This is both a brainstorming exercise and an attempt to prove or disprove a point. I've stated from time-to-time that the most important factor in whether or not an American Indian tribe or group survived to the present as an ethnic group and/or played an important historical role wasn't the intrinsic qualities of the tribe, but where they were placed in regard to European settlement. There was a "right" distance to be away from European settlements and most of the tribes non-historians have heard of were lucky enough to be at that distance: far enough away that settlers didn't immediately dispossess them, but close enough to have secure access to trade goods like firearms.

As a brainstorming exercise and an attempt to prove or disprove that point, I went through and:

1) Tried to see how close I could get to going through the alphabet, picking an Indian tribe or ethnic group that most people have never heard of for each letter and coming up with the title of an alternate history mini-essay where that tribe plays a vital historical role.

2) Picked a few of the more promising sounding ones and took them a few steps into the creation of a scenario.

I may come back to ideas from this essay in later issues, and any feedback on which mini-scenarios or titles you would like see more of is very welcome. I would also be interested in whether or not you think I've proven my point.

Fair warning: I'm going through a phase of being fascinated by Mexican Indian history again, and two of the four reasonably complete essays involve Mexican Indian groups. If you are interested in those essays, but don't have the background to understand them, I have a historical background elsewhere in this issue to help you get started.

Apalachees avoid a crushing defeat at the hands of the lower Creeks

The Apalachees of our history: The Apalachees were a large, warlike tribe of northern Florida. At time of first contact with the Spanish, there were probably a good 30,000 Apalachees. They fought the first couple of Spanish expeditions that went through, but eventually became a peripheral part of the Spanish missions system in Florida. The Apalachees were initially at about the right distance away from the main Spanish settlements in Florida to do rather well. The various epidemics that went through the missions reduced their population rather substantially in the late 1500's and the 1600's, but there were still a large number of Apalachees—around 8,000--as late as 1700.

The Spanish gave the Apalachees a considerable amount of autonomy and viewed them as military auxiliaries to some extent.  In the early 1700's, that use as military auxiliaries essentially destroyed the Apalachee. Starting around 1670, the English settlement in South Carolina aggressively challenged Spain for influence over tribes between the two powers. The South Carolina English had a major advantage in that they were willing to trade guns, as well as many other desirable goods to the Indians. They were also adept at turning tribe against tribe in order to feed a rather large trade in Indian slaves.

By the 1680's, South Carolina was gaining strong influence among the Lower Creek Indians. The Spanish governor made some inept moves that further alienated the Creeks, turning them into allies of South Carolina. As the century turned, this little backwater struggle became part of a larger war, between Spain and France on the one hand, and England on the other. The Spanish decided to organize an expedition of the Apalachees to drive the English out of Creek country as a preliminary to a Spanish/French attempt to crush South Carolina. The French were skeptical of the move, because the Apalachees were still for the most part bow-and-arrow Indians and their opponents were well armed with English guns.

That skepticism proved well-founded. The Apalachee expedition was ambushed and routed. The Apalachee lost several hundred men, possibly as many as 500. The survivors lost most of their equipment, including a few guns that the Spanish garrison had loaned them and arrived back at their villages weaponless and demoralized.

The defeat left the Apalachee and the rest of the Florida mission Indians wide open to English attack. That attack came with devastating results, as Governor Moore of South Carolina attacked the Apalachee missions with a force of 40 English and over a thousand allied Indians. The Apalachee were scattered, with thousands of them taken as slaves to South Carolina. The English and their allies proceeded to destroy the remainder of the Spanish missions in Florida, leaving Florida almost empty, and Spanish power shattered.

What might have happened: Given a little more patience on the part of the Spanish, they could have probably worked with the French and built the Apalachee up enough that they could have at least held their own against the English and Creeks. Alternately, the Spanish could have reacted more intelligently to the influx of English traders, avoiding alienating the Lower Creeks and turning them into firm allies of South Carolina.

Either course could leave Spanish Florida as a viable entity, competing with South Carolina for influence in the southeast, at least for a time. That could make for a very different southeastern United States. As the Bourbon reforms took hold in Spain, Florida could have become another source of inter-colonial rivalry, like Canada and Louisiana. The Spanish might even have remained powerful enough to prevent the founding of Georgia.

