Say there's a timeline where, for whatever reason, the Europeans don't colonize the Americas extensively, limiting contact to trade and missionaries. Perhaps the medieval period continues longer and peasants remain tied to the land, or maybe there's more depopulation from the plagues which encourages people to stay on the continent. Maybe there's no Protestant reformation so there aren't as many religious minorities seeking a new home in the west. The point is that there's a few centuries between the discovery of the Americas and European attempts to conquer them. If there's no European large scale colonization and conquest, could the native populations recover and reform into states that could remain independent from later European attempts to conquer them? Would two centuries be enough for the population to rebound? Even if they don't remain independent, could they at least get a fate like the African and Asian colonies where they are eventually returned to native rule?
In a timeline with minimal European intervention in the Americas, what happens to the Natives?
- Thread starter ArchimedesCircle
- Start date
Certainly. The example of Jesuit Paraguay suggests that given conditions conducive to population growth (universal early marriage and high fertility, both of which the Jesuits took care to implement among the natives under their control), it is fully possible for indigenous populations to not just recover, but grow significantly, even with regular epidemics.
It depends entirely on the circumstances, but it's worth noting that the Aztecs and the Incas IOTL already could easily have remained independent from Cortes and Pizarro absent some flukes of bad luck. The Tlaxcala could have decided to kill Cortes and be done with it, for example. Same with the Incas, where Manco Inca's rebellion could have resulted in, at the very least, an independent Andes with the Spaniards controlling the (sparsely populated) coastline.
See above. Jesuit Paraguay's population more than tripled when the Jesuits were there to enforce high fertility (eight children per woman) and protect them from the worst abuses of colonial society. Not to say that the missions were not abusive, but at least they were far better for the Indians than the slavers they would have faced otherwise.
I think we would see a prolonged, about a century, of population decline assuming that the Europeans are still trading with the New World ITTL. This will likely weaken many of the existing native states in Mesoamerica and the Andes with the Aztecs being more vulnerable than the Incas to outright disintegration. However by the 17th century, the worst of the epidemics should have passed and we will see a strong economic/demographic recovery, particularly as the native Americans will presumably integrate European technology and tools including the horse into their overall package. This period will likely see significant state consolidation across the Americas but particularly in areas where existing states were already present. After that, it is difficult to know for sure.
teg
teg
TBH I think a more interesting TL would be super Paraguay, or a theocratic Paraguay ruled by Jesuits.
If European diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis, and measles are introduced, and they will be, you will still see a massive die-off of Native Americans. It may be slower and perhaps not quite as bad as OTL but still will be a huge percentage of the population. Trade routes and movement of more migratory natives were quite extensive, and there is ample evidence that the wave front of European diseases progressed well ahead of any meaningful European presence. First explorers, traders, or trappers would often find evidence of populations reduced or eliminated by disease when they arrived at some new location. The other problem with these massive die-offs was the tremendous disruptions in societies. Cultures, governing systems, and "corporate knowledge" (like how to make a bow) may vanish as the holders of such knowledge die before passing on skills and also the young who survive may starve if they cannot fend for themselves.
Obviously, absent waves of colonists the natives at a distance from enclaves can reorganize, but it will be slow and knows how viable they will be.
Obviously, absent waves of colonists the natives at a distance from enclaves can reorganize, but it will be slow and knows how viable they will be.
That evidence is actually quite lacking, besides the likely (but still uncertain) possibility of the 1520 smallpox epidemic in Mexico reaching the Incas. Disease appears to have been a minor factor in the Mississippian collapse, which was apparently beginning even before European invasion. Indeed, smallpox was largely contained in the American Southeast for most of the seventeenth century due to the presence of sparsely populated hinterlands between chiefdoms. There is a similar ambiguity about whether Pueblo populations decreased or not in the sixteenth century (despite the venerable trade links between there and Mesoamerica), but it is clear from archaeology that the imposition of Spanish taxation caused terrific population collapse. The presence of any major European disease in California prior to Spanish invasion is also unconfirmed.
The Winter Counts of the Sioux from 1683 onward do show that epidemics preceded Europeans for the horse cultures of the Plains, but 1) I think this may have a lot to do with the vastly expanded scale of European involvement in North America by the late seventeenth century and 2) the horse was now a thing.
