How do I write Native American city and town settings? How large of a “kingdom” is realistic?
How do I write Native American city and town settings? How large of a kingdom is realistic?
How do I write Native American city and town settings? How large of a “kingdom” is realistic?
you can do whatever you want. it's your setting
>How large of a “kingdom” is realistic?
About the size of Disney Land.
> Forgets about Incas and Aztecs.
Read about the various Native American cultures, or at least the larger culture groups. Navajo are gonna be different from Blackfoot, who will be different from the Iroquois. You're not gonna see traditonal Eurasian style "kingdoms" in those groups, for the most part.
Depends on your scope. The Haudenosaunee built up a brief trade & military dominion over a sizable portion of western North America, while their home territory was much of upper New York State. The Triple Alliance and the Purapecha built up sizable dominions over convoluted city states that had a similar political disposition to that of the Ancient Greeks (that being automatic sneering contempt for anyone nominally outside of your native city state, which usually results in war and blood feuds.) On the other hand you have old Californian hinterland micro-tribes that were twenty to thirty people with their own unique languages. In the north west you had vast expansive town networks that were carried by sub-clan groups and personal chief allegiances where one man could bribe and talk his way into immense regional political sway over decades, only to lose it because his second cousin's wife's nephew's story teller was shunned by his lack of generosity and would bring down his social empire by constructing an elaborate shame pole. And that's just north America.
It ends up defined by other circumstances. For instance introducing some sort of riding animal automatically runs any expansive plains or steppes into; Fantasy American Ghengis (give it a few decades to centuries). If you bring in advanced ships then suddenly the vikings of the Great Lakes are now everyone along the Eastern Seaboard's problem. Fantasy creatures? Actually the cultural system is already pretty assimilative. They're just you're butthole neighbours who occasionally raid you / you raid them / sometimes enough people from both of your groups split off and form their own tribe.
So the ACTUAL question is; What do you want to make here using North America as a starting point?
That is fair, however if we're going in fantasy terms we can elaborate on hypothetical for longer term sedentary establishments.
My setting is the southeast islands corner of islands in this picture, and will have the story travel through the various southeast regions, with Guragull and Southrange being the borders of the story. I want to base the cultures off of Native American cultures and civilizations because the magic in this world is animal based. Everyone to a certain degree has an innate ability to turn into an animal, form spiritual connections with animal, make chimeras by combining and grafting species, along with some more complex and rare abilities. Because of this, warfare and technology hasn’t really advanced to the point of metallurgy (at this time in the southeastern area, but northern civilizations are further along). I want the protagonists to encounter a wide variety of cultures and places and while I know a decent amount about plains indians and smaller size tribes and villages and federations, I don’t really understand large scale cities in the Americas aside from South American civilizations. Which I plan on saving for the southwest.
This map is already on a very large scale, as I wanted to cram as many biomes in my setting as possible, picrel (not a very scientific naming process, I just threw in places I’ve seen in person and travelled to before). However I will not use 75% of it for the main storyline, at this stage.
I’m looking for a pre-Colombian era, but due to the natural danger of my setting, various groups and cultures can be far apart in technological advancement than others without coming into too much contact. But nothing invented after European involvement, aside from animals and plants introduced into the Americas that might already be in my Pangea setting. Although I am stealing Polynesian and southeast Asian early seafaring boats for my setting.
Thank you. I will look into this.
Nice try-
Colour me shocked! An actual thread, about an actual setting! Once in a blue moon, I suppose. I'd recommend you look into religious ceremonies. Don't worry about the particulars, just try to capture the vibe.
I really am trying to capture a vibe. The story starts off Taino (Caribbean natives) and has them sail to the mainland, encountering a variety of different cultures along the way. The biggest liberty I think I’m taking is ocean travel, however I’m using this boat from Southeast Asian cultures and think it fits rather well.
One big issue I’m having is figuring out what non-English based words should get a new name. There’s so much indigenous terms for clothing that don’t translate well.
For example, all of this attire is so interesting, but do I just call it robes/loincloth/etc and describe the pattern, or do I keep the traditional name and force the viewer to keep google search open the entire time? Apologies for the shit quality, I’ll post some more. And I know this isn’t North American attire, just some examples
Also, do I get rid of partial nudity? Do I let ballsacks hang out?
>Do I let ballsacks hang out?
That should be a practical matter. If you're in the hot regions, freeballing is a must. There was a contraception study that made males wear jockstraps and 80% of them couldn't father a child despite trying. The study was in Egypt. So in warmer climes, letting ballsacks hang might be essential for reproduction.
Conversely, if you're going into battle and don't want your balls swinging around, literally girding your loins is a must (and provides a measure of protection). Ditto if you're anywhere near mosquito land. Or riding animals for long periods of time. The chafing...
>Ditto if you're anywhere near mosquito land
There are alternatives. South American body paint has social and symbolic meanings, but covering your body in something helps dealing with that. And other factors, can't remember it well.
>the peruvian knot writing is super interesting, for example, but his video is far from the only perspective on it.
Someone recently found colored quipus, and it might add another level of complexity for their record-system. Though it would also make even harder to decodify it.