There is an outside chance that this more powerful Florida could actually lead to the destruction of South Carolina. South Carolina managed to turn most of the significant tribes of the area against it in the Yamassee war of 1715. Having another significant European power to turn to might have given the Indians enough of a boost to destroy the colony, or at least leave it devastated. Barring that, Florida would eventually accumulate refugees from South Carolina, some Indian and someblack. This time-line's version of the Seminoles would form around the Apalachees, and possibly some of the other mission tribes. Assuming that the rest of North American history went pretty much as scheduled, that could make for some very nasty equivalents of the Seminole Wars.

During interval of peace, the Apalachees could also have played a major role in spreading European technology to tribes further inland. By the time they were destroyed, the Apalachees had added a great many European crops to their native agriculture—including wheat, barley, peas, sugarcane, peaches, pears, figs and grapes. They were also raises chickens, hogs, cattle, and enough horses that they were trading horses to the lower Creeks in the 1690's, before relations between the two peoples soured beyond repair.  The Apalachees also had some skills at iron-working by the time of their destruction.

The Spanish in Florida repeatedly requested importation of Tlaxcallan Indians from Mexico to teach skills to the Apalachees—primarily weaving. That raises some intriguing alternatives in and of itself, but is beyond the scope of this scenario.

So, what do you think? Could the Apalachees have played an important role through the 1700's and 1800's if they hadn't been destroyed? Should I explore this in more depth?

Black Andastes(?)

Cazcanes join the Chichemic rebellion.

Erie Indians avoid war with the League of Iroquois in 1653 to 1656.

Great Northern Revolt in Northern Mexico succeeds.

Huastecs successfully revolt against the conquistadors.

The Huastecs in our history lived on the northeast coast of Mexico. They were not politically united, and only part of their area had been conquered by the Aztecs before the Spanish arrived. They were important because:

1. They were the closest 'civilized' Mexican group to the US southeast, and thus were the most likely source of Mexican influence on the Mississippian mound-builders. If they were somehow able to continue in that role for a while longer, you might see a new set of Mexican Indian- inspired technologies being adopted by the surviving Mississippians.
2. They fought very hard against the Spanish conquest. They used formations resembling a Phalanx with long spears on the outside and bowmen on the inside.
3. They played an important role in the political and military maneuverings between Cortes and a would-be rival for control of Mexico, Francisco de Garay, the governor of Jamaica.

In our time-line, the Huastec political leadership was essentially wiped out by the Spaniards after the last of their revolts, as the Spanish burned 300 or so captured nobles alive. The remaining Huastecs had an even worse than normal set of experiences under the Spanish. They were ruled as a separate province for a while by a very corrupt and short-sighted colonial governor (but a royal favorite) who sold many of them into slavery in the West Indies.

What might have happened: If the Huastecs managed to remain independent or at least autonomous for a fairly extended period, some interesting things happen. I'll get into that later, but first lets figure out how they could remain at least somewhat independent.

The Huastecs actually defeated a couple of large Spanish forces that attempted to invade their country. It took a major expedition led by Cortes himself and including four hundred Spaniards and forty thousand Indian allies to defeat them. The Huastecs did not consider that defeat final though. Garay's last expedition in late 1523 disintegrated in Huastec country, and the roving gangs of Spaniards stirred the Huastecs up into their final revolt.

Lets make the point of divergence Garay's last expedition. The Spanish crown had initially awarded the area to Garay. Faced with the fact that Cortes had already occupied the area, the Spanish crown decided to tell Garay not to occupy the area until boundary issues were decided. Unfortunately, that message came too late. Garay landed in the Huastec area. Garay wasn't much of a leader of men, and Cortes loyalists quickly undermined what authority he had left. His army disintegrated into roving gangs of hungry men, who provoked the Huastecs into a revolt which killed around 300 Spaniards, both Garay partisans and Cortes followers. That revolt led to the destruction of the bulk of the Huastec leadership, as noted earlier. (It also led indirectly to the death of Garay, who died of an unidentified illness after a reconciliation with Cortes in Mexico City.)

Let's say the Garay expedition gets delayed a bit. The decision of the Spanish crown then catches up with the expedition and puts it on indefinite hold. The Huastecs bide their time for a while, keeping a degree of autonomy under their old nobility like hundreds of other Mexican Indian groups. In the early 1520's the Spaniards still needed the old nobility as 'middle managers' in most part of New Spain.

New Spain entered into an extended period of instability in late 1524, when Cortes left for Honduras to crush the revolt of one of his lieutenants. Cortes was gone for over a year and a half. He never regained complete control of New Spain, and in the next several years, pro and anti-Cortes factions came close to civil war several times.

