Manifest Destiny Diverted
Reading James Fenimore Cooper has made me want to write an alternate history of the United States. Yes, I am proud to be an American. No, I am not proud of some of this country’s past and present. I want to write an alternate history piece in which the Native Americans won the initial strings of battles for the conquest of their land. They were the rightful owners and did not view it that way. I also want to give them extraordinary medical capabilities so they can become immune to the diseases that are spread both intentionally and unintentionally. I want their children to live, and never for them to be hanged in the number of thirteen. This will happen once and only once. The great spirit will show its dark side. The natives will use their immense knowledge of their own terrain to outsmart the assailants and steal their weapons. This is the story that would have been written as history if someone could have warned them. No, they befriended the whites and helped them survive. The same goes for the Spaniards who read them a proclamation in Spanish which they “had no hope of understanding” (Source: Corporate Avenger.)
and in effect meant this. There are several translations and this is the one in the Corporate Avenger song.
“We ask and require you to acknowledge the church as the ruler and
superior of the whole world and the high priest called pope and in his
name the king of Spain as lords of this land. If you submit we shall
receive you in all love and charity and shall leave you, your wives and
children and your lands free without servitude, but if you do not submit
we shall powerfully enter into your country and shall make war against
you, we shall take you and your wives and your children and shall make
slaves of them and we shall take away your goods and shall do you all
the harm and damage we can.”
I want the Natives to win. I think our society would have been more peaceful and moral had this land never been stolen. The great civilaization that already existed in North America.
This is 100% true and so are the gruesome details (which I will post here) in the song (which I won’t post here. Instead I’ll give you a different song so no one gets offended. Here’s the gruesome details.
“The Spaniards made bets as to who would slit a man in two or cut of
his head with one blow. They tore babies from their mother’s breast by
their feet and dashed their head against the rocks. They hanged Indians
by thirteen in honor and reverence for their redeemer and their twelve
apostles. They put wood underneath and with fire burned the Indians
alive.”
This time around the natives would be able to defend themselves because there will be a Paul Revere type in the natives who discovers the plan for conquest initially. This causes the tribes of America to unite in battle as one tribe.
Another Corporate Avenger song (Evolved) states
(I would indent but this is a post)
“Indians are not chinamen, some books contain lies.
If man had evolved from apes, there would be no more apes.
It has been said and written over and over again that the first north
Americans crossed on a land bridge from asia into the north America due to
exposed land which occured during the low sea levels of the last ice age.
It has been said that there is no historic record of these early pioneers the
last of which crossed supposedly at 10,000 years ago, even though great
civilizations, with great structures already existed in north and South America.
If man had evolved from apes, there would be no more apes.
Oh, the truth feels good.
All this is quoted as fact with absolutely no consideration to the common
sense notion that as an ice age recedes it does so from the warmest parts of
the earth around the equator, to the north and to the south towards poles.
This grear land bridge theory subliminally suggest that the people who were
native to this land were not native at all but mere descendants of immigrants.
If man had evolved from apes, there would be no more apes.
Oh, the truth feels good. ”
I would like to take this interpretation of the history so I can emphasize the strength of all of the tribes conjoined. It is their great civilization. North America will help South America and vice versa to eradicate the genocidal, parasitic and destructive evil from the face of their great union that requires no laws, boundaries, or borders. This land does not rely on treaties that become broken but on mutual respect and symbiotic relationships. This inner strength will assure the ultimate victory of the natives. They are no longer cornered or isolated. Sure they lose some battles but they have enough immunized men to fight forever! The battle is on!
I do not think war is right but I do believe that self- defense is a God given right to every organism on this planet.
(My main focus is making my story as realistic as possible this time around. The sole basis is not morality or absurdity. It is an alternate reality.) The link below where the text is underlined and talks about the RATM video is a link to the Gutenberg text detailing the initial destruction inflicted upon the natives.
