By the way, WE are the immigrants.

And I'm not just referring to the obvious fact that Native Americans were here first. The Hispanics were also living in the western US for hundreds of years before white Europeans showed up.

I've begun researching my epic fantasy. Working title is "The Feathered Serpents:" plural to distinguish it from all the other books with that title. As I say, it's a working title.

I'm going to give myself a full year to research. The book is going to be incredibly complicated, so I want to have a full plan in place before I start writing. 

Anyway, the story starts with the first meetings of Spanish conquistadors and Native Americans. The first book I'm reading is called, simply enough, "America" by Robert Goodwin. Subtitle: "The Epic Story of Spanish North America."

Right away I'm realizing this is going to be harder than I thought. For one thing, all the Spanish and Indian proper names are hard to distinguish from each other and simply don't stick in my mind. I forget from one page to the next where, when, how, and who the action if referring to.

I'm pressing on because I am getting the gist of it.

I'm about a hundred years into the Spanish explorations of North America and they've made hardly any progress. Most of the expeditions to the north are disasters. The leadership is incompetent, compounded by greed and arrogance. (This is N. America, so Cortez and Pizzaro haven't entered my research yet.)

Many of the problems come from the long distance direction of the Spanish rulers back in the old world. The cruelty to the Native Americans only compounds their problems--almost always coming back to bite them. There's a constant motif of priests volunteering to stay behind with the Indians and then being immediately slaughtered as soon as the soldiers are out of sight.

Between starvation, disease, and warfare, the mortality rate is incredibly high. Meanwhile, this is still a couple hundred years before the USA was established. The Spanish were trying to tame North America for longer than our country has existed. When I say "Spanish" I'm referring to the already 'Creole' culture that was happening.

(The whole immigration argument is insane--take a look at the place names in the Southwest and tell me who was there first!!!)

The only real surprise so far, besides the length of time it took for all this to take place, is that there were a few Spanish explorers who were somewhat enlightened and tried to stop their fellow soldiers from slaughtering everyone in sight. There were rules in place--the Spanish at the time were very legalistic--but of course, once out of sight of civilization, the conquistadors did what they wanted.

On one hand, they seem to our eyes to be incredibly naive about "Cities of Gold." On the other hand, they did find riches beyond their wildest imaginings.

The premise of my story--that the Indians not only fight off the Spanish but gain supremacy, isn't that far fetched, frankly. I posit that the Europe is ravished by plague and thus the explorations are held off by a hundred years or more. And that the Indians take the technology of the first Spanish explorers and improve on it.

It'll be fun, but also very challenging to write.