A Different Take on "American Vikings"

The Mississippi river system is also very easy to get to through OTL's Chicago. The subcontinental divide is a mere handful of miles away from Lake Michigan and the Illinois River is a mere six mile portage. That opens up the entire Miss culture and eventually the gulf.

Yes, indeed, once you got the ships. My point was that the spread from the great lakes -> st.Lawrence -> Newfoundland etc offers a very good progression for boats to change into ships, each step further offering less sheltered waters and more challenges.
 
For that matter, high quality cotton was grown and high-quality cloth was known in the SW and SE USA. On the basic topic though, I would agree with others than the Pacific Northwest might offer the best bet for the evolution of a strong maritime culture in North America. The lifestyle was sedentary, based heavily on the exploitation of fish, marine mammals, and trading. Society was complex and heirarchical, with a strong element of competition for rank and status.

The downside, however, is that the Pacific Northwest is geographically isolated from MesoAmerica and other high-culture areas of the americas, so would be hard to start a tradition of vikingesque raiding and pillaging on more developed civilizations.

I was rather trying to point to other means of sailmaking, well you'd come up with another!

There isn't much for Viking going on the West coast unless you go further to sea!

The Caribbean offers the kind of possibilities plundering Mesoamerica.
But then there was this old thread on another board about Bronzeage America originating in the Caribbean and having boats! Can't find it though it was referred to a short while ago here.
 
Yes, indeed, once you got the ships. My point was that the spread from the great lakes -> st.Lawrence -> Newfoundland etc offers a very good progression for boats to change into ships, each step further offering less sheltered waters and more challenges.

Ah, copy, I'm with you now.

That said, the Great Lakes can be as bad as the North Sea weather/navigation wise, possibly worse as there are very odd currents due to the odd geometry.

Witness the Edmund Fitzgerald, a massive multi-ton cargo ship that just vanished in an instant.

I think even alone the Lakes could spur ship development since they can be hardly navigable for canoes even near shore for much of the year.
 
Like everyone said, the West Coast had the technology and the raiding culture, but no real reason to use the water as a highway beyond the Alaska-to-Oregon area, while the East Coast seems to have lacked the technology (no redwoods!) even though the Great Lakes/St.Lawrence/Mississipi/Carribean seem like a good reason to develop some.

Incidentally, does anyone know what state was the river-going technology for the Mississipi peoples before the Spanish arrived?
 
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