Would Old-World disease resistant Native Americans be able to resist Settlers?

So, would the Native Americans (either North, South or both) be able to resist non-local encroachment on their lands, if not ravaged by foreign diseases?
Some historians speculate that up to 80% of the northern native americans died off-screen, meaning the diseases spread long before they became known to european settlers, so the colonists basically pushed west against a shallow remnant of the indigenous population.
The South American pandemics are better known, again with up to 80% mortality rate.
So presuming that both natives and settlers (and conquistadors) are resistant - that means none is more likely to get a foreign disease then the locals at the point of origin - to diseases, would the Natives be able to resist conquest if all other conditions are the same?
 
This is (almost) ASB. But to the original premise, almost certainly yes. The Spanish could of course not have conquered Mesoamerica and the Andes very easily, not at all.
 
Resist initially, yes. But there is still a big technology gap. If a European nation decides that it wants to move in badly enough it is only a matter of time.

They would likely need to ally themselves with friendly tribes and nurture those alliances better than before.
 
Cortez's conquest of Mexico was possible not because of disease, but because he arrived at a time where various native Mexican tribes were quite upset with the current state of Aztec dominance. Cortez's arrival presented an opportunity to overthrow that status quo, and so the bulk of Cortez's army actually came from the non-aztec cities of Mexico.


The Inca of south america, on the other hand, would have been in a much better position to handle Pizarro's arrival if they hadn't been ravaged by disease and the civil war that disease sparked. In all honestly Pizarro's conquest of the Inca reads more like a comic book bad guy's plan to take over the United States than an actual peace of history.


How things would have happened elsewhere is difficult to say, as we don't really have a clear picture of what native groups had what numbers where outside of those two regions.
 
Cortez's conquest of Mexico was possible not because of disease, but because he arrived at a time where various native Mexican tribes were quite upset with the current state of Aztec dominance. Cortez's arrival presented an opportunity to overthrow that status quo, and so the bulk of Cortez's army actually came from the non-aztec cities of Mexico.
Smallpox decimated the Aztec elite as well as Tenochtitlan itself, and also killed more in areas loyal to the Aztecs than in rebel areas (because Tenochtitlan was where the epidemic began). The dismembering of the empire does owe much to disease.
 
So, would the Native Americans (either North, South or both) be able to resist non-local encroachment on their lands, if not ravaged by foreign diseases?
Some historians speculate that up to 80% of the northern native americans died off-screen, meaning the diseases spread long before they became known to european settlers, so the colonists basically pushed west against a shallow remnant of the indigenous population.
The South American pandemics are better known, again with up to 80% mortality rate.
So presuming that both natives and settlers (and conquistadors) are resistant - that means none is more likely to get a foreign disease then the locals at the point of origin - to diseases, would the Natives be able to resist conquest if all other conditions are the same?

Short answer: ain't gonna happen.

Long answer:
Disease resistance doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens because people are exposed to diseases.
SO... The only way the New World can be resistant to Old World diseases is if there is a relatively constant interchange between the two (so that as new diseases arise/arrive in the Old World they are spread to the New).
In which case, there's no such thing as a 'New' World and history would be unrecognizably different.

The best you're going to get is one of two scenarios:
1) minor contact brings some of the worst diseases across early enough they can spread and resistance can develop. The problem with this is that, realistically, only one or two diseases will cross, and that's not going to be enough of a help. For instance, a contact with Iceland in a slightly more successful Vinland won't help with Smallpox (the worst of the killers) because there was no smallpox in Iceland at the time.
2) The New World natives have their own battery of diseases, also viral and bacterial. This levels the playing field the other direction. While epidemic Hanta Virus won't do much for saving *Aztecs from Small pox, it might wipe out enough of the *Conquistadors to allow the Aztecs to survive. (Obviously, with a PoD this early, neither Aztecs nor Conquistadors will be around, but reasonable equivalents might.) The problem with THIS scenario, is that most diseases start as zoonoses. So having major epidemic diseases endemic to the Americas likely requires common animal husbandry. This is doable - but the changes involved will again make New World societies unrecognizable. Moreover, those changes will improve the ability of New World societies to resist the invaders, regardless of diseases.

So.
With anything resembling the Old World/New World split, the challenge is ASB.
 
