OTL tehre were instances of native Americans leaving their native homelands, mostly against their will, as illustrated most famously by the likes of Pocahontas (who's buried in Gravesend, Kent, where I've worked a fair bit), Squanto, and Beothuks IIRC who were taken during Frobisher's late 16th C expeditions for the NW Passage and exhibited in London. I also believe there's even a small northern native American community in Guyana, and Seminole communities in Mexico as well as in Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. Now, is there any possibility that native Americans of NA from 1600 onwards could've somehow been taken from their homelands to some other geographically-removed place so's they could've established their own largescale communities in these new lands ? Would that have been possible after the RW ?
Native Americans outside North America
- Thread starter Melvin Loh
- Start date
Grey Wolf said:
ARW,RW = The American Revolutionary War, War of Independance, or what you will.
Leo Caesius
Banned
Perhaps the native Americans are convinced by the Mormons that they are, in fact, descendants of the 12 Tribes of Israel, and settle in Palestine? If the Nagas can do it, so can the Native Americans!
The native Innuit or Beothuks could have survived in the Falklands with sheep and maybe cattle and horses. Musk oxen?
Bermuda would have seemed like paradise. So would the Seychelles.
There are some small islands like Ascension and Pitcairn that aren't too bad.
Mauritius and Reunion are large, but tropical and susceptible to malaria when they were revisited by Europeans. Ditto Sao Tomas and Principe. Annobon is small and susceptible to malaria.
Kerguelen is also possible. It gets snow in all months, but it can support sheep, so it could support people. Again, that's going to be Beothuk territory. They would plant walnut, chestnut, beechnut, and maybe other cold weather trees and tend them for starches. Chestnut is a very starchy nut. What other cold weather starches are available? Cranberries and blueberries and American grapes and blackberries. Plums and apples are probably not going to make it. Wild rice is in Minnesota and isn't going to available. Or is it?
Where did they grow wild rice in 1600?
Bermuda would have seemed like paradise. So would the Seychelles.
There are some small islands like Ascension and Pitcairn that aren't too bad.
Mauritius and Reunion are large, but tropical and susceptible to malaria when they were revisited by Europeans. Ditto Sao Tomas and Principe. Annobon is small and susceptible to malaria.
Kerguelen is also possible. It gets snow in all months, but it can support sheep, so it could support people. Again, that's going to be Beothuk territory. They would plant walnut, chestnut, beechnut, and maybe other cold weather trees and tend them for starches. Chestnut is a very starchy nut. What other cold weather starches are available? Cranberries and blueberries and American grapes and blackberries. Plums and apples are probably not going to make it. Wild rice is in Minnesota and isn't going to available. Or is it?
Where did they grow wild rice in 1600?
The problem is that any areas outside of what would later become the continental USA were also undergoing colonial development and European settlement themselves - or were already densly populated non-western areas like China, SE Asia, Africa, and Japan. Thus, it's hard to believe Indians could escape anywhere to develop on their own.
Mexico is probably the most likely option. It could be reached overland, was essentially a Native American/mestizo population anyway, and displaced American Indians would not suffer significant racism - at least not any more than the majority of Mexicans did under Spanish and Creole rule. I believe the Seminoles were not the only Indians to have some members flee to Mexico. However, Mexico was not necessarily a haven for aboriginal cultures. Spanish-speaking and conversion to Catholicism was pretty much expected. Elsewhere in latin America are also options for voluntary resettlement.
If you are talking about forced resettlement out of the future USA by US authorities - perhaps in league with other Europeans - the only place which seems empty enough (sorry native Australians) is the Melvin's favorite homeland. Of course, most of the country would not led itself to the horticultural practices of most eastern Indian groups - being generally dryer than Oklahoma - which itself semed to be a pretty awful place when the Five Nations were resettled here.
Here's a wierd Alternate TL along those lines: For some inexplicable reason the Brits and Yanks (or possibly the Yanks while they were still Brits and the Brits) decide on a massive program to resettle American Indians in Australia. Over the late 18th and early 19th Centuryundreds of thousands of Indians are setlled in eastern Australia, and give protection of the crown. Although missionized and nominally Christianized, they are provided general autonomy to organize their settlements as they wish. British establish forts to protect these people from aborigines and rogue white convicts settled there previously under an earlier silly scheme to use the place as a penal colony. Eventually Indian Australia assumes political self rule within the British Empire (which also hopefully still includes those American troublemakers).
Perhaps the best possibility would be for an early, voluntary exodus of people like the five nations, Iroqouis, and other more advanced farming groups to the eastern Plains and Mississippi valley area long before western settlement encroached in these areas, where they might perhaps set up quasi independent states and be better prepared to resist or negotiate better deals with the Americans as they eventually pushed westward. This would have required an ASB level of forseight and still might not have worked.
Mexico is probably the most likely option. It could be reached overland, was essentially a Native American/mestizo population anyway, and displaced American Indians would not suffer significant racism - at least not any more than the majority of Mexicans did under Spanish and Creole rule. I believe the Seminoles were not the only Indians to have some members flee to Mexico. However, Mexico was not necessarily a haven for aboriginal cultures. Spanish-speaking and conversion to Catholicism was pretty much expected. Elsewhere in latin America are also options for voluntary resettlement.
If you are talking about forced resettlement out of the future USA by US authorities - perhaps in league with other Europeans - the only place which seems empty enough (sorry native Australians) is the Melvin's favorite homeland. Of course, most of the country would not led itself to the horticultural practices of most eastern Indian groups - being generally dryer than Oklahoma - which itself semed to be a pretty awful place when the Five Nations were resettled here.
Here's a wierd Alternate TL along those lines: For some inexplicable reason the Brits and Yanks (or possibly the Yanks while they were still Brits and the Brits) decide on a massive program to resettle American Indians in Australia. Over the late 18th and early 19th Centuryundreds of thousands of Indians are setlled in eastern Australia, and give protection of the crown. Although missionized and nominally Christianized, they are provided general autonomy to organize their settlements as they wish. British establish forts to protect these people from aborigines and rogue white convicts settled there previously under an earlier silly scheme to use the place as a penal colony. Eventually Indian Australia assumes political self rule within the British Empire (which also hopefully still includes those American troublemakers).
Perhaps the best possibility would be for an early, voluntary exodus of people like the five nations, Iroqouis, and other more advanced farming groups to the eastern Plains and Mississippi valley area long before western settlement encroached in these areas, where they might perhaps set up quasi independent states and be better prepared to resist or negotiate better deals with the Americans as they eventually pushed westward. This would have required an ASB level of forseight and still might not have worked.