American History - Woodland Apocalypse

When Hernando de Soto wandered through what would become the southeastern United States between 1539 and 1542, the region was heavily populated by the Muskogean peoples who still lived very much in a way representative of the Mississippi culture that had once dominated nearly the entirety of the Eastern Woodlands. Autonomous city-states, homes to thousands of people each, traded with each other over long distances and vied with each other for political dominance via constantly shifting alliances and declarations of war. Compared to areas further north, the fertile lands and mild winters had helped stave off the decline that had largely ended the Mississippi culture amongst the Siouan peoples living in the Midwest. As de Soto and his men wandered the southeast they left behind a trail of violence and abandoned livestock, mostly pigs. However, they also left behind virulent Old World plagues from which the Muskogean people had little to no protection.

It’s hard to say why the spread of disease was so much more common amongst with the de Soto expedition compared to the Coronado expedition in the southwest. It was likely a number of factors. The southeast was much more densely populated and had more extended trade networks, de Soto’s men were largely recruited directly from Spain meaning they likely had variants not seen in the New World before, and just dumb random chance. Whatever the reason, over the next several decades after the de Soto expedition passed through, some 90 percent of the Muskogean people died, many perishing with never having ever met or even seen a European.

It is frightening to think about how quickly Old World diseases such as small pox likely spread amongst the Muskogean. With no immunity whatsoever, it would have devastated countless once prosperous communities. As people sickened and died, it would have become difficult for communities to grow and hunt enough food to feed themselves, leading to famine and starvation. In his quest to find mythical cities of gold, de Soto and his men crisscrossed the entire region, unintentionally setting spot fires of sickness everywhere they went. These spot fires grew into conflagrations, spread first along trade networks and then by refugees attempting to flee from their dying communities. People at the time did not understand disease as we do today, and as a result few if any precautions were taken to slow the spread. However, it was not just a societal collapse, it was as well a cultural collapse. Traditions were passed orally from elders to the younger generation, and as the elders died in huge numbers and people fled, those traditions were lost forever. The plague was so quick and so devastating, that despite the rich resources of the region, many of the other tribes in the surrounding areas dared not try to claim them. Within the region, the survivors intermixed and coalesced into new tribes with new cultures and traditions, becoming the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and several others. Left largely alone by other tribes, they were allowed to re-establish themselves, though scattered in small villages over a wide area once home to millions.

The plague of Old World diseases introduced by de Soto did not stop with the Muskogean. To the west, in the southern Plains, the Chaddo as well maintained the last vestiges of the declining Mississippi culture. It was to their detriment. Though more scattered than the Muskogean due to the more limited resources of the region, limiting the spread of disease to some degree, larger settlements closer to the Mississippi were hard hit. The plague also spread north into the Midwest, home of the Siouan peoples, spread by old trade networks with their southern Muskogean neighbors. By the sixteenth century, the Siouan peoples had largely lost all vestiges of the old Mississippi culture, having devolved into a wide diversity of tribes living in small towns and villages. This provided some relief from the spread of disease, but still more than half of the Siouan of the Midwest were dead by the end of the century. As a result, the spread of the Algonquian peoples westward was accelerated.

Even prior to the outbreak, various Algonquian tribes had been pushing their way westward across the Appalachian Mountains into Siouan territory. This was partly to lay claim to valuable hunting grounds, but also due to many Algonquian tribes themselves being pushed westward by the Iroquois, who were expanding from their traditional homeland around the St. Lawrence River into the regions around the eastern Great Lakes. Neither of these groups had much contact with each other or the Siouan peoples outside of confrontation, so the spread of the plague to them was at first limited, making it easier for them to push the weakened Siouan peoples westward. By the start of the sixteenth century, various Algonquian tribes had taken control over large parts of the Midwest. Though a few Siouan groups, such as the Catawba, remained in eastern areas such as North Carolina, the rest found themselves forced out onto the northern and central plains, where they in turn came into conflict with the Numic and Caddo peoples who already lived in those regions. Unable to easily hunt buffalo, most of the Siouan tried to stay to the more fertile edges of the Plains, founding new farming and hunting communities along the regions various rivers.

Though now firmly in control of the fertile lands of the Midwest, the Algonquian peoples were not without their own challenges. By the end of the century, the Iroquois had managed to firmly establish control over the shores of Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, and eastern Lake Huron, as well as significant areas in what is today New York and Pennsylvania. A group had even managed to make its way south along the western side of the Appalachians, becoming the Cherokee. This effectively split the Algonquian into two distinct groups. One spread along the Atlantic Seaboard from New Brunswick through Virginia, and a second spread across the Midwest to north around the western half of the Great Lakes and up into the colder northern parts of eastern Canada.

