AHC: OTL the best case scenario for the Native Americans

Apparently the OP is asking to find a way to make OTL the best possible outcome by coming up with worse ones, but I can't figure out how that makes sense from a logical perspective. Even if you could figure out a way for Native Americans to be worse off than IOTL that still wouldn't make OTL the best possible scenario by any means. It's really a logic fail with a poorly worded title.

Yeah that's what I mean. The OP is making my head hurt. But I just got off work and I'm going to bed so I leave it to you to figure this out.
 
Apparently the OP is asking to find a way to make OTL the best possible outcome by coming up with worse ones, but I can't figure out how that makes sense from a logical perspective. Even if you could figure out a way for Native Americans to be worse off than IOTL that still wouldn't make OTL the best possible scenario by any means. It's really a logic fail with a poorly worded title.

The OP is: How do you make a situation where the OTL outcome is the best possible outcome after the POD.

For example, in a situation where the Spanish do unto the Aztecs what some have suggested, native groups getting off with "merely" the Trail of Tears (OTL) would be the best case scenario for them in that timeline.

I'll admit it was poorly worded.
 
The OP is: How do you make a situation where the OTL outcome is the best possible outcome after the POD.

For example, in a situation where the Spanish do unto the Aztecs what some have suggested, native groups getting off with "merely" the Trail of Tears (OTL) would be the best case scenario for them in that timeline.

I'll admit it was poorly worded.
I still don't get it. If say the Spanish went even more crazy than OTL and all, the best case scenario for them in that timeline would be that they didn't do that and instead got their asses kicked and nothing like the Trail of Tears happened.
 
I still don't get it. If say the Spanish went even more crazy than OTL and all, the best case scenario for them in that timeline would be that they didn't do that and instead got their asses kicked and nothing like the Trail of Tears happened.

One could have a scenario where doing better than OTL would not be possible (by 2013), however, thus the thread.
 
Last edited:
I still don't get it. If say the Spanish went even more crazy than OTL and all, the best case scenario for them in that timeline would be that they didn't do that and instead got their asses kicked and nothing like the Trail of Tears happened.

I'm not sure what there is not to get.

This is a two-part, two-POD question: the first is "what POD makes the Native experience even more craptacular" to the point of "an ideal second POD following the first one would ONLY be able to produce OTL as best-case scenario"

The question may be way too broad what with the extensive geographical variations, but it's not unclear.

So to use your example "Spanish went even more crazy" is POD1. "Didn't do that and got their asses kicked" is not in the cards anymore, it happened. Whatever POD2 you have after that, it's realistically impossible to create something better than OTL.

What is POD1?

Think Chingiz and the Tanguts. Once he's suppressed that revolt and slaughtered them towards the end of his life, no POD that happens LATER would help them have a better outcome than OTL. Same here.
 
I'm not sure what there is not to get.

This is a two-part, two-POD question: the first is "what POD makes the Native experience even more craptacular" to the point of "an ideal second POD following the first one would ONLY be able to produce OTL as best-case scenario"

Thank you for putting it better than I could.
 
Why would this last - I'm not arguing, just looking for elaboration - meaningfully change things?

At first I had written a longer description, but realized that it might very probably lead simply to OTL, just nudged a bit earlier.

My thinking was: in the Great Lakes and what is now the Midwest, the Indians were able to play the French and British against one another. The French were more adept at drawing allies because Canada was not the settler society that the British seaboard was - its settler population was always just a fraction of that of the English speaking colonies. This meant that (1) France had more reason to seek allies, and (2) the Indians were more inclined to work with the French, because they were so much less land grab-y.

So get the French out of the way sooner, and the British settlement wave hits that much earlier, the tribes in the Great Lakes and the Ohio country have less time to react, the population of New France is even smaller (so you might end up with an English-speaking Quebec) and in general the settlement patterns of OTL are put on fast forward.

Maybe not a dystopia, but in all likelihood worse than OTL.
 
Makes sense.

Note that this thread isn't necessarily about true dystopias - as stated, cultural absorption would technically qualify too.
 
Top