how come Native North Americans didn’t have vast empires of wealth and cities like Montezuma had down in Mexico?
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Some did(as other comments point out even as they don’t answer the question), some didn’t.
Some rose to that level and fell of their own accord(it can be easy to settle, but over a couple of generations overpopulate and/or overhunt and wind up with not enough food) or were wiped out by weather or sickness, not to mention warring with neighbors or the more recent infamous European colonization.
It is somewhat popular to assume that all of mankind is on a progressive slope of advancement but this really is *not* the case. It takes a certain spark to really innovate even when there are ample resources to exploit, and while that can be catching(lead to more innovation)…. without that spark, things can muddle along indefinitely.
It does not take much to wipe out a village or city that would barely qualify is a society or civilization through most of history.
Famine, disease(of the populace or a food source), flood(or worse, eg earthquake, ice age, wildfire, etc), war/invasion.
You have to remember that a lot of the US has *extreme* weather, even in comparison to Northern Europe. Northern North America is still a lot of tree-filled wild land even with today’s technological advancement.
When you can’t build 6 months out of the year, or more, can barely even reach neighbors, see massive melt-offs and flooding that can change the landscape…not to mention landscape which is incredibly difficult to transverse in the first place.
It begins to be progressively more difficult as you move to the north.
It is a wonder people even crossed the bearing straight and kept migrating south and survived to make it to South America. Meaning, the ‘native’ U.S. population’s very beginning was exceedingly harsh. This is the opposite of the other side of the world that slowly expanded into the cold from the warmer climates.
People could advance and adapt in stages, and fall back where they failed, as where in the America’s it was the opposite.
This is a good portion of why it remained virtually isolated for so long, and why some of these cultures only bear passing resemblance to Europe/Asia/Africa.
Think of it this way.
Being born on a plain of abundance makes it easier to build(gather food, educate, build society).
Being born on the frozen precipice of a mountain, you’re very likely to just fall down and die….and if you do survive to reach more favorable climates, you are basically starting from scratch, can’t go back to neighbors to learn a new skill or one we’d forgotten.
Once people crossed over to the America’s by land, it was the ultimate historical example of “the point of no return”.
Barely survive the crossing in the first place and people will be loathe to try to return, it’s difficult enough just trying to survive in this new land with literally no support from anyone but the few survivors and what little knowledge you brought with you that was all passed down verbally.
As such, a lot of ‘native’ Americans remained explorers / nomads right up until discovery/rediscovery from the east, because that was the best way to survive at that stage of technological development.
They did. They just built out of wood and earth. Wood rots, earth erodes and is taken over by nature until they just appear as natural hills. South and Central Americans built out of stone so their buildings last into today.
The third largest pyramid in the America’s is outside St. Louis.
There was a documentary I watched in World History in college that talked about this (or rather, why some cultures propelled into the bronze/Iron Age/industrial eras and others seemed stuck in the Stone Age).
The theory the documentary focused on was effectively reliable and consistent access to nutrient-rich carbohydrates usually via farming (soil needs to be just right). Such as Rice (Asia, Middle East and North Africa), Wheat/Barley (Europe), and Beans (Middle and South America).
South and Middle America had reliable and consistent access to beans which are nutrient dense. Cultures like the Great Plains peoples were nomadic because their primary food source was animal meat, not carbohydrates.
To contrast, many African (like Papua New Guinea) peoples didn’t have soil to sustain farming well, as since jungle and rainforest soil is notoriously low nutrients and thin, which prevented the people from progressing as quickly (I think we can get around this today with advanced cultivation and fertilizer).
To compound that effect, Middle and South American cultures traded with North American cultures for food and other resources (IIRC, it’s been a while), I believe through the Pueblo peoples, which I think concentrated valuable resources (like turquoise and beads, things with intrinsic value) into Middle and South America while North Americans received food (which while definitely valuable, it wasn’t “permanent”). The peoples of North America largely remained hunter-gatherers because it was the easiest food source for them.
Mexico is in North America. So the North Americans did have a vast empire of wealth according to you.
