Wolfborn: A Native American Timeline

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    • Sarthak

    Sarthak

    Wolfborn
    A Native American Timeline
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    ​

    I am the wolfborn, the spirit of history, the core of today, and the heart of tomorrow.
    I am wolfborn of this land.

    -     Old Sioux Poem.
    ​
    Welcome to Wolfborn: A Native American Timeline! Where Natives are given the due focus they deserve with a chance to make it out far better than they did historically. This timeline will focus on four primary groups that will make it out surviving - The Salish, Sioux, Californios, and the Comanches/Apache. This timeline starts in 1695 AD.
     
  • Index
    • Chapter 1: Spark of Innovation (1695)
  • Index
    • Sarthak

    Sarthak

    Chapter 1: Spark of Innovation (1695)

    During the early months of the summer of 1695, a single Native American emissary moved north from Mde Wakan through the Mississippi River towards the vaunted Hudson Bay region. French traders guided the canoes upstream against the current, as the nervous emissary stayed quiet for most of the journey. The name of this emissary was Tiyoskate. The Teton Sioux, known as the Lhakhota by the French colonialists of New France, on the orders of the Seven Council Fires had sent their most experienced diplomat towards the Hudson Bay Company. Moving along the St. Croix River, Tiyoskate knew that a heavy burden had fallen onto his shoulders, for the future of the Sioux Confederacy – a loosely allied confederation of the Sioux tribes under the Seven Council Fires – depended on him and his diplomatic efforts.

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    Old seal of the Seven Council Fires    ​

    After months of travelling through the northern rivers and forests, in early August, 1695, the small convoy reached Fort Albany. There, Tiyoskate believed he would meet with the Governor of the Hudson Bay Company, Sir Stephen Evance. Fort Albany was small, and destitute compared to the grand settlements of the French which Tiyoskate had visited in the past. The fort held nothing of the beauty that Montreal permeated. But for Tiyoskate, that did not matter. Upon leaving his canoe, he thanked his French contractors for their service, and asked his English and Scottish receivers to take him to the Governor of the Company at once. The English were skeptical of the wishes of this Native, but the Scots, led by Captain Nathan Grant moved to accept this request. Reluctantly, the English acquiesced to the sympathy shown towards the Natives by the Scots, and arranged for an audience the next day.

    On the 7th of August, 1695, the audience was held, with a 30-man militia of the Hudson Bay Company ceremoniously welcoming Tiyoskate to Fort Albany, even though he had already spent the night there. Though hundreds of his native compatriots had turned to New France, Tiyoskate and the Seven Council Fires had turned towards the English [1]. Sir Stephen Evance and the great English explorer, Henry Kelsey were in attendance. Evance, the Governor of the Hudson Bay Company was unenthusiastic about the meeting and audience, but spurred on by Kelsey who was eager to hear about the Sioux, he welcomed Tiyoskate and asked him to make himself at home, so that the English could process Tiyoskate’s requests on a case per case basis. Tiyoskate began to weep. These were not only the ceremonious tears that the Sioux were known to do when meeting with diplomats that they were friendly with, but these were emotional tears. The Sioux were beset on all sides, and Tiyoskate called out to Evance, stating, “All the Nations have a father, but we are bastards in search of a new father.” (Hudson Bay Company Records @1690 – 1700 AD). Tiyoskate bent down to his knees and laid out priceless furs from inland America, and then laid down twenty-two arrows at the feet of the surprised Evance, naming the 22 sub-tribes of the Sioux, asking Evance to accept Tiyoskate, and by extension, the Sioux people as his children, to bring to them, their guns, and their iron weapons to the Sioux people for use against their enemies.

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    Henry Kelsey    ​

    The Hudson Bay Company’s Governor was caught off-guard by the request of finding a ‘father’. Not a veteran of native affairs, he had no idea what it meant emotionally and politically. Kelsey on the other hand, understood immediately. The Sioux emissary was asking the Governor of the Hudson Bay Company to become their Onontio – Great Mountain. The Onontio would mediate wars and conflicts between allied tribes and in return for fur and influence in their native regions, the English would provide the tribe with a steady supply of iron weapons and guns (alongside its ammunition). Kelsey turned towards Evance and explained the idea to him, giving the example of the Governor of New France, who was the titular Onontio of the Great Lake native tribes.

