Land of Sweetness: A Pre-Columbian Timeline
- Thread starter Every Grass in Java
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- mesoamerica mesoamerican taino
"I... am inevitable."
"Going to bed hungry. Scrounging for scraps. The Yucatan was on the brink of collapse. I was the one who stopped that. You know what’s happened since then? The children born have known nothing but full bellies and clear skies. It’s a paradise."
"Aquiach... you have my respect. I hope the Nahua will remember you."
YES! YES! Also how are the aimara kingdoms doing? We got some stuff about the birth of the Incas but we don't know the butterflies also got the aimaras and the rest of Andes.
I have to admit, I do like the World-Conquerer's spunk. Not every guy at the tail end of his life could make such a speech.
But I still want Chollolan to crush him.
But I still want Chollolan to crush him.
Otterspottersmotters
Banned
I'm absolutely engrossed by this timeline, all praise to Java. I mined Timeline 5500 for all its pre-Colombian knowledge, thinking I hit a goldmine when this is just a cut above. Actually, maybe 50 cuts above, but I digress.
I'm wondering if the Natchez culture will have any effects upriver. This timeline's Mississipian collapse is even worse than OTL, but surely the Mesoamericans have introduced some crops or argricultural practices which would result in a more stable society once the Mound-Builders begin to urbanize again, no? If nothing else, would metallurgical knowledge diffuse at least throughout the Natchez?
I'm wondering if the Natchez culture will have any effects upriver. This timeline's Mississipian collapse is even worse than OTL, but surely the Mesoamericans have introduced some crops or argricultural practices which would result in a more stable society once the Mound-Builders begin to urbanize again, no? If nothing else, would metallurgical knowledge diffuse at least throughout the Natchez?
Ah Ek Lemba only wants to make MesoAmerica equal, like it should be.
This was mentioned in a response I made to a post earlier, but basically the coastal states with access to the trade routes aggressively raid the interior for slaves in a way that would make the slave trading kingdoms of Africa proud. That and drought unfortunately seems to have destroyed what could've been since there's no incentive to urbanize since the coastal groups will just destroy whatever they build and carry off the builders in chains to Mesoamerica or wherever.
how far north do they go?do they go as far north as cakothia? And if not that could become a haven for fleeing tribes
Cahokia collapsed due to the OTL drought which still happened, and I can't imagine its doing too well. Its trading partners like the Middle Cumberland Culture likewise didn't do too well either TTL. The post-Cahokian centers like in East St. Louis or modern St. Louis are likely at best some periphery and not of any importance. The "Vacant Quarter" OTL included a lot of the Ohio basin so the devastation is pretty far north, and I can't imagine there's much civilisation aside from small villages there, or maybe at this point they've so utterly collapsed we have people from far outside (like the Shawnee in OTL Tennessee) ranging into these lands.
Although if I were writing this TL, I'd totally have the Highland Rim/Cumberland basin become a key center of resistance, maybe an "Indian Switzerland" or like the Nri in Nigeria. Just fortify the hills of the Highland Rim and you have some nice isolation, and with good leadership, could carve out a realm bounded by the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers and the Appalachians to repel more coastal foes.
It does make me wonder if the Yuchi TTL have a similar history (albeit the added stress of slave raids) to OTL's Yuchi. From what I can tell, their ancestors lived in Middle Tennessee and formed part of the Mississippian cultures there and after the collapse there moved to East Tennessee where De Soto encountered them. Although considering their history of conflict against Muskogean peoples and the Cherokee, I can't imagine they've done much better. Maybe their best solution TTL would be to move north than to East Tennessee.
that sounds really cool and would spread butterflies north and would just be awesome
Of course, we don't know what OP has in mind for the Iroquois, the Beaver Wars, and the fur trade in North America. Although some AH "Plains Yuchi" (or another Southeastern culture, maybe a Dhegihan Sioux group like the Quapaw or another isolate like Yuchi such as Tunica) replacing an OTL Plains Indian people (like the Cheyenne or Lakota, also chased from the Eastern Woodlands) would be cool. The Plains Indians were very interesting as a mix of all sorts of people, like the Sarcee/Tsuutina, Athabaskans from far north who allied with the Blackfoot, or the Comanche, a branch of the Shoshone who migrated east and eagerly adopted to the horse and formed a powerful empire, or the Kiowa, who split from the Ancestral Puebloans and migrated all over the place. And then groups who failed in that lifestyle (thanks to external opposition), like the Kutenai, who lost various wars on the northern Plains and were chased back into the mountains.
Entry 64: Responding to Defeat, 1413
RESPONDING TO DEFEAT, 1413
The Solar Court.
