ONLY The Silmarillion

[Encaitare]

One feature of discourse among the learned, and not so learned, perhaps, might be, "Have all the Elves gone over sea?" Which would put a different bent on exploration, too... Would the native Americans have been treated differently... at least, at first? Purely speculative, of course...

Supposedly the Aztecs thought that the Spanish explorers who arrived were gods, or messengers from the gods, because of their unusual (to them, at least) appearance. Perhaps if it was widely believed that in the West yet dwelt the Elves, it would have been the other way around. The explorers may have made a crusade of sorts, and believed that the natives they encountered were Elves. How disappointed they would have been to discover the truth ...

But they probably would have had great respect for the Native American at first, since they would have considered them to be wise, wonderful beings. However, when they failed to witness any great acts of elven "magic" and such, the explorers probably would have turned on them, deciding that they weren't going to revere people who seemed too much like regular people.

Yay! This is a speculative thread which is actually quite thought-provoking!