# What if native Americans weren't so nice **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 15, 2018, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706 "2018-01-15T18:06:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AWB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bb73d2/32.png) [@AWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AWB)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/1 "2018-01-15T18:06:16Z")
I was wondering what the world would’ve been like if Europeans hadn’t been able to found colonies in North and South America. For example, suppose _all_ of the indigenous peoples of the Americas were more like the [North Sentinelese](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3049022/The-island-dangerous-visit-Mysterious-Sentinelese-tribe-rejected-outsiders-60-000-years-try-kill-sets-foot-land.html), who viciously attack anyone who lands on their island. In this scenario, perhaps Colombus’s first voyage would’ve had all his men slaughtered, except for maybe a skeleton crew who escaped. And they reported to the Spanish crown how violent these people were. And also suppose the natives could fend off the Europeans for at least a century, even though the Europeans had the greater firepower of guns. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/2 "2018-01-15T18:17:16Z")
The Europeans would still have taken over. It’d just result in a different timeline. How that timeline would have panned out is absolutely impossible to guess. We’re changing the course of european history; the resulting effect of chaos theory is total. It’s beyond any reasonable ability to take an educated shot at. You’re probably not just changing North American history but all history; you’re altering the very existence of the American Revolution, the World Wars, the slave trade, everything. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/3 "2018-01-15T18:32:00Z")
Well, lets look at the settlement of Plymouth, for instance, because, for quite a while, the Wampanoag Confederation had been doing sort of what you suggested. They were trading with Europeans (and not letting any of their neighbors do it), but making it pretty clear that the Europeans were there to trade, and nothing else, and anything like a permanent settlement would be met with deadly force. Then the plague came…maybe it was smallpox, maybe viral hepatitis, but in 1616, something broke out among the Wampanoag, and the population dropped from about 20,000 to about 1000. So when the Pilgrims showed up, Massasoit couldn’t drive them off, because the Narragansett weren’t affected by the disease, and Massasoit desperately needed allies against the Narragansett, who had been enemies of the Wampanoag for quite some time. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/4 "2018-01-15T18:45:15Z")
You seem unaware that the Taino _did_ fight Columbus and his men. Two hundred Spaniards faced tens of thousands of Taino. The Spaniards had horses and guns, neither of which the Taino had seen before. Moreover, the brutal butchery of the Spanish didn’t comply with the rules of war as the Taino knew them: they were out to slaughter as many Taino as they could, regardless of age or gender. The Taino had a welcoming culture, but they weren’t wimps. As to your second question, Spain was one of the most powerful nations in Europe at the time and weren’t afraid of a vicious response. The drive for gold, silver, conquest, and an alternate route to the east would have brought Spain in ever-greater numbers–or if not Spain, Portugal, which was already attacking and colonizing the African coast. Whoever showed up and whenever they did, the results, I’m afraid, would have been the same. And we’re not even talking about the impact of disease on indigenous populations. I can’t imagine the indigenous people could have held off the Europeans for a hundred years because it couldn’t have been done. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/5 "2018-01-15T19:04:53Z")
I’d like to hear of case where Europeans settlers were welcomed by Native Americans. It may have happened, I doubt it would be typical. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/6 "2018-01-15T19:25:28Z")
> [@AWB](#): > > For example, suppose _all_ of the indigenous peoples of the Americas were more like the [North Sentinelese](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3049022/The-island-dangerous-visit-Mysterious-Sentinelese-tribe-rejected-outsiders-60-000-years-try-kill-sets-foot-land.html), who viciously attack anyone who lands on their island. The North Sentinelese live on a small island. If the people who lived in America had acted like this, they would have killed each other off before any Europeans arrived. ---
