Cultural effects of a mixed European-Native American population?

[Otto Kretschmer]

Does the following fit the "conworlding" definition?

Let's say that Mayflower reaches America and the passengers - numbering slightly over 100 people - are even more successful than they were in real life and establish a happy colony. Then by some kind of bizarre set of circumstances - like a large plague in Europe or a sudden loss of interest on the part of England - they are left largely to their own and receive no further "reinforcements" from Europe - yet are lucky enough to find 60-80 Indians whom they integrate into their own community.

How might such a mix of cultures turn out linguistically and culturally?

Virtually all children born in such a community will be raised hearing both English and native language and will be exposed to both Christianity and Native American religion from birth.

[zompist]

Without European reinforcements and support, what you probably get is that the settlers melt into the local Algonquian population, leaving perhaps some words and cultural techniques behind. More or less what happened with Vinland.

Or, if it was only England that was affected, the colony gets taken over by the Dutch, French, or Spanish.

The Pilgrims had guns, and that might have given them the upper hand for awhile-- especially as the Native American population was decimated by smallpox. But for guns to be useful for long you need iron smelting, and I don't think the tiny colony had that.

If you're looking for a successful European + Native American mixed society, I suggest researching the Métis. This required, I think, a delicate balance, and the existence of European and Native American societies in the area was important. (Definitely look up Michif, one of the few examples of a complex mixed language.)

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I think a lot will depend on how the Native population came to view the new culture. If we have only, as Zompist remarks, cultural techniques and perhaps some words, I would expect borrowings from English for such things as write, pen, letter, alphabet, spell (of words, not magic), transcribe, consonant, vowel, and the names of the letters themselves. The orthography developed from the letters would also presumably start by using the values the had for the transplanted English.

If heavy syncretism between Christianity and the native religion, or even a very thorough Christianisation, were to occur, I expect English might persist as a sacred language even after ceasing daily use, and might also come to be regarded as a Classical language. If communication from Europe were cut off for some time, I expect that a story of people crossing the ocean would be appended to whatever extent of Christianity became established. Whether or not people believed Europe were a real physical place, or some ethereal realm, would probably depend on both how much technology and scientific knowledge became entrenched, and the duration of the separation (everything else going the same, I expect they would only have until sometime in the Nineteenth Century before some sort of "rediscovery", however some sort of broad societal collapse affecting Europe and West Africa could probably stall this as long as you like).

If there were limited, but non-English, European contact (say France conquers England, or England conquers France, and the new entity becomes chiefly concerned with New France and French possessions) were to persist, there might be some limited travel back to England (keeping understanding of its reality intact, and allowing the fledgeling settlement to develop alongside the Old World), or else trade with the Spanish to the south, Dutch in the New Netherlands, and perhaps the French to the West. In such a case, we might expect a sort-of trickling in of European ideas, a mixed Native-European population speaking primarily an Algonquian language with a classical English superstratum (I know nothing about the Algonquian languages themselves, so I'm not sure exactly how it would look, however), possibly rapidly advancing with the sudden adoption of new technologies and systems of government (as in Japan, except the ideas wouldn't be quite as foreign). Whether this semi-Europeanised Native culture would create an expansionist state would probably depend on how things were going elsewhere, but this was generally the trend of emerging powers in the Nineteenth Century of our world, so I could see it going in this direction.

[Otto Kretschmer]

No one except England was interested in colonizing North America. The French colonies were larger but had minimal population, just trade posts and small forts. If England is unable to support the colony or loses interest (not that hard since New England was a side project, mostly aimed at getting rid of religious dissidents) the colony might lose contact with Eurooe for 60-100 years

The mixed Pilgrim-Native culture that retains the Puritan emphasis on education and hygiene might do very well and might see the population double every 18-20 years.

I expect some kind of creole to emerge - or a version of English heavily influenced by Algoquinian languages

[Torco]

*points at the entirety of latin america*

if you mean specifically *english-native north american mestizos in the US*, well... the english of that era really seem to have a strong genocidal bent to them, but you could end up with something very much like the south african coloureds if that bent was for some reason or other curtailed, as it was in africa by diseases. the cultural effects of native american and european contact and dialogue are interestingly explored by graber and wengrow: apparently the strongly libertarian -as compared to early modern europe- ideals of at least some of the native american populations may have had a strong influence on the enlightenment, even though for the most part this is not widely acknowledged by enlightenment authors themselves.

[zompist]

No one except England was interested in colonizing North America. The French colonies were larger but had minimal population, just trade posts and small forts.

