Haida Civilization: leader 3d, animated, era specific, icons included...

Well, the Iroquois Confederacy was quite peaceful as far as relations between the member tribes goes, and it was remarkable in that way. But peaceful? No! They were *the* most feared group in the northeast by all the other tribes. The Hurons too had a Confederacy not unlike the Iroquois, a sort of democratic republic of sorts and a union of tribes. In the late 1500s a major war broke out between them and the Iroquois who were aggressively expanding because they sought to take control of the fur-trading routes that led further inland. Not only did they attack the Huron, they destroyed numerous of the smaller "neutral" nations (eg the Oue Rohronans) or forced them to assist. In the end they won, smashing the Huron Confederacy which totally collapsed. Some were adopted into Iroquois tribes (Onandaga and Mohawk mainly) but as a group, they were wiped out.

The Iroquois also did a splendid job of securing their position in the face of white settlement, having protected their lands for several centuries before being overrun, and their military prowess played no small part. For over 150 years they were at war with the French without ever really suffering a decisive defeat. Not many native groups survived the kind of intense European encroachment that happened in their area for as long as the Confederacy did (from about 1600 to 1779), particularly not while at war with them the whole time.
 
Sword_Of_Geddon said:
Wasn't it the Iroquois who attacked New England Settlements during King Phillip's War?
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No .. that was groups along the coastal lands, on the far side of the Appalachians, like the Wampanoag and many many other small tribes. Those groups actually felt threatened by the massive expansion of the Confederacy that was occuring then. They were more or less allied with the French (although it didn't really help much) who were at war with the Iroquois. One of the main reasons they sought to push the English into the sea was because they were trapped between the English and the Iroqouis and the situation looked very grim indeed (as it was). At that time, attacking the colonists was alot more palatable than attacking the Confederacy; they came very close to winning against the colonists, but would surely have been destroyed fighting the Iroqouis. In the 1600s the Confederacy was an extremely powerful force. They controlled a vast empire from the Appalachians to Michigan that was at its peak in the late part of that century. If they had participated in the war - there is not a doubt in my mind the English would have been wiped out. But they did not view the newcomers as enemies truly, they were much more concerned about rivalries with neighbouring native groups. The only reason they were at war with the French was because of their good relations with the Huron.

You really have to understand what was going on with the Confederacy to understand King Phillip's war. It was in an imperial phase, subjugating all the surrounding groups in the area. Those who submitted without resistance became second-class members of what was, in effect, an empire. Those who did not were hunted down to the last man. The Confederacy wanted the Iroqouis to have absolute supremacy in the empire, sort of like Rome towards its non-citizen subjects, and they didn't want to have internal trouble in the polity they sought to create, so resistant groups were not just attacked, they were exterminated. The groups in the coastal region were understandably frightened. It didn't help matters that the English were supplying the Iroqouis with metal and firearms (because the Iroquois were the only large supplier of beaver furs for the English, and because they were fighting the French and trying to wrest the fur-trade from them - the enemy of my enemy, etc etc). This was probably a huge factor in the war.

Don't take this as meaning that the Confederacy was an "evil empire" it was just a typical empire in an expansionist phase, not unlike most others. They probably had good intentions in mind, namely, unifying the native groups into the area into a single, powerful nation. Had they begun earlier, or been a bit more harsh and speeded up the pace, they might just have succeeded in creating an entity powerful enough to check European colonization. As it was, they were just a bit shy of the mark - and in history it is often "miss by an inch, miss by a mile".
 
The Iroquois didn't really stop trying to build an empire until Tecumseh was killed in the war of 1812, did they? Now that's resilience. North American Geopolitics would be alot more interesting today if they had succeeded.
 
Well ... Tecumseh was Shawnee ... most of his followers were Cherokee and Shawnee, but there were assorted others including Iroquois ... he was trying to unify all the native groups but it was a completely different thing than what the Confederacy had started 200 years earlier. Tecumseh was trying to pick up broken pieces and forge them into a large, egalitarian alliance of native groups via ideology rather than conquest; the Iroqouis in the 1600s were a vibrant nation expanding their hegemony by force. His vision was much more expansive but alot less practical - and in the Confederacy's heyday it would have been far more impractical. The native nations were still fairly strong at that time and didn't have much interest in submitting (willingly) to any kind of greater union. Even in Tecumseh's time many native leaders balked at the idea of losing their influence over their people to a greater union.

