History 146—Jeffery GentryStudent: Brian D. Lewis

America without the Indians

So much of our modern world owes itself to things we have forgotten the importance of, and how they played a part in shaping our lives as they are now. Though much of what should be remembered is slowly being brought back to our sights as we learn more about history as—to our knowledge—it happened, much more has been lost with time.

And even when the things which have disappeared can be recovered, often times, we find ourselves unwilling to do so, unable to accept how things were, and how the presence (or lack of presence) of key stuff has changed us.

Though I prefer to look, anyway. In my opinion, the best way to avoid mistakes in the future is to pay attention to what has happened in the past, so that the present can be changed for the better of all.

And because of that, I was quite open to the idea of looking at the past, and seeing what would happen if key events in our history…simply weren’t there. Because they’d change the world as we know it so drastically, that they’re definitely worth remembering.

This is why the article, Colonial America without the Indians: Counterfactual Reflections holds so much interest to me. As it points out, it’d be impossible to create a complete timeline with this view and have it hold any accuracy whatsoever; the timelines’ divergence would leave our world so drastically altered that we’d not be able to tell it was our world at all.

So the article makes necessary assumptions, that things would still play out as they did, until the next change they point out that would be different, if America was truly as barren as the Europeans arriving had hoped it would be.

And looking at things through this perspective is truly eye-opening. Almost everyone knows a little bit about what the Indians have given us, and I know more than most (as I was a bit of a history buff when I was younger), but even I held new respect for just how much it was after reading, because while I may have known a lot more than typical, the list is so long and includes so many things I’d never think about, that I’m willing to bet anyone could learn something new from the article.

One of the primary ways this happens is with interactions—many nowadays are aware of the abuse, negative interactions, we had with them, and even more are familiar with the stereotypes of gift-bearing Indians (positive interactions), but few are aware of the other types of continuous interactions, and how gray things were on both sides.

Simply put, while I was raised to look for the multiple views on the Indians (mainly, contributions), it was not until this article that I truly thought of the flaws present in each alternative methodology.

And how the contributions approach has some flaws itself. Only when looking at the article did the thought of reactionary changes occur to me, and then I realized just how important they were.

Though the thought of history without the Indians is an interesting one, I was quite fascinated with the controlled approach the article took. It most certainly can’t get all the details, but the number of facts fit in with the assumption things would otherwise be unchanged is rather impressive.

The Spanish Empire (and, by extent, the pirates we’ve romanticized so much that preyed upon their galleons, often as privateers for England) would have been short-lived if it existed at all. (As a consequence of this, Spanish would not be as much of a widespread language, as it is largely because of America that it is.)

Sure, they might have established a few outposts, and they may have eventually started colonies for what little resources they would be able to find on their own, but they’d be limited by the need to import black labor and for the large part, they wouldn’t have been the dominant force in America—that’d have (most likely) been England, a lot more so than they did.

The English, too, had help settling thanks to the Indians, via the proxy of the Spanish. ‘Liberating’ the Indians from the Spanish, combined with stealing their gold and finding friendly natives willing to help fight against enemies helped the English establish their power base in the first place.

Though with time and settlement, the gold and silver of America would have almost certainly been discovered, it’d not have been nearly as immediate. America’s potential would largely have been left untapped, as who’d want to live on a dead piece of rock?

Plus, many of the things in the new world cultivated by the Indians would either not exist or have taken us far longer to discover. Corn, crop rotation techniques, pearls, and dye are just a few which come to mind.

But of course, most of all, without the Indians, there wouldn’t have been a reason to look at what we have with the shame that we do when ignorance is discarded. The extinction of entire populations, along with their culture and history being lost forever, with only fragments left to reconstruct things.

Legalized plunder and murder are just among a few of the very long list of atrocities committed, with others being stealing of land, refusal to honor deals, slave labor, cruelty, and in general, showing little respect and much fear and arrogance towards them.

Though the Americas would have eventually been colonized for no other reason than we simply ran out of space, it would have been a much slower process if people thought it was just a lump prosperless land.

As just one example, fishing would have drawn fishermen, but the lack of trade opportunity with natives would deter further settlement by, say, the French, who have played such a strong role in the founding of America. (Evident most strongly in Canada and Louisiana.)

