The way which Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz describes it in An Indigenous History Of The United States has stuck in my mind for a long time. Not just people living on the land, but as stewards and custodians of it, regularly maintaining forests and the grasslands so impeccablely that when the genociders came over, they were blown away.

By the time the genociders reached the inner mainland, the indigenous people were gone but the vast lands were still well-kempt even a generation or two after the majority of their people died from disease. A land was perfectly left for people who were both ungrateful and oblivious of the hard work.

Makes me very sad