Could domestic animals have saved the American peoples from devastation?

The tapir, peccary, llama (guanaco and vicuña), deer, capybara, rhea, muscovy duck and many more animals are all native to South America, whilst the bison, mule deer and the turkey are native to North and Central America.

All these animals are to some extent possible to domesticate, some more so than others. With domesticated animals come disease - over hundreds of years, the immune systems of the pre-Colombian Americans would improve to withstand these diseases. Of course, the lack of permanent settlements in North America and the huge amount of animals available for hunting discouraged the North Americans from ever domesticating animals before the arrival of Europeans. However, the South American peoples, specifically the Incas, domesticated the llamas, though too late and too little to make a difference. Of course, it's also important that the diseases that spread from the animals have the ability to spread further.

Is it possible for the peoples of the Americas to have had stronger immune systems by the time of European arrival if they had domesticated animals several hundred years earlier? What would be the incentive for them to do so? What other conditions would be necessary?


Edit: I'd also be interested to know what the latest date this domestication could start at to be effective.

I'd say no. First, some of those animals would have been incredibly hard for a stone age level people to domesticate (particularly bison and peccaries). It would be cases of penning them up and slooooowly breeding unwanted characteristics out of them, generation after generation. This puts them behind the Old World right out of the gate. Second, even with domesticated animals, they still don't have the equivalent of wheat or barley (maize is a decent crop, but it took a loooooong time to selectively breed up to a suitable size). Third, even if they do develop some unique diseases from their livestock, it might not help them much when completely unrelated Old World disease hit them; in fact, it might work both ways, with Europeans being hammered by New World diseases. What works against the new world natives more than anything else is just sheer lack of time... they get to the new world far later than other humans got to the Fertile Crescent, had much less in the way of domesticate species to choose from, and the ones they have take longer to domesticate than the ones in the Old World. Even if they manage to set up a real agricultural culture with steel and swords, the Old World that finds them will have guns and cannons...

I'd say Dave Howery has effectively described how it's not a given. IOTL, llamas did not help the Inca much, after all. I would add some caveats, though:

If animal power (specifically mounted warriors) can repel initial invasions and the native polities remain self-ruling, the effect of disease from trade (and there will almost certainly be trade of some kind) will be less lethal since half the population won't be working in slave like conditions as the diseases hit them.

If mounted warriors are known to Native militaries, they will be able to more effectively fight off the initial Spanish incursion-particularly if someone ITTL's higher Native population has discovered military application for metalwork, so soldiers will know how to fight mounted and armored troops armed with stabbing and slashing weapons. Other posters are going to jump in to remind me that the Aztec obsidian club and Inca bronze mace killed Spaniards, but let's be real: if the kill rate of these weapons was so low that the few hundred Spaniards in Cortes and Pizarro's expeditions were not eliminated entirely in those crucial first encounters, they were not effective enough. The Inca general who figured out how to kill Spaniards in the Andes (drop rocks on their heads) was ordered by Manco Inca to attack the Spanish at Lima-and there, all his strategy and intelligence failed him, as the inexperienced Inca footsoldiers (including said general) were once again decimated by a heavy cavalry charge on flat ground.

If diseases are more widespread before contact (livestock =/= disease, but higher populations and more trade possibly do) then practices of quarantine will be better known. This could be effective at preserving lives, particularly in sparsely populated areas like the Great Plains and Pampas or in mountainous areas like the Andes.

In the case of a double whammy with Europe getting an epidemic disease, the aftermath of the disease need not be bad on a societal level. The destruction of innovation-quashing elites, the increased value of labor and independence that comes with it, and the possible ability to absorb the knowledge of marooned European and African sailors will do a lot to help the native societies prepare for round 2.

Finally, and perhaps most vitally, an early domestication could create butterflies at the Norse contact-giving the Native Americans 500 years to be struck by and recover from European disease before the Euros get all uppity (assuming their history goes like OTL. This POD could see, for example, the Reconquista totally fucked up by incompetent "Vinlandic" mercenaries). Something like felt from domestic deer, ivory from domestic mastodons, or a very soft and luxuriant wool like that from alpacas or musk ox would grab the attention of the Norse and convince them to stick around to trade. Land grabbing can be done a lot more safely in Europe, though, so don't expect a viking invasion outside of a few trading posts.