Both sides were equally capable of atrocity and equally capable of cooperation. So let's not pretend that the Natives were either the vicious rampaging "Injuns" of earlier myth or the peaceful, nature-loving hippies of modern myth. Mmkay?
Hmm... I'm starting to like you Cicero, never a good thing

You state what I believe in such a much more elegant way than I.
So I think the era of colonization would take much longer to get going than in OTL, but would get faster and faster once things did get going. Like a freight train that needs time to build up steam before it can get to speed.
Again, totally agreed - however, I did want to point such colonies as the Nordic one was purely for expansionism - not religion, not trade goods, just 'living room'. Plymouth colony comes to mind as well, a colony built simply because of religious persecution back home. Hmm, does that mean the Zionists or Jews might have sailed West earlier if no Natives?
That said, there was a 2nd reason for coming here, with or without Natives. Trade goods such as Pot Ash, trapper's furs and others would still have drawn trappers, traders, scouts, and eventually farmers and townsfolk would have appeared or migrated. In addition, you always have that small percentage of the population, the undesirables, that are, throughout history, moving to the 'new lands' whether under formalized arrangements like Austrailia, or the western drive of colonization before Manifest Destiny in the form of scouts. Sometimes even just the desire to know what is out there 'Lewis & Clark' like.
Slow start yes, possibly even slower than I'd care to speculate.
Faster expansion after start? Perhaps, depending on how hard the colonists cling to the 'European methods' in the New World. They weren't very applicable, yet still clung to quite stubbornly - both Nordic & European colonizations had that problem - which was one reason why Greenland colonies foundered, along with climate change, lack of adaptability, and disease.
If there were no natives, I do wonder if they would founded l'aix Meadows or not. If they did so with no natives, and got a couple critical resupplies from home as well as a somewhat larger number of people in, then they would very likely have colonized most of the eastern seaboard.
Wow - that would lead to a Nordic N. American, wouldn't it? I'd speculate the Europeans would still have a technological edge, especially if contact was cut ~1100, that would lead to wars, etc. but it would sure be a different timeline from OTL - almost unrecognizably different
