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Aurini comments on Suffering - Less Wrong
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I am an emotivist and do not believe anything is good or bad in an objective sense. I think some Indians may have had guns by the 1700s, but their bows and arrows weren't terribly outclassed by many of the old muskets back then either (I'm actually discussing that at my blog right now). The biggest advantage of the colonists was their ever-increasing numbers (while disease steadily drained those of the natives). The indians frequently did respond in kind to killings and the extent to which they could do so would strike me as as the most significant factor to take into consideration when it comes to the decision to kill them.
There is also the factor of trade relations that could be disrupted, but most people engaged in prolonged voluntary trade are going to have significant ass-kicking ability or otherwise they would have been conquered and their goods seized by force already. I understand Peter Leeson has a paper "Trading with bandits" disputing that point, but the frequency with which dominance based resource extraction occurs makes me think the phenomena he discusses only occur under very limited conditions.
Just an aside, you should look up some of the writings by my old (and favourite) Professor Dr. (James?) Weaver of McMaster University. He argues that it was the social technology of institutions, banking, land speculating, and established commerce that allowed whites to take over North America, not individual hostility. The key players he notes are the empire (who vacillated between expansionist and not-expansionist), the homesteaders, and the land speculators.
The Indians were harsh and intelligent bargainers, but they were playing by the rules of a game that white people wrote and created - the house always wins.
Fact: All Historians approach historical documents with their own set of contexts and biases - all Historians except Dr. Weaver, that is. Fact: Most Historians have to cite sources - Dr. Weaver is able to go back in time and create them.