Koolasuchus

In the movie Avatar the natives on the planet of Pandora use flying mounts (Ikrans and Toruks) in their fight against the marine soldiers from Earth.

One can wonder if some kind of giant flying animals would have lived in the Americas (but not in the rest of the world) and some groups of native Americans had learned to tame and to ride them, how would that have affected the outcome from their first confrontations with the Europeans?

Also one can wonder how that kind of "technology" would have influenced the whole culture of the Amerindians.

Nick

Interesting idea. Indian legends tell of a giant eagle or thunderbird. If such creatures did exist and were tamed the US cavalry would have a very hard time. Perhaps they would respond by building huge steam-powered land ironclads to protect the wagon trains from airborne braves

Nick

Or some sort of weapons-bearing airship to shoot them down. Steam dirigibles were flying as early as 1852. The US Balloon Corps may use several variants: a small scouting craft with a pilot and marksman all the way up to a gigantic flying battleship designed for bombing Richmond:

Corbulo

A sound notion Nick!!
It would be pretty cool to see Cheyenne Dog Soldiers zooming out of the sky astride giant eagles!! Alas though me thinks those magnificent birds would have joined the ranks of Messers Winchester and Colt other victims, along with the Buffalo, the passenger pigeon and many native Americans too!!

Salah

My thoughts exactly.

Lucius

Whoa!

That's completely and totally the bomb! When I hit the lottery, Ima get me one of them!

DreamWeaver

There would be a market for bigger and sturdier umbrellas

Koolasuchus

The early airships were rather slow and clumsy (which was all to obvious in the first world war). The native Americans on their flying mounts would probably be able to outmanouver them or avoid them. The most critical for the amerindians would be to hinder the euro americans to get hold of, or destroy, their flying mounts, that would be critical.

Nick

True, but land ironclads would be well-protected and heavily armed, making raids on wagon trains, military outposts and railroads a lot more difficult
[IMG]http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f29/*********/ironclad.jpg[/IMG]

Koolasuchus

Interesting thoughts.

One can wonder though if Europeans would gain any foothold on the American continents in the first place if they had met flying warriors. Perhaps already Columbus and other early Europeans would have been run away be mounted warriors if a conflict would have arisen. But later on Europe would probably have tried again to win a foothold, but if they ever would have gained it depends ofcourse on the circumstancs, on where, when and how they would tried that foothold.


When concerns ironclads, they would probably have been very slow and cumbersome and all outposts could not always be dependant on them.

I think it is hard to overestimate the advantage in mobility that the flying mounts would have given the Native Americans.