Stegner-"Beyond the Hundredth Meridian"

pg 256
"What destroyed the Indian wasn ot primairly political greed, land hunger, or military power, not the white man's germs or the white man's rum. What destroyed him was the manufactured products of a culture, iron and steel, guns, needles, wolen cloth, things taht once possessed could not be done without."
This is taken from Bernard DeVoto's,"The Course of the Empire". At least, if i understood the citations correctly. As I continue reading I realize that Stegner believes that the Indians were not intentionally exterminated. What he believes is that it is the culture that destroyed them. The assimilation to the American or white man's way of life. They died not because they were destroyed but because they lost some of their identity in accepting what the white man had to offer. Indians had a way of life before any white man came to their land. They didn't need anything that that the whites had to offer. They had their own culture and own way of cultivating the land. The white man may have offered them what we know as accessories or luxuries that they did not need. They did not need them at least until the white man came and took over their land.