This video will also inspire the unity in my story. It is from a period that is a later time than my story, but it serves well to reflect the attitude and brotherhood a battle of this magnitude would require.
Okay…
I’m not usually a fan of genocide (the exceptions, of course, being stupid people and those who talk at the theater), so do not misconstrue the following.
You say you don’t want this to be a piece about morality or absurdity, but you go on at great length about horrors that took place and quote again again the specific horrors you would be ‘preventing’ in this alternate history. It’s pretty obvious you would have a strong moral message or slant. But that’s a separate issue; let’s talk technical.
If you want a historically accurate and academically intriguing “alternate history” you have innumerable hurdles to soar over. And these hurdles are not the short ones they use at The Y; these hurdles are grand, and would make Reed Richards himself gulp nervously. These include, but are not limited to, complex social conditions and boundaries, vastly superior technology, and the source of this magical immune system that you can not contributed to magic.
First of all, I have no idea at what date you intend to place this turning point, but the White Skins and Red Skins didn’t have too much of an issue with each other for well over a hundred years after Columbus. The white man started slaughtering the red man on behalf of… the red man. You see, the various American Indian tribes had a mix of getting along with each other, and kill-those-bastards-on-sight. Some of them hated other tribes far more than they hated the white man. Of course, the white man sided with whatever tribe best suited their interests, but that’s just being smart. Even later, in the 19th century as the “Native American” was becoming an endangered species, there were tribes who fought long side the white devil to purge other tribes off the planet. White and red might have hated each other, but some of these Red-on-Red fights were as sick, bigoted, and vicious as anything you can imagine. Don’t think they didn’t play a few games of “kick the baby” themselves. Despite what Avatar taught us, the tribes would have never united. I know this, because history knows this.
That’s Hurdle One.
I don’t know what you’re saying with this great healing and immune system bit, but I assume you mean preventing the spread of the common cold (oops) and small pox (bio-weapon). If the American Indian had some leaf or whatever they could rub on their chests that would make them not die from the crap we infected them with, they would have. They didn’t because it doesn’t exist. But maybe you want to make red skins with white lab coats in clean rooms making advanced immune serums that protect against general infectious agents. OK, I’ll go with that. When small pox was spread among tribes the people didn’t even know what a germ was, but you can fudge that. Also, small pox is a highly contagious viral agent that has a long incubation period and a kill rate of 1 in 3. One of the nightmare scenarios of modern medical science is a small pox outbreak. How do the American Indian tribes protect themselves from this 200-400 years ago?
That’s Hurdle Two.
As for the technology, let me say this. I gather six highly-trained commando squadrons armed with full body armor and a compliment of XM214 miniguns to raid a local ROTC camp. If you can convincingly depict the ROTC boys winning, you will have jumped Hurdle Three.
And if you’re just idly wondering what North America would have been like without the Great White Wave, historical experts lean toward the notion of “not too different than circa 1500ad”. The various tribes had little reason or ambition to change from nomadic life, let alone advance industry.
Or you could do what Alan Moore did in Tom Strong. Introduce a time flub a thousand years ago that prompted a production of industry by the local tribes, so when Columbus came ashore in 1492, he was met with machine guns.
Just a little input.
On Bob and Brain thurs morning, they were discussing land dispersal in Philly (I think), and how they made a deal with the indians that how ever much land they could walk in an alloted time would be granted each person. However, the white dudes found marathon runners to do “walk” their plots, and ended up with WAY more land. I don’t know if you could find out more accurate details of this, but it would show some of the misconduct of the white men under the ruse of fairness.
