That's a rather melancholic set of verses, and I think the people of the Yucatan will view Ah Eh Lamba's empire that way once the Spanish arrive: a king who conquered the world and revived the Maya heartland, at the cost of oceans of blood and forsaking old traditions.
Land of Sweetness: A Pre-Columbian Timeline
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That's a rather melancholic set of verses, and I think the people of the Yucatan will view Ah Eh Lamba's empire that way once the Spanish arrive: a king who conquered the world and revived the Maya heartland, at the cost of oceans of blood and forsaking old traditions.
And it seems I have commented too early. The sheer amount of raw resources on the highlands does make me wonder if there have been campaigns by the Mixtecs or Tarascans to control the sources of elite wealth. Then again, the huge labor and men required might've made that a tall order.
Hi every grass in Java! Loving the updates! One question the use of lamas in transportation how far has it spread northwards (the last update mentioning them that I recall would put them in otl Panama, I can’t recall when that was.) If they had spread north by the time of the Centrals America answer to gengis Khan I could see them spreading rapidly?
The mercenaries are clearly the New Worlds version of the Knights Hospitallar, right down to the part where there a pain in the ass for both local and foreign powers. I can see several small islands being conquered or granted to mercenary companies to own.
I can see small islands off of the coast of Central and South America, such Trinidad and Tobago being the New World version of Malta once the Spaniards arrive.
I can see small islands off of the coast of Central and South America, such Trinidad and Tobago being the New World version of Malta once the Spaniards arrive.
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With the Yucayans focused on the Greater Antilles, maybe the Lesser Antilles can become places for mercenaries fleeing Cuba and Mesoamerica to go?
Not really adding anything to the thread, but I was reminded of a sweet picture from the fantasy art thread showing the Maya Hero Twins playing ball with these guys:
The Mixtecs are much too far away. The Tarascans are closer and did impinge on the Tequila Valley even OTL... But more on them later.
That would have been Entry 15 (that was almost four months ago, wow) where the narrator meets llamas owned by Siki merchants. Even so, the llamas of Ācuappāntōnco are exotic animals owned by exotic people, not something normal people use. And Entry 15 is actually a very late entry, set after Ah Ek Lemba's death and just two generations before the arrival of Columbus. So it's not very likely that this TL's equivalent of the Aztecs are going to have llama caravans, though they'll probably be aware of their existence, just like medieval Europeans knew elephants and giraffes were a thing.
Remember than in OTL, there weren't very many llamas in highland Ecuador prior to the Incas, and even fewer in lowland Ecuador. TTL's event that introduces llamas to the lowland is pro-camelid policies by Lakekala Siki in the 1390s (discussed in Entry 14-2), so there's really only a hundred years for giraffe sheep to spread further than OTL before the Spaniards begin interfering.
(And just as a final note, humans are way too fat to ride on llamas, so there won't be prarie nomads until the Spaniards bring horses. Even a tween will badly hurt the sturdiest llama. Don't hurt llamas, be nice to them
)
I imagine there are already some Aztatecs living there by 1400, mostly fishermen and the odd tax evader. Maybe some important people will end up there eventually. Who knows...
You guys are giving me lots of new ideas to play with, thanks! I might have to revise my plans for the Lesser Antilles a bit...
The fact that people still play the Mesoamerican ball game (and the Mesoamerican board game) is one of the few things that make me irrationally happy.
Chariots are clearly the answer. That's how horses were used before they were bred big enough to ride. (Yes, yes, there's not nearly enough time to develop that).
If you aren't nice, they'll spit at you. Of course, they do that even if you ARE nice.
I can imagine Llamas stationed at mountain passes being ordered to spit at invaders while they're crossing the treacherous mountain passages. Also for your ideas considering the Lesser Antilles, the Caniba coastline of OTL Venezuela, and the Surinames would be the perfect coastline to set up mercenary outpost. It could be like the Greek mercanaries and their colonies in the Black Sea.
I think there have been allusions to Mesoamericans setting up a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi
Yah and from there they can keep going up the misssipi and set up new outpost and have the mouth be the main base
Judging from the developments in this timeline I am beyond curious what will happen once European contact is established.
If there are zero butterflies in Europe, then Columbus is due to land in the Bahamas amist a lot more natives who are unfriendly to outsiders. Does that mean he doesn’t make it back?
If there are zero butterflies in Europe, then Columbus is due to land in the Bahamas amist a lot more natives who are unfriendly to outsiders. Does that mean he doesn’t make it back?
I think it's probably too late in the game for them to have any real impact on the upper Mississippi by the time the virgin field epidemics roll through
We haven't had a mercany update or a update really on the Mississippi yet soooo
Entry 39-1: Oasisamerica in the fourteenth century, Part 1
OCC: It was extremely annoying to have to discuss the Pueblos without ever using the (Spanish-derived) word “Pueblo.”
