Native American control of the Americas, post 15th-cent.

Hi there. I've been lurking around these boards for quite a while, reading (and enjoying) various timelines and disccussions, but I haven't registered until recently. Pardon my noob-ness! :)

Basically my question is, what would be the most plausible way of having Native Americans maintain control of the continent of North America (South America too, but my primary center of interest is North) following the early voyages by Europeans? Once Columbus has set foot on Hispaniola and Europeans have made the first rudimentary steps toward establishing permanent settlements, what kind of catastrophic event, or series of events, could prevent them from gaining a significant foothold in the Americas?

My provisional theory (roughly) involves a series of revolts in the early 1500s by enslaved West Indian natives that dissuades the Spaniards from continuing large-scale colonization, in addition to few Roanoke-style disappearances of English and French colonies along the Atlantic coast. I'm not sure that would quite cut it, though, so I'm wondering what others might think...
 
Hi there. I've been lurking around these boards for quite a while, reading (and enjoying) various timelines and disccussions, but I haven't registered until recently. Pardon my noob-ness! :)

Basically my question is, what would be the most plausible way of having Native Americans maintain control of the continent of North America (South America too, but my primary center of interest is North) following the early voyages by Europeans? Once Columbus has set foot on Hispaniola and Europeans have made the first rudimentary steps toward establishing permanent settlements, what kind of catastrophic event, or series of events, could prevent them from gaining a significant foothold in the Americas?

My provisional theory (roughly) involves a series of revolts in the early 1500s by enslaved West Indian natives that dissuades the Spaniards from continuing large-scale colonization, in addition to few Roanoke-style disappearances of English and French colonies along the Atlantic coast. I'm not sure that would quite cut it, though, so I'm wondering what others might think...
Give them immunity to Small Pox.
 
Hi there. I've been lurking around these boards for quite a while, reading (and enjoying) various timelines and disccussions, but I haven't registered until recently. Pardon my noob-ness! :)

Basically my question is, what would be the most plausible way of having Native Americans maintain control of the continent of North America (South America too, but my primary center of interest is North) following the early voyages by Europeans? Once Columbus has set foot on Hispaniola and Europeans have made the first rudimentary steps toward establishing permanent settlements, what kind of catastrophic event, or series of events, could prevent them from gaining a significant foothold in the Americas?

My provisional theory (roughly) involves a series of revolts in the early 1500s by enslaved West Indian natives that dissuades the Spaniards from continuing large-scale colonization, in addition to few Roanoke-style disappearances of English and French colonies along the Atlantic coast. I'm not sure that would quite cut it, though, so I'm wondering what others might think...

Give them immunity to Small Pox.

Ahem. (filler)
 
Yeah, these discussions pop up every once in a while. Basically to recap them all:

1. Failed invasion of Peru could lead to a surviving Inca state.

2. For every other Native group, you need to give them germs and steel to resist conquest and destruction.

3. Lost Vinlanders are not enough to give the Natives this outside of a small portion of the Canadian/US northeast. For Native control of the Americas, you need an agricultural POD giving domestic animals and plants that allow an earlier rise in sedentism and civilization, with corresponding longer development of tech, warfare and disease.

4. I hope you like paleobiogeography, because figuring out a plausible, interesting and original alternate Native agricultural package takes a lot of homework.
 
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You could theoretically give a short break for recovery and growth by having Cortes completely wiped out by the Aztecs before he can really get the word back that they've got lots of gold.
 
2. For every other Native group, you need to give them germs and steel to resist conquest and destruction.
Hate to bump this thing so late, but this bit reminds me of something I've been wondering -- obviously the Americans had no immunity to stuff that had been going around Europe for centuries, but why weren't there American diseases to which the Europeans lacked immunity?

My (slightly) educated guess is that the developing urban environment of Europe facilitated the rapid evolution of viruses so that the ones brought across by Columbus and his pals were more different from the last viral common ancestor to which the natives has been exposed than their own viruses would have been. Dunno, though. It still seems like things of that sort would have been seen earlier in history (during the late-13th century contact with the Mongols, for instance, or even in early European outposts in southern Africa).
 
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The big reason was a lack of large domesticated mammals, which frequently carry diseases that can also infect and kill humans.
 
The domesticated mammals and the way the Americas stretch north to south more than east to west. Something about it being more difficult to travel from one end to the other because of the different climates, so people can't carry a disease from Patagonia to the arctic as easily as they can carry it from Iberia to Siam. Also, Eurasia has a tremendously large area of very hot climate, which is the best climate for diseases to thrive.


An unrelated change I thought of that might work is what if America was claimed by Europeans who weren't as interested in settling the areas as they were in just getting money from them, like OTL's Netherlands were? Is that plausible?
 