It's not clear if you're talking about your conworld, or about our world. In ours, Sweden and Holland both established colonies in what is now the US. They, and the French, would have done more if Britain was out of the picture (and they were not).

I expect some kind of creole to emerge

Why? Your colony might start with half Europeans, but by your hypothesis no more are coming. They are surrounded by Algonquian speakers, who are the only possible pool of immigrants. Their neighbors would have little reason to learn English, while they themselves have every reason to learn an Algonquian language.

(There were English/Native pidgins in New England, and I can see one developing in your colony. But pidgins generally develop through colonialism, and that's precisely what's missing in your scenario: your Europeans are more like isolated refugees.)

[Moose-tache]

OK, let's tackle the original question in more depth. Let's assume that European migration is only a trickle, and the settlers never completely replace/displace/murder/cough on the native population. This would require throtling the rate of immigration quite a bit. The Native Americans had lost the demographic war east of the Appalachians already by the late 17th century, and in the core areas of White settlement by the mid-17th century. So we can assume a small chain of stations for supplying ships that never became huge magnets for convict transportation, homesteading, plantation agriculture, or gold speculation. The Western Cape, for example, had a White population under 30 thousand until about 1800, and were routinely outnumbered by non-Whites. The VOC actually used a "reverse one drop rule" for a while, where anyone with at least one Dutch parent was Dutch, because they were desperate for manpower. But I doubt the Cape Colony is the perfect mixing of cultures that Otto is looking for. With a strict, ever-present European overlord, be it the VOC or Queen Victoria or whoever, there are barriers to cultural mixing.

So we have a sweet spot: low and slow European settlement, with very limited integration into the system of European empires and trade. A good example would probably be Paraguay, but after that the examples, at least in modern times, get pretty thin. The Metis? The American-born elites of Liberia, maybe? It seems like a pretty small target to hit.

But let's assume we hit it. Paraguay on the Chesapeake. Some random Algonquin language becomes the lingua franca, a comically syncratic American Episcopal Church is the dominant religion, and everybody's a genetic miracle with like, really good cheekbones. How would this society function? Can we even predict what sort of modern world it would be integrated into? Would the Native-European hybrid population have experimented with African slavery? Would they have remained in the British Empire?

[Torco]

I don't think it's that difficult to imagine a severely throttled rate of migration into the new world: for example

you could have another black death in Europe, or some other kind of big deal crisis that makes it so there's not as many loads of europeans waiting to get on boats and become settlers in the americas.

you could have some earlier source of exchange with america, for example the chinese, that makes the disease catastrophe happen earlier so that when spanish and later english settlers arrive the population is not as severely decimated, and thus they can resist somewhat more effectively and thus stop the europeans at their bridgeheads for a while longer.

you could have england remain catholic, as opposed to protestant, which would only require a relatively small change in history: maybe henry the eight gets his kid from wife two or something: catholic countries were a lot less genocidal towards native american populations. this to their credit, but not to that much credit: enslaving is less evil than genociding, but it's not good.

As to what would happen to those populations, i.e. how they later integrate into the world, I think latin america again offers the template, and in this peru and brasil are probably more representative than chile or argentina: mestizo countries evolved to have extremely dominant, ethnically european oligarchies ruling over vast swathes of mestizo populations, alongside a lot still mixed but not culturally assimilated indigenous groups: in many places of latin america you can still find villages of mayas, nahuas, quechuas, mapuches, diaguitas, guaranis, etcetera. of course most groups did not survive into the modern time, but plenty did: a north american paraguay would have probably had a similar thing happen. What you would also get is a different type of incorporation into global capitalism: the united states would not be the global superpower it is now but, rather, a bunch of different countries, a few post-french (louisiana, quebec?) and a few post-english, other post-spanish (florida and los angeles, for example), some even post-scottish maybe, and alaska would probably speak russian to this day. these countries would be treated by europe the way they treated the ones across the rest of the world: as raw material providers and markets for finished products, with coups routinely making sure pro-european-business governments prevail, and in general kept poor and dependent. you'd have british petroleum drilling texas and paying death squads to disappear union workers.

this would have had a lot of second order effects, such as the soviet union probably not falling when it did (not to say the soviet system didn't have problems, but the yanks definitely helped), the nazis achieving an agreeable peace after WW2 (if the nazis even happened, they were explicitly inspired by the white settler genocidal project of the early US, but let's say it did), and possibly even japan achieving their pan-asian co-prosperity sphere.

culturally... man, that'd be something to behold.

