Best Scenario for Native Americans

You must consider some changes to the environment that can give the Natives not only immunity to diseases but also greater access to animal husbandry. Anything after 1492, may just be too late in the impending doom of Native American civilizations.

While any form of Columbian Exchange in OTL terms would be devastating to the Native American side, I think that OTl comes fairly close to the worst possible outcome in the probability range. I mean, there is NO independent Native political entity at all in the entirety of the Americas; while there are countries where Native identities play a significant part (most notably Paraguay, and to a lesser extent Bolivia at least recently) they are fairly minor in a continental balance where a grand total of four Native languages (Nahuatl, Quechua, Aymara, Guarani) have anything approaching national status in, AFAIR, five countries (though some Mayan languages also manage relatively well). And the current trends bide ill for a lot of Native groups remaining in places like Brazil.
It is possible to imagine worse levels of destruction onto the Native Americans, but what they collectively underwent IOTL was on average really extreme. Devastating plague, combined or followed by centuries of systematic dispossession, deculturation, violent expoitations, enslavement, and, not so rarely, outright deliberate genocide.
Almost any other plausible TL should have them, or some of them, fare at least somewhat better.
 
Obviously, the earlier the POD, the better they'll do, but I think even with a pretty late POD you can seriously improve their chances. Columbus' voyage was particularly unlucky for the natives: Columbus was a religious fanatic and would-be crusader, working for monarchs eager to spread Catholicism even further after the success of the Reconquista, who landed on a well-populated island full of potential Christians wearing gold trinkets and talking about sources of even more gold further inland.

If the initial landings had happened elsewhere, and involved people and powers less interested in conquest, the arrival of Europeans might have at least been slower, giving the natives enough time (with a lot of luck) to weather ineivtable waves of diseases without being overrun. Cabral landed on the coast of Brazil by accident (maybe) and basically just thought it was a big island with a lot of trees and a couple of savages, definitely worth exploring further, but not the most important thing in the world; John Cabot just found rocky coast and the remains of a fire, and kept hoping for a Northwest passage. If European first contact with Americas had been more like that, natives would have... done slightly better, probably.

I could do a POD that starts around c.13,000 in which North America was affected about as much as the rest of the world by the Ice Age, keeping from the mass extinction event that occurred. At the very least horses and/or camels survive, get domesticated and the wheel gets invented around 3500 BCE just like it would be in Mesopotamia. Likely the Mississippian culture could become a dynastic one similar to that in Ancient Egypt with parts of the empire breaking off here and there or separate, related areas developing (like the Caddo and Plaquemine). Cities like Chakoia would probably be more common and likely diseases as well. Certainly sheep, horses, and camels would all be domesticated (vastly changing dynamics). It's possible bison might be hunted to extinction - though given their apparent status among Plains Natives it's equally possible a taboo could be put on hunting them if their numbers get too low. Who knows? Perhaps in this timeline some variant of the bison comes around that is domesticated.

A Mississippian culture that continues would undoubtedly have developed not only ships for sailing the Gulf of Mexico, but up and down the Mississippi river as well - and we know that even in the OTL there was a lot more wide-spread trade than is usually thought. Certainly it's possible that the Hadosaunee Confederacy could form a sort of counter to the Mississippian Empire, controlling most areas between the Mississippi river and the Great Lakes (and probably a good chunk of area around those). Meanwhile the Diné could have expanded to include all of Arizona and New Mexico as well as parts of Utah, Colorado, and southern California.

Meanwhile down in Mexico the Aztec Empire is facing a lot of trouble and may even collapse - though likely something else will replace it. The Incas, however, now have a very stable (or mostly stable) empire that runs up and down the entirety of South America. They trade with the Amazon Basin culture who likely influence a good chunk of the Amazon rainforest.

If they've had livestock for a thousand years, maybe the Americas have cooked up airborne hantapox or some such to give the Europeans.

Yeah, this is the next part I see: Europeans come over and bring diseases that wipe out a huge swath of Natives and return home to Europe with something that reduces the Eurasian population by the same amount. This leaves only Africa and Asia with sizable populations. And even India and China could be hit by the new diseases. Net result is that 90% of the human population outside of Africa has died of diseases by 1550 or so.
 
The Black Plague kills all Europeans before they even arrive at the New World and Native Indigenous cultures evolve after being left untouched.
 
