Last issue I focused on Africa and to some extent South America. This time I'll focus on North America, where if history had gone a little differently we might have found:

The Lost City of Cahokia – As most of you know, southern Illinois hosted probably the largest Indian town of pre-Columbian North America. At its peak a little after 1200 AD, Cahokia may have had more than 20,000 people in a town that included enormous temple mounds, a powerful social hierarchy, and an astronomical observatory/calendar that has been nicknamed 'Woodhenge' because of its alleged similarities to Stonehenge.

Cahokia was abandoned in the 1400's and was so overgrown by the time the French got to the area over 200 years later that they didn't recognize it as a formerly inhabited area. Large populations at a Mississippian level of technology put enormous stresses on their environments, especially over several centuries. Firewood becomes scarce and time-consuming to bring in from miles away. Animal protein becomes scarce. Even the most fertile soil becomes depleted by the high demands put on it by centuries of corn farming.

Cahokia was going to decline eventually. It might be possible to alter when it declined a bit though. Let's say that something changes to give it a bit longer lifespan. The change doesn't have to be huge—50 to 100 years. Maybe Cahokian traders bring back beans from the Pueblo areas of the Southwest 50 or 100 years earlier. Planting beans and corn together slows down the rate at which corn depletes the soil. It also makes for a much healthier diet.

For whatever reason, the decline of Cahokia is delayed. It is still in sharp decline by the late 1400's, and by the 1520's it is a pale shadow of its former greatness. At that point, the Narvaez expedition to Florida falls apart, just as it did in our time-line. The survivors try to make it back to Mexico in home-made boats, just as they did in our time-line. In both time-lines most of them die in the attempt, but a few are shipwrecked on the Gulf Coast. The survivors spent years wandering with the local Indians before making it back to Mexico in our time-line. In this time-line they head north for some reason, maybe attracted by stories of a great city.

If they make it to Cahokia, they could find all of the accoutrements of an Edgar Rice Burroughs lost city—a once-great city now mostly in ruins, maybe even mad priests, a cruel and powerful but beautiful queen, barbarian tribes encroaching on the ruins as the remaining inhabitants cling to the symbols of their once great power and try to ignore the reality of their decline. I could have deer and even buffalo (they made it as far east as Pennsylvania at times) grazing in abandoned fields. I could have plots and counterplots among the decaying nobility of Cahokia, with the itinerant Spanish joining in.

Sounds like something Edgar Rice Burroughs would have enjoyed writing to me. What do you think?

Lost City of the New Amsterdam Dutch: Let's say that an early English governor of New York makes his newly acquired Dutch subjects very unwelcome. They do a Boer-style trek into the interior of North America and set up an independent republic in say Ohio or Indiana. This isn't real likely and the resulting colony would have a very tough time adapting to life without a trade pipeline to Europe. Unless they somehow got that trade link re-established, chances are that they would be close to indistinguishable from the Indians around them by the time the frontier reached them.

Lost City of Tecumseh: In some ways the greatest Indian leader, in the early 1800's Shawnee chief Tecumseh tried to unify all of the Indian tribes of the frontier to resist further American encroachment. He led his followers into the War of 1812 on the British side and died along with many of his core supporters in one of the last battles of that war.

I can think of two Tecumseh alternatives, one of which leads to a lost city. Before I get to the lost city though, I want to mention the other scenario. Its kind of a nightmare: England does much better in the War of 1812 and ends the war in control of a major hunk of what in our time-line became the upper US Midwest. Tecumseh was an educated man, and actually held the rank of general in the British army. The Brits make him governor of the newly acquired province.

Keeping the territory turns out to be a mistake. The US is not willing to accept the loss of that territory permanently and after a time begins gearing up for another round. The balance of power between Slave and Free states in the US is also thrown off. The US and Brits spend most of the next 40 or 50 years in a state of hot or cold war, and the resulting diversion of resources slows down the industrial revolution in both countries.

I'm not sure what the fate of Tecumseh and his Indians would be in this scenario, but I can't see it leading to a lost city.

The other Tecumseh scenario is recycled from an earlier POD, but it does lead to a lost city, and a neat one at that. Let's say that instead of dying in battle, Tecumseh is wounded badly but recovers. By the time he recovers, the War of 1812 has ended as it did in our time-line. Tecumseh is disillusioned with the British, but he and his men have no place in the United States, where the tribal territories are being overrun by American settlers. He flirts briefly with the idea of moving to Spanish (soon to become Mexican) territory, but then decides to try to find a place for this followers completely outside the reach of white settlement.

I'm not sure where he would go, but it would be interesting if he completely crossed the plains and settled in the northwest, hacking out a new life there. He would be a very old man before the frontier reached his new home. I think that's where I'd put the story. The reaction of settlers when they discover their old enemy again after he has become somewhat of a legend would be interesting.

Lost City of the Later Day Saints: The idea here is that sometime after the Mormons settle in Utah, the US is shaken by something major—maybe an earlier or more prolonged Civil War, severe economic problems, or maybe more effective Indian military resistance to white settlers crossing the plains. As a result, the Mormons have a prolonged period of near isolation from most of the rest of the US, and diverge more in customs and attitudes than they did in our time-line. Mormon territory could become essentially lost to the rest of the world, with all kinds of myths growing up around it. After twenty or thirty years, bring in a young hero type, and we might have ourselves a story.

