- Previous: Establishment of a Town (CYOAH! Redux)
Christopher Columbus, after meeting with the starving residents of his new colony, decided that trading advanced European weapons for food is a reasonable strategy in these desperate times. The natives of the area, known as the Lenape, are more than willing to trade their surplus of food in exchange for guns. It's not a huge amount, but enough to prevent anyone from starving to death, and the next spring the Lenape will help the Europeans to plant new crops and teach them how to farm in the New World. Columbus, under strict orders from King Henry VII not to exterminate or threaten the locals, decides to offer a treaty with the Lenape people, despite their odd ways in comparison to the English settlers (mainly their Matriarchal society).
The Treaty of New York, signed on Friday, November 17, 1493, ensures that the colony and the natives will be friends "until the sun no longer rises," and that the English will come to the aid of the Lenape when they need help, and the Lenape will help the English in their new homeland. A great feast is held that evening to celebrate the new friendship.
For the next decade, the Treaty of New York holds firm: the Colony slowly grows larger with population growth and more Englishmen arriving every year, and Columbus leads expeditions every year to explore more and more of the Coast, circumnavigating OTL Newfoundland (ATL Henrysland after the King) and reaching the southern tip of OTL Florida (which they call the Southern Peninsula). The Lenape, using their new weapons, expand to the north and south and manage to humble the fierce Iroquois warriors, establishing themselves as the most powerful native tribe in what in OTL would be the North Eastern US.
However two new developments occurred almost simultaneously in Northern Columbia in the early 1500s: The French, spurred on by rumours of the great English colony in the new world, arrived in what is OTL known as Nova Scotia (and they called New France, with a capital at OTL Halifax named Nouveau-Bordeaux), and almost immediately begin to challenge the English in this area, and allying with tribes hostile to the Lenape in the area. The second, and perhaps more damaging result, was an outbreak of smallpox and other European Diseases that quickly sickened thousands of natives. While the disease had popped up occasionally before, European aid and ideas (namely quarantining those ill) had prevented a huge loss of life. However this outbreak was too big to actively quarantine, and soon radical native leaders claimed it was the "White-Man's Disease," and they were not wrong.
With new threats to the Lenape and the English, and a breakdown in their relationships, Governor Columbus (having been made so in 1495 on a trip back to England) must now make a hard choice for his relationships in the New World. What does he do?
- Make the Alliance stronger!
- The natives have outlived their usefulness!
- With the natives weak, this is the time to expand!
- It's the French fault! Destroy them!