If you believe in whig history then they might of with a little more time. In the old world there were “pristine civilizations” or groups of people who developed classical civilizations ( social orders characterized by sedentary agriculture, social hierarchy, monumental architecture, writing and organized religion ) without any sort of outside influence. The Egyptians and sumerians are a good example, they developed a classical civilization all by themselves without the influence of outside cultures. Civilization spread through the old world by different tribal and nomadic peoples coming into contact with these civilizations and deciding to try it for themselves. The Egyptians taught the Minoans, the Minoans taught the Mycenaean Greeks, the Greeks taught the Etruscans, the Etruscans the Romans and the Romans the Gauls ( French ) and Briton Celts. A similar situation was happening in Mexico. The pristine civilization of Mexico is the Olmec, the people who taught the ways of civilization to the other people’s of Mexico including the Aztecs who Montezuma was the king of. There is evidence that the Aztecs were in contact with the natives of the southwestern USA. And although they never had sprawling empires, the Hopi, Pueblo and Chaco peoples already had some characteristics of a classical civilization. If contact with Mexico had continued undisturbed by European conquest it is possible that a few natives cities would have popped up in Arizona similar to the ones they had in Mexico or Peru. Of course resources play a big role too, and generally speaking technological progress was much slower in the Americas than in the old world. This is due to the fact that there were so many more geographic barriers for the Americans ( Rainforests, mountains, ocean, deserts ) than there were for the old world peoples ( the Mediterranean sea is extremely easy to navigate which is why so many advanced cultures sprung up there so early on ) And lastly this is only if you believe in whig history to begin with ( the idea that human progress is inevitable given enough time ) It’s a very western idea, and certainly not one that the natives Americans held. Many of the north American native tribes were perfectly happy with their nomadic lifestyles, and may have continued that lifestyle indefinitely with no intention to become “civilized”.
Short answer, they did have.
In the Southwest, there are stone constructions with astronomical alignments all across the desert southwest than range in size, from Mesa Verde in Colorado to Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. There’s evidence of trade networks between the desert Southwest and Mexico, and evidence of parrot feathers and cacao in North America from these trade networks.
Then there’s the Mississippian people built massive mounds, had huge settlements, trade, craft artisans, social hierarchies while Europe was in a dark age. You can see when corn came north via trade to these people due to changes in their teeth, folks got more cavities when they switched from hunting/gathering to corn cultivation.
Pure copper mined from the Northern North America has been found as far south as Louisiana in what appears to be a very old settlement, also has astronomical alignment features but is badly eroded.
There’s lot of archaeological work being done that runs counter to the narrative that Native North Americans were unsophisticated people. Theres plenty to learn about regarding their sophisticated astronomy knowledge, architecture, local medical practices, regional agriculture, craft production, and sustainable ecological practices that vary by region and people.
Same reason civilizations took off in Europe/Asia… improved farming, irrigation, steady access to food that gave more time to do other things like build big cities and wealth.
I’m not well researched on the Aztecs but my gut feeling is that they were way more advanced with agriculture and less of a hunter/gatherer society.
Because the true history of the native nation’s people’s has never been taught to our citizens. They had an entire continent that was developed and maintained like a park/zoo which they had built over thousands of years. This fed their societies and gave them the most ideal environment to live in and survive in. They could have lived like this for the foreseeable future if their land had not been stolen and genocide had not been committed against them. These were the richest people to ever live on Earth, it’s just a lack of perspective that has been taught to generations of Americans and the rest of the world that makes us blind to what true ‘wealth’ looks like.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Indigenous_Peoples%27_History_of_the_United_States#:~:text=An%20Indigenous%20Peoples’%20History%20of%20the%20United%20States%20is%20a,history%20from%20marginalized%20peoples’%20perspectives.
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.
Well there were the Mississippian and Mound Builder cultures in the Mississippi valley and southeast US. They were not precisely empires(that we know of from the archeology) but did have large cities rivaling Mesoamerican cities.
You could argue that the Iroquois Confederacy was an empire like the Aztecs, only instead of a triple alliance, the Iroquois were a 5 way alliance that exerted power down to Virginia and north in to Canada and west in to Ohio.
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