From A Short History of America:
Oasisamerica, the arid country of cacti and adobe houses far to the north of the Nahuas and Tarascans, has always challenged those historians who love classifications. Are the peoples of Oasisamerica Mesoamericans? Some would point to its egalitarian social structures, its lack of urban society, and its isolation from the political events of the Mesoamerican core and say that Oasisamerica was Mesoamericanate like the Taiguano state – deeply impacted by Mesoamerica – without being Mesoamerican. Others, historians of religion especially, say yes without hesitation. It is difficult to discuss late Mesoamerican religion while ignoring Oasisamerica.
Into the fourteenth century, Oasisamerica was approachable only by barren mountain roads and enjoyed a splendid isolation from the great commercial metropolises of the south. Its peoples included the Opata, the Hopi, the Zuni, and the Tano; its largest settlements included the Opata-dominated town of Paquimé, the Tewa town of Sapawe, the Keres town of Yaatze, the Tano town of Kayepu, the Tiwa town of Kuaua, the Tempiro town of Tenabo, the Hopi town of Homol’ovi, and the Zuni town of Heshotauthla (see map). Yet even the greatest of these, Paquimé, had no more than 3,500 rooms, including ceremonial precincts, and (though its population varied according to the seasons) housed no more than 7,000 people at any given time.
It is then difficult to deny that the Opata and the Hopi inhabited a rather materially simpler world than their southern neighbors. As we shall see, this material simplicity had no bearing on the complexities of the Oasisamerican spiritual world. Nor did this mean that the north was stagnant and lacking in historical dynamism.
As Mesoamericans and Yucayans experimented with sailboats in the thirteenth century, Oasisamerica was undergoing its own age of turbulence. A catastrophic drought from 1276 to 1299 and the civil conflicts that resulted forever shifted the center of Oasisamerica. The great adobe towns of the twelfth century had been on the Colorado Plateau. By 1300, the region was depeopled. (It would remain empty until the arrival of the Apaches generations later.) Thousands had abandoned their homelands on the Plateau and sought refuge in the Rio Grande Valley, the mountains of the Mogollon Rim, and terraces of Chihuahua.
The expulsion of Oasisamerican civilization from the Colorado Plateau created new communities where peoples of diverse ethnic groups mingled. New ways to organize society and explain the world around them became necessary in this brave new world, and the entire fourteenth-century Oasisamerican world was, in a way, in the midst of soul-searching.
It was in this context that the Aztatec merchants, pushed outward by their own economic prosperity and by the greater commerce with distant regions that the sail facilitated, began to reach Oasisamerica in force. They brought ideas along with trade goods with them, and these Mesoamerican ideas joined Oasisamerican ones as building blocks of a new kind of society.
Fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century Oasisamerica was a fragmented world. Countless settlements were scattered across the mesas and valleys, some with thousands of rooms and inhabitants, others with mere dozens of both. Warfare and raiding were constant threats, and much of an Oasisamerican's life was dedicated to the fight. In many places, boys had their skin torn with eagle claws so they would endure battlefield injuries better, and warriors stirred their wine with the amputated hands of their enemies.
There was no capital of Oasisamerica, and each village was its own polity. The smaller villages were egalitarian, if only for the fact that there were too few people to support any kind of elite. The larger adobe towns were theocracies. Among the Zuni, each larger village was ruled by a four-to-eight-member Council of Head Priests led by the Sun Priest, whose will was enforced by the Bow Priests, a subsection of the priesthood who had permission to kill suspected witches. (The members of the Council were obliged to remove themselves from violence to retain their state of purity.) The consensus of Hopi villages was shaped by their kikmongwi, a priest-chief who headed the annual ceremonies. Paquimé was dominated by two complementary priesthoods, each focusing on ancestor worship and a fertility cult. As we shall discuss below, this importance placed on religion reflects the desire of Oasisamericans, fleeing what must have seemed like divine punishment, to find a new way to order the world.
Paquimé and the larger towns had hereditary occupational guilds of artisans and merchants, including tool makers, woodworkers, weavers, alcohol brewers, shell workers, turquoise workers, metalsmiths, architects, macaw tenders, bison hunters, and bookmakers. There was great demand for Oasisamerican turquoise and bison products in Mesoamerica, just as there was great demand for Mesoamerican ritual goods in Oasisamerica, and the fourteenth century was the height of both economic production and long-distance trade in the area.
Irrigated agriculture was still the bedrock of Oasisamerican society, and there is evidence for rising populations in the Rio Grande Valley and the Mogollon Ridge throughout the fourteenth century. While historical demographics are infamously difficult to gauge, it is clear that there were several hundred thousands of people in 1400 Oasisamerica, scattered in thousands of little white adobe towns.
From A Short History of America:
Oasisamerica, the arid country of cacti and adobe houses far to the north of the Nahuas and Tarascans, has always challenged those historians who love classifications. Are the peoples of Oasisamerica Mesoamericans? Some would point to its egalitarian social structures, its lack of urban society, and its isolation from the political events of the Mesoamerican core and say that Oasisamerica was Mesoamericanate like the Taiguano state – deeply impacted by Mesoamerica – without being Mesoamerican. Others, historians of religion especially, say yes without hesitation. It is difficult to discuss late Mesoamerican religion while ignoring Oasisamerica.