The Black Plague kills all Europeans before they even arrive at the New World and Native Indigenous cultures evolve after being left untouched.
Why exactly does any realistc disease manage to kill all humans?

While any form of Columbian Exchange in OTL terms would be devastating to the Native American side, I think that OTl comes fairly close to the worst possible outcome in the probability range. I mean, there is NO independent Native political entity at all in the entirety of the Americas; while there are countries where Native identities play a significant part (most notably Paraguay, and to a lesser extent Bolivia at least recently) they are fairly minor in a continental balance where a grand total of four Native languages (Nahuatl, Quechua, Aymara, Guarani) have anything approaching national status in, AFAIR, five countries (though some Mayan languages also manage relatively well). And the current trends bide ill for a lot of Native groups remaining in places like Brazil.
It is possible to imagine worse levels of destruction onto the Native Americans, but what they collectively underwent IOTL was on average really extreme. Devastating plague, combined or followed by centuries of systematic dispossession, deculturation, violent expoitations, enslavement, and, not so rarely, outright deliberate genocide.
Almost any other plausible TL should have them, or some of them, fare at least somewhat better.
I'm not sure the logic really holds, some people say that IOTL is what we really can call the most plausible timeline but even excluding that I'm not sure that what can be construed from a certain perspective as an extreme scenario actually means that the most probable scenario is one where the situation is better.

Afterall you could make the argument that any realistic scenario should have any given extinct X cultural, religious, ethnic or linguistic group far better, which would easily contradict itself.
 
Give them better civilizations, which is a lot easier to do than "Vinlanders make a trading network" (despite being on the ass end of nowhere from the Norse perspective) or even more out there ideas like "Phoenicians/Egyptians/Romans/Malinese/etc. go to New World". I think the "Vinlander coughs in the wrong place, natives much more resistant to disease, natives win big" scenario is rather cliche here (and based on a gross simplification of epidemiology).

What would really help is more and larger trading networks, so better boats and sailing especially would be key to spreading innovations around. Also wank the Eastern Agricultural Complex--this is more suited than corn for temperate regions and could spread to the Pacific Northwest as far as the southern Alaskan coast. At the same time, some northern group domesticates the moose (caribou is a solid substitute) to help take their wild rice and wapato horticulture to the next level. The combination of moose, not-so-wild-rice, and wapato plus whatever other water plants work would encourage more cooperation (building those paddies is hard work) and enable state building. It turns out this part of the Americas also is rich in copper and has one of the few sources of tin in North America (Alaska is also good for this along the Yukon and Seward Peninsula). So there you go--Bronze Age America. Have mountain goats, bighorn sheep, or even Dall sheep as a secondary domesticate. The search for tin on the West Coast would mean a trading network is needed--it already existed OTL anyway, so get the Chumash, Chinookans, Haida, Tlingit, etc. to move the tin (and more no doubt) from Alaska to wherever. One of these groups will eventually want to cross the Bering Sea and perhaps eventually begin trade with the Kamchatkans and Ainu--this is again feasible. From the Ainu, you could import cold-weather crops like millet and buckwheat and perhaps Eurasian diseases would spread that way. And right past the Ainu is of course Japan, Korea, and China...although this might not be a good thing since now those groups definitely have a reason to cross the Pacific.

One key thing is maritime tech--get the Polynesians there earlier and keep them there (Juan Fernandez, Galapagos, and Cocos Island could all support thriving cultures). Given a few centuries, they could spread sailing to the coastal cultures of South America who would spread it from there to peoples as diverse as the Taino, Chumash, etc. This could happen as late as maybe the early 14th century and would still give the Amerindians a better result since there's going to be more contact, more trade, and perhaps more "sophistication" in parts (i.e. Patagonia/Southern Chile). Maybe a giant trade network across the Pacific moving precious metals, etc. to East Asia, attracting their attention. Assuming East Asians only show up to trade and not as conquerors (i.e. no Tungning types), then they could really help West Coast civilizations out and perhaps by extension, all other Indian civilizations.
 
Give them better civilizations, which is a lot easier to do than "Vinlanders make a trading network" (despite being on the ass end of nowhere from the Norse perspective) or even more out there ideas like "Phoenicians/Egyptians/Romans/Malinese/etc. go to New World". I think the "Vinlander coughs in the wrong place, natives much more resistant to disease, natives win big" scenario is rather cliche here (and based on a gross simplification of epidemiology).