News of Ah Ek Lemba’s defeat came to the Great Sun in Washt Kahapa as if it were shrouded in clouds and mists, told by lips one and two. The Sun was not fazed. The courtiers asked him who he thought would prevail.
“The Tiho king may well be the puma who wagered with the crane,” the Sun replied.
They knew the story, all. The puma had bet the crane that unlike him, the bird could never throw a hammer across the Mississippi. The crane knew the puma was right. But as the puma was about to throw, the bird whistled. “Why do you whistle?” Asked the puma. The bird answered, “I’ve a friend across the river who needs a hammer. I’m calling him to get his free hammer now.” The puma paled and said, “No! I’m keeping my hammer. Let’s do another bet. Let’s see who can eat the more.” The bird said yes, hanging a loose pouch about his neck. As he pretended to eat, he stuffed the food into the bag. The puma was too busy gorging himself to notice, and eventually his stomach burst open and he died. And they all knew what the Sun meant to say: Ah Ek Lemba might be strong and big-bellied like the puma was, but that did not mean he could not lose.
“Why are we still with the puma, then?”
“We are like the frog in the tale of the thunder god.”
They knew that story too. From time to time the thunder god Tun’akek would enter a mighty rage, flinging blazing bolts of fire and light that razed everywhere they struck. Men and women fell dead in the blink of an eye, and Tun’akek collected their heads and arms and buttocks for display in his palaces. But the frog served as the god’s steward. So he was never hit, even when he danced openly under the thunderstorm.
“It is an insult to the dignity of the People of the Sun to compare us to the frog,” said the Tattooed Serpent, the Sun’s retainer.
“Yet,” said the Sun, “every thunderstorm must come to an end.”
Cuba.
News of Ah Ek Lemba’s defeats was received by Cuba in silence. The new kingdoms and republics had parceled out the island only with Maya support; now Ah Ek Lemba’s fortunes were wavering, and Cuba’s new regimes wavered with it. There was no Tiho garrison in Cuba, yet no king nor council chief dared voice rebellion. Each and every one of them knew they owed the World-Conqueror all they had.
Each and every one but the Cacique of Maisi, the island’s easternmost realm. Batai (1311—1403, r. 1333—1403), the venerable king of Maisi who alone had withstood Ah Ek Lemba’s 1393—1394 invasion, had died ten years before. He was succeeded by his great-grandson, the fiery-hearted Bibicatihu (1389—1416, r. 1403—1417). In the rainy season of 1413, the young ruler made sacrifices of human hearts and limbs to the zemi effigies of his ancestors. The skulls were set in the temple racks, and the attending nitaino were feasted in the grounds with iguana casseroles and steaming agouti roasts.
“I vow,” said Bibicatihu to his gods and assembled guests, “That I will reconquer this island in the name of the holy gods, and restore the due sacrifices the enemy lays waste.”
The guests let out a roar. The gods, it seemed, were nodding in approval.
Tiho.
Ah Na’ K’ab’, the Thumb, though sixty-two years old, received the news with surprising calm. The Finger grieved for his friend and king, but did not doubt that he would prevail. The World-Conqueror was a god: the Quetzalcōhuātl īnelxiptlah, the True Avatar of Quetzalcōhuātl. Gods do not lose to men.
The news spread across the Maya lands, and everyone agreed. Matech kuil tz’oysabal tumen winikil. Men do not win against gods.
And it mattered little in the end, thought Ah Na’ K’ab’, so long as the people of the Yucatán were full-bellied and happy-hearted still.
Oaxaca.
With the departure of Mahpilxocoyōtl’s army for the north, no Maya force was left to occupy Oaxaca. In May 1413, the aquiach’s emissaries arrived in Lyobaa at the huìa tào’s priestly court, flush with the triumph of Ocoyōcān. The priest greeted them with courtesy. The emissaries did not look him in the face. They averted their eyes in respectful awe, and every word that came out of their mouths was uttered in due submission. They spoke Isatian, of course, but in a cringing voice; and there were translators, and the huìa tào could respond loud and clear in Zapotec. All this was a pleasing contrast to an ill-remembered meeting three years prior.
The high priest’s mind was made up even before he arrived, but he still feigned skepticism and made the emissaries cower and beg before him before formally resuming allegiance to Cholōllān in a carefully orchestrated ceremony. There was respect to win back, after all.
They did not know of the child, and the huìa tào did not tell them. A vow was a vow.
Quizii and Soconusco.
In late 1413, Tēmiquittac (1356—1416), the old Nahua mercenary that Ah Ek Lemba had appointed Viceroy of Soconusco in 1389, declared himself independent “Great Lord of Soconusco” (Xoconōchco huēyi tēuctli). He then moved his army of thousands of Tapachultecs, Soconusco natives, west into Quizii.
