Vinland-Mesoamerican Trade

I think if Vinland ever became a thing it would probably start establishing trade routes sometime around the late 13th century to the early 14th and eventually come into contact with Mesoamerican cultures (I know some might want to argue over this but I think it's seriously underestimating what people are capable of, but regardless of opinions lets all agree that it's a possibility for now for the sake of the thread). I don't think they would be capable of conquering or raiding anything but trade seems possible. So my question is how would this contact effect the civilizations of the region? Something that immediately comes to mind could be the introduction of European livestock in the region, pigs most likely, maybe some cattle if we're lucky. Not only would this change the local diet and cause a population boom alone but might also lead to the development of leather armor, altering warfare. There is also the possibility of introducing new types of ship building but that's probably a stretch as the Mesoamericans would need to create rivets but they were working with copper at the time so who knows?

The Totonac cities in Veracruz seems to be a likey place that the Norse would first run into. They liked hugging the coastline and Veracruz looks to have the right geography for it. But what do you guys think?
 
Well, assuming it happens, what would cause it?

The decline of missisipian cultures could provoke a rupture in "traditional" trade ways of Vinlanders; reinforced by a decline of Vinland/Europe relationship.

What would Vinlanders lack most? Agricultural products, probably, especially maize (that could be an interesting factor for Vinlander breeding farms), luxury products, salt, etc.

It also depends on the political structure of Vinlanders : unified, decentralized, or on the form of statelets. If it's the latter, the decline of supporting economical grounds for that would be likely still a small maritime entity could lead to a similar situation than Xth Northern Europe.

Meaning decline of kingship authority, at the benefit of raiders.
Of course, that implies that Vinlander would have a knowledge of Mesoamerica, maybe by earlier contacts or settlement in OTL Georgia and southern. That's probably the most important difficulty : having either Scandinavians sailing south before the XIVth century without entering in a trade relationship; or Mesoamericans going further than Caribbeans.

I wouldn't be surprised, if you manage that, to see appearing the pattern mentioned above, and coastal Mexico being raided, and possibly coastal islands or estuary used as trade emporioi.

Amber, tissues, gold, would certainly count there (and possibly Mesoamericanize more or less significantly Vinlanders)
 
Well, assuming it happens, what would cause it?

The decline of missisipian cultures could provoke a rupture in "traditional" trade ways of Vinlanders; reinforced by a decline of Vinland/Europe relationship.

What would Vinlanders lack most? Agricultural products, probably, especially maize (that could be an interesting factor for Vinlander breeding farms), luxury products, salt, etc.

It also depends on the political structure of Vinlanders : unified, decentralized, or on the form of statelets. If it's the latter, the decline of supporting economical grounds for that would be likely still a small maritime entity could lead to a similar situation than Xth Northern Europe.

Meaning decline of kingship authority, at the benefit of raiders.
Of course, that implies that Vinlander would have a knowledge of Mesoamerica, maybe by earlier contacts or settlement in OTL Georgia and southern. That's probably the most important difficulty : having either Scandinavians sailing south before the XIVth century without entering in a trade relationship; or Mesoamericans going further than Caribbeans.

I wouldn't be surprised, if you manage that, to see appearing the pattern mentioned above, and coastal Mexico being raided, and possibly coastal islands or estuary used as trade emporioi.

Amber, tissues, gold, would certainly count there (and possibly Mesoamericanize more or less significantly Vinlanders)

I was thinking the Norse will be divided into petty kingdoms at this time and the reason for expanding to Mesoamerica will be merchants looking for new markets after ending contact with Europe. They would definitely have established trade with the Mississippians and Caribbean cultures before then though, so they would probably have at least some knowledge of Mesoamerica before then, maybe even some "undocumented discoveries" by some adventurous types early on.
 
Would the Vinland people have much to offer besides weapons to the people of Mesoamerica?

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Salt cod.
OTL Newfoundland sold millions of tons of salt cod to Caribbean plantation owners. Fish was the least expensive protein they could feed to slaves.

TTL How much would Mayan/Aztec population have to grow before they needed to import food from Vinland?
 
. They would definitely have established trade with the Mississippians and Caribbean cultures before then though, so they would probably have at least some knowledge of Mesoamerica before then, maybe even some "undocumented discoveries" by some adventurous types early on.

So, a mix between Norse raids in Europe and Great Discovery motives...You know, there is some map potential there...
 