Into the fourteenth century, Oasisamerica was approachable only by barren mountain roads and enjoyed a splendid isolation from the great commercial metropolises of the south. Its peoples included the Opata, the Hopi, the Zuni, and the Tano; its largest settlements included the Opata-dominated town of Paquimé, the Tewa town of Sapawe, the Keres town of Yaatze, the Tano town of Kayepu, the Tiwa town of Kuaua, the Tempiro town of Tenabo, the Hopi town of Homol’ovi, and the Zuni town of Heshotauthla (see map). Yet even the greatest of these, Paquimé, had no more than 3,500 rooms, including ceremonial precincts, and (though its population varied according to the seasons) housed no more than 7,000 people at any given time.
It is then difficult to deny that the Opata and the Hopi inhabited a rather materially simpler world than their southern neighbors. As we shall see, this material simplicity had no bearing on the complexities of the Oasisamerican spiritual world. Nor did this mean that the north was stagnant and lacking in historical dynamism.
As Mesoamericans and Yucayans experimented with sailboats in the thirteenth century, Oasisamerica was undergoing its own age of turbulence. A catastrophic drought from 1276 to 1299 and the civil conflicts that resulted forever shifted the center of Oasisamerica. The great adobe towns of the twelfth century had been on the Colorado Plateau. By 1300, the region was depeopled. (It would remain empty until the arrival of the Apaches generations later.) Thousands had abandoned their homelands on the Plateau and sought refuge in the Rio Grande Valley, the mountains of the Mogollon Rim, and terraces of Chihuahua.
The expulsion of Oasisamerican civilization from the Colorado Plateau created new communities where peoples of diverse ethnic groups mingled. New ways to organize society and explain the world around them became necessary in this brave new world, and the entire fourteenth-century Oasisamerican world was, in a way, in the midst of soul-searching.
It was in this context that the Aztatec merchants, pushed outward by their own economic prosperity and by the greater commerce with distant regions that the sail facilitated, began to reach Oasisamerica in force. They brought ideas along with trade goods with them, and these Mesoamerican ideas joined Oasisamerican ones as building blocks of a new kind of society.
Life in the adobe towns
Fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century Oasisamerica was a fragmented world. Countless settlements were scattered across the mesas and valleys, some with thousands of rooms and inhabitants, others with mere dozens of both. Warfare and raiding were constant threats, and much of an Oasisamerican's life was dedicated to the fight. In many places, boys had their skin torn with eagle claws so they would endure battlefield injuries better, and warriors stirred their wine with the amputated hands of their enemies.
There was no capital of Oasisamerica, and each village was its own polity. The smaller villages were egalitarian, if only for the fact that there were too few people to support any kind of elite. The larger adobe towns were theocracies. Among the Zuni, each larger village was ruled by a four-to-eight-member Council of Head Priests led by the Sun Priest, whose will was enforced by the Bow Priests, a subsection of the priesthood who had permission to kill suspected witches. (The members of the Council were obliged to remove themselves from violence to retain their state of purity.) The consensus of Hopi villages was shaped by their kikmongwi, a priest-chief who headed the annual ceremonies. Paquimé was dominated by two complementary priesthoods, each focusing on ancestor worship and a fertility cult. As we shall discuss below, this importance placed on religion reflects the desire of Oasisamericans, fleeing what must have seemed like divine punishment, to find a new way to order the world.
Paquimé and the larger towns had hereditary occupational guilds of artisans and merchants, including tool makers, woodworkers, weavers, alcohol brewers, shell workers, turquoise workers, metalsmiths, architects, macaw tenders, bison hunters, and bookmakers. There was great demand for Oasisamerican turquoise and bison products in Mesoamerica, just as there was great demand for Mesoamerican ritual goods in Oasisamerica, and the fourteenth century was the height of both economic production and long-distance trade in the area.
Irrigated agriculture was still the bedrock of Oasisamerican society, and there is evidence for rising populations in the Rio Grande Valley and the Mogollon Ridge throughout the fourteenth century. While historical demographics are infamously difficult to gauge, it is clear that there were several hundred thousands of people in 1400 Oasisamerica, scattered in thousands of little white adobe towns.
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Entry 39-2: Oasisamerica in the fourteenth century, Part 2
The katsinas
Katsina dolls for children
It is impossible to understand the history of Oasisamerica without mentioning the rise of the katsina cult.
As important as it has become to the history of the Americas, the origins of the katsina cult are shrouded in mystery. In modern Oasisamerica, the katsinas are the spirits of nature and the ancestors who mediate between the creator and humanity. The katsina societies, whose ceremonies lie at the center of the community’s religious life, connect the people to the katsinas: the men through dances where they wear masks and impersonate the katsinas, the women through dolls.
