Firstly, my apologies for this being an unfinished map. I'm new to this stuff, it's slow going making a map and legend and trying to make it not look awful. Most of the rest of this map will end up being OTL for the year mentioned. How would I best splice that in?
Anyways...
On the Run- 1810 AD
The year is 1810. Several years ago, a deadly pandemic emerged from a remote part of central Canada. Though devastating to people of European extraction, itt does not affect most natives, but they can become carriers- and through trapping and trading quickly spread it to the more populated eastern regions. The results are nothing short of devastating. The condition works extremely quickly- less than a week, sometimes within 48 hours. It causes delirium and over time, paralysis of the lungs. After 18 months in the the United States and other New World territories of the French, Spanish, and Portuguese, more that fifty percent of non-native peoples are dead.
The condition is named by the Europeans as Indian Kiss; many indigenous languages use a term analogous to "the Foreseen Wind."
However, these people, these towns and cities, do not disintegrate into dust. Instead, they leave behind valuable technology- whole armories of weapons, advanced farming implements, printing presses, and large amounts of valuable trade commodities. There is a rapid movement by natives to obtain and begin to reverse-engineer these things. Natives who received some degree of training help advance productivity. The process is slow, but over the next few years native society begins to morph and change.
Using the existing stockpiles of weapons, several large powers come to push back the United States of America and British Canada. The visionary Shawnee Tecumseh creates a large confederacy north of the Ohio. After severe damage in several Anglo-French wars and the American Revolution, the Iroquois have occupied much of Ontario. The Four Civilized Tribes- Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cheeroke- have occupied most of their original territory and pushed far up the eastern seaboard, assimilating several mid-Atlantic tribes.
The United States is in a crisis, with no friends to rely on. Europe has already had some cases break out, and England, France and others see no reason to send an army to keep colonial claims. They'll either all die or worse yet, contribute to the spread. America still has New York and Boston, but depleted numbers (and an uneven spread of Indian Kiss) means that the economy and the food supply must be substantially changed. The native groups have factions in favor of full invasion and assimilation, while others have a more favorable view of Americans and would rather avoid bloodshed.
The slaves, African and native, have weathered the storm in the Caribbean and Brazil. The lopsided proportion of slaves to masters in many plantations meant a rapid takeover to land by rebellion. The newly created class of freedmen join in a republic, and quickly secure the smaller islands.
The most ominous thing is that the freedmen have a new resource- huge fleets of ships for piracy, trading, and transport are undamaged and plentiful in the many islands, Florida, and Brazil. Motivated by ancestral connection, in 1810 a large force lands at the main sites for the Atlantic slave trade.
The New World is poised to not only remove colonial powers...but they have their sights set much higher.
) etc to Mexico. If living standards are actually better (which due to the higher availability of land and work they may possibly be), that might hit two birds with one stone...somewhat diminish the numbers of the separatists and nationalists in the non-German parts of the Empire, and get more European-cultured people into Mexico. Especially because, now in Mexico, the anti-Germans would probably realise that they have more in common with German culture than Mexican and support a cultural "Germanification" or at least Europeification of Mexico to an extent.
