PC/WI: Surviving Muisca civilization

[GauchoBadger]

The Muisca were a South American civilization, politically organized into a confederation of multiple kingdoms and chiefdoms, located in the vicinity of modern Bogotá, Colombia. They're oftenly renowned for their fondness of gold, mostly in (admittedly quite eye-catching) artwork. In fact, they were so fond of it that the origin of the El Dorado myth is often attributed to them. There is evidence that they were capable of metalworking, both for artistic and military purposes. Eventually, the Muisca were conquered by the Spanish at around the late 1530's, right after the conquest of Cuzco and Peru from the Inca.
But what if the Muisca survived as a civilization?
What would be required for them to survive? Could they pull through even with a Spanish Peru?
Who would they appeal to for protection? The French? English?

 

[Salvador79]

With a Spanish Peru, it's a matter of time only, especially with all the gleaming gold.
Without it, though... well, actually, I am always astonished by how easily so much of the New World was turned Spanish, I mean it wasn't like the Iberian kingdoms of the 15th century showed any signs that they were on the threshold of conquering half the world - and holding these conquests together for almost three centuries! -, and then they did. I must admit I haven't half understood it. So I suppose I better shut up and let someone else reply. Otherwise, I'd just cough up ideas without a Spanish super-conquest. (Because if Spanish New World acquisitions would have been of the quality of Portuguese colonizations across Africa, the Muisca and lots of other native American civilizations would have plenty of time to survive and transform.)

 

[Diego]

With a Spanish Peru, it's a matter of time only, especially with all the gleaming gold.
Without it, though... well, actually, I am always astonished by how easily so much of the New World was turned Spanish, I mean it wasn't like the Iberian kingdoms of the 15th century showed any signs that they were on the threshold of conquering half the world - and holding these conquests together for almost three centuries! -, and then they did. I must admit I haven't half understood it. So I suppose I better shut up and let someone else reply. Otherwise, I'd just cough up ideas without a Spanish super-conquest. (Because if Spanish New World acquisitions would have been of the quality of Portuguese colonizations across Africa, the Muisca and lots of other native American civilizations would have plenty of time to survive and transform.)

Well, compare the Portuguese on Brazil with the Portuguese in Africa, or the British, French... it is a lot easier to conquer and populate a continent after diseases already steamrolled the native population of said continent.

 

[Salvador79]

True about the Diseases (which inevitably Hit the Muisca, too).

But if you compare how slow Britain and France, much later, i.e. with considerably greater complexity, centralization, technology etc. Advanced - I still think the Spanish (and Portuguese) mega-conquest which included much more formidable indigenous adversaries than those the British and French later encountered, is puzzling. Also, I think it was this quick mega-conquest which provided the blueprint for later colonization of others, too. Before that, the Portuguese colonies resembled much more the small trade-related colonies the Genoese and Venetians had.

 

[Captain Jack]

Obviously the Spanish Conquest is a vastly complicated topic, and no one has a satisfying explanation for how Spain (insofar as its usefuk to talk about Spain in the modern sense in this context) was able to do it. However, I'd offer that one aspect of the conquest that helped was the complexity of the native cultures being subjugated. While the Spaniards certainly brought in plenty of settlers to the Americas, at least in Mexico and Peru they operated more by inserting themselves in place of the native elite that preceded them. The new regimes changed up some of the governing structures, especially at the higher levels, but often they left the local organizational system relatively unaltered. Effectively, they repurposed the traditional power structures of the native socities to support their own empire. This was helped by the fact that those same structures had been used for exactly the same purpose by the preceding native empires, and in some cases been created by them as a means of imperial control. Thus, they Spanish were able to effectively harness the resources of the conquered regions to expand and sustain the empire, rather than having to base their power in Spain itself. For evidence, look at the huge numbers of native troops the Spanish used in their armies, or how they took the existing Incan labor levees and simply redirected the labor being supplied by that system, or the similar way that the Mexican encomiendas drew their labor from the local populations using the tax system employed by the Aztec state virtually unchanged.

