What might have happened: Let's say that sometime in the 1300's or the early 1400's, an obsidian 'sword' from central Mexico makes its way down a chain of middlemen to the Chimu area of South America. The timing is actually fairly tight on that. The 'swords' were a fairly recent innovation in central Mexico at the time the Chimu fell. In any case, a Chimu leader is fascinated by the 'sword' and wants more. Local copies are at least initially nowhere near as effective as the original, so the Chimu decide to go to the source, following the coast along the traditional trade routes to Western Mexico. Once they are there, they find plenty of other things to trade. Each of the cultures has a lot that the other wants, ranging from narcotics like coca leaves and peyote to unique crops and animals, and of course military hardware like the obsidian 'swords'.

The Mexican 'swords' are reasonably effective but they also have a major psychological affect on both the Incas and the Chimu when elite Chimu warriors start using them. The Chimu win some battles that they lost in our time-line, routing the Incas when the war comes. The Incas retire to their mountains to lick their wounds and reconstitute their empire, which is wracked by revolts following their defeat by the Chimu. The Chimu continue to trade with western Mexico for the next century and a half. They establish permanent trading posts at several points on the Pacific coast. Access to those posts becomes the object of a great deal of competition between the small western Mexican states, and later between the growing Tarascan and Aztec states. Towns grow up around those posts, with a mixed population of Chimu and Mexican Indians. Some of those towns become heavily involved in seagoing trade further up the Pacific coast of Mexico, bringing a mix of Chimu and coastal Mexican culture to the tribes of northern Mexico.

The trade enriches Indian cultures of both Mexico and Peru. Peruvian metal-working techniques are considerably more advanced than Mexican ones, though some of them had already diffused to western Mexico by this time. Peruvian guinea pigs make a handy addition to the protein-poor diets of the Mexican Indians. Llamas come into use to some extent in western Mexico before the Spanish arrive. Llamas are primarily highland animals and big enough that transporting them is not easy, but they are useful enough that they make their appearance. They are still scarce in the Aztec areas of central Mexico when the Spanish arrive, but they are avidly sought after.

The highlands of Peru give the highlands of western Mexico a huge array of new crops like potatoes that allow farming to become more productive and to spread to areas where it was previously not feasible. Use of quipus becomes common in areas where writing has not spread yet.

Peruvian culture is enriched too. The Chimu become great bowmen, inspired by the Indians of western Mexico. The Chimu had been aware of bows and arrows before, but the bows of Mexico are far more effective than the ones they had known before. There was a definite north/south gradient in the effectiveness and technology of bows in Pre-Columbian times, and the Chimu make good use the advantage they derive from contact with the excellent bowmen of western Mexico.

The 'swords' that started all of this become more effective in Chimu hands, with the extremely sharp obsidian mated to the bronze of Peru to make a very deadly weapon, with obsidian cutting edges and bronze 'sword-breaking' surfaces.

Domestic turkeys and new breeds of corn spread to Peru from Mexico too, as does the concept of writing and some mathematical concepts.

The trade from Chimu up the Pacific coast doesn't just affect western Mexico, though the impact is felt there more than anywhere else. The Chimu create a chain of trading and supply posts along the west coast of Central America, and elements of Chimu culture radiate outward from those posts. About ten years before Columbus's first voyage, the Chimu found a trading post on the Atlantic coast of Panama, and Chimu trading voyages begin probing up the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Local coastal traders establish indirect links between the Chimu and the Atlantic coast of Mexico, though the Chimu themselves have not yet reached Mexico on the Atlantic side.

The Spanish under Rodrigo de Bastidas meet the Chimu in Panama in 1501, on a voyage that also occurred in our time-line. Things start diverging for the Spanish at this point. They spend a lucrative month trading, with the Chimu, then start to sail home. That month makes the difference between a safe voyage home and a storm that leaves the expedition stranded among their hosts. A number of Spaniards die in the storm, and survivors become guests/prisoners of the Chimu. They include Balboa, the man who in our time-line discovered the Pacific Ocean.

The destruction of the Bastidas expedition leaves the honor of the first reported encounter with the Chimu to Christopher Columbus. In our time-line, in his fourth and last voyage in late summer 1502, Columbus explored the coast of Central America from Honduras to Panama with an expedition of four old leaky boats and 140 men. In our time-line he found a few Indians willing to trade him gold. In this time-line he encounters the Chimu.

