you don't have to turn Native Americans into megafauna to make them disappear

[edenfalling]

I was reading a fanfiction story* a couple days ago. I enjoyed it; it's well-written and atmospheric, with some intriguing world-building, fun character interaction, and a conclusion that wraps up the immediate plot arc while leaving space for potential further adventures. But an issue that has bugged me off and on about alternate histories (and specifically magical/paranormal alternate histories) for a while now finally jumped up and refused to be dismissed anymore.

Namely, America.

If you are changing history such that magic or psychic powers or other forms of the supernatural have always existed, then why does European conquest and colonization of the Americas still happen so often? Yes, you can handwave that the Europeans still develop technology and particular forms of social organization that give them a leg up on the rest of the world, but if there is magic, that will tend to change and even the playing field. And therefore, why does North America still end up with the same ethnic mixture it has in our world? Why is such a massive demographic and cultural change taken as a given?

What is wrong with writing about Native Americans in America?

I think the issue jumped out at me from this particular story more strongly than usual because it posited a world that mirrored ours until the mid-1500s -- whereupon there was a massive paranormal incursion and things went semi-apocalyptically sideways. So Spanish and Portuguese colonization was already ongoing, but northern European colonization of North America hadn't started. Yet somehow the story still had North America inhabited by English-speaking white people with a few black people. There were obvious equivalents to several cities in the United States, with clearly European-derived names. No explanation given. And considering the way this particular alternate history went sideways, I think the last thing anyone would have had time for was trans-oceanic colonization.

The only way I can make sense of the writer's world-building is to suppose that the inborn magical protections some people developed against the paranormal intrusion were limited to (or at least concentrated in) the locations nearest that intrusion (which apparently happened in England). That would mean that people in, say, China and Mexico were just shit out of luck and died in droves. Instant genocide. Then a bunch of English people (plus some French people and some people of African descent) went off and settled the emptied continents in an effort to get away from the presumably ruined lands near the source of the paranormal catastrophe.

That is not a pretty explanation. It is also not given in the story. As I repeat, there is no explanation in the story. Just an Anglicized North America with a hint of French influence near New Orleans, presumably because that's the way North America is (or is perceived to be) in our world and the world of the canon source of which this story is an AU.

...

This issue is, unfortunately, not restricted to any one story, nor to fanfiction AUs. It shows up in lots of professional original fiction too. For example, why are the vampires in the Anita Blake series overwhelmingly of European descent? Where are the ancient American vampires, aside from the one we meet in Obsidian Butterfly? For that matter, why are the werewolves organized around European mythology? I can see why were-hyenas wouldn't use Native American terminology -- hyenas not being native to the Americas -- but wolves have been in North America for ever and ever, and I highly doubt that any European werewolves crossed the ocean until steamships were invented, since you can't exactly hide changing into a giant wolf on a small wooden ship on a months-long voyage. Even if European colonists were infected with lycanthropy, they should have been absorbed into Native American packs. So where are the American myths?

For another example, look at Nalini Singh's angel series. She postulates that there have always been immortal winged beings who A) create vampires and B) rule humanity. Fair enough. So again, given that there's an apparently Asian angel ruling China, and, IIRC, an African angel and an Indian angel in charge of sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent, respectively, why is the angel in charge of North America shown as white? Why is the population of North America majority white as well?

Or even take JK Rowling -- why are her sketch descriptions of the Americas based on the muggle populations of those countries? Wouldn't wizards and witches have been less likely to emigrate from Europe? Therefore, wouldn't most ethnic-European witches and wizards have been Muggle-born, and trained (if at all) by Native American witches? (Presumably Native American wizards would be able to use their spells to survive where their Muggle brethren didn't -- even if the separation of the magical and the mundane is more a European Christian-influenced idea than an American one, and if Native American witches were part of the Muggle community, the entire history of North America ought to have gone noticeably differently from our world...) In any case, where are the Native American wizards? All we hear about are a few people of clearly European background who A) invent Quodpot, and B) run the Salem Institute.

Seriously, what is going on here?

It is not a given that Europeans will colonize the Americas -- that African slaves will be shipped over -- that the native population will die from disease and starvation and war, and the survivors be displaced and dispossessed and disempowered -- that European colonies will reach the Pacific -- etcetera ad infinitum. It is not a given that an alternate history will produce the same patterns of human migration and cultural erasure that our world has experienced.

To assume that every world will look like ours, especially when the world-building renders a strict parallel history track damned unlikely, is, bluntly, racist. Maybe not intentionally -- actually, almost certainly not intentionally; one must be thinking of an issue at all to have intent -- but intent doesn't change the outcome.