[hwhatting]

you could have england remain catholic, as opposed to protestant, which would only require a relatively small change in history: maybe henry the eight gets his kid from wife two or something: catholic countries were a lot less genocidal towards native american populations. this to their credit, but not to that much credit: enslaving is less evil than genociding, but it's not good.

As to what would happen to those populations, i.e. how they later integrate into the world, I think latin america again offers the template, and in this peru and brasil are probably more representative than chile or argentina: mestizo countries evolved to have extremely dominant, ethnically european oligarchies ruling over vast swathes of mestizo populations, alongside a lot still mixed but not culturally assimilated indigenous groups: in many places of latin america you can still find villages of mayas, nahuas, quechuas, mapuches, diaguitas, guaranis, etcetera. of course most groups did not survive into the modern time, but plenty did: a north american paraguay would have probably had a similar thing happen.

I'm not sure about this - what happened in the parts of Latin America where you still have sizeable indigenous populations was normally two factors or a combination of both:
(1) Tropical jungles - not so conducive to European farmer-settlers, especially away from the coast and the riverine networks, at least until modern times with chainsaws and roads into the rainforest;
(2) The conquistadors stepped into the shoes of pre-existing agrarian empires and while they imposed their own religion and own institutions, they basically took over (and worsened) the pre-existing rent-extraction from farmers by the state.
With North America having a more accomodating climate for farmer colonists and no indigenous agrarian Empires (except maybe in the Mississippi basin; I'm not sure now whether these broke down before or due to the Columbian exchange of diseases), I'd rather expect a situation like in Argentina or Chile, and would expect colonisation only to be slowed down or averted by a slower inflow of settlers.

[Otto Kretschmer]

As late as 1670s Native Americans were able to inflict severe losses on English colonists. With smaller population they could have either pushed them back or assimilated them

[alynnidalar]

you could have some earlier source of exchange with america, for example the chinese, that makes the disease catastrophe happen earlier so that when spanish and later english settlers arrive the population is not as severely decimated, and thus they can resist somewhat more effectively and thus stop the europeans at their bridgeheads for a while longer.

I have often thought the "easiest" way to accomplish this in an AU is to simply have the Norse bring smallpox and such when they showed up. Certainly giant plagues and mass deaths would be expected to lead to dramatic changes in culture and how society is organized, so what sort of world the later European explorers would have stepped into is a pretty big mystery--but it's not implausible to imagine one that was better prepared to resist colonization on a social level aside from merely more prepared to deal with smallpox, if that makes sense. i.e. more centrally organized governments, more formal militaries, wonderful medical advancements, I don't know, there's a lot of ways you could take this.

[hwhatting]

@alynnidalar: I agree. A more susccesful Norse colonisation might have brought European technologies and institutions to North America without overwhelming the local populations / cultures, and could have given them a chance to adapt and develop in a manner allowing them not to be steamrollered in the same way as in our time line.

[Richard W]

maybe henry the eight gets his kid from wife two or something:

FWIW, she seems to have favoured the Protestant tendency.

[zompist]

you could have england remain catholic, as opposed to protestant, which would only require a relatively small change in history: maybe henry the eight gets his kid from wife two or something: catholic countries were a lot less genocidal towards native american populations.

Hans-Werner already replied to this, but I'd add that in temperate areas— i.e. Chile and Argentina— Latin America was just as bad as Anglo-America. So, I don't think the difference was religion.

[Torco]

let me point out that latin america is a lot more varied, biome-wise, than just tropical rainforest: we have mediterranean shrubland, steppes, maritime rainforest, abject desert, nice rolling grasslands, fjords, conifer forest, and that's just in chile! colombia, ecuador, peru and the rest of it is similarly diverse: maybe the jungle-stops-whiteppl thing happened in north and central brazil, where indeed the rainforest kept settler activity mostly in the coasts and around the rivers at first, but peru, central chile, most of argentina, uruguay, venezuela, colombia, ecuador, all have vast stretches of eminently non-rainforest territories, a lot of them quite accessible by foot and horse.

as for the second point, it's also flawed for the same reason: some of mejico was the aztec federation, and parts of peru, chile and ecuador was ruled (since recently, in some cases such as central chile) by the tawantinsuyu (incas, by their more common name) but the rest of latin america (i.e. southern chile, the peruvian amazonia, all of brasil argentina paraguay uruguay venezuela colombia etcetera) was not, in fact, ruled by any large imperial machinery which the spaniards could coopt in this way, and the results weren't very different in the areas where they did from the areas where they didn't: this is because you can also coopt small power structures: in santiago, for example, pedro de valdivia arrived and quickly came to an arrangement with the local chieftains, according to his letters.