The Huave kingdom of Quizii had been conquered by Ah Ek Lemba in 1408, in the opening salvo of his war against the Feathered Serpent priests. The Huave monarch Iñiwiw Ndakñi had fled to Lyobaa, and from there to exile in Cholōllān. Now, with Lyobaa swearing fealty to the aquiach once more and a traitor viceroy advancing on Quizii, the king marched back to his old city.
The Huave nobility joined their returning lord in hundreds and in thousands, and Tēmiquittac chose to support them rather than take Quizii for his own and spark a two-front war. In September 1413, the Tiho-appointed viceroy surrendered. He was guaranteed safe conduct. But Iñiwiw Ndakñi had his skull broken open anyways and gilded a goblet out of it.
Guatemala.
The Pacifier of Guatemala in Q’umarkaj learned the news in early 1413, from the Nohbe runners. He was a man about whose origins little is remembered. We know he was from the warrior clan of Kan and had been appointed to the Protectorate in 1396, that his wife was a K’iche’ noblewoman from the highland town of Rabinal, and little more.
When the runners arrived, the Mice of the Lord were watching his every uttered word. What more could the Pacifier say than affirm his loyalty to the king, his faith in the assuredness of Maya victory, and his everlasting support for the cause? The messengers were ordered to return to Tiho in silence. “If you disclose any word of the incidents in the north,” they were told—the Pacifier did not use the word “defeat”—“your tongues are to be pulled out.”
But talk flies faster than men and birds. Within months, the outcome of Ocoyōcān was common knowledge among the highland Guatemalan nobility. And the rumors grew wilder and more bloated with every new man that added to them. Ah Ek Lemba was severely injured; Ah Ek Lemba was comatose; Ah Ek Lemba was dead; Ah Ek Lemba’s skull ornamented Cholōllān’s skull racks; Ah Ek Lemba’s stringy flesh had been stewed in the aquiach’s soup…
The Pacifier realized he should have announced the defeat earlier. But it was too late by then. The truth sounded more deceitful than the lies.
The highland peoples of Guatemala rebelled in the early rainy season of 1413. Warriors streamed to invest the Protectorate capital of Q’umarkaj from every hill and vale: K’iche’s and Kaqchikels, Mams and Poqomchis, Ch’orti’s and Xincans, Tz’utujils and Q’anjob’als. The city was defended by two Yucatec warrior clans, Kan and Balam.
The Balams counselled fighting on until the last man was dead. But Pacifier Kan was receiving envoys from the rebels, and with dismay the Balams saw flurries of feather-dressed men creep in and out of the fortress gates. And surely their eyes must have been mistaken when they thought there were Yucatec men—Kans they knew!—among those who creeped out.
One day, the Balams woke to find the Mice of the Lord all dead, their agents’ bodies strewn on the streets. “Who has done this?” “The ajaw tekti.” This was no title they knew; it seemed a portmanteau of the K’iche’ word ajaw “king” and the Isatian tēuctli “lord,” but no one had combined the two words before. “Who is this ajaw tekti?” And they were told that the Kans had crowned the Pacifier as an independent monarch and that they had persuaded most of the highland rebels to accept the Yucatec as king.
Huitzlampa.
The Mopan Mayas, who lived in the southeastern lowlands that Ah Ek Lemba had made the Protectorate of Huitzlampa, also rebelled in late 1413. The Protectorate’s capital of Nico was a port supplied by sea, and for all their alliance with the highland rebels, the Mopans could never seriously dislodge the Yucatec position in Huitzlampa when Tiho had full naval supremacy.
In their correspondence with the Mopans, the highland rebels used the phrase juyub’al taq’ajal winaq: “people of mountain and vale.” The rebels could not have known that this word, juyub’al taq’ajal “of mountain and vale”—though long miswritten and mispronounced in Europe as “Hullubtaca”—would one day be the name the entire world knew their country by.
Central America.
In late 1413, Miskitu Tara, a former Miskito mercenary, raised the banners of revolt on the shores of Lake Cocibolca. He killed the chief of Ūmetepēt Island, a Tiho vassal, and appointed himself the u ajaw noh ha’, “king of the great waters.” By 1415, Miskitu Tara had already conquered the other islands in the Lake, sacked the town of Nequecheri whose chief refused to abjure the Tiho king, and subjugated Diria, Nochari, and Cuauhcapolca, the three chiefdoms on the narrow isthmus between the Lake and the Pacific. The rebel’s ships began to harass coastal Pacific shipping, and Ah Ek Lemba was too preoccupied to care.
Miskitu Tara’s teenage sons—the Mosquito Brothers whose exploits so marked Central America in the 1430s and 1440s—helped in these early campaigns. Or so, at least, the romances go.
In Ācuappāntōnco, the king and the Council of the Rich only watched.
