A Cortez clone explores N. American Southeast in place of De Soto

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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De Soto's expedition through what became the southeastern U.S. sighted many sophisticated and populous natives. However, disease and devastation in his wake were such that when explorers came a century later the area appeared to be a much less populated and much less sophisticated wilderness.

It is interesting that Mexico and Peru and other Spanish conquests saw mass die-offs, but that there were still native people and resources left to exploit and rebuild with.

What if the Spanish explorers of the southeast had found Appalachian gold enough to make permanent settlements and missions seem worthwhile? Could a large "Florida" east of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio have become a third pillar of the Spanish empire in the Americas, a source of mineral and then plantation wealth attracting decent numbers of Spaniards and leading to a mestizo people and culture that preserved more of a written and artistic record of the pre-contact cultures than survived in OTL?
 
No. At best, it becomes another New Mexico. The native peoples already were declining in the area, and de Soto arrived around the time of a major drought. Combined with a more active Spanish presence, there won't be many natives to exploit, at best some missions and maybe a few towns like New Mexico. The gold is also nowhere near as much as Northern Mexico.

On the bright side, the locals will be easier to deal with than the Apache and later Comanche, and resupply will be easier making the area more likely to thrive than New Mexico.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Monthly Donor
No. At best, it becomes another New Mexico. The native peoples already were declining in the area, and de Soto arrived around the time of a major drought. Combined with a more active Spanish presence, there won't be many natives to exploit, at best some missions and maybe a few towns like New Mexico. The gold is also nowhere near as much as Northern Mexico.

On the bright side, the locals will be easier to deal with than the Apache and later Comanche, and resupply will be easier making the area more likely to thrive than New Mexico.


So, as a "New Mexico at best" it would be a fairly unimpressive frontier. Perhaps it would be vulnerable to major Indian revolt later on (an analogue to the Pueblo revolt). I would think though, that even if it is a backwater a sustained "Gran Florida" provides enough of a Spanish presence in the long-run to butterfly away English colonies in Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, and probably French colonies on the Gulf Coast like Mobile and New Orleans. And, even if English or other colonies to the northeast eventually encroach on the land, it protects a long-term continuous hispanic cultural influence in OTL's Florida and Gulf Coast into the 20th and 21st centuries (whether under independent or Spanish government).
 
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