Mongol style horse civilisation in the Americas

They wouldn't be too much of a problem for the Europeans in an alt-19th century confrontation. European armies wiped the floor with horse nomads by then. But if you had horses and developed animal husbandry among the woodlands nations and in mesoamerica, things could well turn out rather differently early on.

Ah but remember the only got wiped outaround the late 19th century by semi-modern weaponry. 16th-18th are entierrly different
 
.....?

CahokiaMounds-old.jpeg


Well admitingly a artist rendering, but still, the Mississippian Cahokia supported extensive urbanish populations of somewhere between 8-40 thousand in its history.


I wasn't aware of that. The solution would be to land in less advanced areas.
 
personally I like the Comanche side of this. If the Comanche maybe had a larger, horde-like population or were more unified, they'd be a scourge in the SW.

Just imagine a bunch of crazed and wild Comanche warriors riding in over the horizon with guns ablazing as they massacre entire cities like St. Louis and Houston!

Maybe further viking settlement is the answer, but they don't need to introduce horses, only more disease so the native population isn't so completely ruined by european settlement 500-800 years later by plague and small pox.
 
personally I like the Comanche side of this. If the Comanche maybe had a larger, horde-like population or were more unified, they'd be a scourge in the SW.

Just imagine a bunch of crazed and wild Comanche warriors riding in over the horizon with guns ablazing as they massacre entire cities like St. Louis and Houston!

Maybe further viking settlement is the answer, but they don't need to introduce horses, only more disease so the native population isn't so completely ruined by european settlement 500-800 years later by plague and small pox.


If the US gets as far as Houston the Comanche are screwed. By this time the US has a huge population and there is no way the Comanche could have taken on St. Louis or Houston.
 

Hendryk

Banned
Maybe further viking settlement is the answer, but they don't need to introduce horses, only more disease so the native population isn't so completely ruined by european settlement 500-800 years later by plague and small pox.
This has been discussed before on this forum, and the consensus is that even if the Norse settlers had introduced Old World diseases, it would have failed to give the native Americans a lasting immunity as they lacked the population density to keep said diseases endemic.

Now, if Old World diseases are introduced later and in Mesoamerica, where the population density is higher, it's a different story.
 
Well the Comanche for a brief time had a large trading empire in OTL? Give them horses and you'll have a Comanche empire consisting of the Great Plains.
 
The Comanche seem like a great bet, possibly also the Apache or Sioux. What about escaped Spanish cattle as a possible herd animal?
 
I don't think the Comanches moved onto the plains until the 16th or 17th century (I could be wrong about this), so any plains nomad civilization emerging in the 11th century is going to be from a different tribe, or possibly of multi-tribal background.

I agree that the Mississippian cultures are likely to get smashed if a full-blown steppe empire emerges just to their west, unless they learn how to fight on horseback very quickly. Most likely the settlements in their heartland get overrun and devastated, but the eastern outliers of their civilization along the Ohio and in places like Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia survive and even thrive as they get an influx of refugees. On the other side of the plains, the Anasazi might similarly get devastated by raids from the plains. The Mesoamerican civilizations to the south are further away, but they might get raided at least. The first group to develop cavalry there might build its own empire.
 
I'm remembering the old story about how the Mesoamericans thought the Spainish where gods because, having never seen horses before, they thought they where half man half deer. Would horse Natives have the same effect?

That's BS on par with "Columbus sailed to prove the Earth was round" and "Washington cut a cherry tree". It never happened.

The Mesoamerican civilizations to the south are further away, but they might get raided at least. The first group to develop cavalry there might build its own empire.

Well, if language and myths are to be trusted, the Aztecs were a migrating tribe from the Western USA that took over Mesoamerica anyway.
 
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Well I have heard of the Commanche making broiled leather armor for a brief period, similar to steppe cultures of Asia. But guns became more wide spread, making it useless.
 
I think it would make things much easier for europe, because of the wide availability of horses diseases will spread much faster.

smallpox and the likes will have an even bigger impact than they had in otl.

thus less people left to resist
But, more time for the natives to recover, especially in the west.
 
The Comanche DID own the Plains

You'll be interested to hear that history's way ahead of you. It's not too well-covered in history courses, but much of the Plains were dominated by the Comanches WienerBlut mentioned for some decades. The problem was that arrows could fire far faster than rifles or muskets, and that hunter/gatherers of necessity hunt often enough to get amazing skillz, while farmers, well, mostly farmed and occasionally hunted using slow rifles.

Comanche tactics were to fire a rifle or musket, then put it away and change to archery.

The Comanches' advantage was finally ended by one Mr. Colt. Revolvers gave enough firing speed to be a better weapon than bows and arrows even with modest amounts of practice. Only then could Plains nomads be ethnically cleansed along with the rest of the continental slice, bwahaha. :eek::eek:
 
I'm surprised that people keep focussing on the Comanche. If horses come from the east, it will be an eastern people that take them onto the plains. Probably not Plains Micmac:), but quite possibly Iroquoians or Souians or Algonkians. (OTL's Dakota/Lakota were a woodlands people originally, IIRC, and could provide a decent analogue.)
 
You'll be interested to hear that history's way ahead of you. It's not too well-covered in history courses, but much of the Plains were dominated by the Comanches WienerBlut mentioned for some decades. The problem was that arrows could fire far faster than rifles or muskets, and that hunter/gatherers of necessity hunt often enough to get amazing skillz, while farmers, well, mostly farmed and occasionally hunted using slow rifles.

Comanche tactics were to fire a rifle or musket, then put it away and change to archery.

The Comanches' advantage was finally ended by one Mr. Colt. Revolvers gave enough firing speed to be a better weapon than bows and arrows even with modest amounts of practice. Only then could Plains nomads be ethnically cleansed along with the rest of the continental slice, bwahaha. :eek::eek:

so if the comanche, who technically were well on their way to being mongol-like in their tactics and niche in the SW, could get their hands on some colts (the gun, they already have plenty of horses:D), (maybe by trading with mexicans?) they could effectively become a bigger scourge of the west
 
For a while, if the Comanche have a bit more luck, they can manage to get either their own state or a larger reservation for themselves. I like the idea of a Comanche empire but of course, you know. :p
 
For a while, if the Comanche have a bit more luck, they can manage to get either their own state or a larger reservation for themselves. I like the idea of a Comanche empire but of course, you know. :p
There was a significant minority in the early days of Texas that wanted designated areas to left for the Comanche and other tribes (there was also an area for the Cherokee), however like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson's initial ideas for the Five Civilized Tribes, it never really had much success and gave way eventually to those who just wanted to kick them out of Texas.

In fact, I live about a mile from where the original dividing line was supposed to be. For some time, there were stone markers to indicate the boundary, but, as I said, the whole idea was abandoned shortly after Texas became a State.
 
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