Exploration of the continent would have been further hindered, by the lack of native support, meaning that people trying to find North- and South-West passages would have had far greater difficulties compared to what they did.

The land by sight would only have been impressive for being…land, and lots of it. No furs, no gold, no nothing, so why bother going to find out what it so much as looked like when it would have apparently simply been a barren wasteland, devoid of life?

Though the thought of “land rich for the taking” may have appeared, it couldn’t have happened nearly as fast as it did without the Indian presence to help bolster ideas, such as a city of gold.

Native knowledge would not have existed, so traversing the terrain would have been incredibly difficult—no guides, and no specialized tools for the journeys. Canoes and in the north, snowshoes both helped the adventurers survive the wild world of America, but neither would exist without the natives.

Most of all, the English owe the Indians—it was them which helped create England’s wealth (somewhat by stealing from the Spanish), and it was their support of other countries (France and Spain in particular) which motivated the English to farm the new land, despite how hostile it seemed.

It could have happened without the Indians, but it’d have been much slower. All in all, the trend remains the same: our natural drive to go further and take more, for glory, wealth, and knowledge would eventually lead to all of the great discoveries we made.

However, they would not have been nearly as immediate as they were, taking far longer to be done, setting us back dozens (if not hundreds) of years, in just about every single way possible.

Simply put, without the reward, America was too much of a risk, and the Indians are what generated that reward, and with strong motivators of the three Gs (Gold, God, and Glory), we expanded quickly.

The English had overpopulation, high crime rates, and struggled with religious freedom, all of which seemingly-infinite land would help alleviate. So when the potential was eventually realized, expansion would have been extensive. But the Indians gave a check to the colonists, making them stick to land.

In that way, it may seem as if they slowed things down, but in truth, it merely changed how things would have played out, with fewer atrocities, fewer wars, but also significantly less drive to expand beyond boarders, for among other reasons, lack of labor in the land.

Add into that, the geography of American cities would be vastly different—many places were founded for militaristic purposes, rather than economic purposes, for fear of attack. If the only attacks coming were from rival nations, then the number of places guarded from attack as they were (such as Jamestown) would be significantly less.

Furthermore, the ‘threat’ of ‘native attack’ is one of the things which helped bond and unify us as a people—its absence would mean that people would be far less communal, less organized, and less likely to break from the crown for independence, since there’d be less motivation to do so.

Less organization combined with fewer wars means fewer complaints and fewer taxes to have dealt with. With more to go around, there’d be less reason to be concerned with certain things being taken, as there’d be plenty to spare.

Technology and financial support would have limited the Americas for longer than it did, so the Indians helped expansion, but once those boundaries would have been overcome, only Indians would have stopped exponential growth as we began to fulfill the idea of “Manifest Destiny”.

The interior would have therefore remained largely unexplored. The eastern and mid-western parts would surely be colonized, as would the west eventually, but that’d be slower, and all that lied between would remain as described, ‘barren wasteland’, hostile terrain with no life in it.

The boarders of countries would be different, the histories of regions would be different, the technology, and land itself as it is today would have been different. The Indians were what helped shape it all. Their work and (for the most part—they were only human, after all) careful caretaking of the land produced such fertility to be cheaply exploited by colonists, which would be absent without them.

The very livelihood of the nation owes itself to the natives, as it was them who laid the foundations for our nation as it is today. They helped keep those coming to the new land alive and revolutionalized the way things were done.

Though they certainly weren’t perfectly efficient, the Indians had a way with their environment which made them far more ideally adapted in almost every way, from farming to hunting techniques.

For people whose technology was allegedly miles behind that of the settlers, they managed to do a lot to pioneer technology we use today. And it was with this that the nation was allowed to so easily prosper.

I could continue writing about such details as how their absence would have increased the influence of black culture, how they helped create the American Revolution, and other such facts, but for the most part, I’d just be repeating the lessons already outlined in everything I’ve said above:

The Indians are anything but the historic footnotes they are often made out to be. They have had such a rich history and have contributed so much to the modern world that it’d be impossible to list (or even predict!) all of the changes we owe to them.