If we had a better idea of how big America was...

[Mega Fauna Blitzkrieg]

Do you think we would have perpetuated quite so many lovely atrocities against the Natives, in our Eastern Seaboard early Colonial days?

I mean, do you think we would have been quite so diligent about taking allllllllllllllll the land by whatever means necessary, around the east coast, if we knew exactly how far away the west coast was?

[sgt.null]

yes. manifest destiny.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I concur. Even had there been twice as much land earlier generations would have felt that it was their right and patriotic duty to take ownership of all the land. We know better than that now--or at least we should know better--but I am not going to bet any money on that.

The unfortunate truth is that there was no way for the Native Americans ever to win that conflict. Too much distrust between the nations, their lack of technology, and their lack of a centralized military force. The only strategy that would have approached victory would have been to completely slaughter every attempt at colonization beginning in 1600...but this might have only delayed the inevitable because England would have sent troops by the thousand.

[Mega Fauna Blitzkrieg]

Sad but probably true.

Really sad since Native communities don't really...grow. They only need like one little valley per vast area of land. Actually, why don't their communities and land requirements grow? Do Algonquins eat babies? O_O

Actually, I had a history class that said it's pretty likely that the native population across the continent was a lot lot lot lot higher, like enough to actually fight back even if they all are using spears, but our white people diseases spread far faster and beyond our colonization areas, and basically WMD'd the native population of North America and South America.

I mean, it's not a debate that our diseases killed a lot of them, but this class was putting out like genocide numbers. We have this concept that most of the Americas were unsettled and the Natives were generally roving nomads, but apparently most of it was settled and we just managed to kill a lot more of them than we ever knew existed.

I should look into that.

[DoctorGamgee]

As I recall, the native population was quite large at one time. Enough at least that the ships going up and down the coast were aware of their presence by the smell of smoke while still out at sea. However, a plague hit them just about the time that Jamestown was settled, (not the same strain, but certainly akin to the black death which hit Europe in terms of numbers of fatalities). Had that never happened, our fight would have been harder and less sure.

I have Choctaw ancestors, but am an Angelo when all is said and done. Perhaps that is why I tend to distrust the idea of government taking care of anything.

[Billy G.]

[sgt.null]

www.thefurtrapper.com/indian_smallpox.htm

some reading about disease and the native population of America.

[High Lord Tolkien]

It's a huge What-if type of question.
"What it the American Natives were immune to European plagues."

Much of the damage was done by plague before any European North American settlements.
The Spanish even longer down in South America.

Pizarro took over the Incan empire because it had been decimated by plague and had been fighting a civil war between two brothers because of it.

Cortes, similar thing.

The entire Mississippi valley was home to a Native American peoples but were all gone before Europeans even got there.


European fishing ships were interacting with Native Americans for over a 100 years before Jamestown.
The Pilgrims landed in Plymouth because they found fields cleared and land that had been worked because all the Natives in that area had died years before.
Massasoit welcomed the Pilgrims because he needed them to help against their Indian enemies that hadn't suffered as many plague losses.

Could history have been rewritten?
I'd say yes.
Add back 85% of the Native American population, erase all the culture shock and infrastructure collapse from all that death happening and things would have gone differently.
maybe America would have been more carved out?
Native Americans would have had more power as the country grew?
No one knows...

Think about if that happened today (forget about nukes for a minute).
85% of American population died in a few years....
China decides it's going to move in.
We'd be f#cked.

Forget about Chine, we might only have 3 plumbers left in the State of Mass or 10 electricians.
The Native American might have lost all the people that were best suited to deal with the Europeans.