All members of the community are initiated into a katsina society at around the age of ten, in a traumatizing ceremony whose impression on the child will last until their death. For ten years, every child in the village has seen and heard the ancestor spirits descend to dance and bring rain. They are as real as friends, parents, uncles, neighbors, anyone else that he or she has ever seen. Their older brothers and sisters, their parents, the elders and priests have all told the children that the katsina dancers are the spirits in flesh and blood. Then comes the day of the initiation. The children are brought into the underground kiva (room for religious rituals) to watch the katsinas. The drummers beat their drums, excitement mounts, the children are bubbly with anticipation at seeing their guardian spirits again—
Three Hopi elders recall what came next:
When the katsinas entered the kiva without masks, I had a great surprise. They were not spirits, but human beings. I recognized nearly every one of them and felt very unhappy, because I had been told all my life that the katsinas were gods. I was especially shocked and angry when I saw all my uncles and brothers dancing as katsinas. I felt even worse when I saw my own father—and whenever he glanced at me I turned my face away…
My… uncles showed me ancestral masks and explained that long ago the katsinas had come regularly to Oraibi [the Hopi village] and danced in the plaza. They explained that since the people had become so wicked… the katsinas had stopped coming and sent their spirits to enter the masks on dance days…
I cried and cried into my sheepskin that night, feeling I had been made a fool of. How could I ever watch the katsinas dance again? I hated my parents and thought I could never believe the old folks again, wondering if gods had ever danced for the Hopi as they now said and if people really lived after death. I hated to see the other children fooled and felt mad when they said I was a big girl now and should act like one. But I was afraid to tell the others the truth… I know now it was best and the only way to teach the children, but it took me a long time to know that.
My… uncles showed me ancestral masks and explained that long ago the katsinas had come regularly to Oraibi [the Hopi village] and danced in the plaza. They explained that since the people had become so wicked… the katsinas had stopped coming and sent their spirits to enter the masks on dance days…
I cried and cried into my sheepskin that night, feeling I had been made a fool of. How could I ever watch the katsinas dance again? I hated my parents and thought I could never believe the old folks again, wondering if gods had ever danced for the Hopi as they now said and if people really lived after death. I hated to see the other children fooled and felt mad when they said I was a big girl now and should act like one. But I was afraid to tell the others the truth… I know now it was best and the only way to teach the children, but it took me a long time to know that.
There is an element of sympathetic magic to the ceremony. In Mesoamerica, the tears of children as they were dragged away to be sacrificed were thought to bring rain, the more tears the better. The same principle prevails in Oasisamerica, only that in this place things are rather more humane, and the tears are those of disillusioned children, not those marked out for death.
The importance of children’s tears is not the only Mesoamerican motif in the katsina cult. A strong Mesoamerican undertone prevails throughout the spectrum of rituals and beliefs. Many katsina figures parallel Mesoamerican deities and heroes. Important days in the katsina ritual calendar align with major Nahua festivals. Many elements of katsina cult cosmology, such as the Flower World to which the dead descend or the symbolism of clouds for ancestors, have obvious southern connections. Gold, obsidian, quetzal feathers, and other rare Mesoamerican luxuries play central roles in the ceremonies. Katsina societies keep a sacred Mesoamerican-style codex of rituals and events, and the larger towns even have a small library of books – much as in Mesoamerica.
Yet there are two key differences. The first is that there is little blood about the katsina cults. The katsinas were offered prayer feathers and sticks, blessed cornmeal, and holy water, not the blood of humans. Hopi legends suggest that human sacrifice was practiced, once upon a time, to appease the spirits of the water. But by accepting the sacrifice, the spirits “had committed a wrong,” and they “left because of their own transgression… [They] had sinned.” Henceforth, there was no sacrifice of people to any spirit, water or otherwise. Archaeologists have found utterly no evidence for even these limited and exceptional cases of sacrifice.
Some historians have suggested a link between the katsina cult’s disavowal of sacrifice and Ah Ek Lemba’s similar policies forbidding most forms of human sacrifice. This is difficult to substantiate. Ah Ek Lemba is virtually unknown in the area, and large-scale human sacrifice continued in the cities of the Aztatecs, the Mesoamerican people with whom the katsina followers were in direct contact with.
Nor are the justifications of forbidding sacrifice the same. For the katsina followers, offering human blood rather than sacred cornmeal is wrong and runs the risk of leading to koyaanisqatsi – corruption and imbalance in the world. For Ah Ek Lemba and his successors, human sacrifice is not wrong per se, simply less desirable than offering butterflies and hummingbirds, and according to the logic of the religion, such offerings themselves are actually forms of human sacrifice (as butterflies and hummingbirds are thought to be purified souls of valiant humans). The katsina forbidding of human sacrifice must have been an indigenous development.
The second is that Mesoamerican religion glorifies the elite, while the katsina faith glorifies asceticism and egalitarianism. The priests of Mesoamerica were unhuman-like, gaudy with their ornamentation, blood all over their skin and their hair matted and tangled; they lived in splendid houses and hired hundreds of servants to prepare them fine food no commoner could dream of; often, they held the power of life and death. The priests themselves supported the monarch, much of whose power derived from religion – as Ah Ek Lemba’s authority came from the Feathered Serpent – and connections between the fearsome gods and the bloodthirsty kings were ubiquitous in Mesoamerica.