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The balance of power looks like it was mostly determined by disease epidemics wiping out Native American population concentrations at the 50-90% rate, Charles Mann's "1491" has a lot of interesting stuff on that and William McNeil's books on the impacts of plagues on history are amazing in how they change one's opinions about the importance of weapons technology or imagined industrial base. Balancing that is probably ongoing contact with Eurasia so frequent smaller plagues and acquired resistance, a genetic resistance to a wide range of diseases would be up into Alien Space Bats POD.

Iron and steel technology would probably be best coming over from China to "Fu Sang" and materials science always matters in many, many ways. Unfortunately the iron ore and coal deposits are on the Atlantic sides of the continents mostly so Viking tech transfer (or Phoenician/Minoan, Roman, etc.) would be key, maybe just better diffusion as Arlington Mallory found Viking-tech iron foundries at several Northeast locations in the 1930's-1940's in his book "Lost America" (photos included and metallurgical analysis included.)

Domestic livestock could be solved two ways, either llamas and alpacas are brought by sea to Central and North America where they spread. Or Viking horses are brought over in greater numbers and have spread further although there was an interesting article tracing them to more of the wild mustang horse population than the Spanish Barb ponies generally credited...partly because the Spanish early enough were bringing geldings in their expeditions rather than mares and stallions (just as few knights, cavalry, or cowboys ride other than geldings) which apparently most historicans didn't notice geldings don't breed prolifically.) The mildest wonk is probably not to have horses and camels die out in North America for unknown reasons between 8-12,000 years ago (you'd also retain mastodons/mammoths for India-style muscle-power in dragging logs and building stone/ore which'd be a big advantage.) The plains and woodland bison in North America are superior to cattle in just about everything but convenience in fencing or milking, actually a competitive advantage to Europe. Chinese contact would bring over pigs and chickens as well as teaching duck domestication, but food production other than in droughts is something the Americas are better at already in this era than Europe (better developed crops and higher yield/lower input/terrain adapted farming methods.)

I recall reading the Incas did turn out to have some bronze (lots of copper in their regions-Chile, Argentina, etc. while tin is in Bolivia, not sure where zinc is there) but didn't turn it into the mass production, many uses that Euraasia did, which either contact with heavy bronze users or the minor POD of "hey, let's try this!" would resolve that. Bronze would expand their coastal shipping that was seen on both continents' coasts by the early explorers and that explains lot like getting people onto the islands in the Carribbean and sustaining those populations. More trade, faster ideas spread and the river systems in both continents eclipse Europes while there were big civilizations along them (Adena-Hopewell, Mississippian, Amazonian Basin, etc.).

Without the big die off of Indians, their numbers would trump the quite small quantity of horses, attack dogs, arquebusses and wheelock guns (they already had swords, body armor, tactics, trained veteran warriors, etc., the edge of the Spanish is mostly measles, smallpox, chickenpox, whooping cough, mumps, etc.). With bronzeworking more spread, capturing some bronze cannons from Cortez or Columbus etc. shipboard cannons on the ships that wrecked or were dismantled, casting new ones would be a learning curve but not a big one...gunpowder artillery at this point is far more important than small arms, and matchlock muskets are very low tech. The Native Americans are less "primitive cultures" and more cultures with very different scientific development and political organizations from 16th Century Europe, it's just taken a lot of research to realize and admit that (as conquering primitive savages is the classic rationalization of killing inconvenient populations.)
 
The plains and woodland bison in North America are superior to cattle in just about everything but convenience in fencing or milking, actually a competitive advantage to Europe.
Fencing is a pretty big deal, though, especially in areas where wood is scarce. People weren't able to affordably fence cows in the Great Plains until barb wire fences were invented, and you need something better than that for bison. And weren't North America's horses scrawny and zebra-like? Could they have been bred to be as big and strong as European horses? And is there any reason to suspect that North American horses were domesticable?

I'm going to repeat that I think it would be simpler to have a European power claim the Americas but not settle any more than they need to make a profit, therefor nearly all the land is controlled by the natives.
 
And weren't North America's horses scrawny and zebra-like? Could they have been bred to be as big and strong as European horses? And is there any reason to suspect that North American horses were domesticable?

At least one study has determined that not only North American caballine horses but also South American caballine horses were Equus caballus (our domestic horse) which means they would be domesticable. As to horse size, environment can determine body type as much as genetics, and when provided good pasture, protection from predators by farmers who will also select size as a basis to breed, American horses will grow. Remember, the first horses domesticated in the Old World were also pretty scrawny.

I'm going to repeat that I think it would be simpler to have a European power claim the Americas but not settle any more than they need to make a profit, therefor nearly all the land is controlled by the natives.

France tried this IOTL, and the land they claimed got snatched by a more interested power. For one European country to hold land from rivals without settling it is hard.
 
