If somehow the American Indians had continued to develop relatively independently of the Europeans, how would they have developed? It’s impossible to know that of course, but it is possible to make some reasonable speculations. I won’t concern myself with why European influence is absent. The focus is purely on what might have happened in the absence of that influence. I’ll eventually go from 1492 to 2002, though I probably won’t even get to 1600 for every area I want to in this issue.

1492 to 1600: The big American Indian empires of the Incas and Aztecs probably still have some years of expanding left in them. They will do that expanding during this period.

The Aztecs of Mexico are approaching the natural limits of their expansion. They can expand to the northeast to some extent, and they do. They take control of more and more Huaxtec territory. Independence-minded Huaxtecs are forced north, but the climate and soil to their immediate north allow very limited agriculture. The Huaxtecs have been in very tenuous indirect contact with the fringes of the Mississippian Mound Builders. As the Aztecs push north, the Huaxtecs that remain independent are forced to orient their economy to the north and trade with the Mississippians becomes more important and direct. They develop coastal trade routes that eventually reach the mouth of the Mississippi.

To their northwest, the Tarascan Empire makes Aztec expansion difficult. The Tarascans have a smaller, but much more cohesive empire than the Aztecs. The two empires have bumped heads several times before 1492. They continue to do so, but with inconclusive results. The Tarascans continue to expand, but they expand at the expense of poorly known groups to their north and west.

To their south, the Aztecs run into the unfamiliar ecology of tropical rainforests. That doesn’t stop them from extorting tribute from economically important areas, but it does limit their interest in the area to some extent.

The Aztecs also press against the Tlaxcallans who form a hostile island of independent territory inside the Aztec empire. The Tlaxcallans are excellent fighters and it takes many years to wear them down, but the Aztecs are able to do that and are able to force the Tlaxcallans to pay tribute by 1550. The Tlaxcallans revolt a time or two after that, but are as firmly under Aztec control as most of the rest of the Aztec Empire by 1600.

The structure of the Aztec Empire doesn’t change a lot in that century. The Aztecs extort tribute and logistical support for their armies over a large area, but they generally don’t govern that area in the European sense. Conquered tribes and city-states generally are allowed to keep their traditional leadership and the Aztec generally leave them alone as long as the tribute continues to flow. Cities and tribes even wage wars on one another inside the empire.

In a few especially important areas the Aztecs do settle garrisons or appoint governors. In some cases they punish a particularly dangerous revolt by depopulating a city—killing or enslaving its people and bringing in Aztec settlers to replace the rebellious population.

The Aztec Empire is always one weak emperor away from disintegration, but it also has a large warrior class that needs war to gain prestige. Weak emperors tend to mysteriously die in Aztec society.

In the second half of the 1500s, the Aztecs face increasing trouble on their northern frontier. The ancestors of the Apaches and Navaho are pushing south into the southern Great Plains. That sets off a chain reaction as displaced tribes are forced south. The Apaches have an initial advantage in that they have more powerful bows than most of their enemies. Apache bows are a kind of primitive compound bow, using animal sinews and horn to give the bow extra power. The Apache advance ultimately pushes desert Chichemic tribes against the northern fringes of the Aztec empire.

The new type of bows spread to the Chichemics toward the end of the 1500’s and give them a military advantage over the Aztecs and their tributaries. The Tarascans also adopt Apache-style bows by around 1600, putting more pressure on the Aztecs.

In terms of technology, Indian Mexico has not advanced very much in a century. Bronze-working has become more common, spreading from the Tarascan and Huaxtec areas to central Mexico. Metal objects are still primarily ornaments in most areas. The Tarascans have begun using bronze in tools and even weapons, but those tools and weapons are copies of their stone equivalents, with little use of the advantages of metal. Metal-working for ornaments has become more sophisticated, with techniques spreading from the northern part of South America.

Writing has gotten a little more sophisticated and has spread to new groups. The Tarascan Empire has become large and complex enough that written records are necessary there.

Elements of Mexican Indian civilization are spreading north. Along the coast of western Mexico and in the Opata area of interior Mexico, Mexican Indian crops are spreading. So is copper-working. Both the Opata and tribes related to the Yaquis are taking elements of Mexican Indian culture and reworking them into new advanced cultures.

The Inca Empire is also approaching the natural limits of its expansion. It faces fiercely independent jungle tribes to the north and east, and the even more fiercely independent Aurician(sp) tribes of Chile to the south. Those tribes can be brought under control, but it is a slow, expensive process. In many cases, the Incas have to resort to bringing in settlers from established parts of the empire to establish control.

The Incas are dependent on llamas to transport food and other material for their armies. That creates problems in the north and west because llamas are cold country animals, adapted to high altitudes. They don’t do well in the humid lowlands, though over the course of the 1500s breeds gradually adapt to some extent.

The Inca Empire gets two new domestic animals in the late1500s. Polynesian voyagers have been in sporadic contact with coastal Indians in Chile and introduce chickens and pigs to the locals, while taking several root crops like sweet potatoes back with them. Chickens and pigs are both easy to keep and raise, and they spread rapidly, becoming common in lowland areas of the Inca Empire by the 1580s.