The outcome is an erasure of Native Americans.

I think it's pretty fucking ugly.

(Even when I otherwise like the stories in question.)

---------------

*I am not naming the story, the writer, or the fandom because I don't want this post interpreted as a personal attack (especially since I don't know the writer from Eve). It's just random luck that her story was the straw that tipped me from saying, "You know, that's kind of skeevy," and then shunting the issue aside, to saying, "Okay, this is just not on," and getting genuinely angry.

Comments

Another one for the list...

[ineptshieldmaid]

Cecilia Dart-Thornton's Bitterbynde trilogy: set in a fantasy land which is some kind of smush of Celtic mythology and peoples combined with (south-eastern, coastal) Australian flora and fauna.

Perhaps its saving grace is that it's not supposed to be an 'alternate' anything, just a... well, I think it's supposed to be a reaction to the Euro-centric landscapes of fantasy, but it's very, very gimmicky. If it's supposed to be writing "our" environment into fantasy, it's writing A VERY LIMITED GEOGRAPHICAL REGION, which is incidentally the most economically and culturally privileged part of white-person Australia; and it's... I dunno, there's something quite squicky about transplanting gum trees and koalas into Magical White Celtic Fantasy, like you take the cute bits of Australia and leave out the harsh environments and the people who belong there.

Re: Another one for the list...

[edenfalling]

Huh. I have a vague memory of trying to read the first book in that series several years ago, and finding the plot and characters so tediously boring (and the writing so self-consciously overwritten) that I gave up halfway through. I do not recall the landscape being Australian, but that's probably because I was so bored I don't recall much of anything past the fact of that boredom. And also because, yeah, there may have been gum trees, but the characters and plot were the same European-ish stock fantasy starter set as always.

I guess it's better to throw in some aspect of Australia than none, but you're right, there is something very squicky about essentially stealing the pretty parts of the land and giving them to white people.

Re: Another one for the list...

[ineptshieldmaid]

The choice of Australia was utterly inappropriate for her genre, topic, and language register. I would say 'no Australians think like that', but CDT does, so. It is, at any rate, utterly out of touch with the tone of Australian (whiteperson) literature and... I have no idea why she bothered.

I loved those books, until the final one. They got progressively more dull, and then the not!sex scene did it for me. I find a page-long Terrible Fantasy Sex Scene bad enough, but devoting a whole trade-paperback page to purple prose about NOT HAVING SEX BECAUSE YOUR TRUE LUFF IS PURE? Ugh, no. I got enough of that at school.

Re: Another one for the list...

[edenfalling]

Maybe, to give her the benefit of the doubt, she just wanted to describe geography and plant life she was familiar with? A sort of sideways application of "write what you know"? Still, very weird.

Ah, the ever popular pure love=no sex trope. *headdesk* The reason not to have sex (assuming no social obstacles or time constraints) is if you don't want to have sex, not because you're somehow "above" it. I mean, I don't want to have sex, but that's because I am asexual, not because I am a pure and special flower. *makes face*

Re: Another one for the list...

[ineptshieldmaid]

Well of *course* you're not a special flower. In this set of cracked-out norms, not having sex only has any value if you REALLY WANT TO HAVE SEX. Like, if you're a super-powerful sexually profligate elf dude who's fallen in love with an innocent human (who would be, er, overpowered by your sexual profligacy? I am not sure).

I mean, I get it. It's sorta kinky? The idea of really wanting to and not, because of whatever. But over-exposure to abstinence education as a kid has ruined me entirely for any variants on chastity-kink which involve NOT CORRUPTING THE VIRGINS, and restraining your MANLY URGES and so on.

It was about the time that I was reading CDT and Anne McCaffrey that I formulated my grand principle on sex in literature: have sex, or don't; don't waste a whole page telling me about it.

Clearly I abandoned that rule when I discovered fandom. But I would still like someone to enforce this rule on published fiction...

[branchandroot]

That was one of the parts I had the most wild fun with, sketching in the Global Steampunk background. Screw the Weird West, it's way more interesting to posit a continuation of real history from a much earlier point so we get an interlocking system of independent nations and allied language groups plus the addition of European enclaves to stir up extra technical development. I had to handwave the epidemiology just a wee bit, but honestly it isn't that hard.

[edenfalling]

That is the part of your world-building I had the most fun reading, too. :-) Screw imperialism -- a world with multiple centers of power is so much more interesting than one where Europe is a gravity sink distorting the global cultural/economic/technological/military/linguistic/etcetera map.