The katsina priests, by contrast, lived humble lives. Their houses, food, and dress were no different from the rest of the community’s, and their days were hard ones filled with work like everybody else’s. Everyone was a member of a katsina society, and the societies’ rituals redistributed food and resources from the rich to the poor, shared Mesoamerican goods with the whole community, and allowed men dressed as clown katsina spirits to ridicule the proud and miserly. The katsina priests were accorded influence and respect for their knowledge and wisdom, but rarely were they given power.
What explains these differences? Why was the Feathered Serpent worshipped in Tiho with the hearts of birds and reptiles, and in Homol’ovi with dances and corn?
The most likely explanation for these differences are:
- Following the collapse of Oasisamerican society in the Colorado Plateau in the late thirteenth century, a new religious ideology was necessary for the newly emerging communities to find peace and stability.
- Mesoamerican imagery, like feathered serpents and flowery paradises, were exotic and had the allure of power and wealth. Hence the new communities adopted it to legitimize themselves.
- However, the rituals of Mesoamerican religion were most unsuited for maintaining a stable small-scale village society. Hence the katsina religion promoted egalitarianism, asceticism, redistribution, and nonviolent rituals, which were (obviously) much more appealing for the villagers than the king-centered Mesoamerican cults.
The spread of the katsinas
The Hopi word "Suyanisqatsi," meaning "life in harmony," in Hopi script
The Hopi words "Suyanisqatsi" ("life in harmony"), "Koyaanisqatsi" ("life in disorder"), and "Sinom" (people), written in Hopi script in a cycle. People always have the potential for both Suyanisqatsi and Koyaanisqatsi.
The authority of the katsina priests was built on their knowledge, and the accumulation of spiritual knowledge was a pressing concern for many priests.
The katsina priests were generalists and polymaths. The universe itself was a spiritual entity to them, and much of the knowledge that we would consider secular or practical were well within the purview of their academic interest.
We would not be surprised to hear that the katsina priests were expected to know the songs, myths, and ritual procedures of nearly a thousand katsina spirits. But the most learned priests also knew the names, physical properties, behavior, and utility for humans of more than a thousand insect species and around four hundred types of birds, many of which did not exist in Oasisamerica. They categorized the differences between some two dozen breeds of corn and could tell the lethality of spiders by examining their webs alone. The katsina priests were also usually leaders of the medicine societies, secret guilds of healers whose members could join only by invitation or by benefitting from a cure, and their medicinal knowledge was vast. Besides animals and plants, they studied both the land and the sky, learning the details of the land throughout Oasisamerica and using the Metonic cycle (cycle of 19 years in which the same phase of the Moon returns to the same place in the sky) to predict eclipses.
The katsina priests, as journeyers on the path of knowledge, found Mesoamerican writing a godsend. Increased trade with Mesoamerica introduced the merchants’ syllabary (though not the convoluted noble-only pictographic system) to the region sometime in the thirteenth century. The priests quickly realized that writing, besides being a foreign import and hence charged with spiritual power, would limit the loss of knowledge upon each elder’s death. The syllabary spread quickly, adapting to each of the dozens of languages that Oasisamericans spoke (see image).
Mesoamericans rarely ventured as far north and east as the Rio Grande. To access the ritual goods that every town desired, the priests had to journey far south, across desolated roads and warring villages, onto markets such as at Paquimé. Oasisamerican priests had always gone on pilgrimage to the abandoned towns of the ancestors, but the greater presence of Mesoamerica added a new dimension to their journeys. The priests were more mobile than ever before, and it was not long before the more adventurous of them began to visit other villages, even ones that were further away from Mesoamerica than their own and had nothing to do with the ancestors, to see if these distant towns had books and knowledge that they themselves did not. At the end of their lives the priests came home with the books they had copied to add to their society’s library. Members of the katsina societies were perhaps the most literate peoples of the Americas.
These two dynamics, the introduction of writing and the mobility of the priests, allowed the katsina cult to spread extremely rapidly. Priests wondered from town to town, lending their own books for the priests who hosted them to copy and borrowing the hosts’ books to copy themselves. Along with their books, the priests shared katsina spirits and ideas and ideologies about how society should operate. As we have suggested, the katsina cult held an immense appeal for most Oasisamerican villages, and even after the guest priests had gone home, the people remembered the katsina rituals and began to carry them out on their own.
As the katsina cult spread geographically, its authority grew greater. The katsina societies began challenging the secret societies of hereditary priests, arguing that important rituals should be open to everyone and that the village should be led by the katsina priests. Everywhere the katsina priests went, hereditary distinctions frayed and fizzled, whether violently or not, in favor of the egalitarianism of the katsina cult. In the Zuni villages, the Sun Priests and the Council of Head Priests conceded their position following a bloody “revolution” in which the hereditary society of Rain Priests was abolished, and the Sun Priests and the Council were no longer chosen from among the Rain Priests, but from the katsina societies.
