American Indians held back the Europeans

Speed37

This is my frist thread so sorry about it
what would of happen if the American Indians held back the Europeans?
 
This is my frist thread so sorry about it
what would of happen if the American Indians held back the Europeans?
Welcome to the Board. You may wish to contact the user Atom. He is quite knowledgeable about Native Americans.

To answer your question, it all depends on where, when and how. An Americas wide resistance to the Europeans would require Alien Space Bats intervention. A more local resistance is definitely a possibility. I've always liked the Haudenosaunee.
 

HueyLong

Banned
Welcome to the board.

Well, there is an issue with your question- its more an effect of a what-if than a what-if itself.

If you meant to ask how they could have held off the Europeans, there are a variety of options.

There's always the pre-Columbian discovery option. Vikings or some other pre-Columbian Old Worlders wander to the New World and leave a greater impact than they did IOTL. Often leads to a disease outbreak and may leave them weaker.

There's also the earlier Columbian event- if New World had met the Old World earlier. the tech (and possibly disease gap) would have been lower and the more advanced Amerindians may have stood a chance. Search for The Vivaldi Brothers for a good TL like this one.

Then there are the agriculture and livestock PODs. These usually involve a horse, a hardier llama or other camel descendant, something domesticable and useful surving in the Americas. The livestock both enables native diseases and speeds up population growth and trade, letting the die-off of disease hit Europeans and lessening the tech gap.

I'm certain there are more, but those are some starts.
 
Welcome Speed. I'd be interested in just who your question or scenario is dealing with. On the American Indian's side of things do you mean a concerted effort of a united nation of all tribes resisting European colonization or just in general some way of the smaller tribes successfully fighting off both their numerous Indian enemies as well as the Europeans?
On the flip side, do you mean holding off colonization as a whole or just specific times or places such as the English or French specifically or pushing the Spanish South? Just curious as to where your question stemmed from.
 
This is my frist thread so sorry about it
what would of happen if the American Indians held back the Europeans?

Welcome to the board - and don't be sorry!

As already mentioned generally they would have difficulties in doing this as deseases would severely decimate them.

It would also be diffecult for them being on a stone-age technical level as opposed to the Europeans.

If they were able to survive the deceases, mostly what we would know as childhood ones but with them having no immunity against it, they would probably pick up on European technology fast. Some other TLs talk of Aztecs using captured Spanish swords for lances and they were able quickly to adapt to horses.
The diffuculty would be in applying metallurgy especially. Its not much of good if you have to rely on trade for getting guns, horses, iron - you name it.

So there is a lot of barriers to be crossed for a general American Indian holding back the Europeans and some of that is often the issue of discussion on the board so stay tuned. ;)

I'm not saying you're going for the impossible - the American Indians just didn't have the time to aquire skills and use them to their advantage and push the Europeans back/out.
 
As mentioned upthread, disease is the major element keeping the American Indians from preventing the Europeans from establishing themselves in the early years. This is true through the 17th century. Once the majority of "American-Europeans" start being born in the New World, however, they loose this advantage because they are also fall victim to Old World diseases.


I think the second biggest thing keeping the Indians from holding back the Europeans is lack of a united front. Tribes fought each other and used alliances with various European nations to their own local short-term advantage. Tribes also negotiated separately so you could have one tribe selling the land that "belonged" to another. There were often Indian leaders who strived to unify the tribes against a common foe, but they never succeed. This may be due in part to the nonauthoritarian culture of the Indians.


A third major factor, in North America at least, was the disparity in population sizes. The Indians were very often successful at fighting off the Europeans, but there were always more Europeans to replace the fallen and the Indians were eventually overwhelmed.


I believe the technology disadvantage has been overstated because the natives could be very quick to adopt new technology. During King Philips War (1676), for example, Indians mined their own iron and made their own ammunition for the guns they had purchased. And there were often enough rival European interests to keep Indians supplied with weapons they couldn’t produce for themselves.


To keep large portions of the New World in the hands of the native inhabitants you could:
Make them more resistant to diseases.
Give them their own diseases which the Europeans can’t resist.
Unify the tribes.
Vastly increase population densities (even after the effect of diseases).​
Change things in Europe so that those nations don’t want to expand in the New World or are handicapped by local European events.
 

Sachyriel

Banned
Bigger, and badder, what if the reservation system was implemented sooner, and Europeans had Native-leased sites for the formation of cultural exhanges and heritages?

Then, without a legal opportunity for expansion, the Explorers might rethink the 'savage' approach, as they have room to live and friendly people next door, with a system engaged to help both parties in their trading and living.

It might not work, but I can see an enterprising tribe trying it. "You can stay here, but if your gonna wander out more, contact us, because you might run into other tribes...who scalp."
 
American Indian Victories

I did a book of scenarios where the Indians do significantly better at holding off the Europeans. It's called American Indian Victories. It's available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, etc.

If you want the 'in a few paragraphs' version, you could be asking one of several questions, each with a different answer:

(1) What would have happened if the Indians that Columbus met had been able to successfully meet the European invasions and throw them back into the sea? That's very difficult to have happen for a wide variety of reasons. The Europeans had an enormous advantage in technology, immunity to diseases that devastated Indian populations, and military political organization. Also, as stated, your question seems to require that Europeans be pushed back into the sea everywhere. That's probably impossible because some Indian cultures like the Taino of the West Indies were not at all warlike or socially/technologically capable of being, while others like the Aztecs were vulnerable because all the Europeans had to do was replace a hated minority which was ruling a lot of unwilling subjects.

