A Better Deal for the Native Americans?

The treatment of the native americans by the US government is probably one of the worst parts of American history, right up there with slavery. What I'm wonder is, in a timeline in which the US manages to get most of its OTL territory, is there any way to still have a significant percentage of people in the US that could be considered to be of native descent?

(And I don't mean white people who go "I'm 1/32 Cherokee!")
 
In my opinion, no. With the US (as in the former British colonies who unite and begin to expand) taking over that amount of territory, the natives will suffer from diseases and violence, their birthrates will drop, and their numbers will go down.

A higher native population would require things like a disunited states where tribes in the southeast could play the states against each other and not suffer removal.



Also, the 1/32 thing doesn't really work with the Cherokee Nation (I don't know about the Eastern Nation or the Keetowah Band). If you have an ancestor noted in the Dawes census, you're eligible for tribal citizenship period. They don't do the blood quantum thing.
 
Maybe have the original colonists have a harder time establishing their initial colonies, and need more help from the natives, resulting in the natives and the colonists having good views of each other and viewing each other as both necessary for the colonists' survival? This would be considerably helped by having a less racist colonial power establish the colonies than OTL. We would have a greater mixed population than OTL, and slower exposure to European diseases may or may not be able to have them spread enough faster than the colonists for the further-west tribes to recover their populations before being contacted - maybe they could be viewed simply as a different but equally good people, like the French or Dutch, in which case having more mixed-bloods would probably be a great boon to relations. Maybe as the colonists penetrate further west, we could incorporate the various tribes better at fighting in certain environments into the military(es) as a sort of auxiliaries, kind of Apache-or-such Gurkhas? Over time, the eastern tribes could be incorporated and viewed as first-class citizens in their own right, while the more westerly ones could become useful allies against other powers. Eventually, you could have a situation where some tribes are citizens on par with whites in the eastern colonial successor states, while others are their own first- or second-world nations with significant white populations.

Unfortunately, this scenario would probably result in both groups treating blacks even worse, but you never know - maybe we could start out with at least one or two completely race-blind nations, and we might well end up better than OTL. We'll never know, unfortunately.
 
I've often wondered if having the French not claim any parts of N. America would do part of this. With no French Canada, and thus no French and Indian Wars, there wouldn't have been the horrible raiding that the French and English both encouraged their native allies to do to each other. The natives had some abominable customs when it came to dealing with captives, and the English colonists/later Americans never really forgave or forgot it. Without the Europeans egging them on, the natives would likely have raided each other more than the colonists, and the ones who were in OTL allied with the French would likely seek trade with the English to get the guns and steel they wanted. Of course, the natives are just going to lose out no matter what; disease, lack of industry and tech, lack of professional armies backed by real logistics, etc. But without this initial surge of raiding and bad feelings, they would likely get a lot more sympathy...
 
The French had better relations with the natives largely because they werent a settler colony in the same way that the british ones were, which removed a lot of the stress. Fewer whites stealing indian land, fewer retaliatory indian raids, etc.

If the Brits dont do settler colonies in NA I suspect someone will. OTOH, the Dutch colony wasnt either, so maybe if the British colonization went differently the natives would have a better chance.

Ok. Suppose Britain prevents dissenters from settling, allowing only good Anglicans. Then almost all of the settlement that went to New England wont happen. It might not change Virginia much, but the Dutch might keep New Netherlands, and the Swedes might survive a bit further south.

Ultimitely, Virginia will likely expand to take in much of the continent, but it COULD give the iroquois, and maybe the 5 Civilized tribes a chance to catchup/compete.
 
The French had better relations with the natives largely because they werent a settler colony in the same way that the british ones were, which removed a lot of the stress. Fewer whites stealing indian land, fewer retaliatory indian raids, etc.

If the Brits dont do settler colonies in NA I suspect someone will. OTOH, the Dutch colony wasnt either, so maybe if the British colonization went differently the natives would have a better chance.

Ok. Suppose Britain prevents dissenters from settling, allowing only good Anglicans. Then almost all of the settlement that went to New England wont happen. It might not change Virginia much, but the Dutch might keep New Netherlands, and the Swedes might survive a bit further south.

Ultimitely, Virginia will likely expand to take in much of the continent, but it COULD give the iroquois, and maybe the 5 Civilized tribes a chance to catchup/compete.

That'd be a cool TL. I was thinking of something like this for my TL in how the Atlantic coast gets colonized. It would probably also lead to a mixed race group coming about, like the Creoles and Metis.
 
Given that natives tended to do better when the European powers were fragmented and worse when any one European state held real hegemony, any timeline that keeps North America balkanized as long as possible is going to be to the Indian's benefit. They will be able to play off European and later settler powers against each other for longer to preserve their independence and hopefully do so until either some kind of equivalent of Wilsonian nationalism takes root or until more cynically they are too powerful and numerous to kick out.
 
The treatment of the native americans by the US government is probably one of the worst parts of American history, right up there with slavery. What I'm wonder is, in a timeline in which the US manages to get most of its OTL territory, is there any way to still have a significant percentage of people in the US that could be considered to be of native descent?

(And I don't mean white people who go "I'm 1/32 Cherokee!")

