Challenge: Last Possible Date Indians Could Wipe Out an English Colony

Title pretty much says it all. What is the latest date Indians could plausibly wipe out one of the original thirteen colonies?

By wiped out, I mean everyone either killed, captured, or forced flee the bounds of the colony. No time-travelers or space lizards, of course, (since this isn't in the ASB section) just Indians and possibly plausibly available Europeans, with the heavy lifting being done by Indians.

The wipe-out doesn't have to be permanent. If the territory involved gets reoccupied in twenty years it still counts. Reoccupation in ten years should probably be the minimum though.
 
I don't know, maybe an AH where Britain focusses on the 'First Empire' in America, but at the expense of the East India Company, leaving the Mughal Empire to somehow beat off the French, become a massive superpower, conquer the subcontinent, and eventually build up a massive naval strike force to crush perfidious Albion by removing its American colonies once and for all!
 
The First Anglo-Mysore War, possibly the Second...

If you're going to be snarky, you should really explain how Mysore would destroy one of the 13 colonies, as said in the OP.

As a general rule, very early. North of the Carolina's the ship had long sailed by 1700. Now in places like South Carolina and Georgia, where you had a tiny white population and large enslaved minorities to coopt, the potential lasted a little longer. IIRC, black and white combined the original Deep South had fewer than 5% of the American population come the Revolution. Plus the southern tribes tended to be a bit more populous. Even then though, you'd need to throw together a very substantial alliance of tribes to get very far. The OTL Cherokee wars didn't achieve much more than forcing themselves back across the Appalachians.
 
I think it could happen during King Philip's War. After all, most of the towns in New England were attacked, and I think half burned down. It was one of the most devastating wars in America.

Nah, we had a thread about it a while ago, and the general consensus determined that King Philip was about a generation too late, the Indians were too few at that point to stand up to any push on the part of the colonists. I'd say 1640s would be the latest for New England.
 
Is the event the POD, or would you accept some earlier change to Native American history? maybe a stronger post-Cahokia state, having taken on some Spanish technology, puts some resources into helping their Eastern allies push the English out of, say, Georgia or S. Carolina. Assuming there is a Georgia or SC.
 
Nah, we had a thread about it a while ago, and the general consensus determined that King Philip was about a generation too late, the Indians were too few at that point to stand up to any push on the part of the colonists. I'd say 1640s would be the latest for New England.

Well, that might be the way then, eh? Shift things so that we can get the stimulus for an equivalent war a generation early. It's not a simple progression issue - a different set of colonial governors could set the Indians on the back foot much earlier, if they only had the right (wrong) policies.
 
Pequot War isn't a bad possibility for New England. Too bad the Pequots had made themselves so hated.
 
Title pretty much says it all. What is the latest date Indians could plausibly wipe out one of the original thirteen colonies?

By wiped out, I mean everyone either killed, captured, or forced flee the bounds of the colony. No time-travelers or space lizards, of course, (since this isn't in the ASB section) just Indians and possibly plausibly available Europeans, with the heavy lifting being done by Indians.

The wipe-out doesn't have to be permanent. If the territory involved gets reoccupied in twenty years it still counts. Reoccupation in ten years should probably be the minimum though.

South Carolina could have been destroyed possibly as late as 1715. The Yamassee War of 1715 came close to achieving that goal. If the British governor had not been able to get the Cherokee involved on their side, the Yamassee and their allies might very well have been successful.

In addition, right around that same time, the Tuscarora War in North Carolina ended, which meant North Carolina could send help to South Carolina.

So how about this scenario. The Tuscarora War begins in 1711 per OTL. The Yamassees and allied Creek tribes begin their war two years earlier, in 1713. Lets assume a Tecumseh-like figure among the Creeks arises who is able to persuade the Cherokee to come in on their side, and also forges an alliance with the Tuscarora. Just to sweeten the deal, the Spanish, who are currently fighting the English in the War of the Spanish Succession, ally with the Yamassee.

