Thread by @YNot_1989

In honor of #IndigenousPeoplesDay: #WhatIf Columbus never returned alive from the New World? #alternatehistory

POD: 13 February 1493 the Niña and Pinta are smashed upon the rocks of the Azores by the roughest storm of their journey back to Europe... (1)

Like in OTL, the 39 survivors of the Columbus voyage at the colony of La Navidad eventually begin fighting amongst themselves and destroyed their own settlement. 28 survivors remained and became quasi-prisoners of the Cacique of Marién. (2)

The arms and artillery seized by the Cacique of Marién, along with the skills of their captured Europeans, to say nothing of their stock of the horses, pigs, chickens, goats, and cows, would change the world. (3)

Over the next 5 years, Marién would conquer the neighboring caciques of Jaragua, Maguana, Magua, and eventually Higuey, uniting OTL Hispanola under a single Taino dominion, the first Empire of Haiti. (4)

Haiti would experience a population boom and spread out to its neighboring islands using at first the same hollowed canoes they had used for centuries, and later their own breed of double hulled sailing canoe. (5)

In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan leads the second attempt to reach the East Indies, and like in OTL. For much of the 16th century, he is reported as the first European to reach the New World and maps depict a single continent in the southern hemisphere across the Atlantic. (6)

1540: Coronado confirms the existence of OTL North America. He is the first European to map the extent of the Haitian Empire, which now rules most of OTL Mexico and Central America, and has colonies in Florida as well. (7)

1542: Juan Cabrillo attempts to set up a mission in Haitian territory and is gunned down by imperial troops.

1564: Huguenot settlers are captured by Taino colonists during an attempt to settle Florida. (8)

1579: Sir Francis Drake establishes the New Albion colony roughly in OTL Philadelphia, just north of the Haitian frontier. Unlike the Spanish or Portuguese, Drake's colony does not make moves against the Haitians and merely trades with them. (9)

1585: The Mississippi War breaks out between the Haitian Empire and the Choctaw nation. The two states had co-existed and traded for years, facing only minor naval skirmishes. But now the Choctaw seek to drive the Taino out of the Mississippi river. (10)

1591: Haiti sacks Bulbancha (OTL New Orleans) and claims the Mississippi for themselves.

Over the coming decades and centuries, Haiti would explore and conquer all of the Great Plains. (11)

By the 19th century, the Taino ruled Haitian Empire controls the entire Caribbean north of the Guiana Highlands and the Northern Andes, and all of North America east of the Rockies and the east coast up to the Potomac river. (12)

The Empire is a constitutional monarchy of sorts, and shares a typically cordial-occasionally contentious relationship with the United States of Virginia (the descendent of Drake's New Albion colony). (13)

On the West Coast, the Portuguese speaking United States of Magellia rules almost everything west of the Rockies and has had a far more violent history with Haiti. (14)

Despite occasional border skirmishes, the Haitian Empire enjoys the world's largest economy and a military unrivalled by any European power. (15)

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