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

That's one of the things I like about Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson books--she distinguishes between the supernatural traditions of native Americans and Europeans. Both are central to the story, but there are fewer supernaturals of the native American variety because the European invaders killed most of them off.

What I don't like, unfortunately, is her constant harping on the importance of dominance order in werewolf packs. But that's a whole other rant.

[edenfalling]

Hmm. I have seen that series talked about here and there, and the simple presence of Native American traditions alongside European ones is a massive point in its favor. Would you recommend the series in general (dominance issues aside)?

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

Well, I only read the first two books, and by the end of the second one I found the story getting kind of flat and repetitive, so I haven't sought out the third one yet. I think Briggs raises some really interesting issues, but she doesn't do anything particularly interesting with them--the books are kind of standard kidnap/murder mysteries with a supernatural element. Still, I enjoyed the two books I read, and if nothing else I think you'd enjoy seeing how one writer has attempted address some of the issues you've raised here.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

Rowling is a hack who took ideas from Jill Murphy and Terry Pratchett, simplified them for the lowest common denominator, and was lucky enough to strike a chord that caught the imaginations of people too dumb to appreciate the originals. It's blatantly obvious from her 'books' that she doesn't even understand the 20th-21st Century UK - how is she going to understand pre-Columbian America and the logical implications of how it would have developed in a world with magic?

Good world-building is hard. To understand another culture takes a lot of work. In order to create a well-developed Native American character for my Buffyverse story 'Came the Thunder', in which a Cheyenne Slayer who died in 1864 is resurrected into the modern day, I have had to do huge amounts of research and study. I've had to immerse myself in the complexities of Cheyenne culture and the Algonquin language family and, as a result, writing a single chapter takes months. Most people simply won't do that work and stick with what is familiar to them.

Also, during the research, I came to realise that an industrial civilisation could never have developed in North America if the European colonisation hadn't taken place. The vital ingredient was missing.

The domestic cat.

Without cats it is impossible to store grain for the winter and, unless you're far enough South to have an all-year growing season, the winter will always be a time of severe hardship for an agricultural society. Only hunter-gatherers can get by without cats - and the ancestors of the domestic cat never existed in North America.

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

When I think about Rowling anymore, I have to suspend my disbelief. Over a cliff. It's the little things, like how for most of Hogwarts' history, England and Scotland were at war... so yes, let's put/keep a school for English wizards in Scotland, genius. Or how it's utterly ridiculous to build a full-isles school for wizards during the Heptarchy. The Heptarchy was less "states of America, our rivalries erupt in football~<3" and more "nations in Africa, our rivalries erupt in automatic weapons".

Then there's how the Founders can't even be contemporous from an etymological standpoint. Rowena Ravenclaw (Rowena Hrafenclauw, I'd have to check the spelling) is about right for "10th century south coast of the Firth of Forth (the bay into Edinburgh)". However, Godric Gryffindor is Welsh-French, which means at least 3rd-generation Norman. Helga Hufflepuff, Helga is clearly Norse, but the only form of "huff/puff" that existed before the 15th century meant "a scabrous growth" in 12th-century Cornwall! And Salazar Slytherin, gah. You have to make up some complicated backstory involving a Basque sailor in a Cornish port, and possibly a lot of travel in Moorish Spain.

Then there's how Slytherin apparently got kicked out for being anti-Muggle. Because of course wizard-Muggle relations were the driving force dividing the core of wizard society seven hundred years before the Statute of Secrecy. It certainly wasn't feudal class issues; or the 3-4 centuries of getting swapped between the Norse, the Danish, the Scots, and the Heptarchy; or those interloping Normans.


(Jared Diamond has a good book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel", in which he argues that the dominance of Europeans is more luck of geography than anything else. Not that he's necessarily right, but he makes the argument that progress comes from trade of innovations. Most of that's in crops and how to grow them, which changes with latitude, but it's also in germs which come with trade and the antibodies needed to survive them, and Eurasia has the only horizontal orientation in the world. He's not necessarily right, he says that several times, but it's still a good book to read, especially if you're going to be making major changes to see how they play out.)

[edenfalling]

Yeah, Rowling makes me put my hands to my face and sigh really heavily when I try to wrestle her world-building into anything resembling coherence. Still, while her failure at European history is more egregious and immediately noticeable because of its centrality to the plot, that doesn't make her failure at logical world history less annoying.