Now South Carolina is pressed on three sides. There's no Cherokee help coming, there is no North Carolina help coming. The Indians take Charlestown and massacre the inhabitants in 1714. The only survivors are those who can make it out to a ship in the harbor and get away. Spain sends in some troops to help the Indians keep the English away. In the peace treaty, England agrees to abandon South Carolina and Spain formally sets her northern limit at the line of the Black and Saluda Rivers. The territory between that and North Carolina is to be a buffer zone, controlled by the Indians.

The Spanish govern the new territory much as they do Florida...in other words, not very much. They build a few forts to maintain the border against the English, and a few missions to work to save the souls of the Indians, but not much else. As a result the Yamassee are okay with the arrangement...they have Spanish protection to back them up against the English, with not too much interference in their local affairs. The arrangement lasts until the War of Jenkins' Ear breaks out in 1739, when an expedition led by General James Oglethorpe is sent to reconquer South Carolina for England.

EDIT...upon checking, South Carolina didn't separate from North Carolina until 1729. However, the scenario could be expanded to include the entire Carolina colony. Have the Tecumseh-analog persuade the Northern Tuscarora not to turn on the Southern Tuscarora and defect to the English side...perhaps Chief Blunt, the pro-British chief of the Northern Tuscarora, has a falling out with the Blount Family, his British friends, just before the arrival of the Creek emissary. This, plus Spanish and Yamassee support once Charlestown is taken and destroyed, tips the scales in North Carolina as well. The final peace treaty stipulates that the territory between the Black/Saluda line and Virginia becomes the buffer zone.
 
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One thing I've noticed, is that in most of the Colonies the earliest settlements hugged the coast. But Pennsylvania seemed quite inland, wouldn't it be rather vulnerable?

Another idea that's equally as interesting is the Amerindians destroying Louisiana instead of an English colony.
 
Metacom's Revolt. If one of the tribes that IOTL didn't join him did join him, he'dve been able to completely destroy New England, and as it was the colonies there suffered an equivalent death toll in proportion to what the USSR did in their war against Hitler. The consequences of such destruction at that time for the history of British North America would have been rather profound though it would have been a Pyrrhic victory for the Indigenous alliance.
 
Metacom's Revolt. If one of the tribes that IOTL didn't join him did join him, he'dve been able to completely destroy New England, and as it was the colonies there suffered an equivalent death toll in proportion to what the USSR did in their war against Hitler. The consequences of such destruction at that time for the history of British North America would have been rather profound though it would have been a Pyrrhic victory for the Indigenous alliance.

I suspect that it would taken more than one tribe flipping sides to let Metacom/King Phillip win his war. I've studied and gamed the war in quite a bit of detail, and it looks to me as though if the Mohegans and the remnants of the Pequots flipped sides (from friendly to hostile from a British POV) the Indians would have probably been able to achieve a stalemate, with the war petering out in late 1676 or early 1677 as the Indians ran low on gunpowder and the colonists ran out of money to prosecute the war.

The stalemate would be because it was very difficult for the Indians to take well fortified towns and without friendly Mohegans and Pequots to shield their towns from attack, Connecticut wouldn't be able to field the colonial/Indian forces that historically did much of the damage to the Indians.

Another way to get stalemate would be to have the Mohawks stay out of the war. They used it to settle some old tribal scores and in the process interdicted Indian efforts to get gunpowder from New York (where Dutch traders were willing to sell under the table in spite of the British government there) and New France.

Getting to the British colony is destroyed would be tough. We're talking at least 40,000 colonists versus around one-fourth that many hostile Indians, even with the Pequot remnants and Mohegans in the hostile column. The Indians could rarely totally destroy even a small colonial town, much less the likes of Boston.

One possibility: If the Indians of southern New England were still powerful and independent by the time France and Britain resumed their normal hostile stance, you might see a much more threatening set of French and Indian wars. I don't know if a French/Indian alliance could take out one or more of the New England colonies, but that would be more feasible with the southern New England tribes than without them.
 
