the colonial powers seem to miss out is the brutal treatment of women, the gang rapes and the torture. Interestingly enough, the powers that be in New York that never had dealings with the Indians face to face had the same picture of peace loving land hippies in mind when telling southerners how to negotiate with them. The comanche specifically were some of the most impressive and frightening people I've ever read about.
The first problem with what you know: there were many different tribes and they didn't share common culture. They did have some trade, but there was no unified culture.
Second problem: diseases (smallpox is the best known) spread much faster than the Europeans and so most of what we they could see was influenced by large numbers of dead people in the previous generation that wasn't recovered from. It is a lot easier to be peaceful with your neighbors when there are no population pressures (that is everyone can eat enough on the land you have). Likewise it is easier to give away "stuff" when you have a lot of extras from older generations that nobody needs.
Third, guns and horses allowed for ways to life that were not possible before. The great nomadic horse tribes - that was clearly observed, but the way of life depends on things the Europeans brought not long before. It is really hard to know what the culture was like before the horse arrived. There is reason to suspect that those great nomadic tribes where heading to a population collapse of the bison herds because the horse and guns enabled over hunting (but of course Europeans arrived before that could happen, and did their own number on the herds).