WI: Nahua migrated northeast/east to the remnants of the Mississippian culture?

What effects would this have on Mexican civilization, and do you think the Nahua would have picked up where the Cahokians left off, or just become another tribal group of that area?
 
Not directly picked up. So many conditions in the rise and day of the Choikans I cant see another group simply stepping in to continue the sort of dominate group the Choikans were. Any group that 'replaced' them would do so though after evolving to take advantage of somewhat different conditions in the region.
 
Would they be able to make cities like they did in central America? I don't know a lot about pre-contact native Americans, so I really am asking.
 
The Nahua moving east has bigger implications than just the Aztec empire-the Nahua migration was part of a north-south migration of Uto-Aztecan speaking peoples that started (probably) in California (probably) 5,000 years ago.

If it turns eastward at a point early enough to get the Nahua to the Misissippi, then the Native population of what's now northern Mexico would be very different, and tribes speaking various languages related to Nahua would dominate the southern plains* at least at the point of the alt-Columbian contact.

Mesoamerican civilizations possibly would not have had to deal with invasions from the North, and would have a different makeup. Possibly their civilization would be more advanced due to not having disruptions caused by invasion, but this is not a guarantee. Potential alt-'Aztecs' who would come to dominate the region include the Huastec people of western Mexico (whose language is a Mayan language) or people speaking the Kiowa-Tanoan languages (who IOTL became the Pueblo peoples).

Could the Nahua avert the Mississippian collapse? It's not impossible, but they can't avert environmental problems such as the little ice age. And the Nahua somehow saving the Mississippian civilization would probably not mean much post-contact. At least some of the Mississippian culture survived until contact with Europeans (the Natchez) but having the hallmarks of civilization such as clustering in large settlements and living in a hierarchical society did fuck all for actually helping them against the invaders.



*yes that happened OTL, but totally different migration coming from the north rather than the west and an entirely different branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family.
 
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Remember that there were large, viable Mississippian cities in the south as late as Hernando de Soto.

That's LATE. If Nahua move east instead of south, which Wiki, at least, dates to ~500 BCE, then they're going to arrive before the Mississippian culture sensu stricto arises - probably during the Woodland Period, interacting with the Baytown culture.

That's going to have huge butterflies/knock-ons, but I really doubt that it affects the survival of that culture - at least positively.
 
The Uto-Aztecan peoples probably migrated from the region northwest Mexico since that is where the greatest variation in its languages is, pointing to that being the area it's been around the longest. The Nahua were not all that different originally from many of the "barbarian" peoples to the north of the Classical civilized area, other than being numerous, and every time there was chaos in central Mexico northern barbarians would come wandering in. If the Nahua went elsewhere another tribe would have probably replaced them like the Otomi (who came in with the Nahua migrations after the fall of the Toltecs) or perhaps a different Uto-Aztecan group (the Huichol most likely). Teotihuacan's ethnic origins are disputed but the Valley of Mexico and surrounding areas seem to have undergone a steady Nahuazation after it fell due to these migrations.

If the Nahua leave their original homeland (likely in San Luis Potosi or the surrounding area) around 500 BC it would take a a few centuries for the main mass to reach the Lower Mississippi, probably around 500 AD-ish at least. They might be able to bring better varieties of corn and beans or more advanced bowmaking technology due to their origins near Mexico. By that time the Mississippi cultures had a few corn varieties already; but they didn't have beans yet and those would be more significant both as food and for their nitrogen-fixing capacities. I have read that the Mississippians might have had soil exhaustion issues which may have caused the period of decline they were in when the Europeans showed up. Stave that off, and perhaps there will be both a more numerous and more organized set of tribes along the rivers when they arrive, though, probably, not one that will stay independent unless they play their cards exceptionally well.
 
Remember that there were large, viable Mississippian cities in the south as late as Hernando de Soto.

That's LATE. If Nahua move east instead of south, which Wiki, at least, dates to ~500 BCE, then they're going to arrive before the Mississippian culture sensu stricto arises - probably during the Woodland Period, interacting with the Baytown culture.

That's going to have huge butterflies/knock-ons, but I really doubt that it affects the survival of that culture - at least positively.

Re: The Navarro expedition contemporary to De Soto.
 
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