how come Native North Americans didn’t have vast empires of wealth and cities like Montezuma had down in Mexico?
In: 2227
They very much did, the [Mississippian Culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_culture?wprov=sfla1) for instance. Cahokia was ~~one of the great cities of the world~~ a major cultural and economic center, but has been largely forgotten in part because they had diminished hugely in numbers just before contact with Europeans and because the major structures they built, earthen mounds, were for a long time not readily noticeable as ruins.
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There was definitely one at the height of the Mississippian Culture, with the suspected or likely capital at Cahokia. The book “Dawn of Everything” goes into a deep dive on it, but they suspect this empire was so brutal that it influenced Native political philosophy and, consequently, Enlightenment thinking, even hundreds of years later. Before the Mississippian culture, there seems to have at least been a sort of North American cultural sphere that was remarkably peaceful and relatively uniform; whether it was a conscious empire or just a large cultural group is unknown, but they built some impressive stuff.
Even afterwards, the Hodenasaunee or Iroquois Confederation was massive, bigger than the Triple Alliance by land area. The Comanche also conquered a massive amount of land and held it for a long time.
There are likely many amazing epics, wars, and stories of the highest caliber that we will never know thanks to one of the single greatest human tragedies in world history post contact.
I imagine we will learn a lot more about pre-contact North America as archeology continues to find more stuff. Archeology has already shown that significant populations were in the Americas before the last major Bering Strait migration, and possibly even non sapiens hominids before that.
They weren’t needed. People build the civilization they need. No vast marauding army plunged through North America conquering all before it, so the trappings of strength inherent in large fenced cities was unnecessary. The drive for wealth usually exists as a means to either conquer, or resist conquest. While wars happened among North American natives, and empires definitely existed (example: the Iriqoius) they were generally about dominance rather than territory per se.
Furthermore, metalworking technology, while it seems to have existed in some form in certain places in the New World, was a novel notion in most of North America, which really limits the technological ability to have large scale civilization. In a very real sense the Bronze Age seems to have mostly not happened in North America.
The lack of written language probably also contributed to this. When there is no written language, it’s much harder to retain progress. In the Old World (or at least most of it, looking at you subsaharan Africa!) writing is ancient. It was also present in mesoamerica and Inca lands, although the Conquistadors pissed off whole generations of historians by burning most of the libraries. It really wasn’t present north of the Rio Grande, which means that any genuine progress that was made tended to last for a generation, then fade.
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The simple answer is: Access to resources.
Large settlements were established in areas that were resource plentiful. In North America this was in around the Mississippi River basin, the St.Lawrence river valley, and along the coast on either side. The Iroquois, for example, could very well be considered an empire.
The plains people were typically more nomadic because their food sources travelled and weather patterns also drove what foods were available to forage.
And further north it is simply too cold to support extremely large populations of human or animal and foraging is sparse at best.
In short: it always comes down to resource availability.
Further: not having to worry about resource availability then frees up time and energy for technological discoveries and advancement.
Edit to add: thanks for all the upvotes! This has stimulated some great conversation! If anyone would have told me that this would be the most excitement and engagement I would get from my 4 year Anthropology degree 12 years after completing it… I probably would have believed them.
The Hohokam date back at least a 1000 years. The were farmers who built an extensive canal system in the modern day Phoenix area.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohokam
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned here yet is climate differences. North America has seasonality, and winters to contend with. The Central and South American civilizations generally dealt with wet and dry season, but food plants could always be growing. There are cities like Cahokia in North America that come about once corn agriculture is well established, allowing for stores of food large enough to support a large population through a winter. Throughout the world, monumental architecture only pops up once food abundance is possible.
The people that lived in Chaco Canyon (https://www.nps.gov/chcu/index.htm) in the 4 corners area of the Southwest built multiple cities in and around the canyon, complete with a huge road system (180 miles worth of 15-30 foot wide roads, nearly perfectly straight, with stairs carved into cliff faces in lieu of going around canyon edges). The cities main buildings were built oriented on solar and lunar cycles. They made a petroglyph to track the solstices called The Sun Dagger (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fajada_Butte). They weren’t quite pyramid builders, but they were pretty substantial builders until they disappeared.
A lot of them were nomadic hunter / gatherers who moved around and did not build permanent settlements.
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