For example, the Statute of Secrecy itself infuriates me, because it is so obviously based on Euro-centric, Christian-influenced imperialistic assumptions that I cannot see A) how European wizards got anyone else to even attend their conference, and B) whether they did or didn't get the rest of the world to attend, why the rest of the world paid one damn bit of attention to the Statute. But clearly the rest of the world doesn't matter, since the fate of the world must be decided in Britain by the English. (I realize how that sounds coming from an American -- land of movies where the rest of the world doesn't matter since its fate must be decided in New York or LA by (white) Americans -- but still. Grrr.)

I keep meaning to read Guns, Germs, and Steel and then forgetting to get around to it. *makes note for the umpteenth time*

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

The Statute was signed in 1689. Much of the world wasn't even known to Europe, much less subject to any sort of diplomatic influence. (Which Britain sure as heck didn't have. The European superpowers of the time were Spain, France, Italy, and Portugal, if I remember correctly.)

Japan was a good 80 years deep into its Tokugawa isolation period, with laws mandating execution for any Japanese who left the islands and attempted to return. There had been only one European expedition (which was pretty much a complete failure) into the Great Plains at all -- the next one would be a century later, followed by Lewis and Clark in 1804, though the Spanish were making incursions into the Southwest and California. Qing China was at the height of its power. North Africa was under Islamic control, the Portugese were being slowly pushed off the Swahili coast, and pretty much the rest of Africa was under African control and had nothing to do with Europe. Australia was discovered, but being ignored (it didn't become the British penal colony until the late 1700's).

It's utter nonsense to think that the Statute was anything but local. And even then, why on earth would enemies of Britain agree to anything they proposed? "Oh, sure, we'll hide ourselves too, we certainly would never resort to underhanded tactics like getting rich noble Muggle patrons to pay for better schooling than your secret society can afford. Why ever would we want to get an edge over you and plot a war of conquest?"

[edenfalling]

Jill Murphy is unfamiliar to me, but I will keep her books in mind for future dry spells. Thanks for the rec!

As for cats, really? It's true that native American felines are all larger and wilder than domestic cats, but I seem to recall that terriers are bred to hunt rats and mice, among other vermin, and there were definitely dogs in the Americas. (I confess that I am ignorant of specific dog breeds, however.) Also, in an alternate history context, assuming the existence of magic, there is no reason we can't postulate magical constructs to hunt vermin or spells to otherwise keep them out of storage sheds. :-)

Furthermore, even if winter is a time of hardship for agricultural societies, there are places in the Americas that are warm year-round. (Many are even in North America -- it's a big continent, and it does include more than the northern US and Canada!) So it's possible that, if a few points in history had tipped slightly differently, some Central American societies could have developed more advanced technology and then spread those advances north and south, finding ways to combat winter storage losses as they went. Perhaps not likely, but possible.

(Also, I would not lump all North American peoples together as hunter-gatherers. There was a lot of hunting, sure, and sometimes seasonal shifts to secondary villages for fishing runs and so on, but many groups did a lot of farming too -- there is, after all, a reason American mythos emphasizes that the Pilgrims were starving until they learned how to deal with New England soils from the people they were dispossessing... the Wampanoag, I think? Anyway, people who have the patience to genetically engineer maize and then spread its cultivation over a continent are clearly not just "gathering" what happens to grow in the area.)

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that ferrets were also kept to control vermin in medieval Europe, before the change to cats. Although ferrets are an Old World species, they're related to weasels, which are found on every continent except Antarctica.

As for the rest of the argument, about non-hunter-gatherer societies in North America being impossible: Cahokia Mounds, Illinois, across from St. Louis, was an agricultural city, with satellite maize-farming villages, and trade networks ranging from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast. In 1250, it was larger than London, England. Archeologists estimate it was the largest city in the USA region until Philadelphia in 1800. I don't think anyone can argue that St. Louis doesn't get winter.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

Ferrets work, although nothing like as efficiently as cats, and mongooses fill the role to some extent in India. The tayra can be a cat substitute in Central America. However the North American mustelidae species don't seem to be viable subjects for domestication and certainly the Native Americans didn't use them in that capacity.

I don't know much about the mound-builder civilisation but my impression is that it died out when the Lesser Climatic Optimum was replaced by the Little Ice Age. I would guess that it was viable when the growing season was longer but failed when the growing season shortened. Maybe if they'd had cats they might have managed to cope with the climate change - or maybe not.

Re: Good points. Thank you. (edited and re-posted)

[edenfalling]

The problem had been nagging subtly at me for years, but this time it just jumped up and smacked me like a wet trout to the face. :-( And I feel bad that I've been able to push it aside for years.