It’s difficult to say exactly how many people in the eastern woodlands died during this period, but it was certainly in the millions and a significant enough amount to act as the catalyst for significant widespread changes in the dynamics and interrelations of the tribes living in the region. Things looked very different at the end of the sixteenth century than they had at the beginning. It was only the beginning of many drastic changes that would occur throughout what would become the United States in the coming centuries.

American History - Cibola

For most of the early days of the so-called age of exploration, people didn’t really give two shits about what would eventually become the Untied States. Other than the occasional coastal raid by the Spanish to enslave Native Americans, them running swiftly out of natives to enslave in the Caribbean, it was largely left alone. There were a few exceptions to this, with a few Spaniards, particularly desperate for fame and fortune, attempting to found a colony in Florida in 1521 and a colony in Georgia in 1526, but for some reason the locals, probably because of the whole slave raiding thing, didn’t take too kindly to this. The colony in Florida lasted less than a week and the colony in Georgia lasted only two months. The latter was particularly terrifying given only 150 of the original 600 colonists returned to Hispaniola, the rest succumbing to starvation, disease, infighting, hostile natives, and a slave revolt.

Despite this less than stellar start, many desperate Spaniards remained interested in the giant land mass to the north, mostly because the conquest of Mexico had proven that ridiculously rich civilizations could be hiding in the interior of the continent. One of these was fella named Panifilo de Narvaez, who in 1528 set out with 400 men to explore the Gulf Coast and found some colonies. Upon arriving in Florida, the expedition attacked some random villages in search of gold. They found little, but were told that the tribes further north were much wealthier. Despite having little food, Navraez led his expedition in search of these riches while his ships went off to explore the coast. The two groups never met again. After four months of wandering through swamps, suffering from starvation and near constant native attacks, Navraez returned to the coast and had his men build rafts to carry them to Mexico, the currents being too strong to go east. By the time the expedition reached Texas, it had only 80 men still alive, most starving to death or drowning, including Narvaez himself. In Texas, the survivors were enslaved by a local tribe, who then traded them with other tribes, scattering them across the southwest over the next eight years. Eventually four of these men managed to make their way to Mexico City, arriving in 1536.

To say the least, the survival of these men was seen as nothing short of miraculous, especially given that they brought with them rumors heard during their journey of wealthy cities in the interior, which the Spanish took to mean cities filled with gold and silver, because of course they did. The Spanish called these cities Cibola, which later became known as the seven cities of gold. Now of course rumors of fantastically rich cities got all sorts of Spaniards dreaming of being the next Cortes or Pizzaro all hot and bothered. The two most prominent of these were Hernando de Soto and Francisco Coronado, a soldier who had fought in Peru and the governor of a large amount of territory northwest of Mexico City respectively. Both scrambled to put together expeditions to search for the fabled golden cities.

De Soto’s expedition of some 700 heavily armed men left Cuba in 1539. Convinced Navraez had been on the right track, it followed the earlier expeditions route into Florida and then north into the interior. Over the next three years de Soto and his men crisscrossed what would become Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, in general being a bunch of shitheads everywhere they went. Now at the time, the Muskogean peoples of the southeast were the last vestiges of the old Mississippi culture. De Soto found a complex network of walled city-states, each containing thousands of inhabitants. However, he found little to no gold, just a shit ton of corn. Despite the Spanish having the habit of forcefully taking locals as slaves or guides as needed, and the locals in turn carrying out guerilla attacks, the two sides largely avoided open conflict with each other. Instead, most of the native chiefs did their best to hustle de Soto and his men out of their territories, most often by telling the Spanish that there was definitely more gold further north or west. However, as the Spanish became increasingly frustrated, they open conflicts began to break out, culminating in an open battle which resulted in a city burned to the ground and the massacre of its five thousand inhabitants. Things were much more tense after that with guerilla attacks becoming much more common and the Spanish using threats much more often to get what they wanted. De Soto eventually died of a fever in Arkansas in 1542. With about half of the original expedition dead, the remainder split up, some sailing down the Mississippi River and some going overland to reach Mexico City.

Coronado was a much more careful man than de Soto. Prior to heading out himself, he sent a Franciscan friar with one of the survivors of the Navraez expedition north in 1539 to ascertain the exact location of Cibola. Though the survivor did not survive a second time, the friar returned a few months later claiming he’d seen Cibola from a distance while in what is today New Mexico, and that it was a vast golden city. Excited by this, Coronado departed in early 1540 with an expedition consisting of 400 heavily armed Spaniards and 2,000 native allies. When Coronado and his men arrived at the supposed location of Cibola, they found nothing but the small villages of the Zuni. Less than pleased, Coronado forced the Zuni to host him and his men and began sending out expeditions explore west to the Colorado River and east to the Rio Grande, forcing their way into the small villages they found and becomingly increasingly frustrated by the lack of golden cities. This behavior eventually led to open conflict with some of the tribes, to which the Spanish responded by burning several villages to the ground. After a year of this shit, the natives made up a story of a crazy rich city called Quivira far to the northeast, which they promised to guide Coronado to if he would just get the fuck out. The ruse worked, and Coronado headed east onto the Great Plains, where he spent the better part of a year wandering around, reaching as far as eastern Kansas. Though finding some large villages, with populations at times over a thousand, he found no riches, and eventually gave up and returned to Mexico, arriving home in 1542, completely bankrupt.