>not having thousands of years of constant exposure to alcohol in the diet.
The corn beer bottle had a laugh at this.
>Agrarianism and urbanization had almost uncountable impacts on the biology of Native Americans
Meanwhile, Incas were likely the first civilization to erradicate hunger, and current conservative estimates of pre-columbian population in the Amazon biome reach 5 million.
Depends on how close to the grain you're going. Are you going to be running the story through its own developed paces and will take significant creative freedoms? Change the names and give yourself a thorough investigation of the garments. Keeping it simple? Keep the names.
> Also, do I get rid of partial nudity? Do I let ballsacks hang out?
Let it all hang out I say. These kind of cultural continuities won't have much issue with it.
It's best to facilitate ease of play, so describe or show the designs themselves but use the english equivalent.
Nah, let everyone go freeballing. If they're playing injuns, they're going to want to play injuns.
FURRY
Read up on de Soto's expedition, specifically the Tuskalusa episode and the burning of Mabila if you want a scope of what Mississipian civilisation looked like before 80% died from plagues.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabila
Man, the introduction of horses and weapons grade iron must've been a shock.
It really wasn't, despite the memes.
What was the shock was 80% of population dying off within a decade WITHOUT any combat, and the remaining 20% being busy fighting pre-existing civil wars
Why didn't it work the other way as well? Weren't there American diseases Euros weren't exposed to?
European civilization was largely insulated from all of that though
Natives such as the aztecs actually died from cocolizti, a native disease. The narrative that europeans learned to launch germ warfare attacks against the natives is a 20th century 'black legend' directed against the english. Broadly though the europeans tended to be from populations that had already been subject to diseases like the black plague for thousands of years at that point, while the natives were often more urbanized than europeans in areas most severely affected by plague.
But there are other factors to consider- the Cahokian collapse was not just warfare but deurbanization. As young men abandoned cities and farmlands this would have lead to worse access to the medicines available to them while increasing starvations. Populations with weakened immune systems would be more susceptible to foreign diseases.
The whites also had high mortality from yellow fever and other diseases especially in the south of the USA (the impetus to import africans supposedly more suited for the climate was also because whites were so susceptible to these diseases) but the natives were also in the middle of a 'dark age' (though we have no evidence of writing from the Cahokians, so it was more of a civilizational nadir) and lacked the kinds of infrastructure that would have enabled them to more effectively prevent diseases from fricking them up.
Things went wrong in a cascade for natives all at once. This is similar to the Turkification of central asia (once the populations such as the Sakas and Cumanians were described as golden haired, but the mongols burned Samarqand to the ground and the turks resettled the heavily depopulated former lands of what once was Chorasmia but is now Qaraqalpakstan), the Dzungarian genocide by the chinese, the displacement of the Cham by the Viets etc.
The higher birthrates, access to more advanced technology, winning wars, greater organization all contributed. Iroquois were unconquered until they had a civil war that divided
>Weren't there American diseases Euros weren't exposed to?
Europeans had developed a huge bacterial and viral ecosystem and immunity thanks to living alongside domesticated animals for thousands and thousands of years. That's where we got most of our common diseases from. Native Americans largely didn't have any domesticated animals whatsoever, so there was a much much smaller ecosystem of bacteriae and viruses to jump species and infect them.
In short, no, there just weren't a lot of communicable diseases unique to North America.
Agrarianism and urbanization had almost uncountable impacts on the biology of Native Americans compared to Europeans, Asians, North Africans/Middle Easterners. Another example is the (still prevalent) genetic predisposition to alcoholism and alcohol poisoning in Natives due to just straight up not having thousands of years of constant exposure to alcohol in the diet.
>Agrarianism and urbanization had almost
Lack thereof, rather.
Diamond, please.
Also Maya used to brew alcoholic beverages and get drunk quite often, what are you talking about?
Yes, syphilis.
You dont.They are in tune with nature and live hunter gatherer lifestyle.
Study more.
I need to more NA Natives spirituality.
The best part of NA culture is that pretty much all of them were postapocalyptical cultures once the Anglos crossed the Appalachians.
Is there a reason why you're posting about ancient native american cultures all over the fricking place? Is this just your latest autism hyperfixation or what?
And don't even bother pretending this is about traditional games, spammer
How broad is your definition of native american? Most people use it to mean natives of the USA and Canada, but it also includes natives in the Carribean, South America, and Meso-American civilizations.
The Spanish seeing Tenochitlan said that it was as large and as developed and populous as any city in Europe. I'd argue about the only thing the big three (Incans, Aztecs, Mayans) were missing compared to european civilizations were metal-working technologies (and there's evidence that the Iroquois and other nearby cultures were starting to figure out bronze smelting) and access to animals such as pigs, goats, chickens, horses, and cows. The primary beast of burden in the Aztec Empire were other Aztecs. That said- some people think the Incans may have discovered (or been discovered) by polynesians and may have started trading pigs and chickens with them.
There was also the settlement of Cahokia, known for it's earthen mounds somewhere on the Mississipi river. It's believed to have been a theocratic city the size of any in Europe, however it as all made out of wood so the only thing that survived were the earthen foundations. The American South also had many other 'moundbuilder' civilizations. Then of course you also had the Anasazi who lived in the Mesa's of the American southwest, though most of those were of the size of small villages.
