AHC: Plurality of American Indians in the Americas

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Deleted member 166308

With a POD after 500 AD in the Americas, have indigenous Americans be the largest demographic group in the Americas, ahead of Europeans, Mestizos, Blacks, Biracials, and Asians. In order to be considered as American Indian, they have to practice their indigenous cultures and speak the languages native to the Americas.
Edit: Because the POD might be too late, I've decided to push it back to 1 AD.
 
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Otto Kretschmer

Banned
ConquerorOfUgandaInPartic said:
With a POD after 500 in the Americas, have indigenous Americans be the largest demographic group in the Americas, ahead of Europeans, Mestizos, Blacks, Mulattos, and Asians. In order to be considered as American Indian, they have to practice their indigenous cultures and speak the languages native to the Americas.
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Have the Vikings establish a colony in America in 900s. Make it large enough that it exists for a while. It inoculates the Indians against European diseases and exposes them to ironworking, grains and farm wnimals

Alternatively make both Cortez and Pizarro fail. Incas and Aztecs are exposed to European diseases and tech
 

Deleted member 166308

Otto Kretschmer said:
Have the Vikings establish a colony in America in 900s. Make it large enough that it exists for a while. It inoculates the Indians against European diseases and exposes them to ironworking, grains and farm wnimals
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What would be the motivation for the Vikings?
Otto Kretschmer said:
Alternatively make both Cortez and Pizarro fail. Incas and Aztecs are exposed to European diseases and tech
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You would still have to deal with the rest of the Americas, seeing as even a mostly Indian Valley of Mexico and Andes would still not be enough for an Indian plurality throughout the whole Americas.
 

Deleted member 166308

If the Arawaks of the Caribbean develope sophisticated state societies, they might be able to hold off the Spaniards for a few decades. This would prevent them from really establishing a base in the Americas for some time, which would delay the conquest of Mexico and Peru by decades, which would mean less time spent under Spaniard rule, which means more Indians.
 

Otto Kretschmer

Banned
For the Vikings? Land. Even a northern area like Nova Scotia or Maine is better than most of Scandinavia.

Aztecs and Incas with European technology are going to dominate their continents. The Aztecs had as much population as the rest of North America together, with iron and horses they just crush everyone around. So do the Incas
 
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Deleted member 166308

Otto Kretschmer said:
For the Vikings? Land. Even a northern area like Nova Scotia or Maine is better than most of Scandinavia.

Aztecs and Incas with European technology are going to dominate their continents. The Aztecs had as much population as the rest of North America together, with iron and horses they just crush everyone around. So do the Incas
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How easy is it for the Vikings to sail to North America? Can they reliably make the trip to North America from Norway and Iceland? The Aztecs and Incas would be butterflied away.
 

Deleted member 166308

It wouldn't be that hard to make Mesoamerica and the Andes majority Indian. Genetically, the majority of these areas are still Indian. But the trouble is that most Indians decided to assimilate into Mestizo culture. If there had been a greater and more powerful native aristocracy, they might have prevented this assimilation process.
But that still doesn't solve the problem of the rest of the Americas.
 

Gloss

What counts as a Mestizo and what as Native? Are Paraguyans that spoke mainly Guarany but are 30-50% European mestizo?
ConquerorOfUgandaInPartic said:
It wouldn't be that hard to make Mesoamerica and the Andes majority Indian. Genetically, the majority of these areas are still Indian. But the trouble is that most Indians decided to assimilate into Mestizo culture. If there had been a greater and more powerful native aristocracy, they might have prevented this assimilation process.
But that still doesn't solve the problem of the rest of the Americas.
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But there was a native aristocracy, the problem is that it was linguistically divided, if you still have European conquest then you need a native language to be used as a lingua franca alongside European languages, more than it already happened OTL at least.
 

King Jasper

This is very difficult to do. Longer lasting Vinland bringing disease and European tech would be interesting. However, we have a 500 AD POD limit, so I'm going to use that instead. We could do something like The Legacy of St. Brendan. Have an Irish monk (they sailed a lot and landed on Iceland before the norse) discover Newfoundland. Later, small Irish colonies pop up. However, they are eventually forgotten by Europe. These settlements will have a massive impact, however.

First, they spread disease, most notably smallpox, which rages through NA. The population collapses, but without European marginalization and expulsion, it doesn't collapse as hard, and is able to slowly recover.

Second, they spread technology. Lots of it. Most importantly they spread:

-Metal-working
-Wheat (possibly onions or something too, but wheat/other grains is the most important)
-Writing (Already in mesoamerica, but they could spread it to the rest of NA too.)
-Domesticated animals, such as sheep, horse, pig, cow and chicken. (Possibly only some are shipped to the colony)

The remaining Irish colonists slowly mix and creolize with the native Beothuk. Meanwhile, their technology begins to spread. Through trade, iron, wheat and domesticated animals start to spread throughout the somewhat-depopulated Americas. The crops and domesticates are massively useful, and help the remaining Native Americans to stage a demographic comeback. Metal is first only traded, but eventually the knowledge of smelting spreads as well.

One question is what happens to Christianity. The Irish would be overwhelmingly pagan by the early 500s, though slowly converting. Whether any Christians at all arrive is up for debate, and it's possible the few that do arrive have their beliefs syncretized by the new Irish-Beothuk culture. It's also possible that Christianity could slowly spread through the Americas, which would be interesting to see if the Europeans later re-discover the continent.