**Author:** ![Arkcon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/7 "2018-01-15T20:14:52Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > You seem unaware that the Taino _did_ fight Columbus and his men. > [@nelliebly](#): > > The Taino had a welcoming culture, but they weren’t wimps. > [@TriPolar](#): > > I’d like to hear of case where Europeans settlers were welcomed by Native Americans. It may have happened, I doubt it would be typical. The O.P. seems to be unaware of many things, which is kinda par for the course of many SDMB “What if …” history threads. If things were very different, then … they’d have to be totally different. As in, if the Natives weren’t human. Many natives have reacted like Wampanog, and sought the Europeans as advantage vs other tribes, or sought manufactured goods for economic advantage, or just went “Hey. A new kind of human. Let’s talk to them. What could possibly go wrong.” And plenty thought, “Blue-eyed devils. Let me get one alone. He can get to wear my war axe upside his head.” All of this is human nature, repeated in first contacts through all of time. There’s nothing new about the North Sentinelese. Yes, they attack anyone who arrives. It doesn’t have to be that way. With careful, first contact protocols, there is minimal risk to contemporary people to initiate contact, gain their trust, develop a rapport, learn their language and customs. There is just a bit of “non-invasion non-colonial street-cred” to be earned by the Indian government in declaring them culturally off limits. Personally, I hope they don’t go extinct, in a natural disaster (the islands were heavily flooded during the 2004 tsunami,) before we get a chance to understand their culture. Then again, maybe I _ **want** _ that, given my cynical “street-cred” comment above. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/8 "2018-01-15T21:02:54Z")
> [@Arkcon](#): > > Many natives have reacted like Wampanog, and sought the Europeans as advantage vs other tribes, or sought manufactured goods for economic advantage, or just went “Hey. A new kind of human. Let’s talk to them. What could possibly go wrong.” And plenty thought, “Blue-eyed devils. Let me get one alone. He can get to wear my war axe upside his head.” All of this is human nature, repeated in first contacts through all of time. Right. There is no realistic prospect of there having been one unified front of resistance or of hard-nosed diplomacy. Plus the European powers were in the mood for conquest. A weak link would have been found and exploited, as was everywhere else that the colonial powers intervened. > [@](#): > > There’s nothing new about the North Sentinelese. Yes, they attack anyone who arrives. It doesn’t have to be that way. With careful, first contact protocols, there is minimal risk to contemporary people to initiate contact, gain their trust, develop a rapport, learn their language and customs. OTOH I can easily imagine that if the island they inhabited were instead in some disputed part of the South China Sea, someone would have already given them the business rather more tersely. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/9 "2018-01-15T21:05:23Z")
If the Native Americans weren’t so nice? We’d be celebrating Festivus in November instead of Thanksgiving. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/10 "2018-01-15T21:29:22Z")
The North Sentinelese fight off outsiders, true, but they can’t _effectively_ fight off outsiders. We stay out out of respect for their obvious wishes, but if we wanted to, it’d be no difficulty at all to conquer them. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/11 "2018-01-15T21:44:28Z")
The Native Americans WEREN’T so nice. But no one nation was strong enough to defeat a determined force of European invaders. One historian I heard said the only hope (a very remote hope) was for the rise of a Native American Temujin, aka Genghis Khan, to unite all the nation’s into one fighting force. ---
**Author:** ![cayden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/278dde/32.png) [@cayden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cayden)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/12 "2018-01-15T21:53:30Z")
I doubt the continent would be like North Sentinel. Remember there were several advanced civilizations in the Americas before colonization: the Incas, the Maya, the Aztecs, the Cahokia, the Iroquois. These societies would have kept developing without European interference, and probably would have become developed. I think the Americas, uncolonized, would probably be like Asia is today. Home to a few powerful, rich, developed nations (the Iroquois, Inca Empire, Aztecs, and Maya would be like China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan), and many semi-developed countries (the equivalents of Thailand, India, Cambodia, etc.). The idea that the Americas would be some kind of Stone Age, bow-and-arrow society is kind of ridiculous, IMO. The only places that would be like that are in the Amazon, and there are societies like that there today even _after_ colonization. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/13 "2018-01-15T22:48:00Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > If the Native Americans weren’t so nice? We’d be celebrating Festivus in November instead of Thanksgiving. I’d recommend this article to everyone: > **[Native Intelligence](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/native-intelligence-109314481/?all)** > > The Indians who first feasted with the English colonists were far more sophisticated than you were taught in school. But that wasn't enough to save them It’s a look at Pilgrim-Native relations at first contact, and how it wasn’t about niceness…it was about politics, with every group involved wanting something…the Pilgrims wanted a place to settle, Massasoit wanted allies, and Squanto wanted backing in a coup against Massasoit. