Tame the Bison

twovultures

Donor
BWAHAHAHA Tauren! I take it you're a WoW fan :)

How far do you think Bison will expand as a domestic animal ITTL? Is there any possibility that they will be adopted by Europeans? I look forward to reading how they spread in the Americas.
 

Malta

I'm just quite terrrrrrible with names mostly. Though i can tell you that as time goes on the Eastern Bison will become much popular and the Plains bison will see a reduction of their numbers but more naturally I suppose.
 

jycee

Just ad through all of this. It's quite fun! Tomb, although better naming could improve the world building significantly. Regardless it is good work. Can't wait till Europe discovers this world.

One thing you might want to consider, it the development of watercraft in the Americas. Thebamount of rivers in the area where the bison is first tamed should incite the civilizations of the area to develop boats. From there they can spread to the Caribbean.

Will the bison reach south America or do mountains & jungles prevent their spread?
 

Malta

The Late Formative Period of North America: Following the Hoshanka Collapse

Around 1000BC we see the period of history in North America known as the Formative Period reach its final stages with the establishment of what could be considered civilization passing through the stone and bronze and ending in the iron age. This period is chronologically placed as occuring from 1000BC to 500AD, and is characterized largerly by the establishment of five principle geographic cultures which will characterize the North American continent onward to current times. This period is also noted by the spread of culture from Mesoamerica and the lack of any centralized or largeempire as seen with the Plains Empire of the Hoshanka. Following this period is the time period known as the Wolf Period which will be characterized later on. This period can also be called the Dawning Age for the connections with the rise of Solar based Religion and rheotric across the cultures of North America.

The first event that characterizes this period is the breakup of the Hoshanka Empire when infighting occurs amongst the mostly plains indian tribes who have spread out from the High Plains and put themselves into positions of pwoer through conquest of much of the heartland of North America from the Ohio River to the Rockies. This breakup is from ancient sources and oral legends as well as working of scholars such as Owanowo as being the result of a matter of succession, revolts in the eastern city-states along the Ohio river, and migrations from the Northeast and Southeast of the continent. A disease may have also been present, but largely due to the size and scope of the Hoshanka Empire it is believed that it was too much for the Plains natives to control for very long and thus lost their grips on power.

While the Hoshanka Empire was based on warfare and brutal conquest, the Hoshanka Empire should be noted for starting a reoccuring trend of centralization and cultural grouping that will lead to the five cultural groups springing up in North America. Indeed, the evidence of a large number of linguistic diversity throughout the North American continent is stunning, many being the result of language isolates amongst growing then declining population groups in the east. It would be with the establishment of a stronger infanstructure of roads, a greater flux of people between areas, and the drive for centralization amongst tribes and City-States that these language isolates would slowly be extinguished overtime. This would lead to the spreading and dominance of only a few linguistic groups across North America except in the Northeast and west of the Rockies.

The end of the Hoshanka Empire leads to the emergence of four of the five distinct cultural groups. The Chili, the Low Plains, the High Plains, and the Usonagee.

The Chellee are located along the course of the Ohio River and along the upper Mississippi river and are the close descendents of the Chilicoo and Hueoo people, who are credited as the original mound builders and most intensive agriculturalists with the most complex society north of the Olmec and Maya in Mesoamerica. The Chellee start off as Kingdom, with the Hoshanka rulers in the area assimilating to the native population and forming a upper class by which they impose a selective divine right of rule, which is noted as being selective based on the power of the Priesthood of the Divine Sun-which will be covered in the next segment in greater detail-. They will be noted as having the most population in comparision of their neighbors and will be much like the Greeks or Chinese forebearers of many civilizations of the area.

On the Great Plains the split of the Plains tribes goes back to forming along the Red River in the south and the Missouri in the North as except for a handful of exceptions the north and south will not be united. It should be noted in their development that the Southern Plains will be affeted by the upsurge of culture from Mesoamerica and will settle down at the end of the Formative Period. On the otherhand the Northern Plains will be affected by migrations of people from Northern Canada and will not lose their Nomadic lifestyle for sometime, and will be the nucleus of the next Plainsmen empires.

The Usonagee have been present as a disunified people for sometime, located in the southwest up untill 400-300BC they do not really form any sort of coherent state as they progress from a tribal level to a city-state level thanks to taking in of culture and goods called "Crossing the River", as the term goes, not unlike "To Go Viking". Though around 400 BC they come together as a confederation and from a city-state from Shiloh, Alabama we see the unification and centralization of their culture and what will be a major player especially as the Usonagee form the second empire of note in the Americas.

The last of the five cultures are the Nadahul, and they come in rather late around 100AD, but form a important part as middlemen as they move from the area of New Mexico into East Texas. There they will be noted as controlling not only the overland trade routes into Mesoamerica but also the sea routes as well.

Ending this first part, it should be noted that the collapse of the Hoshanka Empire does not halt the course of trade, indeed for from the south through established trade routes with tribes in Mexico we see two things arrive north of the Rio Grande which will spark new revoluations in the way of life for the people. These two things are Religion and Maize, which go hand in hand.
 

