> In the book he describes the ways modern life has disconnected us from a lot of what humans find meaningful, and given that it's not surprising that rates of depression and anxiety have skyrocketed.

Yeah. See Yvain's excellent review of "Empire of the Summer Moon":

All of the white people who joined Indian tribes loved it and refused to go back to white civilization. All the Indians who joined white civilization hated it and did everything they could to go back to their previous tribal lives.

There was much to like about tribal life. The men had no jobs except to occasionally hunt some buffalo and if they felt courageous to go to war. The women did have jobs like cooking and preparing buffalo, but they still seemed to be getting off easy compared to the white pioneer women or, for that matter, women today. The whole culture was nomadic, basically riding horses wherever they wanted through the vast open plains without any property or buildings or walls. And everyone was amazingly good at what they did; the Comanche men were probably the best archers and horsemen in the history of history, and even women and children had wilderness survival and tracking skills that put even the best white frontiersmen to shame. It sounds like a life of leisure, strong traditions, excellence, and enjoyment of nature, and it doesn't surprise me that people liked it better than the awful white frontier life of backbreaking farming and endless religious sermons.

Whites who met Comanches would almost universally rave about how imposing and noble and healthy and self-collected and alive they seemed; there aren't too many records of what the Comanches thought of white people, but the few there are suggest they basically viewed us as pathetic and stunted and defective.

https://www.gwern.net/docs/history/2012-11-13-yvain-bookrevi...