Actually, one of the great ironies is that white men arrived in an environment which had been for centuries highly managed by Indians, but an apocalyptic plague had just wiped out Indian civilizations. Henry Hudson reported Manhattan Island was thick of Indians, whose campfires darkened the evening sky. By the time the pilgrims arrived, there were mere thousands. Thus, settlers had no clue WHAT the natural progression looked like; what they found was quite unnatural, little did they realize.
Depends on your definition of “natural.” Most liberals, in my experience, consider anything done by Indians to be natural, since they aren’t really human in the same way white people are. They’re more like a type of wildlife.