It's not just diseases. The systemic shock to Native societies wasn't just the result of disease, but also of slave raids (by both the Spanish and fellow Natives who then traded with the Spanish), economics changes like the pressure to sell furs to Europeans, newly introduced weapons that suddenly changed relative group strength (horses, etc.) and so on. The disease-only model is rather dated.

You'd also need a model of colonization that didn't involve economic exploitation of the land, its resources and its people. That's rather unlikely.
 
"The problem with THIS scenario, is that most diseases start as zoonoses."

The majority (over 70%) of new diseases that come from animals come from wild animals. There is no real evidence that this was not the case in the past; smallpox comes from rodents, malaria from IIRC gorillas...
 
Why are we assuming this gap was big enough to overcome numbers, or that Americans are incapable of adopting?
There is no need to assume. This happened, and it happened all the time.
Spanish were able to overcome both Aztec and Incas.
Europeans were also able to conquer Africa, where diseases were acting against them, and areas like India where technological difference was not this big.
It just took them longer than pacification of Native Americans, because their advantage was not that big.

Native American societies were generally unwilling to adopt technology (and unwilling is effectively the same as incapable), which is why we didn't see them adopt. They did bought muskets and rifles, but that was it, just trade. Virtually no manufacture of European technology.
Would, for example, Aztec be willing to end mass ritual sacrifice of their own subjects? If not, they are still gonna have problems, even with better technology.

Without disease massacring natives, it would took longer for them to be conquered and pacified, but it would still happen. They had land and gold, and that made them primary target for imperialism.
Only Chinese, Japanese, Persians, and Turks (and Thailand, I think...) were able to resist outright subjugation by Europeans, and those nations had large populations, technology just a century or two behind Europe, and were generally willing and able to adopt modern technology at rate that prevented them from staying way behind.

In short: no diseases would make it more likely for Native American societies to resist Europeans, but still pretty hard to pull off.
 
Virtually no manufacture of European technology.

18th century Native Americans were adopting European crops, and I assume we're not treating horses as a technology?

We also don't know how the Incans and Aztecs would have done, but it's noteworthy that colonial Mesoamerica saw European technology be adopted pretty quickly...
 
18th century Native Americans were adopting European crops, and I assume we're not treating horses as a technology?

We also don't know how the Incans and Aztecs would have done, but it's noteworthy that colonial Mesoamerica saw European technology be adopted pretty quickly...
Are centuries a short time spans? :confused:

I think mesoamerican and andean Civilizations have a chance to survive, after all the Incas were in Civil war situation and the Aztecs were attacked by both local rebels and Spanish conquistadors. The civil war was caused by smallpox after all so I think the Incas could somewhat likely survive OR at least have strong chance to rebel post-conquest.
 
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Even if Natives had their own diseases, it would only blunt the advance of European colonies. Considering the OTL death rate of colonists, more disease won't really do much more damage.
 
Spanish were able to overcome both Aztec and Incas.
In both of which (but particularly the latter) disease was a major factor, as most relevant historians agree. Anyways very large numbers of conquistador expeditions failed outright, again putting into doubt how important this technological advantage really was. We just remember the ones that succeeded.
Europeans were also able to conquer Africa, where diseases were acting against them, and areas like India where technological difference was not this big.
Most of Africa was not conquerable until the late 19th century, and even in the 18th century in most of the continent the Europeans were there largely because local rulers allowed them to be there. The French were forced to withdraw downriver from the Senegal River area when African allies decided not to support them anymore. Various Europeans paid tribute to Akan princes in return for operating factories on Akan land. Etc, etc. Check out Warfare in Atlantic Africa, it's a pretty good book.
You are, intentionally or unintentionally, conflating 19th century Europe with 16th century Europe. 16th century Europeans had no capability to actually conquer any important polity in Africa or India. 19th century Europeans did - but the conquest of the Americas heavily fueled European advances in the Early Modern era. I'm honestly not sure why you refer to such obviously anachronistic examples.
Native American societies were generally unwilling to adopt technology (and unwilling is effectively the same as incapable), which is why we didn't see them adopt. They did bought muskets and rifles, but that was it, just trade. Virtually no manufacture of European technology.
This is such a bizarre claim I don't really know how to begin to answer it, except by saying that you personally not knowing about something doesn't mean it didn't exist. See Inca metallurgy in Vilcabamba, for example. Or see the Narragansett Indians in New England, who had gun forges by the time of King Philippe's War. Or see the adoption of the horse in 18th-century Plains history. I could probably give more examples, but you see my point by now.
 
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