With every newcomer priest, the spectrum of katsina practices over the thousands of villages increasingly converged. The cosmology, the pantheon of spirits, the ritual language, the design of the masks, the choreography of dances, and the relationship between the katsina and other societies grew ever similar throughout the area, and an Oasisamerican identity began to emerge. Popular innovations spread rapidly. The Hopi were the first to decide that the katsina societies should include women as well, and within a generation or two the katsina societies of almost all villages accepted women.
The sole major town that forbid the katsina cult was Paquimé, whose priest-kings emulated Mesoamerica, practiced human sacrifice and built racks of human bone, and could never tolerate the egalitarianism of the katsina worshippers. Because of its social hierarchies and its refusal to embrace the katsina cult, Paquimé proved too unstable to survive a protracted drought in the early fifteenth century. Following a civil war between the elite and the followers of the katsinas in which the latter were victorious, the ball courts were reduced to rubble, the largest town in Oasisamerica was left abandoned, and the population scattered west to form smaller katsina-following towns.
With the fall of Paquimé in the 1430s, the stage was set for the katsina cult to move into Mesoamerica proper.
Entry 39-3: OTL background on Oasisamerica
January was a pretty busy month for me, so this update is fairly late. Apologies.
So—sources and comparison to OTL. Oasisamerica is the Mexican archaeologists’ name for the sedentary farmers of far northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest and their neighbors; Americans are rather more egocentric and usually call it “the Southwest.” For obvious reasons, I will always refer to the area as Oasisamerica. (Relatively) famous Oasisamerican archaeological sites include Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, Cliff Palace, Colorado, and Casas Grandes/Paquimé, Chihuahua. Oasisamerican peoples you might have heard of include the Pueblos (which include peoples like the Hopi and the Zuni), the Apaches, and the Navajos.
The Four Corners area, the part of the Colorado Plateau where four American states (UT, CO, AZ, NM) now meet, was the traditional heartland of the Ancestral Pueblos, who are (surprise!) the ancestors of the Pueblo peoples of the modern U. S. Southwest.[1] But a severe late thirteenth-century drought seems to have exacerbated social tensions, culminating in conflict that ultimately left the Four Corners almost entirely depeopled. (The area remained empty of major human settlements until the later fifteenth century, when Apache and Ute hunter-gatherers moved south in force…)
This was of course cataclysmic for the Pueblos, who clustered in new refugee communities in the Mogollon Rim (in Arizona) and the Rio Grande Valley (in New Mexico). This led to the formation of new ethnic identities and religions, especially the katsina cult which I’ll discuss below.
Meanwhile, southern Oasisamerica (what is south of the U.S.-Mexico border) was becoming increasingly influenced by Mesoamerica even OTL. The best example of this is Casas Grandes/Paquimé, which emerged in the early fourteenth century as the area’s single largest and most politically dominant town thanks to Mesoamerican trade, and whose artefacts and rituals show strong southern influence (probably including human sacrifice). The religion of the Salado culture, in what is now southeastern Arizona, also appears to have been Mesoamerican-inflexed.
So Entry 39-1 is pretty true to history. The main difference is that (thanks to increased Mesoamerican trade, which in turn intensifies the lure of population centers) towns are all a little bigger; Casas Grandes/Paquimé itself is believed to have had only about two thousand rooms at best and very possibly only a dozen hundred, and certainly did not have more than 3,000 inhabitants; ITTL, it has more rooms than OTL Paquimé had people. But it’s a matter of quantity, of OTL things extended further along, than of quality. A 1450 Pueblo person from OTL would be at home in 1450 TTL.
The best resource on Casas Grandes appears to be the 2015 University of Arizona anthology Ancient Paquimé and the Casas Grandes World.
Now, what about the katsina? The katsina cult is a spectrum of religious practices across the Pueblo world that centers on commemorating the katsina, nature and ancestor spirits that intercede between humanity and the creator gods. All men (for Zuni) or all men and women (for Hopi) belong to a “katsina society” that carries out the rituals associated with the katsina. The importance of these societies varies; they remain supreme among the Zuni and especially the Hopi, probably because they overthrew Spanish rule in the 1680s, while it has weakened significantly among the eastern Pueblos due to the Catholicism that was imposed upon them.
The katsina religion does not appear archaeologically until the early fourteenth century. It’s also a religion that centers on humility (katsina ceremonies publicly ridicule the proud) and egalitarianism (all men/people are part of a katsina society, and the rituals redistribute wealth to the poor)—indeed, one ethnologist remarks that “the kachina [sic] dance cult is everywhere that of the ‘poor man’ or commoner.” Its central rituals are dedicated to guaranteeing rain. All this would have appealed to the unstable, water-hungry new villages that were forming in the wake of the Four Corners collapse precisely in the early fourteenth century.