* * *
The Great Sun references OTL Natchez legends compiled by John R. Swanton in Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians, namely "The Panther and the Crane" and "Thunder."
God, it's already all falling apart? Seems like a lot of these wannabe kings are really jumping the gun, though with all of them rebelling at once they just might overwhelm the Tiho war machine. Something tells me that all/most of these nascent states are going to get crushed now, but their memory will ignite similar political movements after Ah Ek Lemba dies.
That Maisi guy makes me nervous, as Tiho seems to exert authority in Cuba primarily through its navy. The same navy that is now partially owned by a guy who drowned a shipful of women for fun. Bacocolon protect the Cubans, please.
I thought Temiquittac's name was Chimalpain, at least that's what it was on the map from your linked post. I wonder if his alliance with Quizii will hold up when Tiho's men come knocking.
Pacifier Kan's arrangement with the Guatemalans actually seems pretty sustainable, at least in the short term. Surely a tough nut to crack for anyone trying to restore Tiho rule, and it might even survive the initial round of suppression. Kan's descendants might get their comeuppance a century down the line though. Also, does our new Ajaw Tekti get a fancy new name now that he's king or is his title just going to be used to name him in historical records? And will the B'alam leave for Tiho now, or stay "cooperative" and fifth-column the Kan later?
Are the Miskitu mercenaries linked to (funded by, originally from) Tawantarkira to the northeast? And why have they adopted Maya titles when Nahua vocab is even in vogue among the K'iche'?
That Maisi guy makes me nervous, as Tiho seems to exert authority in Cuba primarily through its navy. The same navy that is now partially owned by a guy who drowned a shipful of women for fun. Bacocolon protect the Cubans, please.
I thought Temiquittac's name was Chimalpain, at least that's what it was on the map from your linked post. I wonder if his alliance with Quizii will hold up when Tiho's men come knocking.
Pacifier Kan's arrangement with the Guatemalans actually seems pretty sustainable, at least in the short term. Surely a tough nut to crack for anyone trying to restore Tiho rule, and it might even survive the initial round of suppression. Kan's descendants might get their comeuppance a century down the line though. Also, does our new Ajaw Tekti get a fancy new name now that he's king or is his title just going to be used to name him in historical records? And will the B'alam leave for Tiho now, or stay "cooperative" and fifth-column the Kan later?
Are the Miskitu mercenaries linked to (funded by, originally from) Tawantarkira to the northeast? And why have they adopted Maya titles when Nahua vocab is even in vogue among the K'iche'?
I read this timeline during its hiatus and am happy to see it back. Such a well-researched and well-written pre-Columbian TL is truly a pleasure to read.
As for the rebellions, I suspect that Ah Ek Lemba will continue on to Cholōllān regardless. Standing down now would give the greatest threat to his power and reputation much-needed breathing room, while a victory over Cholōllān would likely result in at least some of the rebels being counter-couped by frightened elites who don't want to face the World-Conqueror once again and loyalists who regain their confidence upon news of his victory. Unfortunately, I think that he's likely to be successful in defeating the aquiach (probably due to the tlalchiach's treachery) and sacking Cholōllān given that the Great Pyramid is implied to be destroyed, also due to the various references to Nahua veneration of Cemānāhuatēpēhuani and the rise of Tenochtitlan. Although given his age, sacking Cholōllān might be the last thing that Ah Ek Lemba does, leaving the rebel states and the dynasties of his generals to fight amongst themselves to determine how contact-era Mesoamerica will look.
As for the rebellions, I suspect that Ah Ek Lemba will continue on to Cholōllān regardless. Standing down now would give the greatest threat to his power and reputation much-needed breathing room, while a victory over Cholōllān would likely result in at least some of the rebels being counter-couped by frightened elites who don't want to face the World-Conqueror once again and loyalists who regain their confidence upon news of his victory. Unfortunately, I think that he's likely to be successful in defeating the aquiach (probably due to the tlalchiach's treachery) and sacking Cholōllān given that the Great Pyramid is implied to be destroyed, also due to the various references to Nahua veneration of Cemānāhuatēpēhuani and the rise of Tenochtitlan. Although given his age, sacking Cholōllān might be the last thing that Ah Ek Lemba does, leaving the rebel states and the dynasties of his generals to fight amongst themselves to determine how contact-era Mesoamerica will look.
Nah, Ah Ek Lemba is a shithead and if his empire collapses whilst he fails to defeat Chollolan, especially when he plans to massacre an entire city, his empire and dream collapsing whilst his greatest rival stands tall would be wonderful. He has already definitely changed the face of the world, having him destroy Chollolan on top of that would merely be causing unnecessary damage, kill a bunch of innocent people and cause major destruction to major historical landmarks.
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