You focusing on North American natives? Don't know that much about them. Can suggest some inspirations or sources. And I have a list of 80 North American creatures from folklore (including non-native), but written in Portuguese. For example, number 1 is the Achiyalatopa, from Zuni. A huge bird covered in flint knifes instead of feathers. It taught many things to the Zuni. Can post the list or share the sources I used.
For getting a scale of what America was before 90% of it died within a couple generations, I suggest 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. What seems to be a genuine example of North American-like setting is the game Trail of Ayash.
Some timelines on alternatehistory.com can inspire and/or inform you better. For example, Lands of Ice and Mice has Inuits figuring out arctic agriculture, domesticating Caribou and building pykrete vaults for storing food.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/wiki/doku.php?id=timelines:amerindians
Also read this: https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Shamanism
Do you want some proper horroershow?
Cannibal southwest Indians.
%3D%3D
Lurking this thread for ideas since First Nations-style natives actually are a big part of my current campaign. (I based the region the players are on roughly off of P.E.I. in Canada. So Tweedlers are going to come up and their ruins already have)
Unironically depends on what 'era' you're writing for. Nowadays we've pieced together some parts of the NA story but others remain a black box. For example there's some not-so-schizo evidence of Welsh or Irish expeditions reaching the new world and integrating with the natives centuries before the 'discovery' of the new world. Likewise genetic studies of the Inuit of Greenland, besides the intermarriage with the Danes, have found genetic ancestry from Norwegians from the Greenlandic Norse going native after the climate shift rendered the farmlands in the south too cold to sustain a large urbanized culture during the Little Ice Age (the region today has a similar climate to denmark, while being 4 or 5 times the size of denmark, but the forests which once covered S. Greenland remain small).
In the case of Cahokia and the various cultures identified as 'Mississippian' the legends of the Cherokee indicate that the elites of the culture grew distant and aloof from the majority of the people and used their position as the priestly caste to basically do whatever they wanted, eventually this proved too much and there was a bloody revolution that may have swept through the cities of the Mississippian trading networks- leading to large scale depopulation and deurbanization a century before Europeans as we currently understand them (countries like Spain or whatever) began probing these regions.
In general the writings of early colonists regarding north america indicate a land that was 'seemingly created to be settled' because many native tribes were densely populated before diseases from latin america (90% of aztecs did not die from small pox, but from a disease called Cocolizti which was a result of the spanish banning practices designed to curb the population, as Tenochtitlan was too dense and too unhealthy to sustain large populations normally) while small pox came from europeans.
There are obviously other nations to account for, such as the mobile Comanche.
Anyway it's difficult to address a question of urbanization unless you have a specific region and time period in mind. You posted Cahokia in the OP so maybe you can make an advanced trade network, or take the political organization of the Powhatan pre-contact as a system of chieftains leading to the paramount chieftain who lived in a mobile camp so he could move around and make sure all his guys in virginia were doing what he wanted.
cahokia is super interesting
I don't have anything interesting or constructive to say I just wanted to say that cahokia is cool and interesting
there were a shitload of native american groups, some were semi nomadic tribals and others had large states. the post-contact era also lasted a long time, so theyre seperated temporally, and the Iroquois of the french/indian wars are far removed in circumstance from the aztec on one end and the Comanche and Apache on the other. Some of the Mississippian cities were very impressive in scope and the aztec cities were, in all accounts, awe inspiring and sometimes described as more beautiful than their contemporary european counterparts. Those were the two largest north american cultures we currently know of, but the Iroquois had a fairly developed social and political system and the Anasazi had their really cool cliff cities. pic rel, ive been to them and they were just awesome. you can really imagine their way of life, seeing the little cities spread through the scrub valleys
the pre columbian native americans are absolutely fascinating to me. if you want to just have a bunch of easily digestible informtion that isnt pop history thrown at you, go look at Ancient Americans on youtube. definitely a proper academic and will teach the controversies, but obviously you can learn more from reading. he makes a great springboard though, it can be very hard to know where to start and having a lot of 101 information at your fingertips can really help that.
the peruvian knot writing is super interesting, for example, but his video is far from the only perspective on it.
however, if you want to really get a feel for the civilizations, Fall of Civilizations really communicates a vibe, its very evocative, and has an episode on the aztec and one on the inca. i have found them really inspirational in my own homebrewing
also, and i know this sounds deeply unserious, but i also found the youtuber DJ Peach Cobler's five videos about spanish colonization in the americas to be shockingly good. really digs down in the the veracity of sources and their biases, but its funnily enough much more about the spanish than the natives. but i actually think that his stuff about montezuma was really good, because most people talking about him "pick a side" on the debate on what happened at the end, and he explains all or at least most of the stories and perspectives on what happened at the end. Fall of Civilizations has a better background about the actual aztec civilization and how it dug its own grave on the lead up to cortez, and how it was actually on the threshold of a political crisis when he showed up, but it is too focused on having a Narrative (in the storytelling sense) to muddle that with the controversies.