The Spanish crown decided to establish the Huastec area as a separate province of Panuco, and in November 1525, appointed Nuno de Guzman as royal governor of the new province. Guzman arrived in his new province in May of 1527. He quickly seized control of the province, as many Cortes allies fled to New Spain, and a few others were executed. Panuco and New Spain came close to civil war in 1527 and 1528, with actual small-scale border raids by both Spaniards and allied Indians. The hostility was fanned by Cortes partisans who had lost their Indians and their lands under the new regime.

In this time-line, the Huastecs would have been biding their time, like many other Mexican Indian groups, looking for signs of Spanish weakness or division. The Panuco/New Spain rivalry would give them new opportunities. The governorship on Nuno de Guzman would have spurred them to take advantage of those opportunities. Guzman was notoriously cruel and greedy, even for a Spaniard of the time. In our time-line he sold large numbers of Huastecs into slavery in the West Indies.  Guzman was determined to use his governorship to generate wealth, and there really wasn't much wealth to be had in Panuco beyond the bodies of the Huastecs. In this time-line, the Huastecs would almost certainly fight rather than be treated in that fashion, especially given a little encouragement from the more partisan Spaniards of New Spain.

The natural course of events would be for some elements of the dispossessed Cortes partisans to encourage a Huastec revolt, maybe even supplying arms or more likely advice to the potential rebels. They would then be in a position to go in and reclaim their positions in the guise of rescuing Panuco from an Indian uprising. That's actually not far from what happened to the 1523 Garay expedition. It was a dangerous game, but six or seven years of virtually unchallenged rule over Mexico had given the Spaniards a probably unwarranted sense of security. A few of the more bitter Spanish exiles actually plan to join the Indians in an attempt to avenge executed relatives, or at least use the revolt as a cover to avenge executed relatives.

In late 1527, the Huastecs take advantage of the divisions among the Spanish to launch a devastating revolt.  Within a short time, Spanish rule in Panuco is restricted to a couple of besieged and starving enclaves.  Hundreds of Spaniards are killed. The Haustecs were able to do similar destruction in 1523, and in this time-line they would have had several additional years to study Spanish culture up close and understand it's strengths and weaknesses.

The extra years have also given the Huastecs insights into how Spanish military techniques can be used against them. The Spanish came to New Spain as a ruling class. Potentially significant but mundane tasks tended to get done by Indians. For example, a Huastec stable-boy who cleans up after the Spanish horses knows a lot about horses. He knows how to feed them, saddle them up, and a lot about how to ride them, at least in theory. Huastec metal-workers might not work on swords, but they do work on more mundane tasks for the Spanish, and they learn a great deal about how to make better tools out of bronze and to a limited extent iron.

By late 1527, the Huastecs have a pretty good idea what to do with captured horses. They can use captured swords to some degree, though nowhere near as well as the Spaniards. They can make iron axes and iron or bronze tips for their long spears. They know where horses are effective and where they aren't.

The rivalries of the Spanish have set off a powder keg.  At first the Spaniards of New Spain range from unhelpful to elated about the plight of their rivals in Panuco. They take their time about organizing a 'relief' organization, and make a careful legal case for intervening in the neighboring province. Those attitudes change as the magnitude of Huastec victories becomes apparent. By that time though, the last Spanish enclaves in Panuco have succumbed to the Huastecs. Governor Guzman is killed, and less than a dozen Spaniards escape to tell their story.

The impact of the shattering defeat on New Spain is made worse by the fact that some of the survivors testify that they saw Spaniards helping the Huastecs. A royal governor, as well as a personal favorite of the Spanish court has been killed, possibly with the help of Spaniards. Someone is going to have to pay, and the Spanish factions of Mexico spend a great deal of energy ensuring that royal wrath over the rebellion falls on opposing factions. Cortes is back in Mexico, though out of political power, and anti-Cortes factions accuse him of orchestrating the rebellion as a way of generating a regaining power.

As the Spanish squabble, the Huastecs organize their defenses. They are a little overwhelmed by the magnitude of their victory, but have no idea how to follow it up. Most of the other ethnic groups of 'civilized' Indian Mexico consider the Huastecs barbarians, not too many steps above the nomadic Chichemic tribesmen to their north. The Huastec revolt interests them, though not necessarily as an example to be followed. It offers opportunities for the quick-witted, as well as dangers.

