how come Native North Americans didn’t have vast empires of wealth and cities like Montezuma had down in Mexico?
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Indigenous Historian who recently graduated from UC Berkeley. The Cahokian Empire was situated across the East Coast and extended into parts of Michigan. It was a sizable empire that seemed to function in a hierarchical kingdom-like social structure. There is speculation that it might have been similar in orientation to European Feudalism. It appeared to have massive wealth and power. However it collapsed prior to the invasion of North and South America by Europeans. It is thought that it was overthrown by populist rebellions that favored decentralized or “tribal” rule. This is the level of governance Europeans found when they arrived. Europeans found the remnants of a collapsed empire. While this might not necessarily be the most accurate way of describing the situation as the Spanish found it, I like to help others understand the situation by explaining it as a “Dark Age” for North American indigenous on the East Coast. Furthermore, most indigenous cultures did not appear to have strong concepts of land-ownership. Modern European concepts of land-ownership is actually relatively nascent in the grand scheme of things (think Charles Martel (700’s CE) and his propagation of Frankish *Feudalism*). If we look to the South, we can see the Aztec’s had a complex system of vassals and tributaries. Could they have been on their way to their own system of Feudalism? Who knows. Honestly, had the Europeans not fucked shit up so badly, maybe the North American Indigenous tribes might have consolidated thoroughly in the East Coast under the Haudenosaunee (speculative, but they were a major power). If we look further south, we can see Aztec linguistic and cultural migration patterns into Pueblo areas in Arizona. Maybe the Aztecs would have conquered North American lands. it’s really unfortunate to think about but the situation in the America’s at time of “discovery” was incredibly complex and at any time there could have been a spark leading to major societal changes given a couple hundred years. Now we will never know. Unfortunately because of the mass genocide of countless cultures in the America’s we have few records of the past. As a historian and someone of Native American ethnicity, one shouldn’t speculate too heavily, but in this case what could have been is truly tantalizing.
Read “The Dawn of Everything”
It is entirely possible that the “inevitability” of stratified complex society is a myth, and that some cultures chose to not create complex societies even when the resources were available to do so.
They did for example there’s the Mound builders of the Mississippian culture.
They worked in Earthworks and the Mississippian mounds are still there. To pull that off took a large population and a centralized bureaucracy. These were all done by hand, without draft animals or the wheel, so it means a large labor force. Their trade networks ran from central America to northern Canada. This is how corn and squash made it from Mexico and Central America to modern day Canada.
it’s just something you’re not taught in school because they built in soil and wood they also possessed no written record so the bias of the book falls into play.
Why was there such a disparity in technology? that’s where resources, geology and botany come in. In Ontario for example most minerals are locked in granite which without metal tools is very difficult to remove. The canadian shield is a mineral treasure trove but you need quality iron at bare minimum to extract it. There’s a lot of granite in North America.
The parries? that would be a lack of wood and stone as well as the deep grass roots. We had to invent a new type of plow to deal with these roots using European technology to work the land. The traditional plow used for shallow european grasses didn’t even scratch the surface in the west.
This is really the wrong place to ask this. You should go to /r/Askhistorians
But I’ll say one thing. I believe your question is flawed. As it assumes that large cities are somehow natural or will always appear given the right conditions. This is simply untrue. How do you know Native North Americans even desired large cities?
Native North Americans lived as they saw fit. Cities, while they did exist, were not always desired.
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