By Tecumseh's time the Iroqouis "empire" of subjugated tribes was long-gone and all that was left was the Confederation itself, and not in very good shape. But they did participate in his campaigns, at various times.

What really collapsed the Iroqouis' expansive phase was the defeat of the French in North America in the Seven Years' War. As British power grew throughout the 18th century, so the Confederacy's empire waned. Between the Europeans and the natives, it was a race to achieve hegemony over their own peoples; and in the end the English managed to do it before the Iroqouis did. The wider empire of the Confederacy, its external holdings, was already in collapse before the Revolution.

Tecumseh's idea was more of an egalitarian republic than an empire. He was a great man - his enemies were always impressed with him. His big mistake was throwing in with the British - they didn't back him up very well, just saw him and his men as fodder more or less. They ran from a few battles to leave Tecumseh to fight. The sad thing is, he is today more celebrated in the US than in Canada, a country that might well not exist if it weren't for him - and all he has is a small town named after him there and I do believe they have dedicated a small rock - no plaque or carving - to him. It's deplorable.
 
You folks know much about the North American tribes, I'm impress! :eek: There is few folks that know about the Brazilian tribes, I know the Tupi tribes (Tamoio, Tabajara, Guarani, Guaiacuru...) had your own confederence for a short time, the leader was Cacique Cunhambebe, they fought against the abuses of the Portugueses, just was defeat, cos they were betrait.
 
We could do that What If? Scenerio you were talking about earlier Civarmy..

Frekk, we could use your help with all your historical knowledge, you to if you want Mobilize.

Heres my question, if the Spanish Conquest of the Incans didn't occur(Or Pizzaro lost for some reason) and English colonys never really took ahold, what would the nations of North and South America be today? Would N.America be split between the Iroquois, Cherokee and Sioux and perhaps the Haida? And would the Incans have dominated most of S.America?

Ideas?
 
Sword_Of_Geddon said:
We could do that What If? Scenerio you were talking about earlier Civarmy..

Frekk, we could use your help with all your historical knowledge, you to if you want Mobilize.

Heres my question, if the Spanish Conquest of the Incans didn't occur(Or Pizzaro lost for some reason) and English colonys never really took ahold, what would the nations of North and South America be today? Would N.America be split between the Iroquois, Cherokee and Sioux and perhaps the Haida? And would the Incans have dominated most of S.America?

Ideas?
Click to expand...

I suppose this depends. Did the Portugese, French and Dutch colonies take hold?
 
Sword_Of_Geddon said:
We could do that What If? Scenerio you were talking about earlier Civarmy..

Frekk, we could use your help with all your historical knowledge, you to if you want Mobilize.

Heres my question, if the Spanish Conquest of the Incans didn't occur(Or Pizzaro lost for some reason) and English colonys never really took ahold, what would the nations of North and South America be today? Would N.America be split between the Iroquois, Cherokee and Sioux and perhaps the Haida? And would the Incans have dominated most of S.America?

Ideas?
Click to expand...

That's alot of guesswork!

It's very hard to say. Look at the history of Eurasia. Some places that were really backwards when the first civilizations appeared - like Western Europe - became prominent, while other areas fell from power. Also people moved around all over the place. It's really difficult to say what it would have looked like. It also depends on what exactly didn't occur or happened differently. Any contact at all would have greatly changed things, whether there was settlement and conquest or not. Just trade contact - which would be inevitable once Europeans discovered the new continents - would really affect things alot; it would still bring smallpox, guns, metal, knowledge, horses.
If you're talking about no contact at all, it's a good guess to figure that the plains groups would probably not rise to power, not without horses. The chief areas would be the ones who had access to good agricultural land, lots of waterways to promote trade (necessary without horses) a strategic location, etc etc. My guess would tend towards the main centres being located in: the Valley of Mexico; Andes Mtns; Pacific Northwest; Great Lakes/St. Lawrence area; the Mississipi River; and the entire Atlantic seaboard, from Florida to Nova Scotia. I prefer to speak in areas because the people move around, sometimes their political system collapses or they are dislodged from a good region, etc. In any case the Americas would be a vast patchwork of cultures, there would be a few really major powers here and there in a sea of smaller entities, same thing as in Eurasia. I don't think it would be carved up between just 3 or 4 major powers, at least not in North America. There would be dozens upon dozens of nations.