also, contrary to what one might think by the biome analysis, argentina and chile were actually slower to be colonized than the more tropical bits, not quicker: hell, even after independence there was significant part of the southern cone of the continent still ruled by mapuches, and the genociding of the aonikenk, kaweskar, yamana, haush, selknam and other really southern native peoples went up around 1860-1920 or so... so geography doesn't seem to have mattered as much as, well, demography, gold, and the cooperation of the natives: the spaniards, we must recall, were conquerors and not settlers. they wanted to rule and christianize, not genocide and turn the land into yeomen farmland, this is a significant difference between england and spain as far as colonialism goes. arguably, the mapuches lasted as long as they did cause they were practiced at defensive warfare and anti-imperialist organization: they were in the process of resisting tawantinsuyu aggression and annexation when the spaniards arrived: indeed they call us eurodescendant chileans 'huincas' to this day, which comes from, well, incas according to legend, this may be untrue I'm no expert. it went similarly in Argentina, from whence the mapuches were actually from originally (they seem to have crossed and mapuchified central and southern chile around the 13th century or so, in a process of cultural radiation not unlike that of the ancient indo-europeans, the bantus, or the muslims, that is to say, rather decentralized: there was never a mapuche state)

As late as 1670s Native Americans were able to inflict severe losses on English colonists. With smaller population they could have either pushed them back or assimilated them

make that 1860 here in the south: while some chilean troops were fighting bolivians and peruvians to the north in order to take their lands, other chilean troops were fighting mapuches in the south in order to take their lands: in both cases they seem to have had significant advantages but not overwhelmingly so.

I have often thought the "easiest" way to accomplish this in an AU is to simply have the Norse bring smallpox and such when they showed up.

I don't know... was it only smallpox or was it a cocktail of plagues?

Hans-Werner already replied to this, but I'd add that in temperate areas— i.e. Chile and Argentina— Latin America was just as bad as Anglo-America. So, I don't think the difference was religion.

at least here we only got genocidal against the mapuches relatively late, as I point out above: during the colonial period the mapuches were recognized by the crown, had some degrees of rights within the kingdom and had signifiant automony. I don't know if this was the case in Argentina. as for Hans-Werner, I can't find anything on google, who's that?

I'm not sure about it either, and with the low samples we have it's hard to say, but it really does look like there's a difference between how england treated north america and how spain, portugal and france treated the bits they took. maybe it was the germanic/latin split?

[zompist]

also, contrary to what one might think by the biome analysis, argentina and chile were actually slower to be colonized than the more tropical bits, not quicker: hell, even after independence there was significant part of the southern cone of the continent still ruled by mapuches, and the genociding of the aonikenk, kaweskar, yamana, haush, selknam and other really southern native peoples went up around 1860-1920 or so...

Sure, pretty much as in the US and Canada. It took 300 years to fill in the continent, and if you look at a demographic map the process never really completed. (Not coincidentally, the west is also where you'll find most of our remaining Native Americans.)

As late as 1670s Native Americans were able to inflict severe losses on English colonists. With smaller population they could have either pushed them back or assimilated them

make that 1860 here in the south: while some chilean troops were fighting bolivians and peruvians to the north in order to take their lands, other chilean troops were fighting mapuches in the south in order to take their lands: in both cases they seem to have had significant advantages but not overwhelmingly so.

George Custer, a US Army officer, was famously defeated and killed by Native Americans in 1876.

at least here we only got genocidal against the mapuches relatively late, as I point out above: during the colonial period the mapuches were recognized by the crown, had some degrees of rights within the kingdom and had signifiant automony. I don't know if this was the case in Argentina.

It's probably appropriate for the entire European-Native American interaction to be described as genocidal; but I don't think it makes much sense to look for Good Europeans Who Didn't Genocide, especially if you want to identify them with "Latin Americans" in general. (In particular, I sure wouldn't make that assertion after looking at every European nation's record in the Caribbean. You do recall that African slavery was instigated in large part because the Europeans had killed off too many of the Caribbean natives?)

In any case, my point is that Argentina looks a lot like the US and Canada. It accepted nearly 7 million European immigrants-- by proportion of population, higher than the US. In 1914 80% of the population was descended from immigrants. (Of course the population is unevenly distributed-- if I'm reading Wikipedia corectly, half the population of Argentina is in Buenos Aires province or the city itself.)

as for Hans-Werner, I can't find anything on google, who's that?

Dude, how long have you been on the ZBB? That's hwhatting.

