Nice maps. I wondering if this timeline’s New Spain spread Westwards, getting to Louisiana and some of OTL New Spain, like Northern Mexico
The Jaguar's Roar - An Aztec Timeline
- Thread starter Vinization
- Start date
As cool as the Mesoamerica keeping most of their religion intact would be, it is highly unlikely. Personally, I find a scenario like the one described by GameBawesome and Srufiyyun to be the most likely.
Firstly, although the Spanish entrepreneurs in the Caribbean might be willing to turn a blind eye to the peculiarities of the local religion (including human sacrifice) for the sake of making a quick buck, the crown and religious authorities in Madrid will not. They can very easily demand the Mexica allow European missionaries in and begin evangelizing the locals. For the sake of keeping the alliance and their business the Mesoamerican elites might superficially convert, allow the missionaries in, and just keep an eye on them for the time being. Slowly but surely the population will convert. Though this would likely be in a much more syncretic form than OTL.
We can expect much more open worship of death - in OTL the cult of Mictecacihuatl (goddess of death) went underground but never left only to be revived as Santa Muerte in the 20th century – and a more direct link between the worship of Coatlicue/Tonantzin and the Virgin Mary (in this case the name might even be kept the same). Several saints will likely also fill in the roles of other deities.
For most of Mesoamerica, the principal tenets of Christianity would seem fairly reasonable. The idea of a god made flesh sacrificing himself to save humanity would be very recognizable to them (their gods did it all the time). The Christian God can easily be absorbed into their pantheon. [1] And the Eucharist as a symbolic intake of flesh and blood would also be understandable since they had similar rituals. The fact that Jesus’ sacrifice was supposed to mark the end of all sacrifices and that this God is the only god, would be the harder pills to swallow.
We also have to consider, that even with a reduced death toll due to European diseases, these will still represent a major population blow and a tremendous obstacle for all organized statecraft (including religion). Such a situation is fertile ground for all sorts of religious conversions, awakenings, etc. Under such circumstances, I don’t think it will take long before the Mesoamerican elite consider curbing the number of sacrifices so as not to lose valuable labor. Festivities that used to result in hundreds of sacrifices might be reduced to just a handful of offerings, and even these might be limited to criminals and prisoners of war.
In OTL conversion happened by force and in some cases convenience. Here it will mostly be the latter, but I can’t see it not happening in some way or other.
[1] The Mexica used to have reenactments of their god’s sacrifice, which ended with the person acting as the god actually being sacrificed in some of their rituals. I can see a darkly comical situation where a Mexica leader invites Spanish missionaries and allies to their first reenactment of the crucifixion, only for it to end in the actual sacrifice of the reenactor.
These are really cool maps! Question though, have the Purepecha fully conquered the Kingdoms of Xalisco and Colima? Or will we see some future developments there as well?
Indeed they have, and I intend to dedicate a chapter to the Purépecha soon. It'll come after the next one, in fact.
To *Florida? A lot, which will be incredibly unfortunate for the natives there.
Keep in mind that that religion was present before them, and present outside their domain. The Tlaxcalans worshiped Nahuatl gods including members of the Aztec's pantheon; the Maya have similarities in their iconography, cosmology, and rituals to the Nahuatl. Pictograms in Texas have been interpreted as Tlaloc-like figures.
There is more to Mesoamerican religion than the human sacrifices performed by high priests, and it has spread farther than just the temples backed by the Triple Alliance's state apparatus.
Well yes and no. Gods like Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl did exist before the Aztec Empire, however the Aztec iteration of these beliefs were highly different to that of the Toltecs, Tlaxcalans, or Maya. A large portion of the Aztec mythos was rewritten by the government itself under Itzcoatl, and it was centered heavily around the Tlatoani himself and the priesthood. Now that isn't to say that other varieties of Mesoamerican religion won't survive, like that of the Maya or the Purepecha, or that Aztec religious practices won't survive after the collapse of their empire, but the highly centralized apparatus of the Aztec state religion won't survive without the eponymous Aztec state.
I think a Mesoamericanised version of Christianity would be the most likely religion that’s going to survive to the 21st century. It would have the elements of traditional mesoamerican culture while having elements of Christianity that would make it spread more easily.
I figured it would be something more like how Haitian Vodou descends from the West African Vodun and other faiths. Like how Eshu, an orisha of the Yoruba faith is Papa Legba in Haitian Vodou
I imagine something similar would happen here.
I think it's most likely to be like this. No human sacrifices though, and there would be a much more orthodox church in areas where the natives have more interaction with the Europeans. I think the main difference though is that folk ways and Christian orthodoxy would be more like a gradient. You can see the extremes of each side is quite far from each other, but most people's beliefs would lie somewhere between the scale, which would be interesting.
Eh, i dont think any colonial power would penetrate that inland in sparsely populated North America during the early 1500s. No power really did that until the late 1600s otl, and even if its sped up ittl, sheer technological logistics of the era mean that such a level of penetration could be achieved around late to early 1500s-1600s.
A lot of that control is only nominal (especially in Florida), the Georgian gold fields attract thousands of settlers in a few years, and if De Soto's wikipedia entry is accurate the South had some large-ish native populations at the time of his OTL expedition.
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I'd figure it will be a much more organized religion than Vodou and/or Santeria in the Caribbean since it will enjoy state sponsorship. But as stated above, I do think some form of Christianity will take over. Superficially it might look like Christianity in OTL's Southern Mexico where syncretism is felt the most. But that syncretism will be much more widespread, and as Quinkana notes there will be gradients from places where it will nearly resemble folk "Mexica" beliefs and places that will be much more orthodox. Some specific details in this religious mix we're likely to see include:
- Open veneration of the personification death / Mictlantecuhtli. In OTL this basically went underground until it remerged as Santa Muerte in the 20th century. I suspect the public worship won't ever grow underground in TTL and would just keep going strong.
- A more overt fusion of the Virgin Mary with Tonantzin / Coatlicue. Folks in TTL's Mesoamerica might straight-up worship "Our Lady the Virgin Tonantzin" and keep some of the visual cues (such as the snakeskin skirt) in their depictions of the Virgin.
- Similar fusion of other gods with certain saints.
- And the casual veneration / superstitious reference to some forces of nature, - i.e. "pray to Tlaloc it doesn't rain today".
Exactly, there had been little exploration due to little knowledge of the terrain - and swamp-filled coast that made it difficult for Europeans to set up base. But in the 1500s the South had a sizable population, which was hit particularly hard by European diseases brought by DeSoto's expedition. If the Georgia goldfields are discovered during the expedition, it will provide a good enough incentive for Spain to explore up the Savannah and Chattahoochee Rivers into Georgia's interior. This will hit the natives just as hard or worse than OTL. But somewhat, ironically, records of the tribes true numbers and organization might survive better than OTL is the Spanish setup missions there and these do their part in record keeping.
I meant more into places like Sinaloa and Guanajuato where extensive silver and gold mines were found
I think even if they are “technically” Catholic, the Pope might be too far away for the Mesoamerican leaders to give anything more than lip service to the Papacy. Furthermore, rivalries between the different kingdoms/empires might mean that if / when the Mexica go Catholic the Purepecha (or Chichimecas) might go Protestant.
They're nowhere near either of those places right now, so it's not possible for them to go there.
Interesting enough there's a tradition in Mexico during the Semana Santa, where reenactments of the crucifiction go quite far even IOTL, i.e. where the person representing Christ is really nailed to the cross after being flagellated with metal whips and having carried the cross for quite some distance. A Christian version of the blood sacrifice might also be rather popular in syncretistic Mexica Christianity - self-flagellation.