One exception to that reaction comes of the other side of Mexico. The Tarascans are very interested in the revolt and the Spanish response. They have played a waiting game too, paying tribute to Spanish overlords but maintaining a degree of autonomy under their own king. Time is running out on that game though, and the Tarascans listen carefully to the rumors that reach them about the Huastec revolt.

As Spanish officialdom tries to put together a response, Spanish 'entrepreneurs' organize small-scale slave raids into Huastec country with the help of Indian allies. There isn't much else to attract Spaniards in Huastec country—not much in the way of gold or silver or diamonds. Some of the raids succeed. Others fail, and more Spaniards die. The Huastecs respond with cross-border raids of their own, riding their newly acquired horses across the border at night, and stealing more Spanish horses and weapons where possible.  The Huastecs also encourage the wild Chichemic tribesmen of the neighboring desert to join them in these raids.

This is getting long for a mini-scenario, so I'll put it on hold for now. Where do you think it goes from here? Do the Spanish get their act together and crush the Huastecs? Do they do it without chasing diehards (and their captured horses) out among the Chichemics? How does the rebellion impact Spanish politics in New Spain? Nuno de Guzman played a major role in that politics for the next few years in our time-line. He actually governed New Spain for a few years after his time governing Panuco. During that time he managed to unite essentially all of the Spanish factions against him, and overstepped his authority so much that he essentially fled to Western Mexico in an attempt to conquer a rich new kingdom and regain royal favor.

Guzman did manage to torture to death the last Tarascan king in an attempt to extract apparently non-existent gold from him. He also conquered some populous and civilized but almost totally unknown and now defunct ethnic groups of the Mexican Pacific coast. He then headed further north and ran into theYaqui Indians. He claimed to have won the resulting battle, but his army immediately decided that it was time to turn back. He was allowed to rule the area he conquered for a year or two before being tried for his many crimes.

His conquests were later the site of the Mixton Rebellion, the most serious Indian war in New Spain's history—serious enough that the Spanish allowed their Indian allies to use horses and guns for the first time.

Island Caribs advance more quickly into the West Indies (beating Columbus to Cuba and Hispaniola).

Jumanos win the Apache/Jumano wars.

Karankawa don't destroy LaSalle's Texas colony.

Mahicans win the Mahican/Mohawk wars.

Natchez revolt succeeds:

Otomi revolt against New Spain.

The Otomi of our history: The Otomi lived in north/central Mexico. They were not politically united, and like the Huastecs were often considered barbarians, one step up from the nomadic Chichemics of the deserts of Northern Mexico. They were respected for their fighting ability though, and were prized as hard-fighting though somewhat unreliable mercenaries. In our time-line they became military allies of the Spaniards after the conquest, and played a major role in the Chichemic Wars from roughly 1560 until the 1590's.

Alternate Otomi: I was going to have them turn on the Spanish at a key time in the Chichemic Wars, but I ran out of time and energy on this one. If there's a lot of interest I may do this one in a future issue. The Chichemic Wars and the Mixton Rebellion are very little known, but they have some fascinating alternate history potential.

Pequots win their war.

Susquehanna avoid getting sucked into Bacon's Rebellion.

The Susquehanna of our history: The Susquehanna were an Iroquois-speaking tribe, but they were bitter rivals of most of the League of Iroquois tribes. They traded furs for guns and other iron weapons from the tiny colony of New Sweden. They got guns early and used those weapons to dominate neighboring tribes, including the Delaware. They fought several wars against the League of Iroquois, generally holding their own until 1675. They also fought a brief war against Maryland, apparently routing a force from that colony and capturing several small field pieces. New Sweden may have advised and armed them in that war.

Later, the Susquehanna became military allies of Maryland against the Dutch of New Amsterdam and the League of Iroquois. As they exhausted fur supplies in their territory, the Susquehanna started hijacking furs that the Seneca and other League of Iroquois tribes were bringing to Albany. That indirectly led to their destruction as an independent people. League of Iroquois raiders stirred up existing anti-Indian feelings along the Virginia and Maryland borders. Through a complicated set of misunderstandings, the Susquehanna got embroiled in fighting against frontiersmen from Virginia and Maryland as a subplot of Bacon's Rebellion. Most of the survivors found refuge, ironically enough, among the League of Iroquois, where they were eventually absorbed into the Seneca.