 

[ar-pharazon]

I do wonder how the Muisca and other peoples of modern day Colombia and Venezuela would have evolved if there had not been in any contact with the old world or contact had been substantially delayed.

How long would it have taken them to be integrated with the Caribbean, mesoamerica, and the Andes for example?

 

[Salvador79]

How long would it have taken them to be integrated with the Caribbean, mesoamerica, and the Andes for example?

Were they not integrated with the Caribbean? They had constant quarrels with the Caribs, iirc, and some Carib groups expanded across the Caribbean (hence the name). Also, the Taino were doing a lot of maritime exchange, I'd be surprised if they were not at all connected with the Muisca.

As for the Inca, it depends if their empire would have continued expanding at its pace, but if it did, maybe they'd join in battle in the 17th century?

Contact with Mesoamerica would have been overseas, thus we're back to the question of integration with the Caribbean.

 

[Aspiring Author]

I think to save the Muisca, you would have to save the Taino first.

 

[GauchoBadger]

I think to save the Muisca, you would have to save the Taino first.

And that'd require a Caribbean that's not entirely dominated by the Spanish in the early 16th century, right?

 

[Aspiring Author]

And that'd require a Caribbean that's not entirely dominated by the Spanish in the early 16th century, right?

The Land of Sweetness is a timeline that seems to be headed in "the Taino survive" territory. That person uses increased trade to spread ideas.

 

[Qhapaq Inka]

Yeah, to have a surviving Muisca civilization, I think you'd need a more powerful patron to be on their side. Or at least some sort of buffer.

A failed Spanish conquest of the Andes could leave Tawantinsuyu to fulfill this role - though they'd probably turn the Muisca into clients, rather than equal allies.

Alternatively, a non-Spanish-dominated Caribbean would do it, but that would really need a POD that gets rid of Columbus and/or bulks up the native Caribbean civilizations in military power.

Or another idea: any possibility for Portugal to beat the Spanish to Columbia? Maybe no Tordesillas, so the New World is a free-for-all?

 

[Aspiring Author]

Yeah, to have a surviving Muisca civilization, I think you'd need a more powerful patron to be on their side. Or at least some sort of buffer.

A failed Spanish conquest of the Andes could leave Tawantinsuyu to fulfill this role - though they'd probably turn the Muisca into clients, rather than equal allies.

Alternatively, a non-Spanish-dominated Caribbean would do it, but that would really need a POD that gets rid of Columbus and/or bulks up the native Caribbean civilizations in military power.

Or another idea: any possibility for Portugal to beat the Spanish to Columbia? Maybe no Tordesillas, so the New World is a free-for-all?

Or go back further:
Carthage wins the Punic Wars, but not so much that Rome vanishes (a draw I guess).
Therefore the Zealots are able to win at the Jerusalem Revolt. Together a Carthaginian-Israeli alliance keeps Rome out of the Mediterranean, which causes Rome to conquer upwards.
This butterflies Abraham Zacato & Luis de Torres out of existence. Thus buying the Taino's another hundred years atleast.

 

[Arkenfolm]

It is odd how little legacy the Muisca left compared to the Inca. Some toponyms, yes, but their language is extinct and the people who spoke it have shifted to Spanish, compared to Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, where Quechua is alive and well, in part due to Spanish effort.

Hence why the easiest and most plausible way for the Muisca to "survive" is for Colombia to be as Muisca as Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia are Quechua, with Muisca language and other influences even spreading under Spanish rule. That's probably a pre-colonial POD which likely also results in Inca survival.

 

[Qhapaq Inka]

It is odd how little legacy the Muisca left compared to the Inca. Some toponyms, yes, but their language is extinct and the people who spoke it have shifted to Spanish, compared to Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, where Quechua is alive and well, in part due to Spanish effort.