Look up the Taino, if the get as far as the Bahamas they can plug into the outer edge of a mesoamerican trade loop.
 
Look up the Taino, if the get as far as the Bahamas they can plug into the outer edge of a mesoamerican trade loop.

Yeah those guys have been on my mind but I've only begun to scratch the surface in that area. I was hoping this thread could point me in the right direction.
 
Would the Vinland people have much to offer besides weapons to the people of Mesoamerica?

Anything made out of iron. Iron is useful for a lot more than just weapons, although for a number of things it isn't that much more useful than copper and bronze. I'm assuming that during the few hundred years that the Vinlanders had been around they would have discoverd a local source of iron. One of the biggest iron ore deposits in the world is in Labrador. If that is the case, they might get in to shipping raw iron to Mesoamerica, although finished tools would fetch a higher price.

For some reason, I was ignorant of the fact that the Mesoamericans had had cotton (I knew it had been domesticated once in the Old World, and hadn't know it had ALSO been domesticated in Mexico), and thought that, because of that, sheep would be a BIG DEAL. I still think sheep will be important (and pigs, cattle, and horses), but iron I think would be the big one.
 
Well, assuming it happens, what would cause it?
What would Vinlanders lack most? Agricultural products, probably, especially maize (that could be an interesting factor for Vinlander breeding farms), luxury products, salt, etc.

Well, once the Vinlanders discover tobacco, I think that would be the big trade good. They could probably fetch a killing for it back in Europe, and they REALLY need something worth sending back to Europe (because I'm assuming they'd still be importing a whole bunch of goods from Europe).

Meaning decline of kingship authority, at the benefit of raiders.
Of course, that implies that Vinlander would have a knowledge of Mesoamerica, maybe by earlier contacts or settlement in OTL Georgia and southern. That's probably the most important difficulty : having either Scandinavians sailing south before the XIVth century without entering in a trade relationship; or Mesoamericans going further than Caribbeans.

I don't think Vinlanders travelling farther and farther South each generation would be difficult to establish. They start by trading with the St. Lawrence Valley and Northeast Coast peoples for corn, then discover tobacco and trade with the Central/Southern Coast peoples for tobacco, and then travel farther South until they discover the existence of Mesoamerica. I don't know if they'd penetrate inland to discover the Mississipians. I can't imagine them conducting long-distance trade over land, although if they penetrate the St. Lawrence Valley as far as the Great Lakes that could be different.
 
Well, once the Vinlanders discover tobacco, I think that would be the big trade good.
Fair point. Contributing even more having mesoamericanised Vinlanders, we could have as well cacao, pepper.

because I'm assuming they'd still be importing a whole bunch of goods from Europe).
I think we can assume that Vinland wouldn't be that interesting for Europe, as IOTL. If it survives, it would be more or less related to Groenland (for wood), but it's too important of a long-range trade to be interesting (or viable, but Hawkeye asked us to assume Vinland survives anyway).
And the decline of this small trade would be probably one of the main impetus of searching for other trade roads, with the decline of continental North American ones.

I don't think Vinlanders travelling farther and farther South each generation would be difficult to establish.
The difficulty is less threre than making it happening by the XIVth century in the absence of any reckoning.
IOTL Viking raids and expedition were made on worthwhile targets they knew were there, because it's from there that the previously prosperous trade goods came.

ITTL, Vinlanders wouldn't be only traders but explorers with a clear goal without clear target. I don't know enough of Mississipian material culture to say that they could know or use native experiences to know about Mesoamerica. If it's possible, it would be easier for sure.

If not...

I don't know if they'd penetrate inland to discover the Mississipians. I can't imagine them conducting long-distance trade over land, although if they penetrate the St. Lawrence Valley as far as the Great Lakes that could be different.

Here I was assuming some form of Norse presence in Missisipian and Appalachian region comparable to what happened in Rus' : sailable rivers (as St. Lawrance), part of land roads and up to other sailable rivers (as Mississipi, while the troubled stream would be an obstacle). Basically, pulling a Louisiana, as you describe it.
 
Yes. I'd imagine Vinland would spread up the St. Lawrence and trade into the Great Lakes first. Then down the Mississippi. I think they'd reach the Gulf of Mexico through the Mississippi long before they rounded Florida.
 