The Yucatan is sort of a wildcard, its really a guess what would happen there. If a new power arose in the wake of the collapse of the Mayapan Confederacy, it might have rose to prominence, otherwise it might have just remained a divided collection of tiny kingdoms in the shadow of groups to the north, particularly the Valley of Mexico.

One thing I'm pretty sure of though is that technological advancement from the 1500 to now would not have been very great without any contact. There were at a stage of development where progress is fairly slow, just like things didn't change much in Eurasia from say 3000 BC to 2500 BC. There would probably be a few major developments - most likely advances in metalworking, perhaps bronze would have been more widely known and copper would become alot more common. But I doubt in 500 years they would have gone from early copper/ late stone age technology to the iron age or anything.
 
I'm thinking the Iroquois would probably pretty much call the shots throughout the entire Great Lakes Basin, destroying or incorporating the Hurons. If they had horses, the tribes of the northern plains (who were never really given to permanent settlement) would become like the 'Mongols of North America,' launching daring cavalry raids against their sedentary, agricultural neighbours, and being too widespread for anyone to really do anything about it (at least not for a few centuries, until the various sedentary tribes started colonising their territories with agricultural settlements). I doubt that the Yucatan peoples could have pulled it together in time to avoid conquest by the Aztecs, and the Incas would likely have eventually subjugated the entire Andes region, but never really be able to expand beyond the Amazon rainforest. I'm afraid that I don't know enough about the other South American tribes to speculate further about their fates. The Haida, being the strongest tribe along the pacific might well have conquered everything along the coast from the Alaskan panhandle through to California.
All of this might have happened at some point or another in the last five hundred years, but likely, by this point in time, things would have become radically and unpredictably different. Who knows?

Perhaps a more interesting question about this alternate timeline is this: If the earliest attempts at European colonialism had been thwarted by natives, and that had prevented the entire colonial era from ever taking place, what would have happened around the entire world then?
 
The Tupi do not have a central command, for this reason they not did a real civilization, just had them own confederation to fight against the European abuses. This confederation have putted togheter many tribes from present southeast of Brazil, mainly from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro states and it was destroyed, cos they signed a peace treat with Portuguese and was betrayt. The first battles were won by Tupi using archers, canoes and horsemen (that Guayacuru unit) against powder weapons, it shows the power of this condeferation. Maybe, if the Inca or another civilization had arrived in Tupi territory the condeferation could born and defeat the invasors, maybe it could continue and had been the beginning of a big Tupi empire. Maybe could born many Tupi empires, that could fight each others, cos the invasions or fight toghter.
About Jês and Arawak (aka Aruaks), other important races in present Brazil, mainly in Amazon, they are too pacific and were defeat by Tupi and Carib in the past, maybe these race could be missing or slaved after wars against Inca, Carib, Tupi and others.

ACM could has a scenario using just that native tribes in a fantasy war!!!
 
My guess is as good as anyone elses here. I think the real technological and societital leaps would begin when at least several major nations sprang into existance, and then began trading with each other. The real advancement would occur when the Azteks, Haida, Iroquois, Cherokee, and Incans each learned of each other's existances, when trade, and perhaps eventually even war began. Warfare has the ununual side effect of stimulation scientific advancement.
 
It seems like the introduction of Horses to the Americas would free-up movement across the continent and thereby contribute to the free spread of ideas and technology, leading to a 'snowball effect' for scientific development.
 
And their very presence might have stimulated the invention of the wheel.

I've read that their actually were Horses in the Americas in the Neolithic, but they went extinct. Makes me wonder what would have happened if they has survived (images of Iroquois musket cavalry storming Crusader Europe running through my mind...now that would have been cool)
 
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