Malta

Man I suck at making Maps...

NA203.png
 

Malta

The Bison Exchange:
On the pack mounted backs of the Bison two things crossed the expanse of Northern Mexico, over the Rio Grande, up Texas to the Mississippi River and beyond as far as Ohio: God and Corn.

By 700 BC at the latest overland trade from Mesoamerica into North America was existent and was largely taken by a succession of trader oriented tribes from the Southern Plain cultures, namely the Shishawn and Pelloc peoples who were noted for first exploring the area by making raids into Central Mexico. At some point these people realized just how much wealth lay far to the south and decided to make a killing in driving great caravans of Bison southward. Their supreme and respected control over the Mesoamerican trade routes would last until 100AD with the arrival of the Natahul who in turn would find complications later with the rise of the city-states on the Mississippian delta who would go by water.

Nonetheless, the so called Bison Exchanged shifted the socio-economic identities of all the American Civilizations north of the Yucatan with the exchanges made over centuries of trade and cultural adaption. The introduction of Bison into Mesoamerica was noted for leading to a population boom and similar expansion of agricultural development followed by an over-reaching collapse which would by 0 AD give rise to power of migrate people from further south.

The influence on North American cultures though would be much more radical as the introduction of corn totally revolutionized the way the societies ate and how they worked, which also fed into the introduction of the southern Sun God cults which was also heavily transformed the political culture of the Chilee.

Adoption of Corn Farming could be seen gradually starting from the lower Mississippi and slowly making its way northward; the process fully saturated the eastern North America by 200 BC, this largely due to the interconnected nature of the Chilee culture which had built extensive trade networks at their height of power from 700-300 BC. The plant quickly grew side by side with more native plants, becoming a staple crop and expanding the food pyramid which the people lived upon by being an important base of everyday meals.

What came with the corn though was something which would cause far more trouble for the Chilee, as the Solar God T’cholian spread like wildfire, not because in part it was said that he caused wildfires when angry, but because prophets of his ways proclaimed that society was to be ruled by those who communed with spiritual alongside those of sacred blood…if somewhat slightly higher than the Chieftains. This was seen as a chance for the religious men and women who had long been sidelined to grab power for themselves and with what one could call inciting a populist rage the Chilee City-States were at war within each other.

This was quickly taken advantage by both Plainsmen and Algonquian raiders from across the Great Lakes and the upper Appalachian Mountains.
 

GreatScottMarty

Bison...They kind of were domesticated already

It is nice to see a TL started from this idea but I wanted to point out that there is strong evidence arguing for a domesticated bison. If you think of the Great Plains of North America as a great big farm then you can view the bison as free range cattle. Native Americans continuously burned huge swathes of grassland in order to control the kinds of grass and foliage that grew as well as the bison migrations. They followed the Bison migrations and in some instances controlled their movements with fire and mass killings (see the huge piles of bones off cliffs in the badlands). So to say that the bison was domesticated is true just not in a European fashion. The primary issue with Eurasian style domestication is water, with no metalworking, or any sort of light industry you can't get the locks and dams needed to control the Missouri and Mississippi watersheds like you need to support massive agriculture. Just my two cents, don't count me as a troll I just think you need to look beyond obvious and consider that perhaps the Native American way was the best for the environment they had to deal with.
 

Malta

Considering Damns and Locks thats more for Industrialized Agriculture, whereas the Regular Agriculture will more participate East of the Mississippi with limtited instances West of the River. The Bison Domestication is more of a Gateway Technological POD that will allow for greater changes in Native developments both technologically and socially.

Well Native Americans domesticated dogs and used them to pull slightly smaller weights
 
Cuāuhtemōc

Cuāuhtemōc

Banned
I'm certainly liking the image in my head of the looks of surprise and befuddlement as the Europeans face against hordes of bison cavalry. :D
 

Oba

Wolf said:
Well North America's lack of major domesticable crops is worrisome. Corn and potatoes are not enough.
Click to expand...
You are forgetting amaranth, manoomin (wild rice), sunroot, sunflower... It is a myth that North America lacked good crops (and potatoes are from the Andes, BTW.)

Anyways, I think you all are giving too much importance to large domestic mammals and not enough to other protein sources: The Aztecs, for example, ate salamanders, iguana, snails, spirulina, dogs (which can also give wool and leather in addition to meat), turkey in addition to ducks and cavies in South America. Furthermore, there are plenty of fish species that could be domesticated in Aridoamerica and further north such as bluegill, crappie, perch and sucker fish (such as the Cui-ui endemic to the Great Basin that the Paiute in the region around Pyramid lake subsisted on.), not to mention many marine fish and invertebrates, including the vast array of which supported the complex cheifdoms of the PNW coast. And fish skin can be made into a leather superior to that of mammals, a process that can use urine or salt (the OTL Inuit knew of and widely used the former method.)

I think the key is to increase the amount of small animals and plants domesticated in North America; looking for a large mammal to domesticate is a red herring when there are so many far more productive small animals and plants to grow.