A little bit of background is in order here. After his discoveries in 1492, Columbus was for a time governor of the Spanish colony on the island of Hispaniola. He proved to be a rather poor administrator, and faced a revolt by the colonists a few years later. He eventually suppressed the revolt, but was replaced as governor and sent back to Spain. In 1502, a royal governor who had nothing but contempt for Columbus ruled Hispaniola, and the Spanish crown was in court whittling down the rights that they had granted Columbus before his first voyage. The fourth voyage was a final attempt by Columbus to prove to an increasingly skeptical Spain that he had found a route to the East Indies, and an attempt to regain his standing and rights in the areas he had discovered. In our time-line, the voyage was heroic, but ultimately a failure. In this time-line, something more consequential happens, as we will see.

Columbus trades with the Chimu for a time, and sets up a small post headed by his bother to continue that trade. He then sails for home. The trip home parallels that of our time-line. His ships are no longer really seaworthy by this time, and he ends up stranded in Jamaica, which has not yet been settled by the Spanish. After a long series of adventures including a mutiny that he barely puts down, Columbus and a remnant of his crew make it back home in 1504. Almost all of the gold has been lost, and Spanish officialdom in Hispaniola and Spain no longer take Columbus seriously. He does manage to scrape together funds from private backers on the basis of the remaining gold, and sails for Panama directly from Spain in 1506 with one small ship. In Panama, he collects as much gold and silver as his ship can hold, and sails back to Europe, where by a series of misadventures the ship and its cargo ends up in Portuguese hands.

The Portuguese now have a dilemma. They are aware of a rich new source of gold that the Spanish crown is not aware of. On the other hand, they have a stake in avoiding competition with Spain, and Columbus's new discovery definitely falls within the area allocated to Spain. The Portuguese finesse the issue by making Columbus governor of his new discovery under Portuguese rule. That gives Portugal rights in the area by right of discovery, and Portugal moves quickly to make its settlement in Panama a fait accompli. Spanish in the existing small colony mutiny when the Portuguese take over, and some of them survive by fleeing among the Indians.

As news of the riches of Panama leak out, the Spanish and Portuguese crowns compete for the rich trade of the mainland Americas, with rival explorers competing to discover the sources of the gold and silver being traded at Panama. The European discovery of the Aztecs and other Indians of Mexico comes over a decade before it did in our time-line-in 1507. It also comes in the context of cut-throat competition between Portugal and Spain. The French join that competition a couple of years later. The English don't officially, but individual captains do trade along the Mexican Atlantic coast from time-to-time. Possession of Panama gives the Portuguese a major advantage in that it is relatively easy for them to build bases on both oceans and follow the Chimu routes up and down the Pacific coast. That has the disadvantage of putting them in competition with the Chimu. The Chimu respond by taking in Spanish refugees from the original Spanish trading post and trying to use their knowledge to compete more effectively with the Portuguese.

Assuming that the Aztecs or somebody like them created an empire in central Mexico in this time-line, which seems reasonable, things in Mexico still start diverging almost immediately from the pattern of our time-line, as do events in Peru.

The Aztecs and other Indians of Mexico are considerably more formidable militarily and politically than they were in our time-line. Only a small part of that is material. In this time-line, Aztec 'swords' have bronze strips on their sides that are designed to shatter the obsidian edges of opposition 'swords'. By contrast, in our time-line the Aztecs did not yet have bronze, though they did have copper, and they had not started using metal for tools and weapons.

In our time-line's western Mexico the Tarascans did have bronze, but even they had not yet started to use it very much in tools or weapons. In this time-line, the Tarascans have become innovators in bronze work, with many tools, bronze daggers, and even some use of bronze in armor (primarily helmets and small sections of links sewn into cotton armor for added protection of vulnerable areas).

A more important reason why the Aztecs and others-especially the Indians of Western Mexico-- are more formidable is that they've exchanged subsets of their military and political play-books with the Chimu. While the Chimu have been primarily traders, they have at times become involved in the political/military rivalries of western Mexico, and some aspects of their tactics and strategies have been observed and copied by the locals.

Because of contact with the Chimu, the Aztecs and others have a more sophisticated political response to the Spanish and Portuguese. They already have a precedent for having powerful strangers appear from the sea with strange new technologies. Granted, the Europeans are much stranger and more powerful than the Chimu, but most of the same principles used in coping with the Chimu appear to be applicable to the Spanish or Portuguese. The Aztecs and their rivals in Western Mexico use the techniques that have worked with the Chimu:

•  Encourage the newcomers to settle, but only in very strongly held areas and in such a way that contact with the newcomers can be strictly controlled.
• Be very wary of the newcomers. They are tricky and don't play by the same set of rules the locals do.
• Look for military and political ideas that can be copied and used against rivals.
• Look for factions among the newcomers and exploit any divisions to get better trade terms.
• Quickly learn as much as possible about the newcomers. That guards against surprises and lets you get the best possible value in trading.
• Keep the newcomers away from rivals or potentially untrustworthy subjects.
• Learn the language of the newcomers as quickly as possible, but don't always let them know how well you speak it.