[lukita.livejournal.com]

Word and word. It's pretty bad when it gets to the point where even mentioning other cultures or countries in fiction gets me pretty excited. Of course telling these writers that they're being racists would just open a nice can of worms and wank.

I think in this particular case it's just writing from experience, it's what happened in history so the author consciously or most likely unconsciously wrote it as is. Or you know, didn't research properly.

[edenfalling]

Yeah, I think there's a significant element of assuming that since this is how history went in our world, this is obviously how history is 'meant' to go, even if the events make no sense given the background setup of the secondary world. It's the casual arrogance of the historical victor, assuming that 'of course' the vanquished was always going to lose and be swept under the rug. :-(

It's like, I'm not saying the writers are bad people. I'm just saying that they (and I!) are writing and reading in a culture that has racist assumptions built in, and they fell prey to one of those. If they had been paying attention and thinking, I would hope they would have made different writing choices. It's just that the ability to not think about this issue is, you know, a privilege of people 'on top' of a racist system of 'common knowledge' historical understanding. I mean, it has taken me years to go from a nagging sense of "um, slightly fishy there" to finally calling bullshit, so it's not as if I have much moral high ground to stand on; I was using my privilege to ignore the issue just as much as the writers used privilege in crafting the stories I am now complaining about.

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hear ya. I've often wanted to write some kind of urban fantasy thing as an attempt at some serious original fiction, but since I'd be setting it in the US (being, like, an American myself and all), if I was going to do a real job of it the whole European/Native issue would have to be addressed and the amount of research (and potential for unintentional crash'n'burn Fail on my part) is so freaking huge it keeps scaring me off.

[edenfalling]

Yeah, this issue is one reason I haven't tried to turn my Ithaca Paranormal setting and plot sketches into proper novels. Because I did decide that, in the presence of out-in-the-open paranormal gifts, world history had gone differently, but the scale on which that needs to be worked out (before being compressed into the implicit background) is huge, and I don't have the time right now. :-( About the only things I know for sure are that there is a significantly larger Native American population in that alternate USA, the USA itself may not contain all the land it does in our world, some of the states are different (and joined the Union for different reasons than in our world), and the primacy of the federal government over the states is not as firm (which is actually a plot point no and then). But the details are all just "I dunno, stuff's different," which is not really useful from a writing perspective.

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

In order to write a book that includes Native American traditions, you'd have to do a lot of research... Which is probably why most authors just ignore them.

(I'm not trying to justify it! Clearly, that is totally wrong. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well)

[edenfalling]

But research is interesting! And also totally worthwhile. :-/

Yeah, I think laziness (along with just not realizing there is an issue) is probably a large part of the problem. That makes me sad, because the fact that people are able to be lazy and avoid the issue is itself a problem.

[vehrec.livejournal.com]

Agriculture. In the americas, it takes several more millenia for Agriculture to develop. Agriculture gives a tremendous leg up, even in terms of things like magic. An agricultural society is larger, has more people, more specialists, and ergo, more magic practitioners, vampires, and similarly 'urban' supernatural creatures. It also has writing, so that the mmagic of Aristotle's contemporaries can be passed down through the centuries to be rediscovered in Italy in the 1500s. Agriculture in the Eurasian continent also gives us smallpox, measles, bubonic plague, and other epidemic and pandemic diseases that did most of the legwork when it comes to devastating and wiping out American Natives.

Additionally, there's no reason to believe that Native American Werewolves, being simultaneously wolves and Native Americans, would not be the single most hunted species on the continent, probably driven to extinction even north of the arctic circle. Seriously, when did the Europeans encounter a large predator and not try to eliminate it as a scourge of all that lives?

I'm not saying that it is inevitable that Columbus will discover the Americas, that England will start mining coal with steam engines, and that Puritans will be my ancestors. But all things being equal, even in a universe with magic, the major factors that lead to the conquest of the Americas aren't going to disappear.

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure about the Agriculture aspect, as at the time of Columbus, the Americas were arguably more advanced, including more genetic engineering (corn, for example was one such result), more engineering (such as irragation systems) and most of their major crops were a little sturdier than Europe's largest crop (wheat). Plus, many of the major cities, at least in South America and central America, were larger than London, as well as cleaner and healthier. However, I'd agree that magic might not solve all the factors that led to American Native population decimation, especially that of disease. Unless one of the factors of magic was specifically to heal....?

Of course, its also annoying how such stories seem to not give such cultures any thought or power at all. It depended on which groups, but many American Native groups would still considered world players who were treated as independent nations up until the "war of 1812."

