# How long could natives have kept Europeans away? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 21, 2016, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334 "2016-05-21T22:10:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2016, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334/41 "2016-05-23T20:54:25Z")
The Maori of New Zealand were able to hold off outsiders for quite a while until the Europeans weapons were just so much better. In the US the Apache held off the Mexicans and later the Americans until the late 1800’s when repeating firearms and numbers were just too great for them. ---
**Author:** ![Ambrosio\_Spinola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de0a6/32.png) [@Ambrosio\_Spinola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambrosio_Spinola)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2016, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334/42 "2016-05-23T21:16:44Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > A very good book about NA’s is Empire of the Summer Moon. “a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all.” > > It’s not for those of week stomach. This is a really fantastic book, which among other things addresses the fact that the technological superiority of the European settlers was real but not completely overwhelming until after the Civil War. Bows and arrows may seem like a joke against guns, but among skilled users were not all that much worse than the single-firing black powder weapons in widespread use prior to the mid-19th century. The Comanche managed to actually push the American settlement border back somewhat for several years with their constant raids. But the Comanche couldn’t ever match the United States in numbers or in organization, and suffered from constant disease outbreaks. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334/43 "2016-05-24T00:54:06Z")
> [@Kimera757](#): > > I think we would have had a situation similar to India (irony given the name). India was not a country, but a swarm of small states with different cultures, languages and often religions. The United Kingdom in particular defeated them piece by piece until they had conquered the whole region. There weren’t huge plagues associated with the contact, so India’s population did not fall… We also know that contact between Europe and India is extensive, since many of the languages of India (including the classical Sanskrit) are related to Greek, Latin, and most of the modern languages of Europe (including English). That’s the idea of the _Indo-European_ language family. Since there does not appear to be anything like a Turko-Athabaskan language family, a Sinitic-Algonquian language family, or a Yupo-Elamite language family, we can conclude that there is less evidence to support a recent shared history (that is, within historical times) between the Americas and elsewhere. > [@Kimera757](#): > > …I could picture an American history like that. If so, most people in the Americas would have Polynesian and native blood, with a lot of European influence on their culture and technology. In other news, the Third Aztec Republic has been criticized again in the UN for supporting Celtic Druid extremists fighting against the Italo-Polish Alliance’s efforts to resettle Swedish economic migrants in its Occupied Scottish Territories even as an economic embargo continues to be enforced by carriers of the Imperial Wampanoag Navy. ---
**Author:** ![T.M](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ad7895/32.png) [@T.M](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/T.M)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334/44 "2016-05-24T09:57:14Z")
If the natives had united as a single force then the Europeans would have been defeated as their lines of supply and communication were stretched to hell and back. If a ship made it back to Europe and reinforcement organised it would be 6 months before help arrived in that time the natives would have become familiar with European weapons that they had captured. It was the inability of the natives to communicate with one another probably due to petty feuding that allowed the Europeans to gain a foothold in the America’s. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334/45 "2016-05-24T10:31:35Z")
My old History professor told us what he called the Tip of the Iceberg Theory. He said when the first Europeans started heading west, the Indians didn’t think there were enough to be concerned about. Said the Indians could have destroyed them handily, firing off 20 arrows in the time it took the Europeans to load and fire a single shot. They didn’t understand they were seeing just the “tip of the iceberg.” But by the time the danger was fully realized, it was too late, there were too many, and the momentum was gaining. He said a concerted effort early on could have made westward expansion seem undesirable, at least for the foreseeable future. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334/46 "2016-05-24T12:23:13Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > So look at the case of the Aztecs. They were vastly superior numerically to the army of pirates that Cortez commanded. So why weren’t they able to wipe out the Spaniards? Again, it was a question of organization. They weren’t just fighting the Spaniards, they were also fighting a coalition of states that had allied with the Spaniards against the Aztecs. So why did these guys help the Spaniards murder the Aztecs? Because they fucking hated the Aztecs. That’s pretty much the pattern of all European colonization. The Euros were always vastly outnumbered and outgunned but the trick is that they, by definition, were a new and non-zero weight in a delicate and age-old balance. So their simple presence destroyed any status quo, and they had the knack of playing with that fact - basically allying with the underdog(s) so they could murder any overdog, then turn on the now even weaker underdog. That’s how the Brits took India too. In the case of the Americas, variola wiping out close to 95% of the population helped though ;). ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334/47 "2016-05-24T12:31:41Z")
