AHC: Peaceful U.S. westward expansion

Rstone4

Banned
Pontiac and Tecumseh both tried. People call them "Indians" but there were hundreds of tribes and languages. Cultural and religious and ideological differences kept them apart, they were out manned, out gunned, and most were unwilling to copy the white man enough to survive.
 
Pontiac and Tecumseh both tried. People call them "Indians" but there were hundreds of tribes and languages. Cultural and religious and ideological differences kept them apart, they were out manned, out gunned, and most were unwilling to copy the white man enough to survive.

It doesn't matter how much they copied the white man. The fate of the 'Civilized Tribes' shows us that much.
 
I actually gave this some thought. However there is no way the US, as it's culturally set up, could peacefully advance. White supremacy is too much of an ingrained concept by OTL's development of the British colonies in the 1780s.

Only a complete collapse of the racial hierarchy could change this, where maybe a more evenly blended culture of Natives, blacks, and whites arises. Even in this case, it's still probably going to violently expand, except in this case you won't see such segregation or an attempt at complete genocide.

Another option, especially expansion out west, would involve a more 'Russian-style' expansion, where the frontier is settled more lightly and the Natives are conquered but left with a lot of their own social structure intact - just as long as they stay loyal and send tribute. In this case though, you would need to find a PoD where immigration is shunned. Maybe a more culturally insular US, or the colonies dominated by Britain longer, who actually curtails immigration from anywhere but the British isles. A hostile power, contending with the US/British empire would also help, motivating the government to use the tribes as a proxy force in solidifying their claims to the west - autonomy for loyalty.
 
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How about some form of Cargo cult developing across the population of the Amerindians after some European introduced disease wipes the bulk of them out. Maybe Western medicine starts saving them before most of them are wiped out or something.
 
How about some form of Cargo cult developing across the population of the Amerindians after some European introduced disease wipes the bulk of them out. Maybe Western medicine starts saving them before most of them are wiped out or something.

That's more of a game changer early on, and considering medicine in the 16th century pretty much sucked it's not going to help out.

What would help is if the Navajo adaption of livestock spread to the rest of the plains tribes, having herds of cattle and/or sheep to supplement the Buffalo diet; this would allow a bigger population, somewhat mitigating the disease loss. Even in this case, the tribes would have to attach themselves to some industrialized state to keep their integrity by the 19th century.
 
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It doesn't matter how much they copied the white man. The fate of the 'Civilized Tribes' shows us that much.

I was thinking he meant military technology and tactics and whatever cosmetic social things would be needed to get people to sell the former to them myself.
 
In these kinds of PoD's, I rarely see a different disease path suggested. Perhaps some deadly disease could attack the settlers? Natives would be less affected by it. Since the settlers would bring diseases with them, both groups would be in trouble. Cooperation would be necessary.
 
In these kinds of PoD's, I rarely see a different disease path suggested. Perhaps some deadly disease could attack the settlers? Natives would be less affected by it. Since the settlers would bring diseases with them, both groups would be in trouble. Cooperation would be necessary.

Well there is this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis

However, the Indians' lack of European-style livestock meant there weren't local equivalents of smallpox and the like.
 
The European settlers in the Americas were regularly attacking each other for land, ports, etc. (French & British, British & Dutch, Colonists/Americans & Canadians & British, Americans vs. Mexico, Nicaragua (Walker), Cuba, etc.) while the tribes were in a state of continual warfare with nearly all of their neighboring tribes with endless invasions, mass migrations, and incursions (the Iroquois Confederacy or Powhatan's Tidewater Confederacy are both rare but impressive as to what could be accomplished.)

If the POD was in the 1200's with the Mississipian Civilization not collapsing throughout what would be the Louisiana Territory but instead continuing to grow and progress while getting through European diseases better from the 1500's Spanish expeditions, there'd be several million organized people in cities with standing armies that had traded for some European arms (armor and swords of copper are found in the mound burials routinely so clearly it's mostly gunpowder weapons they'd lack and trading with the French, Spanish, Dutch, etc. just an in OTL's 18th & 19th Centuries could make up for a lot of the difference.

