alt Hacker NewsIt definitely was. There were at least sometimes extenuating circumstances though.
My sense is that in the US and Canada settlers found a great deal of "apparently" uninhabited land, largely a result of the diseases that had swept through because of earlier contact, decimating the existing population.
My guess is that had disease not done its work, the European settlers would have found it much harder to displace the existing inhabitants.
I have yet to read 1491, but yes I imagine that it would have been much more challenging without that first strike. But the weapons capabilities of the europeans were also going to make it happen one way or another.