@dmorbach
The beauty about fiction is that the impossible can be depicted in a manner in which it is believable. Even some of the most successful fictional works describing natives (Cooper) were definitely not accurate. You’re right. My idea obviously had some moral objective, but it would not have been impossible for the natives to unite. (According to my Dad)The problem is likely that my people, the vikings,brought alcohol over which the natives were not able to digest properly due to the missing enzyme in their liver. Yes, if they would have had the proven technology to become immune they would have. This does not prove that in an alternate version of history that they could not have found something to help them, and it does not prove that my idea of magical immunity would work. Yes, it appears that my idea was a rewrite of James Fenimore Cooper (incorrect and in some terms impossible) with a scenario that makes me morally satisfied. You are right about the hurdles and my conjecture is that your pseudo- absurdist idea of the natives having machine guns was not serious . Thank you for the help. I may still attempt to write a story in which the natives united, but I will consider all of these hurdles. This will likely not be my story for class because you are right. It is nearly impossible to actually recreate the life in North America at that time and James Fenimore Cooper is a horrible example to go by since his stories about this have proven to be factually incorrect in various ways.
The drive home blessed me with another consideration. I realize that you were piecing together parts of history I had left out and I realize that you must not be entirely ethnocentric if you are against genocide. American tribes did fight one another, Jewish men helped perpetrate the horrors of the racially motivated holocaust, and African men sold slaves. It is important that we acknowledge that there are bad people of all ethnicities, but if someone’s central focus on the holocaust is that the Jews killed themselves or their idea of American slavery is that the Africans sold their own people, then they are being seriously selective in a manner that pins the blame on a whole race of people. It seems that you know the entire story and were just filling in some gaps because it is just as incorrect to say that only white settlers were responsible for the death and the genocide that was caused both intentionally and unintentionally, but this does not excuse anyone regardless of race for their wrong doings. Thank you for helping me contemplate this issue that some history textbooks refuse to.
Regarding the tribes uniting, I’m going to have to side with the historical and sociological scholars over your father, but that’s just me. Your original post read as very sanctimonious and did not mention the important factors I pointed out, so my worry was that you had not considered them. And without confronting those issues, your fiction would read as kiddie fair. That is not to say it does not have potential not to be.
I referenced an Alan Moore short story that I enjoyed a lot, absurd or not. It actually dealt with the Mayans and Cortez, not North America, but the idea is the same. I liked the piece, as it avoided being preachy or heavy-handed, and portrayed the Mayans not as saints or victims, but as warriors and butchers; they now had the power, and they slaughtered their enemies with it. Part of the point here (and what we both mention ourselves) is that doing naughty things is not limited to a certain skin color, but it is a condition of the human race. White, black, red, or yellow, genocide and cruelty are colorblind. Your first post says nothing regarding that idea, and frankly comes off as one-sided and short-sighted. Pleasantly, your second post tells me otherwise, but you can still amp up your story idea. Consider; what would the tribes do after driving off (or much more likely killing off) the English? Maybe invade and colonize an already-inhabited English island?
I’m not telling you what to write, but avoid at all costs the Disney ending. If you want to do something this heavy-handed, it has to be interesting beyond “give the Reds a happy ending and role credits.”
I know this is an old post, but I am going to attempt to give a clearer picture of the truth about this matter. I am not going to write the story, because I have not mentally developed or researched it enough for the concise details, but I would like to give a clearer version of the actual history. The following quote is from pages 104- 105 of “Lies My Teacher Told Me” (I can’t figure out the italics)by James W. Loewen. “Native nations had engaged in conflict before Europeans came, of course. Tribes rarely fought to the finish, however. Some tribes did not want to take over the lands belonging to other nations, partly because each had its own sacred sites. For a nation to exterminate its neighbors was difficult anyway, since all enjoyed the same level of military technology. Now all this changed. European powers deliberately increased Indian warfare by playing one nation off against another. The Spanish, for example, used a divide-and-conquer strategy to defeat the Aztecs in Mexico. In Scotland and Ireland, the tribes had played tribes against one another to extend British rule. Now they did the same in North America.”
I am not going to do the full analysis of this, but it is clearly evident that all people have problems, and the natives had a lot less of them before Europeans arrived. Though I would not exist on this land in this form if Europeans had not migrated to America, ultimately I think this continent would have been more peaceful, had it not been stolen.