Sad note about what the explorers brought with them:

One thing which really stuck with me when reading about the earlier explorer/writers is that we see in Harriot a description about how the settlers from Europe infected the Native Americans with diseases not indigenous to this country at the time.  The diseases are not described (like pox, sores, coughing, etc) but on p 41 about halfway down, there is this telling of how the explorers would go to a village and sickness would arrive, but the "whites" would not get it (they obviously were carriers). And then evidence that the diseases spread from village to village...and the natives assumed that they were doing something wrong since the whites did not get the diseases and they did.  Even the whites thought this was strange.
This must have happened with European expansionism all over the world. Pretty sad!