The significant failure of both the expeditions of de Soto and Coronado left the Spanish with little interest in the interior north of Mexico. Though rumors of Cibola would continue to persist, no further expeditions went north for nearly forty years. Overall, though Coronado’s asshattery had caused harm to the peoples of the southwest, overall they were largely unaffected, going back to how they had lived before once Coronado left. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Muskogeean peoples of the southeast. De Soto’s time amongst them would have dire consequences.

American History - Exploring North

Juan Ponce de Leon, a Spanish explorer, became the first European to definitely set foot in what today is the United States, landing in Florida in 1513 under orders to ascertain the existence of a large landmass to the north of Cuba. Juan didn’t find anything of interest beyond some locals who didn’t seem too happy to see him, so he returned home. This was the general attitude of most early explorers of the Eastern Seaboard. From 1519 to 1525, the Spanish, Portuguese, and even the French, sent expeditions to explore the coast line between Florida and Newfoundland, not so much out of a want to add to the map, but rather in hopes of finding an ocean passage west to the Pacific and the riches of Asia. Not only did they fail to find such a Northwest Passage, they failed to find anything of interest whatsoever. Though there were numerous towns and villages dotting the coast, none of the locals had either gold or silver, or really anything at all of interest to trade.

The first attempt to establish a colony in what is today the United States was carried out by Ponce de Leon in 1521, when he led some 200 settlers to Florida. Though there were no riches to be had, Juan probably dreamed of maybe getting lucky and discovering another empire of gold like Hernan Cortes in Mexico. Instead he got killed by the locals, who were no more happy to see him than they had been eight years before. Five years later, a second group of 600 Spaniards tried to start a colony in what is today Georgia, but again the locals proved less than friendly, resulting in some 450 colonists being killed and the rest fleeing for their lives. It should probably be mentioned that due to a shortage of natives in the Caribbean around this time, you know, due to disease and atrocities, the Spanish had conducted several raids in the area a few years prior to collect slaves to take with them back to Cuba and Hispaniola. So you know, it kind of makes sense they weren’t all that welcoming.

Not everyone agreed with the assessment that the Atlantic coast of North America was useless. There might not have been silver and gold, but there were other resources. Early explorers to the area of Newfoundland described cod so thick that one could practically walk across the ocean. These accounts caught the attention of French fisherman, who in the 1530s began risking the dangerous voyage to see if such stories were true. The voyages provided to be a resounding financial success, leading to not only fisherman from France, England, Portugal, and Spain making the voyage, but Basque whalers as well. Though the fisherman tended to stay out in the ocean, the whalers set up temporary camps on the shore to process their catch. In this way the Basque came into contact with the Native Americans living in the area, trading with them from time to time. One of the more prized trading items were beaver pelts, which could be used to make water resistant coats and hats.

Of all the nations of western Europe, France took the most interest in the possibility of Northwest Passage to Asia. In 1524, the king of France sent the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano to explore the Eastern Seaboard. He sailed from Newfoundland as far south as South Carolina, but found no sign of a way through. During a second expedition in 1528, he ventured south to the Lesser Antilles where he was killed and eaten by the natives on the island of Guadeloupe. Six years later in 1534, Jacques Cartier set sail to the find the passage, discovering the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, which seemed promising. A second voyage in 1535 sailed far up the river, but found its way blocked by rapids., though the local Iroquois were welcoming and more than willing to trade beaver pelts and other such things. In 1541, in order to secure the likely route to Asia, Cartier returned again with orders to create a colony, but found the local Iroquois much less welcoming when it became apparent the French were not just there for a visit. The colony lasted less than two years before it was abandoned.

Despite these setbacks, the king of France still held a great interest in the New World. From his way of seeing things, it was important to create some kind of a toehold across the sea, because one never knew what might come of it. After all, the Caribbean had seemed like a backwater until the discovery of the riches of Mexico and Peru. A small colony called Charlesfort was built in Florida in 1562, but had to be abandoned due to the hostility of the locals and a lack of food. In 1564, a new colony, called Fort Caroline, was built not far from the first colony. This proved too close for comfort for the Spanish. French and English privateers were increasingly attacking their ships sailing across the Atlantic, which for some reason made them less than cool with the idea of having a French fort in Florida. The Spanish attacked and killed the inhabitants of the fort in 1565, and then founded their own colony nearby. St Augustine became the first permanent settlement in what is today the United States.