AHC: Native American Nation

Have a nation founded and run by Native Americans be founded and survive in North or South America. Bonus points if they do it without ever falling to European Colonialisim.
 
Any scenario where the Inca survive would work. That certainly seems the most plausible especially if Pizarro's initial conquest fails. The Spanish were monumentally lucky when it came to the Inca conquest.
 
The British crush the American Revolution. As a result, settlement west of the Appalachians doesn't take as much hold, and eventually Native American nations become independent.
 
US gets curb-stomped during the War of 1812 and forced to accept a Native American buffer state in what is now Michigan. Aside from ensuring its territorial integrity, the British have a hands-off attitude as squabbling tribes are eventually able to form a confederation-type government there. The US fragments into multiple nations, leaving it further unable to interfere in the development of that independent Native American state.

Technically, the nation would be founded by the British. Think of it as a spin-off.
 
If the Iroquois survived the American Revolution, and then somehow became their own sovereign state, governed by the constitution of their Confederacy, they could claim with some justification that they were never conquered, merely that France, England, and America placed territorial claims over them that were as laughably unrealistic as when Spain tried to claim all North America.

Let's say General Schuyler goes up and negotiates a peace with the entire Iroquois Confederation and convinces them to reject Joseph Brandt's war mongering. Schuyler's second, General Montgomery, seizes the initiative and captures Montreal and either does much better with Quebec or doesn't make the attempt and conserves his forces. The Patriots have a much better time of it in general, and when the peace negotiations get underway the Iroquois are remembered for their amiable neutrality. The Confederations successfully gets its own small country around the Finger Lakes extending towards Lake Champlain and northern Pennsylvania.

Another idea is to have a more enlightened administration of New Spain recognize the Zapotecs and acknowledge the independence of Oaxaca. I think they had the benefit of being a little distant from the initial Spanish incursion into central Mexico, being slightly more organized than the Mayan polities at that time (IIRC), and less cruel than the Aztecs. We could presume this same culture of administration might recognize independence or some form of autonomy to the pueblo farmer communities to the north west of central Mexico.
 
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