As the title says what if the Mississippian civilization survived? At least retaining some scale of urbanization and its culture in general. Also the effects it would have.
Areas probably belonging to the Mississippian cultural complex still existed when de Soto explored what is today the southeastern United States in the 1540s; when Europeans returned years later, they had almost entirely vanished. The Mississippian culture only disappeared when European disease depleted its population and forced the survivors to abandon their ways of life, so in that sense, you would need to somehow avoid the epidemic diseases that finally shattered the Mississippian world.
Even if the general decline of Cahokia and other major centers during the later period of the culture is avoided, I feel the result might, sadly, always be the same - European diseases will disrupt the population enough that their way of life will not be able to survive.
Perhaps increasing their population so they can take more loses from the diseases?
Sure, if the total population in alt-1540 is double the population of OTL 1540 then the overall number of survivors in alt 1640 will most probably be much higher than in OTL 1640. How though, is this doubling of the population going to come about and how many generations/centuries would it take? Increased fertility & successful (full term and resulting in a live birth or births) pregnancies and decreased infant & childhood mortality are easier said than done. I wish we knew more about these early North American cultures' neo-natal/post-natal care, nutrition, hygiene, disease prevention/treatment and general medical care practices so we could more plausibly tweak them and bring about realistic innovations for alt TLs.
Yes, is a shame.
Lets assume they do have higher populations to withstand the diseases then how would things play out with Europeans and could they modernize?
As the title says what if the Mississippian civilization survived? At least retaining some scale of urbanization and its culture in general. Also the effects it would have.