Hence why the easiest and most plausible way for the Muisca to "survive" is for Colombia to be as Muisca as Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia are Quechua, with Muisca language and other influences even spreading under Spanish rule. That's probably a pre-colonial POD which likely also results in Inca survival.

Part of the reason Quechua survived so well is that the Spanish authorities decided to use it as a language of evangelization after the conquest. If they were to do the same thing with Muisca in Colombia, you could get a similar result.

One oddity of the conquest era is that, before 1532, there was a third major language in the Peruvian/Bolivian Andes beside Quechua and Aymara - the Puquina language. It probably had a comparable number of speakers as the former two before the conquest, in the hudreds of thousands if not millions, but while Quechua and Aymara have millions of speakers even today, Puquina has zero* - it went extinct in the 17th century. I haven't yet seen an explanation as to why.

*there's some evidence that Callahuaya, a crypto-language of itinerant healers in the central Andes today, might be a remnant of Puquina, but it's inconclusive

 

[Aspiring Author]

Yeah.

Part of the reason Quechua survived so well is that the Spanish authorities decided to use it as a language of evangelization after the conquest. If they were to do the same thing with Muisca in Colombia, you could get a similar result.

One oddity of the conquest era is that, before 1532, there was a third major language in the Peruvian/Bolivian Andes beside Quechua and Aymara - the Puquina language. It probably had a comparable number of speakers as the former two before the conquest, in the hudreds of thousands if not millions, but while Quechua and Aymara have millions of speakers even today, Puquina has zero* - it went extinct in the 17th century. I haven't yet seen an explanation as to why.

*there's some evidence that Callahuaya, a crypto-language of itinerant healers in the central Andes today, might be a remnant of Puquina, but it's inconclusive

I have also been really curious about this. I heard once that it was the language of Lake Titicata?? near where the Llama & alpaca where first domesticated...

 

[ctayfor]

Obviously the Spanish Conquest is a vastly complicated topic, and no one has a satisfying explanation for how Spain (insofar as its useful to talk about Spain in the modern sense in this context) was able to do it. However, I'd offer that one aspect of the conquest that helped was the complexity of the native cultures being subjugated. While the Spaniards certainly brought in plenty of settlers to the Americas, at least in Mexico and Peru they operated more by inserting themselves in place of the native elite that preceded them. The new regimes changed up some of the governing structures, especially at the higher levels, but often they left the local organizational system relatively unaltered. Effectively, they repurposed the traditional power structures of the native societies to support their own empire. This was helped by the fact that those same structures had been used for exactly the same purpose by the preceding native empires, and in some cases been created by them as a means of imperial control. Thus, the Spanish were able to effectively harness the resources of the conquered regions to expand and sustain the empire, rather than having to base their power in Spain itself. For evidence, look at the huge numbers of native troops the Spanish used in their armies, or how they took the existing Incan labor levees and simply redirected the labor being supplied by that system, or the similar way that the Mexican encomiendas drew their labor from the local populations using the tax system employed by the Aztec state virtually unchanged.

That is an excellent explanation of why a relative few Spanish invaders could control Incan and Aztec empires which then gave them an enormous logistic advantage over other European powers in much of the Americas. Compare the Frankish seizure of Gaul, the Norman conquest of England or the British takeover of India for a similar mechanism of conquest where it was mainly a supplanting of the ruling elite and the conversion of the existing structure of empire. Areas where no such complex structure pre-existed required much longer to organise and tie to the "mother country" since political and physical infrastructure had to be built from scratch. Most of those examples such as Canada, Brazil, the original British America, Australia and New Zealand, became settler colonies. Only one of these examples, incidentally, became independent by revolution. Most settler colonies became independent by gradual evolution. The only piece of Spanish America that did not become a revolutionary republic is Puerto Rico.

Perhaps the only way the Muisca might have survived as a culture, even if considerably modified, might have been if a different coloniser used the same modus operandi as the conquistadores.