There were large empire-like hegemonies in the SE US when de Soto passed thru. Much of central Georgia was under one chieftain who controlled several good-sized cities. And they did build mounds there. (And promptly got hit by disease epidemics.)
de Soto was looking for gold. He heard the usual el Dorado rumors. But found very little. (Despite Georgia later being the site of the first gold rush in the US.)
His group wandered well inland thru a lot of the E. US. Once the tribes had been depleted, the Spainish could have easily moved in and taken complete control of the whole area. Instead, they focused on Florida and the SE US coast.
Why? They needed to protect the treasure fleets coming from Mexico and S. America. These fleets would work their way up the SE coast until they got the the Easterlies and then across the Atlantic.
The SE US (as far as they were concerned) didn’t have much going for it, treasure-wise.
It’s like what Willie Sutton said (or maybe not) when asked about robbing banks: Because that’s where the money is. The Aztecs and the Incas had the money. That’s what got robbed first.
We agree that defeating one village didn’t help that much against the next. While in Mexico, defeating one supreme ruler sealed the deal.
The basic argument is simply that fighting multiple hard battles-and winning all of them is harder than fighting one very hard battle-and winning once.
Based primarily on my reading of 1492, so my understanding is limited though Mr. Mann makes a well-researched strong argument, native americans weren’t wandering tribes of hunter-gatherers. They had strong, large, and permanent settlements with sophisticated governments and strong cultures. And quite successful farming. Farming that was based on annual fires, not the plow. But effective none the less. Native American farming was based on mast (various local tree nuts), hunting, and corn. Annual burning of the underbrush enhanced the first two. Corn fields were very important but only part of the diet. De Soto reported many large villages and thousands of very intimidating natives everywhere he went in the southeast. Along the coast of N. America during the 1500s one reason Europeans didn’t establish colonies was simply that the native americans didn’t let them. European visitors had a very poor reputation as dirty hairy criminals who didn’t play by the (native american) rules. And the Indian weapons-primarily arrows with stone arrowheads and very effective war clubs, were quite capable of overpowering the occasional fishermen or armored adventurer. Numbers were in the natives favor, as well as adaptability. Mr. Mann points out that it is possible that for a time in the 1500s there were more native american crewed sailing ships along the coast of N. America than European ships. The native americans captured wrecked, beached, or stranded ships and learned how to operate them. Large European warships weren’t sent over to explore the new world-the ships that made the trip were only large enough to barely survive the crossing in good weather, load up with some fish, and get back home. Many didn’t get back.
While I don’t specifically , Charles Mann is a popularizer who is making a persuasive argument. This is important specifically because he isn’t actually doing research, and actual scholars tend to put a lot more “maybe-possibly” qualifiers in their estimates.
However, the very first thing you should understand, rbroome, is that the idea that many Native Americans had towns is not only not new, it’s been known since, well, forever. This is not a new idea. It’s not even an old idea. Europeans encountered American Indians in towns from the first meeting. However, they also encountered nomadic tribes, and various groups in-between. It simply depended when and where the groups lived. Some people tend to think of all American Indians as nomads, probably based more on the fact that the last independent groups of Native Americans in North America lived in the relatively open West. And of course, we’ve got loads of Western genre films and not a lot of dramas looking at social life among the moundbuilders or clever political satires of the Aztecs. But no scholars believe that, or probably ever believed that unless they were quite mad.
That said, a lot of Mann’s case is thin even on its own terms. It relies extremely heavily on very dubious evidence and many conclusions are highly questionable. Mann, perhaps a good journalist but a poor scholar, presents one-sided evidence and does not adequately examine the counter-case. This does not mean his conclusions are wrong - only that that he does not really make a strong case for them unless you don’t know any other views on the topic. Also, he seems to have kinda-sorta invented stuff out of whole cloth with no evidence on the grounds that he would like it if it were so. Which is a very bad thing in scholarship, but journalists get paid to tell stories.
There’s no evidence at all that the Spanish could not have overpowered anyone and everyone they met - had they reason to do so. We know this, precisely because they absolutely did.
Let me also clarify one thing: Charles Mann’s writing has been thought of very highly by some people, and I have no quibble with that. Nor do I necessarily think his conclusions are wrong.
I am saying that it’s very dangerous thinking to take them as anything more than supposition, and certainly not as anything new. There is a reasonable chance that some of the book is reasonably accurate for some parts of the New World, and many scientists have held this for a long time. Unfortunately, we simply lack clear evidence to make very good projections for many of the quantifiable conclusions he reaches. Additionally, at least some of the quality-based conclusions he reaches are on shakier ground.
There were hardwood forests in Europe and China in the early modern era, so I’m not sure why they would have been completely absent from the eastern United States. I’m sure there weren’t as many in 1550 as there were in 1650, for sure. Further north it would have been too cold for maize anyway, and I’m not sure if the Native Americans had cold-tolerant cereals like the Europeans did. New England and southern Michigan are already towards the limits of how far north maize can grow efficiently.
Also I would imagine New England wasn’t as intensively farmed/populated as the Midwest was (where the Cahokia mound builders lived), since New England famously has poorer soils than the Midwest. Especially Illinois where the mound builders were.
Most abandoned boats probably failed in some way - unlikely that people not proficient in woodworking large planks would make them workable again. To exceed the existing European fleet, they’d have to be master carpenters and there would have to be a lot of shipwrecked vessels - more than actually still floating each year. Plus, didn’t ships in tropical water succumb if not maintained within a few years (worms, barnacles?) I suspect the extreme number is based on assuming almost every ship “lost” was found and put to use by the locals.
When the pilgrims first went sailing around to see what was in the neighbourhood, they mostly encountered tribes that ran off into the forest (you know, trees). One group came back and fired arrows at them… must have had previous close encounters of the European kind. In all cases, the pilgrims found collections of huts, not towns. Those typically belonged to the Iroquois further inland. IIRC, the longhouse culture DID up and move every few years, with slash and burn land clearances. “Towns” could mean a few thousand people - large but not Aztec-level. The big problem, as always, was getting enough food to last the winter.