    The contract between an Onontio and a Tribe was absolute. The Sioux would not trade with any other European power but the English, and would go to war with any local enemy of the English. In return, the English would protect them from other European powers and then give them the western goods the tribes wanted. It was a good deal, Evance told Tiyoskate, showing a positive response, but Tiyoskate hesitated. The Teton Sioux emissary knew tales from the Iroquois, about how they were the only native tribe to smelt their own iron weapons – still though, how to produce gunpowder to make guns eluded all native tribes in the region. To ask the secret towards gun-making was something that Tiyoskate knew he would never be able to haggle, but like the Iroquois, he knew he could haggle some secrets of smelting and iron-working if he was cunning and lucky. With the promise of extending English influence towards the Great Plains, Tiyoskate slowly extended the request of teaching blacksmithing techniques to Sioux people. Evance was pensive about the request. He knew that the Iroquois were reliable English allies and they controlled their own smelting processes. Ambition caught the better of him, and despite some hesitance on his part, he accepted the offer, and told Tiyoskate that some blacksmiths would be sent to Sioux territory alongside Tiyoskate’s return journey, with Henry Kelsey accompanying them to document the Sioux.

    Joyous at his diplomatic victory, Tiysokate bowed down to the Governor with all his might and proclaimed him to be the Onontio of the Sioux Nation. Evance accepted the offer graciously and allowed Tiyoskate to stay at Fort Albany for the week. On August 16, Tiyoskate led 4 English blacksmiths, Henry Kelsey and 2 soldiers towards his homeland.

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    The old remnants of Fort Albany    ​

    For nearly sixty years, the Sioux had labored, and Tiyoskate’s victory was a victory for their entire nation. Before the 1630s, the Sioux had no contact with the Europeans, but as the French allied themselves with the Wyandot, their trade network, often pushed and backed by the powerful French militias began to dominate trade around the Great Lakes. The French wanted iron, and in their quest for greater iron resources, they drew the Sioux into conflict. The Cree People, who came into contact with the French were Siouan enemies, and suddenly with French trade, they began to use guns in battle, using weapons that the Sioux had never seen before.

    Where the Cree now had iron weapons, the Sioux were using stones. They were technologically behind. The Sioux were thus being violently hemmed in by native tribes who were able to trade properly with the French. There were hundreds of tribes between them and the Europeans, and thus isolated as a result. Despite the technology gap however, the Sioux were anything by defenseless. Perhaps their greatest strength was that their population was very high. Numbering ~30,000 by ~1650, they outnumbered their neighbor tribes by a great amount. And all of these peoples shared a strong common identity through the Seven Council Fires, or Ochethi Sakowin in the Sioux tongue. Sioux lands were bountiful and fertile enough to feed a growing population through farming and hunting itself. The diseases brought from the Old World that devastated tribes had a comparatively light effect on the Sioux due to their larger numbers compared to their neighbors.

    By 1650, despite the shock of seeing their enemies wield such thunderous weapons known as Thundersticks to them, stability seemed to have returned to Sioux society. But this stability was not to last. From 1648 – 1654, the Iroquois Confederacy launched devastating attacks against the tribes living next to the Great Lakes, with some marauding Iroquois war-bands reaching as far as Lake Superior. These attacks were the most ferocious and damaging in North American native history until that point. Wyandot villages were burned to the ground, and the Mascoutens, Kickapoos, Potawatomis, Odawas and other native tribes of the region were devastated by the relentless Iroquois attacks. The Iroquois took thousands as war prisoners, where they were either taken into slavery, adoption or execution. The Iroquois did not reach Sioux lands, and if any Sioux was killed in the conflict, none are recorded. But their attacks fundamentally changed Sioux society forever.

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    The Iroquois attack     ​

    The thousands of refugee tribes that fled wet from the Iroquois brought with them unnecessary conflict, in the viewpoint of the tribes already living there. The Ojibwe in particular, were angered by the encroachment of their lands by the refugees and warred with them. Intermarriage and peaceful settlement and assimilation did take place, but wars were more frequent rather than not. On the shores of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, a great refugee (re)settlement took place, which brought with it the attention of the French Colonial Empire. The French allied themselves with the new refugee tribes, and created new trade networks in the area, managed from La Pointe du Chequamegon. It brought with it a gunpowder revolution into Sioux territory. The Sauteurs, Wyandots, Odawas acquired enough gunpowder weapons from the French that they turned those guns not only on the Iroquois, but also on the Seven Council Fires of the Sioux nation. Those tribes needed fur to trade for more guns, and the Sioux lands were rich in fur.