What might have happened: The circumstances that drew the Susquehanna into Bacon's Rebellion were actually rather unlikely. Let's say the Susquehanna are able to ride out that conflict. That has surprisingly large consequences. The end of the Susquehanna freed up the Iroquois to go on a rampage against the tribes of western Pennsylvania and southern Ohio, then as far west as Illinois. Those Indians were still for the most part without guns and easy prey for the Iroquois. They wouldn't have stayed that way for long though. French traders from Canada and English traders from Virginia and South Carolina were starting to penetrate the interior of North America. In a decade or so they would have transformed the interior tribes into much more difficult prey.

If you ever find a map that actually tries to show the aboriginal territories of the Indian tribes of North America, you will probably see a rather large blank spot covering a good hunk of Ohio and Kentucky. There were tribes in parts of that area as late as the 1670's based on European trade goods, but they were so thoroughly gone by the time the European frontier reached the area, that we can only guess at their tribal names and even the languages that they spoke. Epidemics did a lot of the destruction, but Iroquois raids did a lot to ensure that the survivors were not able to rebuild.

By distracting the Iroquois for another decade or so, the Susquehanna might make it possible for those missing tribes to play a major role in the 1700's. They could have generated leaders to equal or surpass Tecumseh or Little Turtle, or Pontiac. The Susquehanna themselves could have become a core around which shattered tribes of Maryland and Virginia coalesced, becoming a force to be reckoned with during the various frontier wars.

Tarascans maintain their autonomy.

Tlaxcallan alternatives.

The Tlaxcallans of our history: The Tlaxcallans are probably the best known of the non-Aztec groups in Mexico. They were actually surrounded by Aztec-controlled territory, and almost in a state of siege when the Spanish arrived. They initially fought the Spanish, then became Spanish allies and provided vital manpower for the Spanish conquest.

This was not a small group. Pre-conquest population estimates for the Tlaxcallans are usually in the 5-600,000 range. That population declined sharply from European diseases, but it was still well over 100,000 as late as the 1560's.

The Tlaxcallans' reward for their help against the Aztecs was rather substantial by Spanish standards. They were promised freedom from tribute and their territory was to be off-limits to Spanish settlement. Spain actually made an effort to keep those promises for quite some time after the conquest. The Tlaxcallans remained useful allies against unconquered groups into the 1590's. By the 1540's, Christian Tlaxcallans of the nobility had the right to ride horses and carry swords. They were often literate in Spanish and very good at using the Spanish legal system to advance their interests.

Spain eventually broke its promise not to settle in Tlaxcallan lands. One of the kings of Spain made a large land-grant to one of his supporters in the middle of Tlaxcallan territory. That land-grant was gradually subdivided, and as more and more Spaniards settled on that land, the Spanish gradually came to ignore that promise.

As they gradually lost their lands, some of the more adventurous Tlaxcallans headed north to found colonies among the wild Chichemic Indians of northern Mexico. The remainder gradually became more desperate until they launched a pathetically futile revolt against Spanish rule in the 1630's—at least 70 years too late.

Alternate Tlaxcallans: In 1520 and to a lesser extent in 1540 or thereabouts, the Tlaxcallans had opportunities to decide the fate of New Spain. Had they turned on the Spanish at a vulnerable time they could have definitely wiped Cortes and company out to the last man. At least one of their major leaders wanted to do that at a couple of points. In 1540, if the Tlaxcallans had added their weight to the Mixton Rebellion, Spanish rule in New Spain would have been seriously threatened.

Later in their history, the Tlaxcalans were junior partners in the Spanish conquest of the Chichemic areas of Northern Mexico. They founded their own military colonies in those areas. Given the right timing, or the right perceived threat, they could have easily ended up supporting Spanish efforts to colonize in the Pueblo areas or even Texas and/or Florida. A Tlaxcallan colony in Texas would have made for an even more colorful history of that state, while Tlaxcallans in Florida in say the 1560's could have transmitted a subset of Mexican Indian culture mixed with Spanish borrowings to the American southeast, revitalizing the fading Mississippian Mound Builders.

Westos strike first in South Carolina.

Yaqui alternatives.

If you enjoyed this brainstorming session, or if you are disappointed with it, please let me know. I always read and enjoy any feedback I can get.  

Note: Starting next issue I'm planning to start an 'e-mail to the editor' section.  If you do e-mail me, please indicate whether or not I can use your e-mail in that section.