AHC: Amerindian language as official language in U.S.!

whitecrow

Banned
With any pre-1900 POD you like, create a situation where the United States of America (NOT some ATL analog thereof where North America is never colonized or some-such) has a Native American language which is either

A) A second official language in a bilingual state within the U.S.A. – it doesn’t have to be but if the tongue is the majority language (like French is in Canadian Quebec for example), then your scenario meet the spirit of the challenge.

B) The second official language of the entire United States.

C) Is the primary language of U.S.A.!
 
A) Maybe if someone other than Andrew Jackson was President and decided to uphold the rights of the Cherokee and other "Civilized" Tribes to the lands that they were inhabiting? Avoid the travesty of the Trails of Tears and all those Native Americans that died on the march to Indian Territory. If you avoid any other further problems, you would have a viable and strong Cherokee minority living in northwestern Georgia and southeastern Tennessee. Granted, this is incredibly unlikely given how valuable the Cherokee land was, particularly with the Georgia Gold Rush.
 
(A) is the only possibility, and I agree with the basic premises set forth in the penultimate Aztec king's post, although even then it's necessary to recognize that even if you had a large Cherokee minority in Tenessee and Georgia, many Cherokees (and especially the leaders) were themselves biracial, bilingual, and already fluent in English. My guess is that, even if these people retained a strong and politically significant presence, they would be largely English speaking.

Although the US has no "official" language anyway, historical practice has always been for English to function this way. Even in states that entered the US with large number of Spanish or French speakers, I am unaware that either of these languages was given any official status.
 

mowque

Banned
Although the US has no "official" language anyway, historical practice has always been for English to function this way. Even in states that entered the US with large number of Spanish or French speakers, I am unaware that either of these languages was given any official status.

No, many state have official languages.
 
Although the US has no "official" language anyway, historical practice has always been for English to function this way. Even in states that entered the US with large number of Spanish or French speakers, I am unaware that either of these languages was given any official status.

New Mexico's original 1912 constitution provided for bilingual English/Spanish government and Spanish was permitted in the legislature until 1935, Louisiana law recognized both English and French, and both of those as well as Maine are de facto bilingual. Hawaii still recognizes Hawaiian as an official language, which, depending on how far you stretch the challenge's terms, already fulfills the challenge.

I think that a fairly simple POD could accomplish this. The Navajo language has a pretty vibrant community of speakers and is indeed spoken by more than four percent of New Mexicans. So somehow get New Mexico to remain bilingual and later make Native American activists politically strong enough that Navajo is recognized as an official language at some point. Alternatively or in addition, get statehood to go through for Sequoyah (IIRC it was expected to be favorable to the Democrats, so maybe if say, McKinley isn't shot and a Democrat wins in 1904) and get the constitution to recognize the languages of the "Five Civilized Tribes" as official, although I'm not sure there was any will to do so.
 
New Mexico's original 1912 constitution provided for bilingual English/Spanish government and Spanish was permitted in the legislature until 1935, Louisiana law recognized both English and French, and both of those as well as Maine are de facto bilingual. Hawaii still recognizes Hawaiian as an official language, which, depending on how far you stretch the challenge's terms, already fulfills the challenge.
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Thanks for the info. I thought about Hawaii, but I don't think you can stretch the definition of "amerindian" to cover Polynesia.
 
Does anyone know what the most populous single tribe in the US was?

I believe the Cherokee currently, with some half a million people, although the Cherokee language is only spoken by some 20,000 IIRC. The most spoken indigenous language in the US, and indeed anywhere north of Mexico, is the Navajo one, which has 171,000 speakers, and indeed has seen it's number of speakers increase over time whereas many indigenous languages not just in the Americas but around the world are in decline.
 
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