Who Were the Sea Peoples?

I wrote a post recently wondering about Indians' geographical knowledge. It turns out that not even the experts know for sure: In effect, through its lateral linkages, [the Indian path network] extended from Canada to Florida and west into the Mississippi Valley. How wide in the end the extent of the coastal Indians' geographical awareness was, what sense they had of ultimate spatial magnitudes, is difficult to discover. (Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years , pp. 15-16) I have been wondering about questions like, did the eastern woodland Indians have an inkling that, say, the Aztecs existed? I guess no one knows, but they did have widespread contacts: The sources of Ontario's most exotic trade goods were particularly far-flung: slaves and marine shells from Florida and the lower Mississippi, copper from Lake Superior, volcanic glass and pipestone from the Dakotas and Wyoming. ( ibid. p. 17)

I'm reviewing the book with the above title by Bernard Bailyn. I'm in the "flipping through randomly to get a sense of the book" stage right now. One thing I ran across was Bailyn's account of the Virginia massacre of 1622. If you want to dispel yourself of any notion that colonial American history consists entirely of peaceful Indians being exterminated by ruthless colonists, then you need only read an account of that event. Acting on Chief Opechancanough's plan, which had been years in the making, the Indians wandered unarmed into English settlements, and offered trades, or even sat down to breakfast with their English hosts. (For the the Indians to share meals with the English, or even sleep over at their houses, was apparently very common before the massacre.) At a certain moment (it is not clear from Bailyn's account if there was a signal), the Indians grabbed whatever weapon was at hand -- "axes, hammers, shovels, tools, and knives" (p....