Fruit of the Thorns: The Domestication of Mesquite

-Chumash-

As a matter of fact, labeling that area Chumash was a mistake on my part :eek:, it should be Tongva (or some other group derived from the Takic tribes). The Chumash may colonize up the coast, though. This map is a rough draft, it will be refined whenever I get around to writing posts covering the regions in question. If you like, consider the "Chumash" area a placeholder for a set of Californian agriculture packages. I think mesquite will take off in the southern half of the Central Valley in a big way, though, and maize should be farmable in many regions, which will cause the Takic tribes pushed into the Valley by Ozami migrants to dominate the area with their acquired techniques. OTL, I think there just wasn't enough contact between California and the agricultural parts of the Americas to transmit agriculture effectively; the lower Colorado was not farmed extensively OTL so there was a big buffer of desert, mountains, and hunter-gatherers in the way; meanwhile in the Eastern US, you had a mostly continuous stretch of semi- or full agriculturalists stretching from MesoAmerica, which helped transmit better varieties of maize when they were developed. California had relatively few high-value products worth trading for, too, while Aridoamerica had turquoise and metals, and the Eastern peoples had copper and furs, which further impaired connections with agricultural peoples. California, has, for example, a vast wealth of native flora and fauna, but the furs aren't anything special compared to those from more northerly climes and many of the unique flora (its huge diversity of berries, for instance) aren't very transportable.

Are you going to be starting a new thread or relying on this one still?

I'll be starting a new thread, a lot of things are going to be thrown out like the USA-analogue and I may need a new framing device in general; since the effects are going to be a lot more far-reaching than I thought I'm probably not going to be able to say much of anything about the colonial era, let alone the modern, until I actually hammer out what the pre-colonial looks like.
 
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I'll be starting a new thread, a lot of things are going to be thrown out like the USA-analogue and I may need a new framing device in general; since the effects are going to be a lot more far-reaching than I thought I'm probably not going to be able to say much of anything about the colonial era, let alone the modern, until I actually hammer out what the pre-colonial looks like.

I must say that overall this sounds really exciting.

Keep up the work and give this thread a bump when you start the new one. I don't want to miss this!

fasquardon
 
Don't you worry, I'll post a link whenever I start the thread. :)

Anyone who can recommend a good book or two on N. American Plains tribes and the Mississippian cultures would have me in their debt. The focus of the TL won't go there for a while, but the butterflies will be extensive eventually.
 
Don't you worry, I'll post a link whenever I start the thread. :)

Anyone who can recommend a good book or two on N. American Plains tribes and the Mississippian cultures would have me in their debt. The focus of the TL won't go there for a while, but the butterflies will be extensive eventually.

I don't have any good books atm, but don't fall into the trap of thinking that modern distributions of peoples are valid historically. The Sioux nations (D/L/Nakota), Cree and Saulteaux nations were all woodlands nation until the advent of the horse, and especially the gun. I know almost nothing about the more southerly nations.
 
Anyone who can recommend a good book or two on N. American Plains tribes and the Mississippian cultures would have me in their debt. The focus of the TL won't go there for a while, but the butterflies will be extensive eventually.

From what I have read (asides in articles on pre-columbian Amerind culture) the plains were probably so radically different in nature that the cultures that Europeans met in the region wouldn't have existed.

I've also read that the peoples who did live on the plains were big game hunters and the plains went much further East than post-columbus, since the big game hunters were cutting down or burning trees to encourage favored game.

fasquardon
 
I don't have any good books atm, but don't fall into the trap of thinking that modern distributions of peoples are valid historically. The Sioux nations (D/L/Nakota), Cree and Saulteaux nations were all woodlands nation until the advent of the horse, and especially the gun. I know almost nothing about the more southerly nations.

Yeah, and the nations moved around a lot. The Ondega on the map are the TTL Kiowa... OTL they split from Tanoan peoples of the Southwest and migrated to the northern Plains, then South again. TTL they will be a lot more important when elk domestication takes off...
 
