Americans incorporate Natives

In the chapter on the British Empire in Amy Chua's book Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance - and Why They Fall, she describes how after the 1707 Act of Union, which united England and Scotland into Great Britain, the English decided to raise the Scots up by incorporating, winning their loyalty and utilizing them rather than trying to keep them down and repress them.

How might American history have gone if Americans had tried to incorporate the Native peoples and bring them into the fold by offering incentives such as letting them stay on their lands and sending their children to school with white children?
 

Redhand

Banned
The Scots were a more or less unified nation and people that had much more in common with the English than the natives did with the US. The natives spoke hundreds of different languages and lived across a huge expanse of land and had constantly warred with each other for quite along time. Incorporating them wasnt possible considering they died when they came into contact with whites.
 
These are two very different situations. The early Anglo-American colonists had no interest whatsoever in treating the Native Americans as equals. The closest the early US got to this was in the Old Northwest territory, where white settlers and Native Americans got along surprisingly well and even occasionally intermarried between 1783 and 1812.
 
increase their numbers and resistance to European diseases? More natives means that if they are conquered they still constitute a large part of the population. If you get them to roughly equal say even half the size of the black population then the governments and states would be forced to deal with them more.
 
The Cherokees of North Carolina could certainly have been allowed to remain where they were and respected as farmers, school teachers, blacksmiths, carpenters, etc.

On the disease front, maybe if Europeans had followed an ethic of quarantine and not visiting unless healthy, even if done imperfectly, this may have made a difference.

And maybe if the Indians had just gotten lucky and the minor form of smallpox had arrived here first. we had a thread about this https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=319962
 
The closest the early US got to this was in the Old Northwest territory, where white settlers and Native Americans got along surprisingly well and even occasionally intermarried between 1783 and 1812.
That's really interesting, indeed. I wonder if the intermarriage was more frequent?
 
That's really interesting, indeed. I wonder if the intermarriage was more frequent?

IIRC, it didn't happen that often before the War of 1812, and it stopped almost entirely during and after the War of 1812 (when racism in general* received an depressingly large boost in the US).

*This was when the army was first segregated.
 
The major thing is the population disparity between the white settlers and the natives. With every major wave of immigration from Europe the percentage of population that the natives made up of the total got smaller and smaller.

If you made the smallpox epidemics less severe you would most likely butterfly the creation of the United States entirely.
 
The major thing is the population disparity between the white settlers and the natives. With every major wave of immigration from Europe the percentage of population that the natives made up of the total got smaller and smaller.

If you made the smallpox epidemics less severe you would most likely butterfly the creation of the United States entirely.

Not to mention the birthrate of the whites in the US. This was the time when people has 12-13 children, and the death rate was smaller for infants than in Europe.

The population doubled every 23 years until the 1870s, and during the first years, before the 1840s, that was almost from native population growth.
 
Not to mention the birthrate of the whites in the US. This was the time when people has 12-13 children, and the death rate was smaller for infants than in Europe.

The population doubled every 23 years until the 1870s, and during the first years, before the 1840s, that was almost from native population growth.

That too which means that there were not enough natives to make the government care all that much and if the population is small enough it gets integrated anyway just through the fact that they have to deal with the majority of the population.
 

birdboy2000

Banned
They did for a time. The Five Civilized Tribes was one of the more noteworthy examples, but efforts towards assimilation and incorporation (which usually, but not always, went hand in hand) were a recurring thread in American history - consider Roger Williams and William Penn's actually respecting native land rights, or the Puritan missionaries to "praying Indians" and alliance with the Mohegans against the Wampanoag confederacy.

And time and time again, new politicians were elected who were less enlightened than the old, and the Native Americans who welcomed the settlers were betrayed by them. The settlers had the votes, the numbers, and the cultural ties with political leaders - the natives had none of these advantages.
 
They did for a time. The Five Civilized Tribes was one of the more noteworthy examples, but efforts towards assimilation and incorporation (which usually, but not always, went hand in hand) were a recurring thread in American history - consider Roger Williams and William Penn's actually respecting native land rights, or the Puritan missionaries to "praying Indians" and alliance with the Mohegans against the Wampanoag confederacy.

And time and time again, new politicians were elected who were less enlightened than the old, and the Native Americans who welcomed the settlers were betrayed by them. The settlers had the votes, the numbers, and the cultural ties with political leaders - the natives had none of these advantages.

Its not that they were necessarily less enlightened so much as the settlers had less and less need to be nice to the natives as their numbers increased. When they first got to the Americas the settlers were vastly outnumbered but as time went on they eventually had local and then total numerical superiority which means that the faction with less guys and resources is going to eventually lose. Once the settlers had enough people to push the natives back they did because every new person who arrived from Europe wanted land and they had to either buy it from another settler or take it from the natives and most of the time they chose to take it from the natives.
 

Driftless

Donor
That's really interesting, indeed. I wonder if the intermarriage was more frequent?

Much of the earliest European contact was with the French from the 1500's up to the French & Indian War in the mid 1700's. Intermarriage was much more accepted between those societies. Even now, many of the place names in Wisconsin(where I am), Minnesota, & Michigan are French origin, or they are Anglicized version of French names
 

PhilippeO

Banned
Even if individual natives could be incorporated, the tribes and their ownership of land would certainly trigger war. the whites will never tolerate native have that much land, whites see indian land as unused because only very small portion is used for farming, and will take it. like canary islanders, the natives will have descendants, but their culture and government would be wipe out.
 

Driftless

Donor
The French activity along the line of the St Lawrence through the Great Lakes and into the Mississippi Valley and into Central Canada was substantial, but generally less intrusive than the English or Spanish. Voyageurs, trappers, traders, explorers, missionary's, but not as many farmers, not as many friction inducing large scale permanent settlements.
 
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