If you presume riverine trade networks rather than coastal, the whole dynamic changes. Contact and trade with the Woodland and Mississippian cultures would create a whole series of technologically advanced small chiefdoms and statelets that might themselves act as agents to introduce draft animals, iron and steel, and concepts wheeled vehicles farther south instead if the Vinlanders. These people might also develop their own written languages based on Runic phoneticism and adopt a synchetized Norse Christianity.

Also, it is highly unlikely that the Vinlanders would have any clue there were advanced civilizations farther south from the Woodland and Mississippian peoples they encountered. Although obviously there was indirect diffusion of concepts from MesoAmerica into North America, there was no direct contact and no ethnographic evidence that the mound building cultures were aware of the advanced Mexican civilizations. Unless the Vinlanders penetrated into the Southwest US/North Mexico area where Mesoamerican contacts were more pervasive, I think it's more likely that the first substantive contacts between Vinland and the high cultures of Mexico and Central America would follow a coastal route into the Gulf of Mexico and western Caribbean.
 
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one snag in all this... wouldn't extensive contact between the Vinlanders and natives introduce European diseases that much sooner? Unless the Vinlanders are isolated from Europe and all incredibly healthy, it seems inevitable...
 
Actually introducing European diseases from a smaller Vinland population and diluted by distance may give the natives a better chance to build resistance.
 
one snag in all this... wouldn't extensive contact between the Vinlanders and natives introduce European diseases that much sooner? Unless the Vinlanders are isolated from Europe and all incredibly healthy, it seems inevitable...

Not necessarily. The big diseases you have to worry about (smallpox, measles, influenza, etc.) tend to naturally die out in small isolated populations. You need either an urban population large enough enough to keep them endemic or frequent enough trade to introduce the diseases more than once per generation for the diseases to become big killers.

What you'd probably see is that just after the Vinlanders arrive there would be disease outbreaks amongst the Beothuk, Mi'kmaq, Innu, and other nearby nations, but the disease would fail to spread very far. Then, every generation or so, you'd see some sick Icelander or Greenlander introduce a new outbreak in Vinland, which would rip through the Vinland population and the neighbouring nations, but would die out before reaching the urban centres of the Mississippian and Mesoamerican civilizations. You don't really have to worry about disease until you have either (a) direct contact with Europe that isn't coming via Iceland-Greenland-Vinland or (b) large enough population centers in Vinland to make the diseases endemic.
 
Yes. I'd imagine Vinland would spread up the St. Lawrence and trade into the Great Lakes first. Then down the Mississippi. I think they'd reach the Gulf of Mexico through the Mississippi long before they rounded Florida.

The problem with this idea is actually mostly the people that between Vinland and the Mississippi. You've got the Stadaconans, the Hochelagans, the Five Nations Iroquois, the Eries, then a couple other nations (depending on what route you take from Lake Erie) before you hit the Mississippi. From what I've read it seems that these nations did trade with each other, but were very possessive of their trade routes. Each nation traded with the next one up and down the chain, but traders weren't supposed to pass through the territory of one nation to trade with the next.

This cause a number of problems with the arrival of the first Europeans in the St. Lawrence Valley. For example, when Cartier, who had previously befreinded the Stadaconans, decided to travel upriver to Hochelaga, the Stadaconans did all they could to try to keep him in Stadacona. By travelling upriver to meet directly with the Hochelagans, he would be denying the Stadaconan's right to be middlemen between Hochelaga and peoples farther downstream.

Similarly, when the 17th century French colonists in Montreal decided to trade directly with the Onondagans via the Upper St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario rather than with the Mohawks via Lake Champlain, the Mohawks got upset as they felt that they had a right to act as intermediaries between the other Confederacy Nations and any Europeans (since the Mohawks were "guardians of the Eastern Door" and Europe lay to the East).

So, any Vinlander trying to trade with the Mississippians without using all the nations in between as intermediaries is going to have problems. Maybe a toll/tax/tribute system could be developed where the Vinlanders could pay for the right to pass through the territory of all of these nations (I'm guessing they'd pay in iron, maybe prompting the development of iron into a sort of currency).

This is the reason why I'd assumed that the Vinlanders would be exploring down the coast rather than through the riverine networks. Certainly I would expect the Vinlanders to penetrate at least as far as Hochelaga (OTL Montreal), but the Hochelagans would likely prevent them from penetrating farther to the Great Lakes and byond.
 
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