Colin,

Actually you could send it the other way around. NA introduced the world to tobacco, which has killed more people than just about anything. So you might draw a correlation that NA killed more people that Europeans.

This is all pretty mindless. People debate this constantly and aside from an interesting side show I don't think it goes very far.

On the initial subject of Colm's, there are a lot of people that lay claims to everything. On the subject of the blues, while I am sure that Native American's did have some influences, they really didn't succeed in bringing it into the mainstream. In most of my interests are what elements come together to bring things to the mainstreams.

History is full of cultures, inventions, music, etc. that were nearly there yet died out before they resulted in much. My particular postition to Colm's study would be that. That while there is plenty of influences, the actual influence of the blues would be more African American than anything else. I don't see a lot of debate on that.

MAB