Descriptions of New World exploration often describes the people as peaceful victims compared to the conquering Europeans, but is that accurate?
I am wondering if the New World people were also harsh or oppressive to their lower classes and were conquered because of something other than being taken advantage of.
There is a large amount of cultural variation between different groups that lived over two continents, and so you're not likely to get a single answer by one historian to this question. However, with that said, you might find interesting a recent multi-part answer by /u/snapshot52 to the question Native Americans in what is now the USA have often been portrayed as having "idyllic" lives before Western colonizers arrived - is there any truth to this? How much "easier" were their daily lives? Before Western diseases and colonists arrived, was it a life of easy hunting and simple living?