The Spanish are considerably weaker in this time-line than they were when they discovered Mexico in our time-line. In our time-line the Spanish had been in the New World for over twenty-five years before they discovered Mexico. Spanish expeditions had established solid settlements with thousands of Spaniards on most of the West Indies islands before the discovery and conquest of the Aztecs. The conquest was actually launched from Cuba, which in our time-line was conquered starting in 1511. In our time-line there were also Spanish colonies in Jamaica (founded in 1509), Puerto Rico (founded in 1508), and Panama (founded in 1510). The Spanish also have to be careful not to leave their settlements too lightly guarded because rival Europeans would be happy to take advantage of such lapses.

The Aztecs have another edge in this time-line: By the time large Spanish expeditions land in 1509, they already know a considerable amount about the Spanish and other Europeans. They know what motivates Europeans and something of how they fight. They even have a few old swords and broken firearms obtained in trade.

When the first major Spanish expedition arrives in Aztec-controlled territory, they immediately encounter Spanish-speaking Aztec interpreters, which the Aztecs try to attach to the expedition. More intimidating, the Aztecs present the Spanish with two native-made attempts at replicating Spanish swords. One is in gold, the other in bronze. Neither is that good, but they do serve notice to the Spaniards that the Aztecs are not like the stone-age Indians of the West Indies.

The Spanish are handicapped in this time-line by lack of independent interpreters, at least for the first few months of the encounter. The Aztecs are very happy to trade on their own terms, which involve keeping the Spanish away from any potentially disloyal subject tribes and bargaining hard, trying to sell the Spanish golden trinkets in exchange for things of value to the Aztecs, especially tools and weapons. They also quietly try to trade privately with individual Spaniards-a practice that they have found leads to lower prices in trade with the Chimu. Prices are already falling by 1509, as European goods become more common and the Indians become more sophisticated at dealing with the Europeans.

The Spanish don't know quite how to deal with the Aztecs. In Hispaniola they easily conquered the natives and put them to work. On the other hand, the Aztecs seem formidable, and they are quite willing to trade-a very profitable trade with gold flowing in quite satisfactory amounts to the Spaniards.

Cortes, the conqueror of the Aztecs in our time-line, arrives in this time-line's Mexico in 1510, and makes a name for himself as a wild but ambitious and capable young man. He becomes wealthy in the gold trade along the coast, as do many other young men, but then becomes bored and seeks excitement as a mercenary fighting for the Chimu against the Portuguese.

The Mexican coast and the rest of the Central American coast are wild territory-places where daring young men can make their fortunes or die in shipwrecks or Indian attacks. It is a place to make your fortune and then go home from, not a place to settle or raise a family, though thousands of mixed blood children begin to appear around trading posts and other areas where Europeans have access to Indian women.

Conquest of the area is not considered an option, at least not yet. Europeans and Indians have clashed militarily from time-to-time, and the Europeans definitely have an edge on a man-for-man basis. That advantage is nowhere near enough to overcome the Indian advantage in numbers, especially when competition between the Europeans means that the Indians usually have European help or at least advice.

The Aztecs and other Indian powers, as well as the Chimu hire European mercenaries to fight for them and to train warriors in European techniques. A European sword or firearm is worth far more than its weight in gold to the Aztecs and other Indians of Mexico, and once they figure out what a horse can do, a horse is almost priceless. Where there is that much demand, there are almost always people willing to supply it. European swords become a status symbol among the Aztec and other Mexican Indian nobility, though the Indians are by no means as good at using them as the Spanish are. Firearms remain scarce, and horses even scarcer, but most of the major Indian powers have a few of each by 1519, along with a small groups of renegades willing to help them use their new weapons. For the time being, they use them mainly against rival Indian groups.

The lure of gold along the Mexican coast partially depopulates Hispaniola, as Spaniards find making their fortunes easier along the coast. It also diverts new settlements away from the West Indies for a while. The islands are nowhere near as lucrative as the mainland gold trade.

The Mexican and Peruvian Indian worlds are shattered in 1522, when smallpox strikes the West Indies, then spreads throughout the area from north of the current US border all the way through Peru to what in our time-line became Chile. The epidemic destroys about the same percentage of the Mexican population that it did in our time-line-somewhere between 30 and 50 percent. It also creates chaos throughout Mexico, as leaders die and balances of power are upset. The epidemic spreads further and faster than it apparently did in our time-line-up the west coast of Mexico and to the Pueblo areas of the US southwest, and the feuding states of Peru. The reigning Inca dies in the epidemic as does the Aztec head of state.