At any rate, really thinking about it, does seem give a lot of possiblities when people start thinking about for why or why not an Alternate History might be different or similar.

[vehrec.livejournal.com]

More advanced? Then were was their metal working, their gunpowder, their systems of writing? (The Incas never had anything more than a system of accounting.) These are also signs of advancement, and would probably correlate better with magic Why were their cities larger-was it because there were no diseases from domesticated animals, and therefore nothing to infect the arriving Europeans? By the time of Columbus, Europe had reclaimed all of Romes accomplishments save two-her armies and the size of her cities. Did their horticultural achievements do them any good when push came to shove? Was it genetic engineering or pure luck that lead them to improve corn enough to grow it in the Misissipian culture's gardens? What good is irrigation when your enemies invade and burn your crops and sink your 'floating gardens'? Even if magic was real, and you could cure say smallpox with it, why would they know how to cure smallpox with magic? They've never had smallpox before, and therefore would have no idea how to treat it!

And while Native may have been treated as independent nations, it was never anything more than an alliance of convenience, especially in the Spanish controlled areas of the Americas, where the entire Carib and Arawak tribes were worked to extinction in sugar fields. The British gave blankets from smallpox victims to these 'world players'. The French only dealt with them to extract furs from the interior and get enough land to support their Haitian holdings. How they were 'world powers' in any sense...maybe third or fourth world.

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

I was referring specifically to argiculturual when I say more advanced, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't an accident that corn was engineered; it was engineered from something that was rather inedible before it was tinkered with. And I'm not saying that this particular advancement would save one from invasion or disease, only that in this respect the American cultures had technology and variety that Europe didn't. As for other things, such as writing or metal working- you have to begin to look at specific different cultures. Obviously they had metal working; they had a ton of gold and silver that Europeans wanted. They didn't make the same weapons and gun powder wasn't in the Americas. To be fair there though, the Europeans didn't invent gun powder. They traded for it from Asia. They did invent a great many weapons that use it quite effectively though, you are right! Their cities were larger because they had better urban planning, such as being able to keep water etc. clean. When it comes to writing, some of the cultures did have writing systems. Basically, what I'm trying to say, is, its not that the European culutres were not advanced. They were, especially in weaponry and in navigation. Its just that it the Native American cultures were arguably the ones who were ahead in certain aspects, such as agriculture. Heck, their cleanliness and large cities likely worked against them!


To me, if a country or group is treated as an independent nation, they are playing on the world stage. But, as I mentioned before it also depends on what groups of Native Americans you are discussing. Some, as you pointed out, were enslaved or exposed to disease very early. Others were groups being given treaties and alliances,and being recognized as independent nations. I don't think its fair to say third world/ first world in this context, and fourth world nation generally are not fighting with the nation and government they are within. However, you are right in that those allying with them had things they wanted themselves too.

[edenfalling]

Random fact! a couple months ago I read in some science magazine (the exact title escapes me; I work in a magazine shop so keeping straight what I've read is a lost cause) that at least two of the epidemics that devastated Mexico in the 1500s were not caused by smallpox; the symptoms do not match up. A new theory says that a native disease which emerges under specific climate conditions -- either heavy rain after a couple years of drought or vice versa, I don't remember the details -- matches best with the two periods of highest mortality. Which is not to say that Eurasian diseases didn't play a big role, but then, I think malaria did a number on Europeans in return, so. Not entirely a one-way street. *shrug*

If Europeans were going to eliminate American werewolves, what makes you think they wouldn't have previously wiped out European werewolves? Wolves are long gone from western Europe, after all, whereas there are still wolves in America, vastly reduced though they may be. Yet in urban fantasy and paranormal romances, the werewolves are almost always culturally European. I will continue to insist that that is deeply weird.

I'm not saying that it is inevitable that Columbus will discover the Americas, that England will start mining coal with steam engines, and that Puritans will be my ancestors. But all things being equal, even in a universe with magic, the major factors that lead to the conquest of the Americas aren't going to disappear.

And I am not saying that magic automatically changes everything. What I am saying is that for magic to exist and nothing to change, beyond the presence of supernatural creatures who mirror the current ethnic distributions of our world, is both fishy and unrealistic. It's lazy world-building, and the specific ways in which it is lazy tend to mean the reinforcement of unconscious racial bias. At the very least the inhabitants of these fictional worlds should have stories about the magic of the Native Americans (even if they were still killed and shoved onto reservations) -- or at least some of the old, legendary monsters lurking about with deep roots in the land should be, you know, American rather than European -- but even that is rare.