Lost City of the Narragansetts: Three possibilities here.

Great Swamp Fort: As it became obvious that they were going to get sucked into King hilip's war in the winter of 1675-76, several thousand of southern New England's Narragansetts tried to find a refuge from the coming English invasion of their homeland. They chose a small (around five acres) areas of upland surrounded by a swamp, and started to build a formidable fortress there. They used a number of techniques that they picked up from the English, but unfortunately for them, the fort wasn't quite done when the English came and burned it down, driving them out into a bitterly cold winter while burning the corn supply that would have fed them through their next harvest.

There was a fairly good chance that the Narragansetts could have gone undetected in their refuge during the winter of 1675-76. The English were led to the fort by a Narragansett who turned traitor to save his family from being sold into slavery. They also came at an extremely cold time where the normally treacherous swamp was frozen over.

Given a little luck, the Narragansetts could have remained hidden on their island. The English couldn't afford to leave an army of 1000 or so men souring Narragansett country indefinitely with a war raging throughout New England. By February those men would be short of food and urgently needed elsewhere.

King Phillip's War would be longer and more destructive in this time-line. The Indians lost in autumn of 1676 mainly because they ran out of food. How can we get a lost city out of this though? Maybe the war ends in mutual exhaustion in a year or two with the fort still undiscovered. The Narragansetts use it as a place of refuge from time-to-time as they try to cope with their European and Indian neighbors. Fifteen or twenty years later, with memories of King Phillip's war fading, an Englishman stumbles across the island and its fortress. Sounds like an interesting situation.

Stone Fort: Another Narragansett fort, this one made out of stone, did remain undiscovered until some time after King Phillip's War ended. It was deserted when it was discovered. Its inhabitants had been killed or captured while away from the fort. The stone fort has generated legends, including one that it has a hidden room somewhere in it. I suppose we could have a band of Indians holing up undetected in their stone fort until years after King Phillip's war ended, which would make its discovery rather dramatic.

Narragansetts in Ohio: Thousands of Indians fled New England after King Phillip's war. Some of them got as far away as Indiana. They scattered after a shot time and were absorbed into surrounding tribes. If more of the Narragansett leadership had survived King Phillip's war, those refugees might have gathered around them somewhere in the interior of North America. These Indians had lived alongside the Puritans for over fifty years, and they had learned a lot. They had forges to repair damaged muskets. A few of them could read and write. They had learned a great deal about fortifications from their English neighbors. If strong leaders had gathered the refugees from Narragansetts and other tribes and established them in a new territory deep in the interior of North America, what would have happened?

That may have almost happened. There are some very primitive iron smelting works of unknown origin in Ohio. They predate any recorded European settlement in the area, and they date to about the time the New England Indians were fleeing. Whether or not New England Indians made them, they are the kind of things we would probably see as the refugees attempted to maintain their old lifestyle without a trade lifeline.

The resulting tribe would probably be at the core of a series of anti-English coalitions as the frontier started to encroach on their new territory. They could also spread a subset of European technology to the interior tribes, which might make them somewhat more capable of resisting European encroachment, though not enough to change the outcome in a major way. Can we get a Burroughs-style lost city out of all this?

Maybe. If the Indians keep a large enough subset of European technology they could build stone forts that the pioneers would consider beyond Indian capability. We could add a Burroughs-style touch if the Indians took some of their English captives with them into the wilderness. The descendents of those captives could add a nice exotic touch. I suppose you could get a Burroughs-style situation out of a young English trader or pioneer getting captured, taken to one of these forts and meeting and falling in love with a young woman descended from the captives.

Lost City of the Puritans: Let's say that English King Charles II decides to rein in the Puritans of New England some time in the 1674-1678 time frame. The New England Puritans had been operating as quasi-independent states, and were probably even sheltering some of the regicides—men who had killed Charles II's father at the end of the English Civil War.

 Charles II succeeds in imposing royal government on New England. Hundreds of die-hard Puritans head into the interior to escape what they consider tyranny. They establish a colony in some relatively vacant part of Ohio and Indiana and are followed by a couple thousand more Puritans.

The colony maintains a fossilized 1670's Puritan society with only a minimal furtive trade with established colonies. They could probably maintain relative isolation for fifty or sixty years—long if they really tried and picked an isolated piece of country. They could get very strange in sixty years of isolation, with genetic diseases from their small gene pool, a shift to the most rigid forms of their religion and an oligarchy that is no longer even theoretically restrained by English kings and laws.

Puritan society was susceptible to witch-burning hysteria. Isolate its most extreme members in the wilderness, give them a siege mentality, and we could get a very Burrough-type setting, with a frontiersman hero, a young woman falsely accused of witchcraft, and an evil religious hierarchy. We could even have the daughter be close to a princess—the daughter of a governor besieged by religious leaders. If I wanted to go really wild Edgar Rice Burroughs style, I could have the Puritan lost city a couple valleys over from the refugee Narragansetts. Put hereditary enemies like that in the stew, stir a bit, and I think I could come up with pretty Burroughsian story. Anyone want to read it?

Anyone want to see any of these min-scenarios fleshed out and turned into stories? I could add them to the long list of stories I really do intend to write someday.

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.