Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander
The concept of 'Native American' seems out of place in a 19th century world. It's a 20th century political construct that hasn't emerged in that world yet.
|
There were about
6-8 major cultural groups in the area of the US about the time Europeans showed up to catalog and record them that way.
About the same number of major language groups, though there were many (many) more individual languages. There really was an Indian sign language which spanned a lot of those cultural groups (and at least one other in the East). More than just a trade pidgin, it was a full language in which you could debate the differing religions, were you so inclined, with its own independent linguisitic development (as opposed to being a signed version of some particular spoken language, as with, say, ASL).
If you want to break up the US into Native American nations, you'll need somewhere between six and ten of them, not just one.
If the Old West style survives in recognizable form, you'll mostly be concerned with Plains Indians (just like all that Hollywood stuff), with maybe some Southwestern or Basin depending on exactly where you set the game. Though it'd be odd to change history enough to have organized nations on par with the Europeans established by 1870 without changing an awful lot of the history that got you to that recognizable background.
Another possibility is just to make the setting more of an expy, without depending on literal details of the historic US. You can have six-shooters and horses and noble savages and bold men doing what's right in a lawless region without dragging in real history. That lets you more freely edit the world to suit yourself, without also dragging in modern politics. Of course, that also gives up some of the appeal, and demands more creative writing skill to carry off your analog without being too obvious or losing the intended message behind all the invention.