Basically the title. For context, I was arguing with someone who denied that what happened to the Native Americans was genocide. Obviously, that is a ridiculous claim, as there is a mountain of evidence to suggest otherwise.
At one point, however, I did make the claim that the majority of the violence that occurred was initiated by the West, and not Native Americans. My reasoning was that, if we view the colonies/America as a conquering force that was expanding westward, then the Native Americans were most likely defending themselves, and not making moves to conquer the US. I also looked at some notable Native American attacks on colonial villages (on Wikipedia lol), and even then, it seemed that those attacks were in response to colonial violence to some degree. That being said, while the person I was arguing with couldn't prove I was wrong, I know I'm not the most informed, and that my history is not the best, so I just wanted to fact check my claim.
Broadly i would say yes that's correct, but it's a bit of a muddy question to answer. It's worth taking a look at how you're really defining "violence" here. Violence can be in the more literal sense of the word actions such as murder, raiding, rape etc. but I would argue that actions such as theft of land, spreading of pathogens, destruction of environments and food-sources, purposefully disregarding treaties, nefarious trade practices and so on also constitute acts of violence that are just as valid and destructive. If we want to say that they do, then it's VERY hard to argue that native populations weren't largely on the defensive from the get go. An example of this would be the Sioux uprising of 1862, in which a lot of the early attacks would have no doubt seemed to a lot of settlers at the time like unprovoked assaults, but were largely in retaliation for the actions (such as those listed above) that white settlers had been taking against the natives for decades.
to sum it up, there are many instances of Native Americans attacking settlers first and killing civilians etc. which may make it seem as though they initiated conflict, but I would argue that it's difficult to say this is really an offensive action when set against the backdrop of their population and way of life being systematically destroyed by the diseases and deliberate colonialist actions of settlers who were far from pacifists themselves.
hope that helps :)
edit: Sioux Uprising happened in 1862, definitely not 1968. silly me.