But sometimes the natives figured out what was what. Japan managed to throw them back to the sea for close to two centuries for example, then managed to recover quite quickly from the rude awakening Perry gave them. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334/48 "2016-05-24T12:48:59Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Since there does not appear to be anything like a Turko-Athabaskan language family, a Sinitic-Algonquian language family, or a Yupo-Elamite language family, we can conclude that there is less evidence to support a recent shared history (that is, within historical times) between the Americas and elsewhere. There is some support for a Central-Asia, Western American [Dene-Yeniseian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den%C3%A9%E2%80%93Yeniseian_languages) language family, not to mention the definitely related Yupik languages on either side of the Bering Strait, the latter of which would have diverged beyond recognizability had they not split in historical times. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334/49 "2016-05-24T13:06:20Z")
I thought the natives also thought the Spaniards were returning Gods, with their ships, dogs, armor, riding horses, and of course their thunder-sticks. I’ll try to find it, but there was some legend of a fair-skinned deity returning to the Aztecs by sea, so maybe they could not resist the 1519 landing by Cortez without approval of their leaders. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334/50 "2016-05-24T14:45:37Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > I thought the natives also thought the Spaniards were returning Gods, with their ships, dogs, armor, riding horses, and of course their thunder-sticks. I’ll try to find it, but there was some legend of a fair-skinned deity returning to the Aztecs by sea, so maybe they could not resist the 1519 landing by Cortez without approval of their leaders. I think they figured out fairly quickly that these were not gods. ---
**Author:** ![mistymage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mistymage/32/459_2.png) [@mistymage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mistymage)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334/51 "2016-05-24T19:52:42Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > I thought the natives also thought the Spaniards were returning Gods, with their ships, dogs, armor, riding horses, and of course their thunder-sticks. I’ll try to find it, but there was some legend of a fair-skinned deity returning to the Aztecs by sea, so maybe they could not resist the 1519 landing by Cortez without approval of their leaders. > **[Quetzalcōātl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatl)** > > Quetzalcoatl (/ˌkɛtsəlkoʊˈætəl/) \[pron 1\] (Nahuatl: "Feathered Serpent") is a deity in Aztec culture and literature. Among the Aztecs, he was related to wind, Venus, Sun, merchants, arts, crafts, knowledge, and learning. He was also the patron god of the Aztec priesthood. He was one of several important gods in the Aztec pantheon, along with the gods Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli. The two other gods represented by the planet Venus are Tlaloc (ally and the god of rain) and Xolotl Que... “Since the sixteenth century, it has been widely held that the Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II initially believed the landing of Hernán Cortés in 1519 to be Quetzalcoatl’s return. This view has been questioned by ethno-historians who argue that the Quetzalcoatl-Cortés connection is not found in any document that was created independently of post-Conquest Spanish influence, and that there is little proof of a pre-Hispanic belief in Quetzalcoatl’s return” ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334/52 "2016-05-24T23:15:47Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > I thought the natives also thought the Spaniards were returning Gods, with their ships, dogs, armor, riding horses, and of course their thunder-sticks. I’ll try to find it, but there was some legend of a fair-skinned deity returning to the Aztecs by sea, so maybe they could not resist the 1519 landing by Cortez without approval of their leaders. That’s an old fable we told ourselves to boost our egos, but outsides of the dreams and infatuations of non-contemporary chroniclers there’s not much at all to support it. Then again, since the bastard burned all the codices, we have not much to support anything regarding the natives point of view ;). But my reckoning is that the natives knew full well Cortez was just a guy - a guy with magitech, admittedly, but still. So I think they used him as much as he would use them, and much like the “sale” of Manhattan both sides thought they were getting the better out of a deal with weird idiots ; as I’m pretty sure the Spaniards’ obsession with gold must have been looked down upon as a weakness, especially by people as savvy and advanced as the Aztecs were. To say nothing of their complete ignorance of how to live in the jungles of central America. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334/53 "2016-05-25T02:16:36Z")
It wouldn’t surprise me if they did think the Spaniards were gods at first. But as soon as the first one bled, let alone died, the game would have been up. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-natives-have-kept-europeans-away/755334.md?page=2)