If civilization spread earlier or developed indigenously in more places, then we would see more cultural diffusion, more widespread writing, more standing armies and a larger population, all of which would make the Americas far more difficult to conquer than in OTL, where it took a couple centuries to assure dominance over the continent by Europeans anyways.

If the Mississipians developed writing and were thriving from trade and farming milkweed, manoomin, amaranth, sunroot, sunflower and crappie when the Spaniards came, they would probably not fall but rather adapt, innovate and survive to the present day. Just look at the practically ASB way the Inka fell; it was not their lack of development, it was that they were just shocked by the cruelty and wickedness of Pizarro and his gang. If Atawallpa had simply brought his 80,000 nearby troops to acompany him when he met Pizarro at Cajamarca, he most certainly would have at least gotten away, and probably captured most if not all of the Spaniards and carried out his plan for them. Or if the Sapa Inka was in Qusqu, where the Spaniards would have had to fight an even larger army on the way out. Either way, it is not hard to see Tawantinsuyu stay an independent power even with such a slight alternation of OTL.

Besides, if the buffalo were domesticated, what would buffalo riding warrior nomads do to the development of the Mississippians, the most complex society to develop north of Mesoamerica? Who would stand against the arms of the Europeans better, Buffalo riding nomadic raiders or a vast, coordinated and orderly state?
 

tallwingedgoat

The greatest impact domesticating the bison would not be meat but agriculture. If they can be used to plow the land then corn production would increase by orders of magnitude. A more sophisticated agricultural society would change everything.

The main population centers of the New World were in the Valley of Mexico and the Andes. Even though the Aztecs and Incas were conquered, these regions are still populated by large numbers of native people today.

With domesticated bison we would see high population densities in the Mississippi region, with entirely different cosmopolitan ways of life and division of labor. Likely cotton textile weaving and pottery making would be widespread. I think it likely the wheel would be reinvented and perhaps writing as well. In short there would be a third population center in the Americas to rival or perhaps surpass the other two since the land around the Mississippi is inherently more productive for agriculture.

What we will not see is Plains Indian cities and bison cavalry. The Midwest became an agricultural center only due to the discovery of the Ogallala Aquifer, which can only be exploited with industrial era technology. Before that the Great Plains was also known as the Great American Desert. Bison, for all its attributes is not known as a good riding animal. Bovine is not commonly used for riding anywhere and there's no reason to suppose they would be used for that. Even horse riding is a fairly recent development in the Old World, which for most of history used the horse as a draft animal instead.

Domestication of the bison would mean millions more natives in North America in 1492 living in hundreds of large towns and cities. Despite the inevitable large scale die off that will follow, there would still be huge numbers of Indians in the Mississippi region today with a culture that continue to exist at some level.
 
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Oba

tallwingedgoat said:
The greatest impact domesticating the bison would not be meat but agriculture. If they can be used to plow the land then corn production would increase by orders of magnitude. A more sophisticated agricultural society would change everything.

The main population centers of the New World were in the Valley of Mexico and the Andes. Even though the Aztecs and Incas were conquered, these regions are still populated by large numbers of native people today.

With domesticated bison we would see high population densities in the Mississippi region, with entirely different cosmopolitan ways of life and division of labor. Likely cotton textile weaving and pottery making would be widespread. I think it likely the wheel would be reinvented. In short there would be a third population center in the Americas to rival or perhaps surpass the other two.
Click to expand...
On Plowed Fields: Have a look at this. Also, let us not forget about the Chinampatin, which also could be a model for Aridoamerica and further north.

On the Importance of Population Density: Exactly: A large population is needed to support complex societies and to resist the European invasion. I simply am pointing out that the buffalo are not the simplest and most logical choice, as they were so abundant in the first place, much like GreatScottMarty said.

And the easiest place for civilization to develop north of Mexico would be the southeast, which had trees, many rivers and fertile land and rich waters, thus making it ideal for a more developed Mississippian civilization.
 

Screvier20

Don't think the Bison can be domesticated tamed yes but not truly domesticated. Maybe some how the Auroch some how makes it across the land bridge but not likely it would because the Auroch preferred swampy and wet wooded areas.
 

Malta

Screvier20 said:
Don't think the Bison can be domesticated tamed yes but not truly domesticated. Maybe some how the Auroch some how makes it across the land bridge but not likely it would because the Auroch preferred swampy and wet wooded areas.
Click to expand...

Genetic POD
 
Mr. BoJangles

Mr. BoJangles

Any living creature can be tamed. If you continue to breed the tamed members to themselves, they will become domesticated. It takes generations... in most cases spanning over thousands of years. This is a great example:
Dogs have been domesticated for nearly 10,000 years. Cats have been domesticated for 7.5-5,000 (depending on the expert and species, as multiple breeds of cat were domesticated separately. While nearly all dog breeds stem from a single domesticated dog breed). And you notice the difference in their behaviors. Cattle have been domesticated but require herding, while dogs are oft used as herders.. see the difference a couple thousand years can make?
 

Malta

Not to sound off topic, while you pretty much hit the situation on the head along with a genetic diversion amongst the species that allows for a more calmer breed that still needs to be broken, I had a rabbit named after you.
 
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