No new thread yet. But, another taste of what I've been working on. North America is going to look pretty different once I'm done with it. Got rid of the placeholders in California and the Eastern US and put the actual tribes there. The northern Hopewell still have placeholder names from the archaeological cultures, but I'm positive most of them are Siouan, I just need to dig into tribal histories so I can assign names. The only one I'm iffy on is the Laurel Complex, AKA the famous copper miners of the Great Lakes. I'm not really convinced they were Siouan but if they weren't, IDK what they were. Preliterate peoples don't leave language records, alas, and if they ever moved elsewhere they appear to have been obliterated by Souians or Algonquians sometime before Europeans showed up.

The butterflies are extensive. The Muskogean tribes report that their origins lie in the far west, near "great mountains". Source differ on when they arrived, even between legends; some (almost certainly false) even claim they fled from Montezuma before the Spaniards came. There are a few web sites out there that try to argue they came all the way from the Maya lands or Nayarit, but they have a distinct crackpot tinge about them that makes me loathe to take them as gospel. OTOH, the Muskogeans are attested to have had chihuahuas, there are a few cultural motifs that they have in common with ancient MesoAmerica, and some modern Muskogee have tested for Mesoamerican DNA, so IMO, they started out somewhere in the Chichimeca lands north of MesoAmerica, where they picked up some cultural traits before moving on. IMO, they probably started showing up in Lousiana around 700-600 BC, around the time Poverty Point culture was replaced with a new, pottery-using culture. OTL, they only seem to have brought pottery... but TTL, the Muskogean groups bringing up the rear of the migration will be in just the right place to pick up maize and beans agriculture from the new Southwestern civilizations that will be getting around a 1000-year head start thanks to mesquite. Net effect? Maize agriculture is introduced to the Eastern US about 700 years early. The map below, in 400 AD, shows the extent of the first maize-based chieftainships. The Muskogeans dawdle in Texas a bit longer than OTL and some end up staying there, so they don't make it as far east, preserving groups like the Timucua. Add in a couple more domestications I have planned (elk, Yaupon Holly Tea) and things should look very, very interesting by the time the Euros show up...

I went in and refined California as well. I'm not 100% happy with it, because there are approximately a zillion native tribes in California, they all moved around extensively, and they were so inconsiderate as to not write anything down. But it should do, especially considering butterflies. The Ozami (TTL O'otham) are given an expansionist boost by their innovation of the canal-maize-mesquite complex and end up taking over the Lower Colorado, instead of the Yuman tribes, who migrate to SoCal instead. When the Salton Basin flood cycle fills the lake, they settle on the new lake shores as well; but when it eventually starts to dry in a few centuries, there is something of a panicked Ozami diaspora into SoCal. This shoves all the native tribes north a bit, and also introduces them to agriculture from the influence of Ozami refugees. I suspect what they get will be a bit spotty, but they will definitely get a strain of maize, mesquite, and maybe beans. The Ozami agriculture package will only really work in the south Central Valley without modifications. Mesquite pods out less frequently in cooler weather, like on California's mountain slopes. So some kind of terrace maize agriculture will likely be adopted. They'll supplement maize with native plants - I have a few candidates.

My candidate process for elk domestication is that with the migration of the mesquite complex Jopi onto the Colorado Plateau, the native tribes like the Yumans, Tanoans, and Zuni are all shoved out of the way a bit. Eventually, they pick up agriculture from the invaders and start building sedentary settlements. OTL, there was a lot of movement following the changing rains, but TTL drought-tolerant mesquite will mitigate that somewhat. With the rise of more permanent areas of occupation, plus a rising population, with a dose of intertribal enmity due to all the migratory shoving about going on, there will be conflicts over who gets to hunt the migrating elk herds, which can range up to a hundred miles between summer and winter territories. Eventually, one tribe gets the bright idea of trying to fence in their own private elk herd, and the rest is (alternate) history... This domestication will takes place in New Mexico around 400 AD, the time of the maps below. Texas is going to be a very interesting place TTL... the crossroads of a continent.

Here are links to the maps, since the images are huge:

Major tribes engaged in extensive agriculture or trade with agricultural peoples
Language groups (text is a bit borked since I don't have the time to reapply all the labels after coloring, but should be legible.)
 
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Have you tried researching toponyms to find out what might have been the linguistic group fro the Laurel Complex?
 
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