POD 1780 when policies towards Indian lands, tribal negotiations, treaties, raid retaliation, etc. were pretty well set over 180 years (Roanoke forward) would be very tough as noted. The diseases wiped out the civilized tribes in organized populations most likely to assimilate and negotiate (like the Cherokee, Iroquois, Creek, Ojibwe, Osage, Crow/Hidatsa, Mandan, etc.) so making those far less lethal would drastically change the possibilities. Most of these lived in complex civil societies with permanent farm land that was considerably more productive and used crops they'd developed themselves while participating in vast trade networks. The roaming nomadic bands are rarer than portrayed and probably reflect epidemic survivors from the large Indian settlements, dispersal and annual contact (sun dance in June equinox) working like quarantines.

Your POD could work with U.S. Constitutional protections for the American Indians like full citizenship as part of treaties, voting rights, creating reservations as regular county governments operating within the common hierarchy instead of a weird separate status, much better defined land titles/land purchase systems with actual enforcement (private real estate developers/distant land speculators bear a lot of the guilt for what happened but get let off the hook as though official actions are all that impact this.) I think Benjamin Franklin did want to do a lot more for the Indians from his own negotiations with them on Pennsylvania's borderlands so having James Madison (Bill of Rights, most of the Constitution), Washington, Alexander Hamilton (NYC's top real estate lawyer as well as Secretary of the Treasury and big proponent of national infrastructure investment like roads into the frontiers), Aaron Burr (NYC's other top real estate lawyer), etc. come around to this way of thinking during the Constitutional Congress and early years under the first 5 Presidents you might get there.
 
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There were plenty of times where a group of Indians would give up a parcel of land in exchange for supplies, although that system could never last forever.


I seem to recall that these trades were done under differing views regarding the nature of property rights. Namely, the native americans did not have a concept of owning land in the western sense. A system designed to take advantage of a different view of property rights probably has limited lifespan.

This was true early on but, as time passed, Native Tribes got a very clear understanding of what settlers meant by land ownership.

Here in Indiana there were some groups that gained US property rights in the pre 'Removal' era. And. some of those were not removed, some retaining their land legally and other remaining in a sort of underground existance until the gradually assimilated. Decendants of both groups retain a thin connection to their ancestory & a few still live on or near the property of their ancestors. They key to both these groups remaining was figuring out how to game the white mans system. they were certainly not 100% sucessful, but were enough to remain on their land.

It doesn't matter how much they copied the white man. The fate of the 'Civilized Tribes' shows us that much.

The Removal was not a given. The economic & political forces Jackson responded to were powerfull at the time, but not inevitable. I dont think it likely all the violence of the westward expansion be eliminated, but it was not impossible for the native people to assimilate to a greater extent into the immigrant population.
 
I doubt it could be done peacefully, but it could have been done more orderly and with more compassion for the natives. The US government and population for the most part didn't want the natives exterminated, but wanted them to live quietly on their reservations. A big part of the problem was the utterly corrupt BIA, who constantly stole money appropriated to them for feeding the natives, who naturally objected to starving and went 'off the reservation' in response. So, a BIA that actually did it's job would help, along with the Feds doing a better job of keeping white intruders out of the reservations. It wouldn't do the job completely, but it would be an improvement over OTL...
 
This might be doable if the Indian removals of the Jackson years are prevented, and none happen subsequently. Simply have the "civilized tribes" decide to "civilize" other tribes. I guess though that one really does need a POD during the war for independence to do this, even if it does introduce too many butterflies. Conflicts with indigenous peoples prior to U.S. independence are not that avoidable though without butterflying away the United States.
 
When two peoples(or, rather, one people and hundreds and hundreds of other peoples) want the same land, war is just about the only thing that can happen. Maybe the Indians could get off better than OTL, less broken treaties and other garbage like that, but no war cannot happen with a recognizable Indians or America.
 
Even if the Natives are accepted as "civilized" and equal to whites, that doesn't magically mean Americans are going to have exclusively peaceful relations with them.

And very few independent nations have wanted to be annexed by a distinctly foreign power (as opposed to say, the Republic of Texas, which was very closely tied to the not-distant American past of its Americanborn settlers).

So what UncleDynamite noted.
 
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