The katsina religion also makes use of Mesoamerican imagery (see “Some Aspects of the Aztec Religion in the Hopi Kachina Cult,” Susan E. James; “Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection,” like Randall H. Mcguire), but in very un-Mesoamerican ways. As is well-known, among the most distinguishing features of Mesoamerican religion is an emphasis on human sacrifice, which some peoples (like the Aztecs) took to rather extreme ends. But, to quote historian Mcguire (“Religion”):
The most likely explanation for these differences are, as stated ITTL:
(The standardization of the katsina cults is also a literary device, because most of what I mention about the katsina—including female participation—is true specifically for the Hopi. As mentioned, OTL katsina cults are quite diverse, I don’t have much information on hand about non-Hopi katsina and wanted a plausible reason to generalize from the Hopi example.)
There was always an uneasy balance of power between the egalitarian katsina and hereditary clan structures in OTL Pueblo communities. Even among the Hopi today, there’s a strong contrast between public and universal katsina rituals and the sorcery of secret societies of priests open only to initiates. ITTL the former are overwhelmingly victorious. The modern Zuni are still ruled by a hereditary Council of Head Priests, for example, but ITTL the katsina societies force the priests to give up hereditary power.
Because the katsina cult is stronger, it spreads beyond the OTL Pueblos and contributes to the collapse of Casas Grandes/Paquimé. (Paquimé did collapse OTL in the early fifteenth century due to drought and civil conflict, but it didn’t have much to do with the katsina, which Paquimé society did not in fact have.) And who knows what might happen next…?
The description of things Pueblo priests know comes from “Case Study: The Pueblo System of Knowledge,” a chapter in Lynne Kelly’s monograph Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies. The description of Zuni political organization (Council, Sun Priest, Bow Priests, katsina societies) comes from Thomas John Ferguson’s Historic Zuni Architecture and Society. The best work on the history and nature of Pueblo religion is Religious Transformation in the Late Pre-Hispanic Pueblo World, a recent anthology.
The OTL Pueblos did know the Metonic cycle! So did a lot of cultures, actually, there’s even a Swedish “Runic calendar” based on the Metonic cycle. It’s unknown if they used it to calculate eclipses, but they could have, and the Maya actually did OTL.
[1] Some people call the Ancestral Pueblos Anasazi. This means “Ancestors of our enemies” in Navajo, and modern Pueblos don’t like people using it. I won’t.
So—sources and comparison to OTL. Oasisamerica is the Mexican archaeologists’ name for the sedentary farmers of far northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest and their neighbors; Americans are rather more egocentric and usually call it “the Southwest.” For obvious reasons, I will always refer to the area as Oasisamerica. (Relatively) famous Oasisamerican archaeological sites include Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, Cliff Palace, Colorado, and Casas Grandes/Paquimé, Chihuahua. Oasisamerican peoples you might have heard of include the Pueblos (which include peoples like the Hopi and the Zuni), the Apaches, and the Navajos.
The Four Corners area, the part of the Colorado Plateau where four American states (UT, CO, AZ, NM) now meet, was the traditional heartland of the Ancestral Pueblos, who are (surprise!) the ancestors of the Pueblo peoples of the modern U. S. Southwest.[1] But a severe late thirteenth-century drought seems to have exacerbated social tensions, culminating in conflict that ultimately left the Four Corners almost entirely depeopled. (The area remained empty of major human settlements until the later fifteenth century, when Apache and Ute hunter-gatherers moved south in force…)
This was of course cataclysmic for the Pueblos, who clustered in new refugee communities in the Mogollon Rim (in Arizona) and the Rio Grande Valley (in New Mexico). This led to the formation of new ethnic identities and religions, especially the katsina cult which I’ll discuss below.
Meanwhile, southern Oasisamerica (what is south of the U.S.-Mexico border) was becoming increasingly influenced by Mesoamerica even OTL. The best example of this is Casas Grandes/Paquimé, which emerged in the early fourteenth century as the area’s single largest and most politically dominant town thanks to Mesoamerican trade, and whose artefacts and rituals show strong southern influence (probably including human sacrifice). The religion of the Salado culture, in what is now southeastern Arizona, also appears to have been Mesoamerican-inflexed.
So Entry 39-1 is pretty true to history. The main difference is that (thanks to increased Mesoamerican trade, which in turn intensifies the lure of population centers) towns are all a little bigger; Casas Grandes/Paquimé itself is believed to have had only about two thousand rooms at best and very possibly only a dozen hundred, and certainly did not have more than 3,000 inhabitants; ITTL, it has more rooms than OTL Paquimé had people. But it’s a matter of quantity, of OTL things extended further along, than of quality. A 1450 Pueblo person from OTL would be at home in 1450 TTL.
The best resource on Casas Grandes appears to be the 2015 University of Arizona anthology Ancient Paquimé and the Casas Grandes World.