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/14 "2018-01-15T23:16:07Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > I’d recommend this article to everyone: > > [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/native-intelligence-109314481/?all](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/native-intelligence-109314481/?all) > > It’s a look at Pilgrim-Native relations at first contact, and how it wasn’t about niceness…it was about politics, with every group involved wanting something…the Pilgrims wanted a place to settle, Massasoit wanted allies, and Squanto wanted backing in a coup against Massasoit. There was also a significant amount of economic self-interest in play. The first wave of settlers didn’t look like a threat; they were small groups and were generally on the edge of collapse. But they did have access to manufactured goods from Europe that the native Americans liked. So it was reasonable for the local natives to see the settlers as harmless and to want to set up trade relations with them. “We’ll trade for the food you need to survive in exchange for your metal tools and cloth.” ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/15 "2018-01-15T23:44:00Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The North Sentinelese fight off outsiders, true, but they can’t _effectively_ fight off outsiders. We stay out out of respect for their obvious wishes, but if we wanted to, it’d be no difficulty at all to conquer them. When faced with a sufficiently strong landing party, the Sentinelese do not attempt to fight them off. Their traditional tactic in this case has been to melt into the forest, so that the invaders only find hastily abandoned villages and no trace of the inhabitants, who keep out of sight until the coast is clear. (I suppose that in a hypothetical conquest scenario this would turn into partisan resistance.) Since the travel ban to the island, the only people they have had to confront have been small groups of illegal fishermen and armed salvagers, which they have been able to deal with despite some losses. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/16 "2018-01-15T23:59:31Z")
> **[Scalping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping)** > > Scalping is the act of cutting or tearing a part of the human scalp, with hair attached, from the head, and generally occurred in warfare with the scalp being a trophy. Scalp-taking is considered part of the broader cultural practice of the taking and display of human body parts as trophies, and may have developed as an alternative to the taking of human heads, for scalps were easier to take, transport, and preserve for subsequent display. Scalping independently developed in various cultures i On... Would make me decide to go looking for land elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2018, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/17 "2018-01-16T04:52:30Z")
> [@AWB](#): > > For example, suppose _all_ of the indigenous peoples of the Americas were more like the [North Sentinelese](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3049022/The-island-dangerous-visit-Mysterious-Sentinelese-tribe-rejected-outsiders-60-000-years-try-kill-sets-foot-land.html), who viciously attack anyone who lands on their island. You realise the Sentinelese are like that _because of_ previous contacts with outsiders, right? “Uncontacted” is code for “Uncontacted by Whites”, it’s highly likely they’d had previous contact with other people, like Indian Ocean slavers. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2018, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/18 "2018-01-16T05:39:30Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I’d like to hear of case where Europeans settlers were welcomed by Native Americans. It may have happened, I doubt it would be typical. Early records from e.g. columbus indicated a culture more friendly and welcoming than he had ever encountered. I guess that still doesn’t mean they were all sweetness and light, but relatively-speaking, they were. And of course they did teach the settlers things like how to farm corn despite various right-wing sites trying to claim the opposite. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2018, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/19 "2018-01-16T12:08:47Z")
The magic words here are Smallpox and Influenza, which devastated all Native American Tribes. Many estimates suggest a population loss of more than 50%, very, very early. Resistance or not–utterly futile. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2018, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706/20 "2018-01-16T14:53:26Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > Many estimates suggest a population loss of more than 50%, very, very early. The number is over 90%. Very possibly in the high 90s. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-native-americans-werent-so-nice/806706.md?page=2)