This wouldn't change everything, but, if the colonization of Panama had failed, the Incas wouldn't have been conquered, as the route through magellan strait was to risky, and getting there through colombian, Braxilian or Argentina's coast, while possible, implied such a hard journey that, once explorers got there, they would be so exausted that they would have beeen easily beaten.

Maybe if malaria was there before 1492, or was brought there by the same Spanish who first settled there, colonization of Panama would have failed, and the Incas would have had time to adapt to Spanish disseases. IATL, Panama ended up being a terrible place for europeans due to malaria.

That doest'n solve the problem of North America, though. You'd need a separate pods which makes Cortez expedition fail.
 

Hnau

Banned
The expedition of Hernan Cortes leading to the conquest of the Aztecs was practically as ASB as the rise of Adolf Hitler and the course of the Second World War. I've talked about his campaign before. If you remove Cortes from the equation, it's probable that a more cautious, conservative conquistador would have taken on the Aztecs and wouldn't have had the sheer bravado to go ahead and try to conquer Tenochtitlan. That or a less intelligent conquistador that would have had a harder time negotiating Mesoamerican politics, managing his men, and figuring out how to the conquer the empire. He could have easily died during La Noche Triste, or during his siege of Tenochtitlan. If you butterfly away Martin Lopez or have him die before the siege of Tenochtitlan, the brigantines that made the invasion of the Aztec capital city possible wouldn't have been built.

If the initial Spanish expedition to conquer the Aztecs had failed, the Mexica would have had many more advantages against the Europeans. They would have been exposed to smallpox once and could rebuild and recuperate on their own terms without having to deal with subsequent diseases at the same time. They would have learned a bit of Spanish tactics, how to counter their cavalry, maybe how to use Spanish crossbows and swords. The Mexica could purge all those that had collaborated with the Spanish and would have had a much more unified emperor the next time they arrived. The native allies of Cortes were indispensable towards his campaign... the next European invasion wouldn't have had nearly as much of an advantage. More important, the Spanish Caribbean would have lost hundreds of experienced conquistadores and veteran soldiers... it would take time and effort, without Aztec gold to finance it, to build up a new army.

What is more probable is that the Spanish would have established a trading post on the coastline, what was initially proposed by Velasquez the governor of Cuba, either instead of a Cortes-like expedition of conquest or after a failed one. Diseases would have taken much longer to disseminate through Mesoamerica through a trading post instead of a full-on occupation of their capital city. It would also have provided the Aztecs a chance to learn about the Europeans, adopt their animals, crops, weapons and technology.

Pizarro got almost as lucky as Cortes did. The Spanish found the Incan Empire in a time of disease and civil war and kicked it down to the ground at its weakest point. If they had come to Peru just a few years later it would have been ten or a hundred times more difficult to conquer. They just happened to run into the ruling Inca far from the capital city where usually he would have been, and managed to capture him and hold him at ransom. It was as if about two hundred modern-day U.S. grunts with virtually no resupply had stumbled into war-torn Riga, Latvia in October 1944 just after it had been recaptured by the Soviets and Josef Stalin just happened to be in the town leading the war and the grunts decide to ambush him and hold him at gunpoint. Well, there are obvious differences, but I think that example highlights how ridiculously lucky Pizarro and his gang got.

Yes, Guns, Germs, and Steel gave the Europeans some serious advantages, especially germs... but their two principal conquistadores had considerable luck on their side.
 
I think a good way, would be a biological POD like the survival of some of the Pleistiocene mammals. If there were North American llamas, horses, asses, and oxen; then the Natives might have been able to domesticate them to provide an extra boost to their advancement. But not only that but since closer contact to animals leads to disease crossovers (like Smallpox) then there is potential that the Europeans will take back a disease after meeting the natives.

If both continents get hit by diseases, it would probably give enough pause to allow the Natives to better adapt to the europeans and their diseases. But I also think that total hemispheric control seems a bit improbable. Just because it hasn't really ever been done.
 
Obviously, the diseases is the big issue. But I think there is another one that was important: The native american lack of ship tech. Personally, I think that is bigger than the lack of a beast of burden. Not only because ideas, crops and animals didn't spread, but also militarily. The natives had no way of meeting the Europeans at sea, or getting to the Europeans island bases.

And I think an increased Vinland contact could alleviate both problems.

Suppose Vinland does just a little bit better than OTL. It gets along with some of the locals, exchange some genes and transfers ship building tech before fizzling out. The natives got half a millennium to play around with their increased mobility. Somewhere along the line, they reestablish contact with Greenland/Iceland and a trade route pipe in diseases, women and livestock.

I've often thought about writing a TL where the Vinlanders just get good chemistry with a local chief. Vinland last for about 50 years before being peacefully absorbed by the greater numbers of the locals.

The locals get the horse, iron, the stirrup, longships, wheat, barley etc. I just know too little about the northeastern american tribes of 1000 AD. :(
 
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