Now, what about the katsina? The katsina cult is a spectrum of religious practices across the Pueblo world that centers on commemorating the katsina, nature and ancestor spirits that intercede between humanity and the creator gods. All men (for Zuni) or all men and women (for Hopi) belong to a “katsina society” that carries out the rituals associated with the katsina. The importance of these societies varies; they remain supreme among the Zuni and especially the Hopi, probably because they overthrew Spanish rule in the 1680s, while it has weakened significantly among the eastern Pueblos due to the Catholicism that was imposed upon them.
The katsina religion does not appear archaeologically until the early fourteenth century. It’s also a religion that centers on humility (katsina ceremonies publicly ridicule the proud) and egalitarianism (all men/people are part of a katsina society, and the rituals redistribute wealth to the poor)—indeed, one ethnologist remarks that “the kachina [sic] dance cult is everywhere that of the ‘poor man’ or commoner.” Its central rituals are dedicated to guaranteeing rain. All this would have appealed to the unstable, water-hungry new villages that were forming in the wake of the Four Corners collapse precisely in the early fourteenth century.
The katsina religion also makes use of Mesoamerican imagery (see “Some Aspects of the Aztec Religion in the Hopi Kachina Cult,” Susan E. James; “Pueblo Religion and the Mesoamerican Connection,” like Randall H. Mcguire), but in very un-Mesoamerican ways. As is well-known, among the most distinguishing features of Mesoamerican religion is an emphasis on human sacrifice, which some peoples (like the Aztecs) took to rather extreme ends. But, to quote historian Mcguire (“Religion”):
The Pueblos lacked this fascination with blood and slaughter. Instead of spilling blood on altars and offering still-beating human hearts to the gods, they put out prayer feathers and offered pollen and corn meal to the Katsinas…
Pueblo priests may have been able to argue theology with Aztec priests but… the lived experiences of their religions would have been profoundly different for them and their peoples. A Pueblo man dancing in the plaza as the masked embodiment of a Katsina experiences his religion in a very different way than an Aztec war captive who is draped over a stone and waiting for his heart to be cut out. By the same token, the experience of the Pueblo priest laying corn-pollen blessings on the masked dancer is very different than that of the Aztec priest who wielded the obsidian blade.
Pueblo priests may have been able to argue theology with Aztec priests but… the lived experiences of their religions would have been profoundly different for them and their peoples. A Pueblo man dancing in the plaza as the masked embodiment of a Katsina experiences his religion in a very different way than an Aztec war captive who is draped over a stone and waiting for his heart to be cut out. By the same token, the experience of the Pueblo priest laying corn-pollen blessings on the masked dancer is very different than that of the Aztec priest who wielded the obsidian blade.
The most likely explanation for these differences are, as stated ITTL:
- Following the collapse of the Ancestral Pueblo heartland in the late thirteenth century, a new religious ideology was necessary for the new Pueblo communities to find peace and stability.
- Mesoamerican imagery, like feathered serpents and flowery paradises, were exotic and had the allure of power and wealth. Hence the new communities adopted it to legitimize themselves.
- However, the rituals of Mesoamerican religion were most unsuited for maintaining a stable small-scale village society. Hence the katsina religion promoted egalitarianism, asceticism, redistribution, and nonviolent rituals, which were (obviously) much more appealing for the villagers than the king-centered Mesoamerican cults.
(The standardization of the katsina cults is also a literary device, because most of what I mention about the katsina—including female participation—is true specifically for the Hopi. As mentioned, OTL katsina cults are quite diverse, I don’t have much information on hand about non-Hopi katsina and wanted a plausible reason to generalize from the Hopi example.)
There was always an uneasy balance of power between the egalitarian katsina and hereditary clan structures in OTL Pueblo communities. Even among the Hopi today, there’s a strong contrast between public and universal katsina rituals and the sorcery of secret societies of priests open only to initiates. ITTL the former are overwhelmingly victorious. The modern Zuni are still ruled by a hereditary Council of Head Priests, for example, but ITTL the katsina societies force the priests to give up hereditary power.
Because the katsina cult is stronger, it spreads beyond the OTL Pueblos and contributes to the collapse of Casas Grandes/Paquimé. (Paquimé did collapse OTL in the early fifteenth century due to drought and civil conflict, but it didn’t have much to do with the katsina, which Paquimé society did not in fact have.) And who knows what might happen next…?
The description of things Pueblo priests know comes from “Case Study: The Pueblo System of Knowledge,” a chapter in Lynne Kelly’s monograph Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies. The description of Zuni political organization (Council, Sun Priest, Bow Priests, katsina societies) comes from Thomas John Ferguson’s Historic Zuni Architecture and Society. The best work on the history and nature of Pueblo religion is Religious Transformation in the Late Pre-Hispanic Pueblo World, a recent anthology.
The OTL Pueblos did know the Metonic cycle! So did a lot of cultures, actually, there’s even a Swedish “Runic calendar” based on the Metonic cycle. It’s unknown if they used it to calculate eclipses, but they could have, and the Maya actually did OTL.
[1] Some people call the Ancestral Pueblos Anasazi. This means “Ancestors of our enemies” in Navajo, and modern Pueblos don’t like people using it. I won’t.