What would really help is more and larger trading networks, so better boats and sailing especially would be key to spreading innovations around. Also wank the Eastern Agricultural Complex--this is more suited than corn for temperate regions and could spread to the Pacific Northwest as far as the southern Alaskan coast. At the same time, some northern group domesticates the moose (caribou is a solid substitute) to help take their wild rice and wapato horticulture to the next level. The combination of moose, not-so-wild-rice, and wapato plus whatever other water plants work would encourage more cooperation (building those paddies is hard work) and enable state building. It turns out this part of the Americas also is rich in copper and has one of the few sources of tin in North America (Alaska is also good for this along the Yukon and Seward Peninsula). So there you go--Bronze Age America. Have mountain goats, bighorn sheep, or even Dall sheep as a secondary domesticate. The search for tin on the West Coast would mean a trading network is needed--it already existed OTL anyway, so get the Chumash, Chinookans, Haida, Tlingit, etc. to move the tin (and more no doubt) from Alaska to wherever. One of these groups will eventually want to cross the Bering Sea and perhaps eventually begin trade with the Kamchatkans and Ainu--this is again feasible. From the Ainu, you could import cold-weather crops like millet and buckwheat and perhaps Eurasian diseases would spread that way. And right past the Ainu is of course Japan, Korea, and China...although this might not be a good thing since now those groups definitely have a reason to cross the Pacific.

One key thing is maritime tech--get the Polynesians there earlier and keep them there (Juan Fernandez, Galapagos, and Cocos Island could all support thriving cultures). Given a few centuries, they could spread sailing to the coastal cultures of South America who would spread it from there to peoples as diverse as the Taino, Chumash, etc. This could happen as late as maybe the early 14th century and would still give the Amerindians a better result since there's going to be more contact, more trade, and perhaps more "sophistication" in parts (i.e. Patagonia/Southern Chile). Maybe a giant trade network across the Pacific moving precious metals, etc. to East Asia, attracting their attention. Assuming East Asians only show up to trade and not as conquerors (i.e. no Tungning types), then they could really help West Coast civilizations out and perhaps by extension, all other Indian civilizations.


Your arguments about domestication of moose and mountain goats ignores a key question; namely, why weren't these animals domesticated IOTL. Diamond argues convincingly that every large animal capable of being domesticated was domesticated. For example, Bison cannot be domesticated (even today) because they are just too aggressive. Zebras apparently become very aggressive in old age. Hence there were never African zebra cavalry. This is why most people argue for an early POD so that horses and camels survive in North America.
 
While any form of Columbian Exchange in OTL terms would be devastating to the Native American side, I think that OTl comes fairly close to the worst possible outcome in the probability range. I mean, there is NO independent Native political entity at all in the entirety of the Americas; while there are countries where Native identities play a significant part (most notably Paraguay, and to a lesser extent Bolivia at least recently) they are fairly minor in a continental balance where a grand total of four Native languages (Nahuatl, Quechua, Aymara, Guarani) have anything approaching national status in, AFAIR, five countries (though some Mayan languages also manage relatively well). And the current trends bide ill for a lot of Native groups remaining in places like Brazil.
It is possible to imagine worse levels of destruction onto the Native Americans, but what they collectively underwent IOTL was on average really extreme. Devastating plague, combined or followed by centuries of systematic dispossession, deculturation, violent expoitations, enslavement, and, not so rarely, outright deliberate genocide.
Almost any other plausible TL should have them, or some of them, fare at least somewhat better.
I don't think its a statistical improbability at all. After all, how can you measure the probably of an event that actually happened, versus a hundred or a thousand events that did not?

In any case, violent conquest and enslavement were the norm in human history until comparatively recent times. there are an incalculable number of ethnic groups in the Eastern Hemisphere that no longer exist because of conquest, assimilation, and plague. By your logic, it would be "extreme" to consider that the myriad of ancient ethnic groups in Europe would be wiped away by the Romans.
 
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By your logic, it would be "extreme" to consider that the myriad of ancient ethnic groups in Europe would be wiped away by the Romans.
Well, it is. The Roman Empire proved to be quite effective at assimilation, clearly above the pre-modern norm in this regard (though China and the Caliphate are respectable comparanda; and the Inca among others tried their best). As opposed to settler colonies in the Americas, that often did not just assimilate Natives; they destroyed them. Of course, unintentional factors such as plagues were a huge factor in that. Still, a large portion of human genetic and cultural diversity was wiped out in a relatively short span of time over a very large landmass as a consequence of the Columbian Exchange. I recognize that this was not really unique as a phenomenon, but in scale and depth, really major.
 