The structure of the Inca Empire does not change too much over the century. The Incas work hard to integrate local nobility into the empire. Over the century the empire gradually becomes more homogenous as memories of independence fade among subject peoples.

Metal-working gradually becomes more sophisticated. The Incas have been using bronze for several centuries now, and they are starting to exploit its potential. Metal-working is also spreading. Many of the jungle tribes on the eastern border of the empire now know how to use bronze.

The Inca empire is starting to decay by the end of the 1500s. Expansion is no longer really worth the effort for the most part. The jungle tribes around the empire are becoming relatively larger and more powerful as they integrate pigs and chickens into their cultures, and become better and better bowmen as waves of new bow technology spreads from North America and ultimately Asia. The Incas have never adopted bows and arrows to any great extent, though they do hire mercenary archers from jungle tribes. Those mercenaries are gradually becoming a problem because they eventually go home with knowledge of Inca organization and military tactics. With expansion less and less possible, the Inca elite increasingly squabbles among itself over pieces of a relatively unchanging pie.

Jungle tribes increasingly raid the borders of the empires as the century goes on. Those raids aren’t a major problem yet, but they are likely to be during the next century, especially as the Inca elite becomes more focused on their own internal struggles.

To the north of the Incas, several Columbian tribes like the Chibchas are not too far from the Inca and Aztec level of culture. The spread of pigs and chickens speeds up their development of more sophisticated cultures. Lack of protein sources has long been a problem in these areas, and the new domestic animals take care of that problem nicely.

In North America, large parts of the American Southeast is undergoing somewhat of a dark age in some places, but still flourishing in others. The spread of large-scale corn farming allowed Mississippian Mound Builders to establish large, politically sophisticated political structures. Unfortunately, prolonged corn farming depletes soil, and Mississippian life-styles can rarely be maintained for more than a few centuries in one place. The huge Mississippian site at Cahokia is now deserted. So are several other large Mississippian sites. There are still a number of large Mississippian chiefdoms around. The annual flooding along the Mississippi river replenishes the soil enough to keep chiefdoms going there. Areas where Mississippian culture spread relatively recently can also still flourish. Mississippian culture is still spreading from the interior toward the coast in South Carolina and Georgia. Mississippian-influenced cultures are developing in North Carolina and parts of Virginia.

The Mississippian cultures are hit hard by a prolong drought in the 1580s, but the culture is still developing. New breeds of corn and other crops are still spreading from Mexico. Cast copper and bronze objects from Mexico are now rare but sought after indications of high social status. Mississippian metallurgy is surprisingly sophisticated and still improving. They don’t know how to smelt or cast copper yet, but they can form raw copper into a wide range of tools and ornaments, some of them intricate enough that they are very difficult to distinguish from cast objects.

In northeastern North America, large-scale corn farming is still spreading toward the Atlantic coast. In a few cases, Iroquoian-speaking tribes spread it, pushing aside Algonquian-speakers. More often, local tribes gradually adopt the elements of the new way of life that fit in with their culture.

The tribes of New England through Maine are developing their own distinct cultures based on corn-farming Indian populations in the area are growing, and social stratification is becoming more pronounced.

Out on the Great Plains, the Plains Apaches are still pushing south. They dominate much of the Great Plains now. They are starting to adopt traits of the tribes around them, including small-scale casual farming.

The Pueblo Indians are for the most part in decline. The Apaches and Navahos usually trade with rather than raid the Pueblos, but they do put an element of added pressure on a group already hard-pressed by draughts, especially in the 1580s. The Pueblos do benefit to some extent from trade with the rising cultures of groups like the Yaqui and Opata of northwestern Mexico.

On the northwestern part of the Pacific coast, Indians have developed fairly sophisticated cultures based primarily on fishing and whaling. They do grow small plots of tobacco plants, but other than that they are entirely non-agricultural. In spite of that, they have developed large permanent villages, craft specialties and elaborate social hierarchies.

The northwestern Indian lifestyle doesn’t change much during the 1500s. It does spread a bit further into northern California; but that spread is limited by the fact that intensive fishing just isn’t enough to support the northwestern lifestyle in much of California.

California and the northwest don’t change much from their path in our time-line in the 1500s. There just wasn’t that much European influence in that area in our time. The California Indians probably avoid an epidemic or two, and they benefit from the continuation of trade routes that were disrupted by Spanish activity in Mexico or the Pueblo areas in our time-line. California Indians are probably gradually heading toward an agricultural system based on native California plants, and they move a little further in that direction in the 1500s, but the movement is almost imperceptible.

The West Indies change quite a bit in the 1500s. The Tiano of Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica are all under attack by the island Caribs. The Tiano either become a lot more warlike or they are enslaved. On most of the islands a little of both happens, with Caribs taking most of the coastal areas and pushing the Tiano inland, where they adapt by becoming more warlike. The population of most of the islands actually goes down as the Caribs disrupt Tiano agriculture and fishing activities.  That gives the hard-pressed ecologies of the islands a little bit of a breather, and some of the toughest of the native mammals see their populations start to grow a little.

Bottom line on the 1500s: Not an awful lot has changed. This is for the most part still an Indian world that would be quite recognizable to an Indian from 1492. Trends are underway that will change that a lot over the next century. We’ll look at the 1600s next issue.