    Gunpowder warfare was something that the Sioux had never seen. They had only been exposed to small sporadic guns in the past, but with entire tribal parties made up of muskets, it was as if the Gods had brought down their wraths on the Sioux people. As a result, the eastern borderlands of the Sioux became a horrific place for the Sioux. They had to confront enemies that could accurately kill them from distances where their arrows could never reach and suffered wounds that their healers and physicians struggled to heal even with all their practice behind them. The Sioux became desperate to secure guns. Whenever they captured Odawa parties, instead of the normal war practice of taking them as slaves, the Sioux returned them back home, and in return, begged for guns and iron weapons from the Odawa. The Odawa were filled with contempt with the pitiful begging of the Sioux and refused every time.

    In 1660, the Sioux got the break they needed, when during a peace settlement, they were invited to a feast where French traders were going to be present. Pierre Esprit Radisson, a French adventurer trader was in attendance of the so called ‘Feast of Death’. The Sioux ambassadors at the feast seized their chance, introducing themselves to Radisson and his present brother-in-law Medard Chuart Des Groseilliers. The ambassadors flattered the French, complimenting everything, much to the Frenchmen’s embarrassment when even intimate things were complimented. The Sioux ambassadors also elevated the Frenchmen as Takuye of the Sioux – non-blood related ‘friends’ of the Sioux. The Frenchmen were delighted and when they returned to Montreal after the feast, the path was opened towards French trade with the Sioux.

    By the 1680s, French iron and guns flowed into Sioux territory freely, but old enmities died hard. The Mascoutens massacred Sioux travelers regularly despite ostensibly being allied under the French umbrella. Kickapoo, Odawa and Wyandot tribes did the same as well. For the wellbeing of their trade, the Sioux tolerated these attacks, which remained small in size and projection. The construction of Fort Bonsecours in 1685 by Nicholas Perrot, a French adventurer, under the authority of New France at Sioux Nation’s border seemed like a great political victory for the Sioux, but was a dagger in disguise. The Mascouten in particular, believed this to be a slight, and attacked Sioux territories with such great intensity, aided by Odawa allies, that the Sioux had no other option than to respond. The French did want the Sioux on their side, but if it was a contest between the Odawa and the Sioux, then it was obvious who was going to be first priority and it was not the latter. The Sioux understood this, and by 1693, they were frustrated beyond belief and started to think about other options. When independent French adventurers and traders brought news of the English at Hudson Bay, the Sioux jumped on this opportunity.

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    Nicholas Perrot    ​

    In accordance with the deal that Tiyoskate had struck with the English at Fort Albany, in late December, 1695, the 4 English blacksmiths, 2 soldiers and Kelsey arrived in Sioux territory, where they settled down, bringing with them great amounts of guns and ammunition. A change was coming, even if neither the Sioux, nor the English knew it yet.

    [1] – The PoD. The English were desperate for expanding their network of trade into inland America at the time, whilst the Seven Fires Council has records of debating England or France before choosing France IOTL.
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  • Index

    • Leonidas

    Very exciting! I’m always happy to see another timeline that focuses on Native Americans and this period of history in general.
     

    Stretch

    Donor
    Assouf said:
    I'll wait to give my comments until after it's certain that this particular Sarthaka TL gets more than a single update and doesn't just fizzle out.
    Click to expand...
    Agreed. If the volume of maps he posts to the map thread decreases, there may be hope for this thread yet.
     
    Godot

    Godot

    Stretch said:
    Agreed. If the volume of maps he posts to the map thread decreases, there may be hope for this thread yet.
    Click to expand...
    Seeing as how he's already moved into a cricket tl which he's already declared to be a side project, I'd assume this is another thread relegated to the dustbin of the website
     

    Qastiel

    I am excited for this timeline. Of the Native Americans I'm only really in possession of a deep knowledge to do with the Comanche/Apache spheres and I've enjoyed some of your other timelines and learnt a lot from them so I look forward to more updates in this timeline too!

    I hope to see more little bits of native american culture like the poem you've gotten this timeline's title from, I think cultureposting and stuff can be really engaging. Anyway yeah, definitely looking forward to reading more.
     
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