As far as bronze is concerned, one need not travel as afar as Alaska for tin. There are several tin mines in central Mexico. Even in pre-Columbian times the natives were already mining tin in Zacatecas for Tarascan bronze makers. Mexico does not have anywhere near the tin reserves of Peru, but there is enough of it for tool making, and it is one of the few places outside Peru where copper and tin deposits are located within close proximity.
 
A series of disasters befalling England, France and the Iberian peninsula in the 16th century, enough to severely delay colonisation. While the diseases would still cause terrible damage, this might give populations enough time to bounce back -- especially if there has also already been some technological dispersion before colonisation attempts stop. It would most likely still end in colonial states being established, but later and on a lesser scale.
 
Your arguments about domestication of moose and mountain goats ignores a key question; namely, why weren't these animals domesticated IOTL. Diamond argues convincingly that every large animal capable of being domesticated was domesticated. For example, Bison cannot be domesticated (even today) because they are just too aggressive. Zebras apparently become very aggressive in old age. Hence there were never African zebra cavalry.

Diamond makes too deterministic of an argument there, since it's ultimately a culture's need which determines what gets domesticated and what doesn't (although biological factors play a big role in things). I take Soviet experiments on foxes and moose to be illustrative of this--IIRC there's also been nice research on muskox in this context too. They created domesticated populations of those animals albeit using modern knowledge on breeding and not under the food constraints of what a Neolithic population would face (why domesticate an animal when you can just kill it?).

Take my example of aquatic agriculture involving wapato and Zizania wild rice and no doubt fish farming. Using moose (as some water buffalo equivalent) would really help. So you could have these communities become closer to moose and subsequently domesticate them because now there's a need for it. Or if the Salish, who used mountain goat wool for various things, suddenly had a population boom (from some new sort of agriculture), they would have more people closer to where the mountain goats lived and a sudden demand for their wool. Although mountain goats can be aggressive, a less aggressive population might be cultivated and thus given a few centuries you have domesticated mountain goats.

I think of it as a cultural question, similar to how an alien anthropologist might ask why we're so worried about the dangers of fossil fuels now when we had solar panels since the late 19th century and nuclear power since the mid-20th. Culturally and economically, we didn't have a need for them, but if you examine our history, there's ways we might've been able to use them a lot more.

This is why most people argue for an early POD so that horses and camels survive in North America.

Which in of itself supposes that any of the number of American horse and camel species are domesticatible, or more precisely, that any Amerindian group actually has a need to domesticate them. Certainly a lot of people in the Old World had no need to domesticate the horse or other animals.

As far as bronze is concerned, one need not travel as afar as Alaska for tin. There are several tin mines in central Mexico. Even in pre-Columbian times the natives were already mining tin in Zacatecas for Tarascan bronze makers. Mexico does not have anywhere near the tin reserves of Peru, but there is enough of it for tool making, and it is one of the few places outside Peru where copper and tin deposits are located within close proximity.

A West Coast trade network from Tierra del Fuego to the Aleutians would use both. Checking the internet, there's placer deposits of tin in the Alaska Panhandle, not far from where copper can be mined, in addition to those in the Yukon, Alaska Peninsula (near Bristol Bay) and Seward Peninsula which isn't far from copper deposits either. IOTL, both the Tlingit in the Alaska Panhandle and the Athabaskans along the Yukon traded for copper and used it to some degree, so an Alaskan Bronze Age isn't quite as ludicrous as it seems. Some agriculture is possible in Tlingit territory, and this map suggests that Sagittaria cuneata (wapato) grows as far north as the Mackenzie and Yukon Rivers, so potentially could be used for a slightly increased population density in the region (caribou herding and increased horticulturalism for the sake of humans and caribou both is also nice). In addition, trading for food from the south (Tlingit country, PNW, etc.) is always possible for any group involved in this. The poverty of the land for farming and yet its wealth from trade in tin, gold, and silver could lead to a Phoenician-like group forming there who would perhaps end up in Siberia (IIRC there is some tin there, but it might not be easily accessible) and from there, we might get a trade route going which eventually the East Asians would take interest in and hopefully try and take hold of themselves in a less violent manner than Europeans did (or at worst, be like the French, favouring some natives over others causing a lot of conflict, but not a lot of actual settlement).
 