[hwhatting]

let me point out that latin america is a lot more varied, biome-wise, than just tropical rainforest: we have mediterranean shrubland, steppes, maritime rainforest, abject desert, nice rolling grasslands, fjords, conifer forest, and that's just in chile! colombia, ecuador, peru and the rest of it is similarly diverse: maybe the jungle-stops-whiteppl thing happened in north and central brazil, where indeed the rainforest kept settler activity mostly in the coasts and around the rivers at first, but peru, central chile, most of argentina, uruguay, venezuela, colombia, ecuador, all have vast stretches of eminently non-rainforest territories, a lot of them quite accessible by foot and horse.

as for the second point, it's also flawed for the same reason: some of mejico was the aztec federation, and parts of peru, chile and ecuador was ruled (since recently, in some cases such as central chile) by the tawantinsuyu (incas, by their more common name) but the rest of latin america (i.e. southern chile, the peruvian amazonia, all of brasil argentina paraguay uruguay venezuela colombia etcetera) was not, in fact, ruled by any large imperial machinery which the spaniards could coopt in this way, and the results weren't very different in the areas where they did from the areas where they didn't: this is because you can also coopt small power structures: in santiago, for example, pedro de valdivia arrived and quickly came to an arrangement with the local chieftains, according to his letters.

Zompist has already answered this, but just to add - if you look where the rate of survival of indigenous poulations is biggest, that's in the inaccessible / inhospitable areas (rainforests, deserts, and I also would add mountainous areas*1), which covers the Mapuche), and even more in the areas of agrarian macro-states. So the tendency holds.
*1) Southern Chile is a bit of a mirror image to the Pacific Northwest, where there is also a relatively high survival rate of indigenous populations.

also, contrary to what one might think by the biome analysis, argentina and chile were actually slower to be colonized than the more tropical bits, not quicker: hell, even after independence there was significant part of the southern cone of the continent still ruled by mapuches, and the genociding of the aonikenk, kaweskar, yamana, haush, selknam and other really southern native peoples went up around 1860-1920 or so... so geography doesn't seem to have mattered as much as, well, demography, gold, and the cooperation of the natives: the spaniards, we must recall, were conquerors and not settlers. they wanted to rule and christianize, not genocide and turn the land into yeomen farmland,

I agree on that part (minus the not wanting to genocide - they just had different necessities) - Spain and Brazil never much sponsored mass Immigration for settlement to their colonies, as their model was exploitation of native serfs, slave-operated latifundia (especially in the warmer climes) and extraction of mines. But that was also due to that was what was optimal for the lands they had. Here the floodgates opened only after independence, but to a degree that's also true for North America, where Britain at least tried for a while to limit settlement west of the Appalachians. But I still wouldn't see religion as the reason for the difference - the French also settled in North America (Quebec, Acadia), displacing the native population, they just lost their colonies to the British early on.

[Moose-tache]

1) Being Catholic doesn't make you love genocide any less. There is really no excuse to still be arguing about this in the year of our lord 2021.

2) Holding up the Little Big Horn as some decisive Native victory is like watching the Hindenburg and pointing out that some parts of it are technically still aloft.

3) Removing the United States as we know it would have enormous knock-on effects, to the point that by 1700 or so, we cannot be confident that anything, anywhere would play out as it does in our timeline, even when it seemingly has nothing to do with the Americas, so we're nowhere near the point of guessing what sort of glastnost we should expect.

4) Why is no one arguing over which language will become the Guarana of the northern hemisphere? Sure, Powhatan seems like an obvious choice, but I like Muskokee. It was already being used as a trade language, after all.

[zompist]

2) Holding up the Little Big Horn as some decisive Native victory is like watching the Hindenburg and pointing out that some parts of it are technically still aloft.

If that was the point, you would certainly have addressed it.

Otto was under the impression that Native American military resistance lasted only till the 1670s; this is off by two centuries. It's also relevant to the comparison with Argentina. No one is under the impression that the Native Americans won the war.

[Otto Kretschmer]

2) Holding up the Little Big Horn as some decisive Native victory is like watching the Hindenburg and pointing out that some parts of it are technically still aloft.

If that was the point, you would certainly have addressed it.

Otto was under the impression that Native American military resistance lasted only till the 1670s; this is off by two centuries. It's also relevant to the comparison with Argentina. No one is under the impression that the Native Americans won the war.

Not really I am under an impression that the King Philip's War was the last chance for Native Americans to destroy New England as it's demographic advantage was growing every year due to birth rates and immigration from Europe.