Perceived... To the point you are trying to make, most Native American Tribes lived close to and around water ways. Which makes sense considering every protein producing food source lives near or around water. They were not metropolitan. The Eastern sea board which the English settled in were definitely inhabited as you say by Tribes like the Cherokee, Catawba , Chickasaw, Choctaw, Apalachee and Seminole are mostly know. The others who inhabited just the SE are The Yuchi, Creek, Guale, Timucua, Calusa, Caddo, Tunica, Natchez and Chitmacha. Not many know of these Tribes. Then comes the Northeast regions that commons know, Shawnee,Mohawk, Mohican, Montauk, Mohegan.... seems faint right ?... Add in the Tuscarora, Pamlico, Powhatan, Conoy, Nanitoke, Wappinger,Pequot, Narraganset, Niantic, Wompanoag, Nauset, Bipmuc, Malecite, Mi'Kmaq, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Abenaki, Pennacook, Pocomtuc, Iroquois, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Susquehannock, Wenrohronon...... Quite a few sectors to be unihabited. Lol please don't tell me of how it was uninhabited, as they took the lands and used these people for slaves, starved them and beat them. Along with raping and killing the women and children. So yeah I can see why the fighting tribes started killing the white man that was trespassing.