Not unless the POD is before Columbus's voyage, in my opinion. Native Americans would need hundreds of more years of population recovery, the population numbers otherwise are just too disparate. By 1776 the non-Native population of North America already outnumbered the Native American population by at least 3-fold. Things could go much better for the Native American tribes, but that still won't yield the requirement that you want.

Now, you could have a timeline where early colonies start off slow, and there is a founder effect where mixed-race colonists are the ancestors of the majority of the US population, but that puts you in a "1/32 Cherokee" situation that you said doesn't count.

So, for this to work, you need a very early discovery-age POD, I think.
 
The French had better relations with the natives largely because they werent a settler colony in the same way that the british ones were, which removed a lot of the stress. Fewer whites stealing indian land, fewer retaliatory indian raids, etc.

If the Brits dont do settler colonies in NA I suspect someone will. OTOH, the Dutch colony wasnt either, so maybe if the British colonization went differently the natives would have a better chance.

Ok. Suppose Britain prevents dissenters from settling, allowing only good Anglicans. Then almost all of the settlement that went to New England wont happen. It might not change Virginia much, but the Dutch might keep New Netherlands, and the Swedes might survive a bit further south.

Ultimitely, Virginia will likely expand to take in much of the continent, but it COULD give the iroquois, and maybe the 5 Civilized tribes a chance to catchup/compete.

Given that natives tended to do better when the European powers were fragmented and worse when any one European state held real hegemony, any timeline that keeps North America balkanized as long as possible is going to be to the Indian's benefit. They will be able to play off European and later settler powers against each other for longer to preserve their independence and hopefully do so until either some kind of equivalent of Wilsonian nationalism takes root or until more cynically they are too powerful and numerous to kick out.

well, the OP is talking specifically about the US with 'most of it's OTL territory', so these ideas are out the window at the start. Anything that has different colonial powers in the current USA/Canada region is going to cause a problem if those two powers go to war. So, the choices are to either keep one colonial power in charge of it all (which will prevent the organized raiding and atrocities), or have two colonial powers which never go to war....
 
Jefferson was very displeased with the Constitution adopted in his absence, had he not been in France at the time, the US would have had a very different constitution. Whilst at France he drafted his own version of a Federal Constitution, in Article 4 of his draft, called "Rights, Private and Public." Jefferson spelled out property rights in detail, he wrote, "No lands shall be appropriated until purchased of the Indian native proprietors." He was a strong believer in the concept of property rights and would have surely pushed for them.
 

Swordman

Banned
The treatment of the native americans by the US government is probably one of the worst parts of American history, right up there with slavery. What I'm wonder is, in a timeline in which the US manages to get most of its OTL territory, is there any way to still have a significant percentage of people in the US that could be considered to be of native descent?

(And I don't mean white people who go "I'm 1/32 Cherokee!")

I have already begun to address this issue in my TL 'State(s) ISOTed. The downtime U.S is about to purchase all of Spain's North American territories, and one of my characters has already married into the Cheyenne tribe in Wyoming. Friendly relations and trade are already taking place between the uptimers and the Cheyenne; the other tribes in Wyoming are sending representatives for a sit-down with the DT group that established contact with them.

Mike Garrity
 
The best possible way I can see is if the Mississippian Cultures (state(s)?) of the great city of Cahokia survives strong and intact so that when De Soto arrives, his force is either annihilated or, better yet, captured, by some South Appalachian Mississippian army.

Even with their partially superior weaponry, the Spanish would be simply too outnumbered by any regional variation of the Mississippian Culture - as a whole - to knock them out.

If Cahokia was but a loose confederation, some formal political centralization might have to emerge to keep up with Spanish - and other European colonial powers - technologically, so that they could maintain their independence and eventually challenge Occidental presence on a greater scale.

But I myself don't think Cahokia was a mere "world renewal centre" as some have suggested. Rather, I am convinced it was the capital of what was at least a powerful paramount chiefdom, perhaps even a true state.

And if Cahokia the capital of a relatively unified polity (whatever its sort), I highly doubt it would role over like the Aztecs, the Tarascans or the Inka did. The first fell at the hands of masses of angry and formerly oppressed nations that were desperate to escape the horrors and atrocities of Aztec rule. The second fell from the Cazonci's foolish, perhaps cowardly, and certainly fatalist refusal to fight for fear of suffering what had happened to their former rivals, even though in hindsight the legions of the Cazonci clearly had a very different situation against the Spanish than their former Mesoamerican neighbours, arguably even in their favour. And the Spanish just got lucky in Kashamarka: If anything went different, the Inka State would have inevitably emerged victorious in an actual battle.

But, barring an repeat of the almost ASB Conquest of the Inka Empire, the Mississippians would be simply too numerous and their polity to strong for another easy Spanish victory.

In conclusion, the Europeans would sooner or later be forced into a peace with the Mississippian Polity. And the Mississippians could build upon their previous achievements to modernize and build a strong, prosperous and truly American state.
 
In my opinion, the best chance for the natives to survive would be if the POD was around 1000, with the Norse maintaining contact with North America for at least a century longer. Maybe trade expands, and the Iroquois and Algonquin begin to adopt iron and steel weaponry. Also, more contact to Europeans might just lessen the impact of smallpox later on. I can imagine some Vikingized Tribes meeting Europeans on a lot better terms.
 
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