(2) How could a group of Indians develop that were capable of throwing the Europeans back into the sea? There you have a lot more room to maneuver, but you end up with something a lot different than the historical Indians. If, for example, the old ice age animals of North and South America had survived the Indians that developed would have probably had a better chance to throw back a European invasion because they would have more scope for domesticating those animals and would have probably developed faster. On the other hand, they wouldn't be culturally very similar to 'our' Indians, and certainly none of the historic tribes or personalities would exist. For that matter, the Europeans who invaded would probably not be the same Europeans because of various butterflies.

In my book I did actually come up with a couple of ways where Indians very much like ours might have been able to survive a European invasion intact. They both involve diseases. One of them involves a disease that quickly jumps from a New World host species to horses and causes the vast majority of them to quickly die. It would have no impact on Indians, thus the same cultures form, but really scuppers the Europeans, at least for a while. Conquistadors without horses really don't work well at all.

The other one involves a nasty autoimmune disease called Lockjoint that only Europeans are susceptible to and only if they venture into the New. How would that work? A benign disease develops in the New World and lodges in cartilage to hide from the immune system. It's not harmful in and of itself so Indians harbor it with no problem. Thing is, to an immune system it looks like smallpox. If someone has smallpox antibodies those antibodies go nuts trying to get rid of it, and in the process destroy the body's joints, leaving them helpless cripples. So any European who has been exposed to smallpox and is then exposed to LockJoint dies. European colonies in the New World are impossible until the Europeans understand diseases well enough to stop a disease like that, which would be postponed by slower development in Europe due to not having New World resources available.

Now even with something like Lockjoint, European technology would start to influence Indians to some extent. That leads us to the next question.

3) How would Indians have developed without European contact? Probably slowly, but on a path similar to the one European and Asians and Africans did. Towns and cities would become more common. Beasts of burden like llamas would spread to more areas. Domesticated food animals like turkeys and guinea pigs would spread to new areas and new breeds of them would be developed. Metal working in bronze and copper would spread north and south from Mexico and Peru. Over the centuries bronze tools and weapons would evolve. I doubt that Indians would have developed much use of iron by 2008. They had a long ways to go technologically before that happened. The North American southeast would eventually catch up to the level of Mexico and Peru, as probably would at least part of the Northeastern US. California and the Pacific Northwest would develop semi-independently and 2008 would probably be at about the culture level of the Indians of the Northeastern US, but using a different set of indigenuously developed crops. Corn doesn't do well in California at the technological level the Indians were at.

I think that pretty much fills up the couple of paragraphs I gave myself. If you want more, you can find the book by going to Amazon.com and searching for "American Indian Victories" or "Dale Cozort". (or you can just click the link)
 
This is my frist thread so sorry about it
what would of happen if the American Indians held back the Europeans?
It depends on how they do it, and who does it. If you suggest some kind of complete/or almost so absence of Europeans, then that is highly unlikely, to say the least. If a group manages to hold them off, then thats much more likely. I think the Southwest might be a good place for that, or the Andes.

Welcome to the Board. You may wish to contact the user Atom. He is quite knowledgeable about Native Americans.
:eek:, Thank you, although you far overestimate my knowledge. I am simply an amateur in a very confused field.

I've always liked the Haudenosaunee.
But there strength was base doff easier acces to Dutch/British guns, and Confederacies was fairly widespread among various other northeastern tribes.

I did a book of scenarios where the Indians do significantly better at holding off the Europeans. It's called American Indian Victories. It's available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, etc.
Its Dale Cozort!:eek::cool:

I read you newsletter, and found it very intteresting, very sad you now lack the time. I'd seen a few of your posts on this board, but I thought you no longer posted here. Its great to see (read?) you!

If you want the 'in a few paragraphs' version, you could be asking one of several questions, each with a different answer:

In my book I did actually come up with a couple of ways where Indians very much like ours might have been able to survive a European invasion intact. They both involve diseases. One of them involves a disease that quickly jumps from a New World host species to horses and causes the vast majority of them to quickly die. It would have no impact on Indians, thus the same cultures form, but really scuppers the Europeans, at least for a while. Conquistadors without horses really don't work well at all.
When does this happen exactly? Because if they can still get a large group of Indians supporting them, they ,might be in a tenable position, although that seems unlikely.

The other one involves a nasty autoimmune disease called Lockjoint that only Europeans are susceptible to and only if they venture into the New. How would that work? A benign disease develops in the New World and lodges in cartilage to hide from the immune system. It's not harmful in and of itself so Indians harbor it with no problem. Thing is, to an immune system it looks like smallpox. If someone has smallpox antibodies those antibodies go nuts trying to get rid of it, and in the process destroy the body's joints, leaving them helpless cripples. So any European who has been exposed to smallpox and is then exposed to LockJoint dies. European colonies in the New World are impossible until the Europeans understand diseases well enough to stop a disease like that, which would be postponed by slower development in Europe due to not having New World resources available.
I can't believe it would be virulent enough or widespread enough to stop all European expansion.
 

Speed37

First thank you all for warm welcome

what i mean if Europeans couldn't get a hold in America would the navies Americans be the same as they were or become more European and how would effect the world today would they be a power?.
 
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