One thing I've noticed, is that in most of the Colonies the earliest settlements hugged the coast. But Pennsylvania seemed quite inland, wouldn't it be rather vulnerable?

Well, keep in mind that Pennsylvania was founded in 1689 (IIRC), when a fairly firm and well-populated band of settlement stretched from North Carolina to New Hampshire. Barring the whole native population east of the Mississippi ganging up, there wasn't as much threat.

More to the point, largely because of the Quaker faith of the original colonists, there was much less hostility between the early settlers and the natives. They were treating the Native Americans much like the rest of America would about 200 years later: Rather than devil-worshipping horrid pagan enemies, they were merely subject to cultural condescension - charitable gifts and promoted efforts to civilize them. Compared with the rest of the colonies, this was viewed very favorably by the Indians. The rest of the colonies viewed the practice as contemptible "paying tribute" to "savages," then couldn't understand why the Indians would occasionally outright ignore Pennsylvania in wartime. I recall one case where a war party marched through Pennsylvania, checked they'd crossed the border to another colony, and then began raiding.

It was later, as the Scotch-Irish began the massacres and Penn's descendants began cheating the Indians out of land, that the first real hostility. So, while 1688 is probably too late because of the strength of the colonies overall, Pennsylvania is a promising site. If you can get the founder to be a hard-line Calvinist rather than a Quaker, and to establish the colony a half-century earlier, you are really talking.
 
A couple of little-known possibilities: (1) The Susquehanna (an Iroquois-speaking tribe but not one of the five nations) really kicked butt on an expedition from Maryland in the late 1630s or early 1640s (can't remember the exact date). The colonists fled the field leaving behind some small cannon. The Susquehanna didn't follow up on the victory and eventually became military allies of the colonists until they got caught up in Bacon's Rebellion and forced to flee to live with their old Five Nations Iroquois enemies.

(2) In the 1650s a group of well-armed Indians from somewhere outside the area appeared at the fall-line of Virginia. Virginia sent an expedition to expel them and got their butts kicked. Though they apparently won decisively, the Indians moved on without further ado, and the tribal name never showed up again in history. On very flimsy grounds, some historians have suggested that they were Erie Indians, ousted from their Ohio homes by the Five Nations Iroquois and on their way to South Carolina, where they showed up under the name Westos and became major slave raiders for South Carolina until they got too powerful for the South Carolina colonists tastes and the colonists armed a group of Shawnees and set them up to attack and destroy the Westos.
 
Well, keep in mind that Pennsylvania was founded in 1689 (IIRC), when a fairly firm and well-populated band of settlement stretched from North Carolina to New Hampshire. Barring the whole native population east of the Mississippi ganging up, there wasn't as much threat.

More to the point, largely because of the Quaker faith of the original colonists, there was much less hostility between the early settlers and the natives. They were treating the Native Americans much like the rest of America would about 200 years later: Rather than devil-worshipping horrid pagan enemies, they were merely subject to cultural condescension - charitable gifts and promoted efforts to civilize them. Compared with the rest of the colonies, this was viewed very favorably by the Indians. The rest of the colonies viewed the practice as contemptible "paying tribute" to "savages," then couldn't understand why the Indians would occasionally outright ignore Pennsylvania in wartime. I recall one case where a war party marched through Pennsylvania, checked they'd crossed the border to another colony, and then began raiding.

It was later, as the Scotch-Irish began the massacres and Penn's descendants began cheating the Indians out of land, that the first real hostility. So, while 1688 is probably too late because of the strength of the colonies overall, Pennsylvania is a promising site. If you can get the founder to be a hard-line Calvinist rather than a Quaker, and to establish the colony a half-century earlier, you are really talking.

In addition, there was a contingent of Quakers in tidewater North Carolina. My ancestors survived the Tuscarora War maybe by the same attitude held in Pennsylvania.
I wouldn't count on North Carolina volunteers going to South Carolina,
there were a few problems when South Carolina militia helped out in the Tuscarora War.
 
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