How could the Iroquois survive to become a US state?

[TFSmith121]

When Denendeh becomes a province...

In addition, while they were much politer than the US, the natives got shafted worse in some ways. Look at the size of Canadian Reserves vs US Reservations. There's no way on earth that the Iroquois get all of southern Ontario. No, they might get a couple of chunks of land near Montreal and Brantford. Wait! That's what happened OTL.

Given the policies of (nearly) free emigration to the US and Canada from Europe throughout much of the Nineteenth and well into the Twentieth centuries, at best there's the possibility of "large reservations"...that's about it.

Best,

 

[Sonichu]

I don't say this to justify American betrayal of the Native tribes, but Britain was certainly no more of an angel when it comes to dealing with non-white peoples where they settled than America was.

It was slightly more of an angel. Hard to be as bad as Merka when it comes to these things.

 

[FleetMac]

It was slightly more of an angel. Hard to be as bad as Merka when it comes to these things.

Ah yes, because the US had a policy of tying people to cannons and blowing them up, invented the very idea of concentrations camps, implemented a policy of apartheid that makes Jim Crow seem downright tame by comparison (not to mention being the ones that established US racial hierarchies/slavery in the first place), and ruin several Asian nations (the effects of which we still see today) over Opium. Also, how did the Australian Aborigines do under British Australia's government, again? The US did displace and restrict its Native population, and then there's the aforementioned Jim Crow, and conducted gunboat diplomacy in the Philippines (something the British did so often, it might've well have been the Royal Navy's main pasttime).

Again, the US has had its share of bastardly actions (their treatment of Native Americans being their worst example IMO), and neither country should be held responsible for the actions of past administrations/leaders, but the British Empire is NOT that much better than the US in terms of dealing with colonial subjects or prospective ones, at least not by a significant amount. Dathi Thorfinnsson makes a good point in that the ultimate fate of Canada's First Nations might not have been all that great in the long run, something I'd not paid much attention to. Canada still has a better track record than the US of course, but again we're comparing armed robbery to armed robbery with vehicular manslaughter (to use a crappy metaphor).

 

[TyranicusMaximus]

I'm not going to bother digging through every treaty with every tribe and tribal grouping, but I'm pretty sure there were many instances in which the US wanted to keep their treaties, but felt an obligation to protect their citizens who settled in "Indian" territory. So you could have a US that wants to keep its treaties, but with a settler population that doesn't give a care in the world about following them themselves, any conflict between the two groups is very likely to result in the US reneging on its deals.

The only way to have an Iroquois US State is for them to hold out against American immigration long enough to be recognized as independent nations in their own right, with the ability to defend their own borders and keep out white settlers, and then have them want to join the union.

This then creates the problem that now that the area is a seperate State in the union it's now open to both white settlement and emigration by native persons to more productive areas (which might be lessened if they aren't citizens, but a US that accepts a Native American nation joining as a state probably is much more liberal in this area.).

 

[Lord Grattan]

It was slightly more of an angel. Hard to be as bad as Merka when it comes to these things.

How is that possible, given that the early Americans, I mean British colonists in North America, learned how to interact with the natives from, well, the British?

 

[othyrsyde]

You also have to consider the Haudenosaunee weren't united during the war, we had our own little civil war and this didn't just come out of no where. The League was not a healthy thing when the ARW rolled around. There was social decay over religion and lost economic interests out west, rampant alcohol abuse, and divided loyalties to colonial figures. Now when the ARW started the Haudenosaunee officially remained neutral, and it was only small factions that actually aided one side or the other, but their infighting spread. The fact the factions leaders even had this much influence to begin with was also a telltale sign of the social decay, for example Joseph Brant was never a 'chief'.

So again you need a POD that keeps the Haudenosaunee united from probably at least around the time of the French and Indian War.