Diamond makes too deterministic of an argument there, since it's ultimately a culture's need which determines what gets domesticated and what doesn't (although biological factors play a big role in things). I take Soviet experiments on foxes and moose to be illustrative of this--IIRC there's also been nice research on muskox in this context too. They created domesticated populations of those animals albeit using modern knowledge on breeding and not under the food constraints of what a Neolithic population would face (why domesticate an animal when you can just kill it?).

Take my example of aquatic agriculture involving wapato and Zizania wild rice and no doubt fish farming. Using moose (as some water buffalo equivalent) would really help. So you could have these communities become closer to moose and subsequently domesticate them because now there's a need for it. Or if the Salish, who used mountain goat wool for various things, suddenly had a population boom (from some new sort of agriculture), they would have more people closer to where the mountain goats lived and a sudden demand for their wool. Although mountain goats can be aggressive, a less aggressive population might be cultivated and thus given a few centuries you have domesticated mountain goats.

I think of it as a cultural question, similar to how an alien anthropologist might ask why we're so worried about the dangers of fossil fuels now when we had solar panels since the late 19th century and nuclear power since the mid-20th. Culturally and economically, we didn't have a need for them, but if you examine our history, there's ways we might've been able to use them a lot more.



Which in of itself supposes that any of the number of American horse and camel species are domesticatible, or more precisely, that any Amerindian group actually has a need to domesticate them. Certainly a lot of people in the Old World had no need to domesticate the horse or other animals.



A West Coast trade network from Tierra del Fuego to the Aleutians would use both. Checking the internet, there's placer deposits of tin in the Alaska Panhandle, not far from where copper can be mined, in addition to those in the Yukon, Alaska Peninsula (near Bristol Bay) and Seward Peninsula which isn't far from copper deposits either. IOTL, both the Tlingit in the Alaska Panhandle and the Athabaskans along the Yukon traded for copper and used it to some degree, so an Alaskan Bronze Age isn't quite as ludicrous as it seems. Some agriculture is possible in Tlingit territory, and this map suggests that Sagittaria cuneata (wapato) grows as far north as the Mackenzie and Yukon Rivers, so potentially could be used for a slightly increased population density in the region (caribou herding and increased horticulturalism for the sake of humans and caribou both is also nice). In addition, trading for food from the south (Tlingit country, PNW, etc.) is always possible for any group involved in this. The poverty of the land for farming and yet its wealth from trade in tin, gold, and silver could lead to a Phoenician-like group forming there who would perhaps end up in Siberia (IIRC there is some tin there, but it might not be easily accessible) and from there, we might get a trade route going which eventually the East Asians would take interest in and hopefully try and take hold of themselves in a less violent manner than Europeans did (or at worst, be like the French, favouring some natives over others causing a lot of conflict, but not a lot of actual settlement).


You raise a fair point. That said, you "cultural" argument seems to be drifting toward "Amerindians did not domesticate animals because they did not have a cultural need to" which is best a deeply unsatisfying answer and basically becomes one of cultural determinism. In other words to the question of why weren't moose domesticated Diamond would say "there is something in their biology that prevents it". You seem to be saying "because Amerindians did not want to". I would find your argument plausible if we were talking about one culture. However, we are talking about numerous cultures over thousands of years. I find it implausible that not one of them thought of trying to get this big beast to drag stuff for them. Therefore, I will still stick with Diamond on this topic, although I agree that at times Diamond can be a bit deterministic.
 
Well, it is. The Roman Empire proved to be quite effective at assimilation, clearly above the pre-modern norm in this regard (though China and the Caliphate are respectable comparanda; and the Inca among others tried their best). As opposed to settler colonies in the Americas, that often did not just assimilate Natives; they destroyed them. Of course, unintentional factors such as plagues were a huge factor in that. Still, a large portion of human genetic and cultural diversity was wiped out in a relatively short span of time over a very large landmass as a consequence of the Columbian Exchange. I recognize that this was not really unique as a phenomenon, but in scale and depth, really major.

I think the Inca would have taken the assimilation crown had they survived longer. They had the geography needed to really isolate and destroy communities that had them getting impressive results in the time they existed. In the context of trying to maximize the assimilation of the conquered, anyways. In any other sense they were just particularly effective warlords, much like the rest of the other candidates.
 
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