how come Native North Americans didn’t have vast empires of wealth and cities like Montezuma had down in Mexico?
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I watched a scholarly video series on this subject, something like 17 hours. I’ll see if I can find it.
Short answer is that they did in fact have vast empires and wealth, and cities as well. The Ancestral Pueblo were likely a significant trading empire, doing trade with the empires down in Mexico and on the Pacific coast. The Moundbuilder culture, including the city at Cahokia, also appear to have extensive trade networks reaching down into Mexico and along the Mississippi River basin and tributaries. The Iroqois Alliance of several nations provided both strong resistance to colonization and inspiration for founding government documents.
However, North America changed very very fast after Columbus. Horses were introduced, changing life on the Great Plains permanently, and the way the people lived. This in fact made the Seasonal Round migration easier and some people went back to that way of life… likely also with an additional pressure from European-introduced diseases, which may have been working their way across the continent since the Vikings colonized up in Canada. Disease likely played a downfall for most of the great native cities of North America. When the cities were abandoned, the people took their wealth with them.
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