The population of the Americas slowly booms with all this new technology, and civilizations grow larger and more powerful than ever before. Smallpox still rages among them, as well as a new disease or two they get from their domesticates. When the Europeans discover the Americas, they find large, iron-age empires, farming wheat and raising livestock. With resistance to smallpox built over the course of 1,000 years, the Native American population is much larger, and remains as a plurality.
 

Gloss

King Jasper said:
This is very difficult to do. Longer lasting Vinland bringing disease and European tech would be interesting. However, we have a 500 AD POD limit, so I'm going to use that instead. We could do something like The Legacy of St. Brendan. Have an Irish monk (they sailed a lot and landed on Iceland before the norse) discover Newfoundland. Later, small Irish colonies pop up. However, they are eventually forgotten by Europe. These settlements will have a massive impact, however.

First, they spread disease, most notably smallpox, which rages through NA. The population collapses, but without European marginalization and expulsion, it doesn't collapse as hard, and is able to slowly recover.

Second, they spread technology. Lots of it. Most importantly they spread:

-Metal-working
-Wheat (possibly onions or something too, but wheat/other grains is the most important)
-Writing (Already in mesoamerica, but they could spread it to the rest of NA too.)
-Domesticated animals, such as sheep, horse, pig, cow and chicken. (Possibly only some are shipped to the colony)

The remaining Irish colonists slowly mix and creolize with the native Beothuk. Meanwhile, their technology begins to spread. Through trade, iron, wheat and domesticated animals start to spread throughout the somewhat-depopulated Americas. The crops and domesticates are massively useful, and help the remaining Native Americans to stage a demographic comeback. Metal is first only traded, but eventually the knowledge of smelting spreads as well.

One question is what happens to Christianity. The Irish would be overwhelmingly pagan by the early 500s, though slowly converting. Whether any Christians at all arrive is up for debate, and it's possible the few that do arrive have their beliefs syncretized by the new Irish-Beothuk culture. It's also possible that Christianity could slowly spread through the Americas, which would be interesting to see if the Europeans later re-discover the continent.

The population of the Americas slowly booms with all this new technology, and civilizations grow larger and more powerful than ever before. Smallpox still rages among them, as well as a new disease or two they get from their domesticates. When the Europeans discover the Americas, they find large, iron-age empires, farming wheat and raising livestock. With resistance to smallpox built over the course of 1,000 years, the Native American population is much larger, and remains as a plurality.
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How would the Irish even reach the Americas exactly? In any case you are overestimating the impact of diseases, any population that follows the north Atlantic route so early would be quite isolated from most Eurasian diseases. Also frankly the Beothuk would be replaced by any self-sustaining population that colonizes the island, their number were tiny, their sustenance method would be outclassed by any northern European agricultural/pastoral package.

If you want creolization you should look at it happening further south and even then people overhype how much creolization would happen, the Slavs took over half of Europe without creating actually mixed populations, culturally or linguistically.
 
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King Jasper

Gloss said:
How would the Irish even reach the Americas exactly?
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A modern-day re-ennactor sailed to Newfoundland from Ireland on the sort of currach St. Brenden would have used if he had travelled to America, so it's definitely possible.
Gloss:

In any case you are overestimating the impact of diseases, any population that follows the north Atlantic route so early would be quite isolated from most Eurasian diseases.
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I don't think I am overestimating. I only had one disease (smallpox) come to the Americas because of this fact.
Gloss said:
Also frankly the Beothuk would be replaced by any self-sustaining population that colonizes the island, their number were tiny, their sustenance method would be outclassed by any northern European agricultural/pastoral package
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Yes, perhaps true. The Irish might stay relatively European. Their population would be relatively small as well, so they might end up with some Beothuk blood and loanwords.
Gloss said:
The later it happens the more likely the Irish are to be Christian.
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I was going to have the discovery happen in the 500s though-- because that's the earliest I can do it and we should give the Native Americans the most time possible to recover. Also that's when St. Brenden's expedition happened (which probably didn't reach the Americas, and possibly didn't happen at all, but whatever). In early 500s the Irish were overwhelmingly pagan and at the dawn of the 600s they had a small Christian minority.
Gloss said:
If you want creolization you should look at it happening further south and even then people overhype how much creolization would happen, the Slavs took over half of Europe without creating actually mixed populations, culturally or linguistically.
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Yes, we could have Irish settlements further south too if we wanted creolization. I feel like a small enough Irish population would make up for the small indigenous population too. Look at the Metis, creolization is definitely possible here.
 
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Deleted member 166308

King Jasper said:
However, we have a 500 AD POD limit, so I'm going to use that instead. We could do something like The Legacy of St. Brendan. Have an Irish monk (they sailed a lot and landed on Iceland before the norse) discover Newfoundland. Later, small Irish colonies pop up. However, they are eventually forgotten by Europe. These settlements will have a massive impact, however.
Click to expand...
I don't think this counts under the restraints of the scenario. I said that POD has to be after 500 AD in the Americas, and this POD would be outside of the Americas.
 

Arkenfolm

King Jasper said:
I don't think I am overestimating. I only had one disease (smallpox) come to the Americas because of this fact.
Click to expand...
Smallpox is fairly low on the likelihood list of diseases to be introduced by sporadic contact given how the disease spreads and how lethal it is. Mumps, chickenpox (shingles), and whooping cough are far more likely to spread in the Americas, even if they'll only kill maybe 5-10% of a population combined (and that's with the help of the famine it would cause by disrupting farming and the gathering of food).
 
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