The advance of smallpox from Mexico in to California shows it preceded mission establishment. In the Northeast/Canada, the extensive movement along river systems and the Great Lakes by Native Americans moved disease from the trading entrepots along the Hudson Valley (such as Albany) well in to the Upper Midwest long before there was any significant European presence. Even limited European settlement or trading entrpots will be foci for disease as fur for blankets/metal goods in Canada and New England areas, even with Europeans restricted to the St Lawrence flowage, Hudson flowage, and the coast will be all that is needed. Scattered missions in Northern Mexico, and California and the American Southwest were perfectly adequate be be starting lines for disease.
Once the disease(s) are introduced their spread is inevitable. Yes, it may be slower ITTL, but once it reaches the "virgin soil" the effect will be the same. The native cultures have zero ability to take measures against these diseases, and many cultural practices are, in fact, counterproductive. Furthermore, to the extent the relative genetic uniformity in Native Americans and inadequate immune response to these pathogens is a factor, delayed interaction is counterproductive as interbreeding with Europeans or their slaves will allow descendants to resist disease better.
Again, while the spread of disease will be slower it will be pretty much as extensive as OTL, and just as devastating to native cultures. Now absent lots of colonists the extra time the Native Americans have to recover and develop some sort of systems to resist the Europeans might make a difference. Doing so with a devastated population and a Europe, that even at medieval technological levels is well ahead of stone age technology will be difficult.
Once the disease(s) are introduced their spread is inevitable. Yes, it may be slower ITTL, but once it reaches the "virgin soil" the effect will be the same. The native cultures have zero ability to take measures against these diseases, and many cultural practices are, in fact, counterproductive. Furthermore, to the extent the relative genetic uniformity in Native Americans and inadequate immune response to these pathogens is a factor, delayed interaction is counterproductive as interbreeding with Europeans or their slaves will allow descendants to resist disease better.
Again, while the spread of disease will be slower it will be pretty much as extensive as OTL, and just as devastating to native cultures. Now absent lots of colonists the extra time the Native Americans have to recover and develop some sort of systems to resist the Europeans might make a difference. Doing so with a devastated population and a Europe, that even at medieval technological levels is well ahead of stone age technology will be difficult.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
In any re-roll of the dice, the more minor form of smallpox may be introduced first which will be a huge strike of good luck! 
As much as I'd like to believe that strong Native American empires would form and be able to fend off future European colonization, we already have a model that suggests this was unlikely, Africa. Centuries of trade contact between the Africans and Europeans (not to mention Arabs) did little to advance the development of African civilizations before the "scramble" began in earnest...and Africa was significantly more advanced than the Americas were at point of initial contact (contrary to "Dark Continent" stereotypes).
actually, a "Scramble for America" concept would be pretty interesting, especially if a similar rule to Africa was employed where Christian nations were omitted from colonization like Ethiopia and Liberia were, particularly if the Jesuit thing is taken into account, too.
There is no uncontested evidence for any sort of European disease in California before the Spanish invasion. The idea of California as an "island" insulated from the colonial disease pool was always the historical consensus, and though William Preston has questioned it, he offers no substantive evidence that Precolonial California suffered from disease, only that it could have.
It is true that disease IOTL spread beyond the European frontier in the seventeenth and (especially) eighteenth centuries. There is no real evidence that they did so in the sixteenth century (even the idea that the Inca died of smallpox is conjecture, since colonial sources only vaguely refer to some sort of "plague" and we know the population centers of the Americas did have some sort of infectious disease before 1492 -- several were circulating in Maya country, for example), before European influence profoundly influenced the entirety of the Americas. By the eighteenth century, most of North America was already profoundly destabilized by the Indian slave trade, the Iroquois wars and the resulting depopulation of the entire Great Lakes region, and the spread of the horse. These were all factors absent in the earliest days of Contact.
Also, despite a major smallpox epidemic in 1837 that killed half the population of the Plains (and various other epidemics documented in the Winter Counts), the Lakota population quintupled between 1804 and 1850, from 3,000 to 14,000, thanks to success in warfare and resulting high nutrition and fertility and low mortality under normal conditions. By contrast, their victims almost disappeared because defeat at the hands of the Sioux made their general living conditions worse and increased the impact of disease. So, just as the case of Jesuit Paraguay shows, terrible epidemics were not a permanent halt to population growth; social conditions needed to back it up.
The "Virgin Soil" hypothesis is no longer consensus; disease killed as many as it did only because indigenous social structures were so profoundly disrupted by invasion and conquest (whether by Europeans or, as in the case of the Lakotas' victims, by indigenous peoples armed with European guns and horses). Look at Livi-Bacci's work on Hispaniola (where the encomienda system made the Taino population demographically unsustainable, with an horrifyingly low fertility, before the first smallpox epidemic) or the recent anthology Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America.