In the chaos following the smallpox, the Aztec Empire suffers from widespread revolts. That's traditional after the death of a ruler. In our time-line, almost every new Aztec ruler had to defeat at least a few revolts in order to re-establish the fear by which the Aztecs ruled. The rival European factions take advantage of the chaos, and promote it. The result is a long, complex series of wars, with rival groups of Indians and Europeans trying to carve out empires, acting as mercenaries for one faction or another, or simply looting. The Europeans still aren't strong enough to simply walk in and take over the place like they did in our time-line, for both political and military reasons. At the same time, ambitious Europeans can become enormously rich and powerful-or dead--along the chaotic coasts of Mexico or Peru.

And that seems like a good place to put a story but I really wouldn't want to live there. What do you think? We have the best of the two major Indian centers of civilization combined, with each building on the strengths that they have acquired from the other. We have Indians that are much more sophisticated in their political and military responses to Europeans. We have the potential for Mexican Indian civilization to spread north into previously less civilized areas as llamas and new crops spread north. Llamas in Mexico make it easier for Mexican Indians to adopt horses when they become available, because the Indians already know how to take care of a large, powerful animal. That in turn makes any European conquest much more difficult. If a conquest doesn't happen quickly it may not happen until rapid-fire rifles are invented, assuming that happens.

In both Mexico and Peru, there is no one center of power for Europeans to seize, which makes any attempt at conquest more difficult. Both civilizations start out their contact with Europeans in the bronze age, and with some degree of metal tool use.

Where do things go from here? How does the rest of history play out? What sort of story should I put in this setting if any? What about the adventures of Cortes? He could start out as a mercenary in the Chimu/Portuguese wars, have a lot of adventures in battlefields and probably bedrooms unless his personality changed a lot, and maybe even take a stab at grabbing the Aztec throne in the chaotic aftermath of the smallpox epidemic. He could meet Balboa, and/or Columbus (who would be in his early 60's by that time). We're talking convoluted intrigue between the Indian and European powers, with Columbus and his relatives trying to assert his powers semi-independently of the Portuguese, and with any little band of Europeans having a chance to upset balances of power and seize enough loot to make themselves very rich.

What do you think?

But what about?

As usual, I went back and reread this scenario with a critical eye. I see a couple of potential problems:

1) Would the Chimu have the ability and a good enough reason to get to western Mexico? To be honest, I don't know. Getting there shouldn't have been impossible-just follow the coast north if nothing else. Would the rafts be seaworthy for that long of a time? I don't know. Having a good enough reason to go there and return again and again? That's hard to know. Long range trade would have to involve luxury goods, at least partly. I suspect that once the contact was made people would find something valuable enough to continue it, but I can't prove that.

2) Would smallpox be that late? That's impossible to predict. It could have come at any time after the divergence started affecting Europeans-any time after 1501. There was going to be a smallpox epidemic sometime in the first 50 or 60 years of contact, but when? Smallpox hit in 1508 in our time-line, but apparently didn't spread beyond Hispaniola. It hit again in our time-line in 1518, and spread to Mexico, and from Panama down to Peru. I chose 1522 as the date of the first epidemic because it gives the Indian powers 15 or so years to adapt to Europeans. It also makes for maximum chaos at a time where Cortes is young enough to take advantage of it. I think 1522 is justifiable because while there would probably be more Europeans in the area than in our time-line there would be far fewer European children and few if any African slaves. Children and slaves were the most likely sources of smallpox because a large enough percentage of European adults were already immune that it was hard to sustain a chain of infection through an Atlantic crossing.

3) Would the Portuguese go for a Panama colony? Again, that's hard to say. There were a lot of reasons not to, but enough gold laying around loose would make going for it very tempting.

4) Isn't the 'Portugal in Panama' bit really a second and more important divergence? I thought long and hard before I went that direction, and I'm still not sure I went the right way. Cortes and company coming ashore in this time-line's Mexico actually has more potential drama in some ways, and is something more people could identify with. I actually wrote several pages of this scenario that described that meeting, but then went back and chose this line because I thought it was the more likely one. Spanish explorers were prowling all through the area around the Gulf of Mexico. Until 1517 they somehow in our time-line kept missing the area the Aztecs and Maya dominated, but they did go through areas that would have been affected in a major way by the Chimu. If the Spanish found the huge amounts of gold and silver in Mexico before they were solidly entrenched in the West Indies, someone would have almost certainly challenged them for control of the area-probably multiple countries. I suspect that until the discovery of Mexico, Europe thought of the Americas as sort of like the Canary Islands-a nice little bit of real estate, but not worth getting in a war over. By the time the Spanish discovered Mexico they had colonies all over the Caribbean, and it would have taken a major effort to dislodge them. For other Europeans, competing in Mexico while Spanish bases in the West Indies were intact would have been very difficult, though not completely impossible.