“The early (western) colonists who came to this continent were truly pre-Copernican, their ignorance cannot be our excuse. Their rapacity was understandable if deplorable. Their whole inheritance had seemed a war against nature; they were determined to conquer this enemy. They were unaware that it had been the selfsame depredations, accomplished by the same ignorance, that had depleted their historic homelands, Yet this was their heritage and their view- nature bestial, savage, rude the arena of the carnal, the temptation of the flesh, the antithesis of the aspiration of godliness, we might well ask whence came this astonishing illusion, this most destructive of all views, a testimony to a profound inferiority complex, reflected in aggression. The aboriginals whom they confronted bore no such resentment. They had other views of human destiny and fulfillment.”
– Ian L. McHarg (1969)