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

Very thought-provocating essay. You might try looking at Orson Scott Card's work. I seem to recall he had a series about American History and how it would be different if magic was involved. Native American cultures and magics are factored in, as are several other groups. Settlers are still on the Continent. Its been a long time since I ever read any of them, but I do recall the world-building was more naunced than most. Charles De Lint's work too, though not really AU or AT, does a good job of incorporating European and Native American and other cultures' magic mythos.


Wouldn't wizards and witches have been less likely to emigrate from Europe?

I'm not sure about that. Many people migrated for economic, political, or religious reasons, and some for just being adventurous. However, I'd be really interesting to hear you talk more about this thought.

[edenfalling]

I have issues with Card's Alvin Maker series -- most especially the way he's using it to essentially retell the life of Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, as a fantasy epic -- but yes, the alternate history aspects are very interesting, and I love to pieces that he not only makes use of actual Native American historical figures (Tecumseh and Tenskwa-Tawa) but finds a way for them to win, at least west of the Mississippi. Also, he includes a state called Irrakwa, which seems to be upstate New York and is majority Iroquois -- this doesn't have any real effect on the plot, but I love that it exists in the background at all.

I have tried reading Charles de Lint now and then, and I consistently find his books tedious and boring, even when I want to like them. Some writers are just like that for me. *shrug*

My thought about magical people being less likely to emigrate is based on the deep insularity of the European magical community. It seems to me that if Rowling's world history mirrors ours, then European exploration and colonization started as a Muggle enterprise -- Muggles being the people who are driven to find new ways of doing things since they don't have magic to make their lives comfortable. Therefore, I highly doubt that purebloods would have much interest in associating with a Muggle idea (especially since they are more likely to have money, lands, and social status already).

Now, it is actually rather likely that a number of Muggle-born wizards (and witches) might want to leave Europe, to get away from pureblood domination of wizarding society. But in that case, they would still be leaving behind vast swathes of European magical culture, since they would be the people least immersed in (and enamored of) it to start with. And so I think they would cross the ocean piecemeal rather than as a unit, which means they would then be likely to get absorbed back into Muggle society, not to set up wizarding enclaves.

Yet this is not what happened, at least not according to the snippets on the development of Quodpot in Rowling's Quidditch Through the Ages -- that book postulates a colonial American wizarding society virtually identical to the insular, pureblood-dominated British version that immigrants would presumably have been trying to get away from!

Mostly I try not to think about that very hard, since it makes me want to scream at the sloppy world-building.

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

he's using it to essentially retell the life of Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, as a fantasy epic Whoa, I had NO idea (the library in our town had only the second book of a series, so I only read it the one time. Weird how often that happens at this library actually.) On the one hand, I find that rather, ah, culturally insensitive to mormons. I mean, Muslims would be mad if it was Mohamad and the (other) Christians if it was Jesus, or even Paul or something. But then, on the other hand, its kinda ironic considering some of the myths about Joseph Smith getting ideas from fiction books too.....


I found De Lint's novels like that too for a long time. Stuck to his short stories till the book Ghost in the Wires which somehow kept my attention. But I have authors like that too where you just can't get into them (um, Tamora Peirce...)

Your reasoning about coming to the new world and why magical people wouldn't is really quite fascinating! Now I want you write something about! lol. It does strike one as rather sloppy world building to have not thought of that, though I suppose since it all takes place in the UK, maybe it just didn't have much thought because it didn't have much baring to the main story. Far more problematic I suppose, is that ignoring of history right in her own backyard as well as on a global level I suppose. Hogwarts, a school for british children, was founded in Scotland when for a long time there was war between England and Scotland including during some of the time the school was there...... I'l try not to think of it too and just enjoy what is there...

[edenfalling]

Card IS Mormon. :-) He has also previously used a sci-fi series (The Memory of Earth, The Call of Earth, etc.) to retell the Book of Mormon, at least the parts that purport to be the story of some lost Jewish families coming to North America and becoming the ancestors of the Native Americans... and later getting "saved" (or not) during the three days Jesus was supposedly in hell before his resurrection. Or something like that; I'm kind of vague on Mormon theology and I find those parts of the Book of Mormon really offensive and ahistorical, so I basically skimmed them when I read the thing about a decade ago.

(Long story short: in my teens, I promised a friend that if I ever converted to Christianity, it would be to Mormonism, whereupon he gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon. I figured that was a safe and easy promise to make, since I will never convert to any form of Christianity, and it made my friend happy.)

