Surviving European contact

Probably not. European diseases devastated societies very badly. And meaning of colonisers was convert them to Christianity.
 
It depends if there is no conquests involved just trading then I can see the natives adopting European weapons for their own methods of war, and even being a threat to European settlement. It happened as I mentioned in the Otumba thread with the natives of the northeast. It would still need a peaceful first contact, with a hell of a lot less luck for the Spanish.
 
Probably not. European diseases devastated societies very badly. And meaning of colonisers was convert them to Christianity.
My thoughts too. There are many less advanced or less powerful nations in the Asia and Oceania that survived contact with the Europeans relatively unscathed at least until the 1800's. So my first thought was "yes, it's possible". But then these nations didn't have to deal with smallpocks nor with a colonizing nation who just years before ethnically cleansed its own homeland like the Spanish did.
 
My thoughts too. There are many less advanced or less powerful nations in the Asia and Oceania that survived contact with the Europeans relatively unscathed at least until the 1800's. So my first thought was "yes, it's possible". But then these nations didn't have to deal with smallpocks nor with a colonizing nation who just years before ethnically cleansed its own homeland like the Spanish did.

Those nations didn't have to deal with apocalyptic epidemics and/or were far more isolated from Europe.

Of the New World civilisations, anyone but the Aztecs and Inca would've crumbled before the Spanish (or any other European) onslaught. And the Aztecs would've been so severely undermined that they would've crumbled once the epidemics hit because of rebellion, though that would mean a far different Mexico than OTL of course.

Though locally powerful, I don't think the Muisca had staying power. If the Spanish could get as far as them to begin with, they can undermine and destroy them in the end.
 
I think pandemics are overestimated a little.

They were so devastating because they happened during a conquest. When they hit tribes who weren't at war, who had access to all their food stocks and could form natural buffers they didn't cause anywhere near the death rates as they did when they hit Mexican cities that had been conquered and were undergoing famine. We know that from new mexico.
 
Very little evidence of that. Just the assumption that those cities were abandoned for that reason.

They have the archeology, including the graveyards.

That said the culture that probably did the best holding itself together in spite of catastrophic losses were the Pueblo. In spite of losing ,at least 90 percent of their population and whole branches going extinct, they still exist.

The Pueblo revolt was key in that their land title was guaranteed (now by international treaty, Guadalupe Hildago) and the missionaries turned a blind eye to what went on in the kiva.
 
They have the archeology, including the graveyards.

You're acting like something that is extremely controversial and debated on is completely agreed upon when it isn't.

The idea that 90-95% of native americans died of diseases is based on spanish population estimates of mexico. Where the diseases hit the hardest of any place in the new world and the where 95% figure is the total population loss from all factors, only some of which are diseases.

This post here: https://np.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2bqvto/slavery_smallpox_and_virgins_the_us_southeast_as/ is a very good summary of my view of the argument. That the pandemics were as brutal as they were because of the overall conditions of the native americans at the time rather than because of innate vulnerability and that they wouldn't have caused as many deaths as they did had circumstances been different (it's a proven fact that being well fed improves your resistance to smallpox and the destruction of food supplies due to wars was a huge factor for the extent of the die off).
 
If we're talking about the Mississippians, it didn't help that the 16th century, when smallpox broke out, was full of droughts (according to historical climatology), combined with the fact that the civilisation was undergoing a major change/evolution (the most famous sites like Cahokia had long since been abandoned). But even if our best source, De Soto, often describes conflict, not all of them were fighting each other, and the Mississippian cultural region was not a giant cauldron of warfare like the Thirty Years War.

Yes, 95% is a very high number produced by very specific circumstance, but it had to have been at least as bad as the Black Death in Europe, at minimum. And it occurred over a generation and more. And we see repeatedly that epidemics decimated populations. Even if the Plains Indians thrived after the introduction of the horse, they still lost huge numbers in a single epidemic events. The Pacific Northwest and California, likewise decimated. Intertribal warfare was a fact of life in North America, and it happened with or without disease destroying the population.

And define "well fed". I notice the Andean diet with the varied crops provides significant nutrients that probably made them among the best-fed agricultural civilisation, but most other places could not have been better fed than, say, European peasants. And the hunter gatherers like the Plains Indians and PNW tribes were well fed based on their diet, but still suffered immensely.
 
For a second I thought that this was a timeline resource survival guide for warding off european colonization.

"Do YOU have unusual foreigners knocking on your door? Proverbial "Greeks bearing gifts" who are actually here to depose you and ruin your entire civilization for their own economic advancement? Actually want some equal footing in a disproportionately bloody war for your very existence? Well look no further!"
 
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