Yes, a factor extremely exaggerated by pop historians like Mann. To quote Jones, Crosby, the original formulator of the Virgin Soil hypothesis, "actually downplayed the 'genetic weakness hypothesis' and instead emphasized the many environmental factors that might have contributed to American Indian susceptibility to Old World diseases, including lack of childhood exposure, malnutrition, and the social chaos generated by European colonization." Research on recently contacted tribes in the Amazon suggest normal immunological responses to most modern pathogens other than tuberculosis (which is likely because of intestinal parasites that plague most indigenous populations in the Amazon, not a genetic failure). Also, new DNA markers suggest Native Americans were rather more genetically diverse than we thought.
Jones is an epidemologist (well, he's a historian of medicine now, but you get the point). Indeed, the supposed mortality rates of 90%-95% would sound insane to an epidemologist more than to any anthropologist. To quote him in Beyond Germs:
When I first encountered the literature on the Columbian Encounter as a medical student, I was startled by the ubiquitous—and impossible—assertions of “no immunity.” Reading more, I found the work by scholars who emphasized contingency, as well as work in medical anthropology about social suffering and embodiment. When I returned to the medical literature on race, genetics, and immunology, I found more reasons to be skeptical of the simplistic claims made by Diamond and so many others.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
The abstract to this medical article is saying one type of smallpox branched off between 1,400 and 6,300 YBP (Years Before Present) and included a minor form called “alastrim.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/40/15787
The idea here is that there's enough trade and missionary activity for the diseases to hit around the same time as OTL, but there isn't an accompanying European resettlement and conquest of the continents.
I think the "Beyond Germs" argument is quite strong: social disruption, forced labour, starvation, stress all exacerbated the virgin soil phenomenon.
IMO the decline of the Indigenous People was so high by diseases otherwise it would make no sense to me by killing them in such a numbers and than import slaves from Africa
There is no doubt that many factors worked synergistically to decimate the Native American populations, and make subsequent penetration by Europeans much easier in all of the new world. Even if the death rates from diseases are ameliorated, there will still be significant disruption of existing native societies. Furthermore those tribes in contact with the fringe settlers will see the impacts of trade, such as the inter-tribal fighting over access to fur animals, cause further disruptions. While the firearms of the early settlement period were not a significant advantage over bows and arrows, this changed rapidly. In order to have a chance at resisting European incursion, which will happen sooner or later, the native societies need to go from stone age to having some industrial capability almost overnight, which is not realistic.
The "Khyber gunsmiths" could come about because they had favorable terrain and were distant from centers of European occupation, and lived in areas not really desirable for exploitation. In Africa, away from the coast and even on the coast, the hostility of the environment worked to limit penetration for centuries. In the Americas, with some exceptions, the natives had few allies in the environment with disease or geography to prevent eventual occupation by Europeans.Where they had those allies, various mountainous regions or Amazonia, Florida swamps, Arctic areas, the conditions for the development of political and technological structures to form centers of resistance weren't there.
Looking at North America as an example, the resources there - fertile land, timber, minerals, etc were simply so attractive that sooner or later they would be irresistible. Native polities politically and militarily strong enough to resist this were ASB IMHO. The only thing that would slow this would be conditions in Europe that would lower the drive to colonize emigrate. Had Europe had a round of an epidemic in the 17th/18th century that depopulated it as badly as the Black Death (perhaps 1/3), this would reduced land hunger and also resources for colonization for some time.
The "Khyber gunsmiths" could come about because they had favorable terrain and were distant from centers of European occupation, and lived in areas not really desirable for exploitation. In Africa, away from the coast and even on the coast, the hostility of the environment worked to limit penetration for centuries. In the Americas, with some exceptions, the natives had few allies in the environment with disease or geography to prevent eventual occupation by Europeans.Where they had those allies, various mountainous regions or Amazonia, Florida swamps, Arctic areas, the conditions for the development of political and technological structures to form centers of resistance weren't there.
Looking at North America as an example, the resources there - fertile land, timber, minerals, etc were simply so attractive that sooner or later they would be irresistible. Native polities politically and militarily strong enough to resist this were ASB IMHO. The only thing that would slow this would be conditions in Europe that would lower the drive to colonize emigrate. Had Europe had a round of an epidemic in the 17th/18th century that depopulated it as badly as the Black Death (perhaps 1/3), this would reduced land hunger and also resources for colonization for some time.