[tealrose39.livejournal.com]

yes, yes, yes, I totally agree about this disgraceful minimization of unique civilizations.

One of the most frustrating comics I read relating to this topic is Neil Gaiman's 1602 where he writes about all the Marvel characters (x-men, spiderman, ect.) in the year 1602 and so they're all European. Somehow, mutations have occurred earlier than usual. It's an interesting idea but

*spoiler*

Captain America is thrown back in time and that time fissure causes the mutations. In anycase, he's taken in by a group of Native Americans who treat him as one of their own. For most of the trade, Captain American is portrayed as Native American with the twist at the end that he's *gasp* Captain America. I don't necessarily think of that as "redface," if you well, because it would make sense for him to adapt the clothing and hairstyle of the people he'd been living with for 20 years or however long. *But* in the end, he talks about how he wants to protect *his* people. "Yay! He's going to protect the Native Americans who took him in and they'll have a fighting chance!" you think. No. He's talking about the WHITE EUROPEANS who eventually populate America who *haven't even arrived yet* because it's only 1602. Great, just great. And why are there no gene mutants among the Native Americans?

Also, the book "The Thirteenth Child" by Patricia C. Wrede is a book about going West and establishing the frontier, except with magic and dinosaurs roaming the land. And I don't remember her mentioning Native Americans or their magic at all, so if she did, it must have been a minor plot point. Again, the story concentrates on a White family and African magic.

And, like you said, often times the authors are great writers, but then there's this...total dismissal.

Another problem is that even when fantasy/sci-fi mentions Native American magic, it usually just eroticizes Native Americans or simplifies their stories. Erotic version: beautiful mystic Native American women with quaint, natural powers who helps the main character *or* old medicine man/woman who takes a moment to give sage advice and then vanishes into the background of the story. (See Cowboy Bebop for that second one. What's the deal with that random old man and kid sitting out in a tent in the middle of nowhere, anyway? Is that a new version of a reservation? Are they part of a movement? What's going on?)

If a Native American man appears, he's usually a "warrior!" who is angry at the white man and wants to take revenge. Certainly justifiable, but there is no depth to the story and he is always the bad guy. See: Buffy, Indian ghost warrior Thanksgiving episode and Supernatural, mystic Native American man curses land so that bugs attack suburbia episode.

At least in Star Trek Voyager, Chakotay is a main character with depth and a backstory, even if the writers generalize and romanticize the "Native American culture" into a monolithic culture, sprinkled with spiritual journeys.

And, hey, one thing Stephanie Meyer (what? what?!) got right: Native American werewolves as opposed to European werewolves! Of course, we can talk about Native American/POC men portrayed as controlled by rage and dominance, ect., ect., but how interesting that she, of all writers, brings up that possibility and contrast. Also, the Twilight movies are not *totally* whitewashed (*cough*Airbender*cough*) and have Native American actors portraying Native American characters.

Anyway, I'm glad to see your post on this. Science-fiction and fantasy, like many other genres, suffer from a dearth of developed, life-like POC characters. Hopefully, racial discourse will help writers to acknowledge other histories, cultures, and peoples as legitimate and consequential. You know, like white histories, cultures, and peoples.

Now I need to go re-read "City of the Beasts" by Isabel Allende. I was just going to give it as an example of an awesome book with native peoples (in South America) since I remember enjoying immensely at the time, but I realized that that was before I was more sensitive to issues of race. It was a long process (ongoing) to get to where I am. Now how much of it will I find is actually "white savior," "native princess love interest," or "cultural exploitation"? Let's see what happens.

[edenfalling]

Yes, the "I must protect the white colonists and their descendents!" moment caused me some severe headdesking, much though I loved other aspects of 1602. That was ugly, thoughtless, and also, I think, out-of-character for Steve Rogers -- he is not always the most sensitive person in the world, since as a white man he's shielded from directly experiencing a lot of problems, but if he'd been living with Native Americans for years, I think that would have awakened him to the injustice of what Europeans did/were going to do to them.

I was actually referencing the reaction to The Thirteenth Child and Wrede's associated comments in the title of my post -- IIRC, she invented a magical barrier between Asia and the Americas that prevented human settlement until the Europeans sailed there from the east. Which meant she was equating the danger of megafauna to the "danger" of, you know, human beings fighting to not get illegally thrown out of their own lands. She also completely failed to acknowledge that one reason European settlement of America went as smoothly as it did was that people already lived here and had found the good food sources, identified (and settled) the good locations, laid trails and created farmland, and so on and so forth.