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While I admire those of you with enough detailed knowledge of the way the Mongols and the American Indian tribes fought to be able to hazard some speculation as to the outcome, I still think any answer is highly speculative because we are comparing forces on opposite sides of the world who were at the apex of their power centuries apart.
how well would the American Indian warriors like the Apaches, Commanches, Lakotas, and other warrior tribes do against Ghenghis Khan's Mongol army?
Interesting question.
The biggest difference between the two is that Ghenghis Khan's organization was that of an army, and the Indians had nothing like an army. Trained soldiers using unit tactics will always defeat irregulars in a battle.
Indians fought as insurgents, and what insurgent movements depend upon is for the invading army to have reluctance to kill the non-combatant native peoples. Ghenghis Khan had no such compunction.
When Ghenkis Khan moved into an area, the natives either surrendered or were exterminated.
Once the villages are destroyed, the women and children killed, then the remaining warriors face the problem of getting food.
If you want to play the game of "equal numbers", the Mongols still come out ahead due to their having in addition to light cavalry (which was still armored), but also heavy armored horses and lancers.
Furthermore, the Mongols used swords both on the ground and from horseback - a weapon the Indians did not have.
The native Americans would have been destroyed by the Mongols for the same reasons that they were destroyed by the Europeans.
A) The Mongols had massively better organization. They had central leadership and clearly defined war aims. It would not have been possible for the horse culture societies (and let's give them horses for our war) to have organized a united defense because their lifestyle was dependent upon being scattered over an enormous geographical area. It required something on the order of 10,000 acres per person to support the hunter/gatherer culture of the Great Plains tribes, consequently they could never be concentrated in one place for very long. They did not have the means to sustain a large army in the field for more than a few weeks.
B) The Mongols would have brought the same diseases that the Europeans brought which wiped out 90 % of the native population.
Nevertheless, it took European settlers 30 years to defeat the Comanches, and even then it was only because we killed all the buffalo, decimated their population with diseases against which they had no immunity, and had modern firearms. The Mongols didn't have firearms either, and the original question doesn't consider factors such as diseases or the extermination of the buffalo herds - it just asks who would have won in a head to head fight.
The plains tribes didn't need to field a standing army - they just sat back in the Comancheria, waiting for you to bring your army to them. And then when your horses were dead from thirst because you didn't know where the waterholes were, and what was left of your cavalry troop was drinking the horses' blood to stay alive, they swooped out from behind a 2-foot tall mesquite bush and scalped you. It worked quite effectively against us for over 30 years, and I'm inclined to believe it would have worked against the Mongols as well.
Disease alone would have wiped the native Americans out quickly. The mongols conquered and absorbed their enemies, thus strengthening the gene pool and especially immune systems.
The native Americans were too inbred to withstand this. I'm sure there is a nice way to say that.
The Mongols superior organization, tactic and strategy would have crushed the Indians. Khan adapted to fighting in all types of terrian and against all types of militarys and militia type armies. He used the best tactics of his enemies against them as he learned them. His ability to absorb the best of the best and ply it to an advantage made him and his military leaders some of the fiercest and most successful campaigners in human history.
What advantage in horsemanship ? The Mongol babies were riding horses before they were walking, they pretty much lived in the saddle.
If you look at say the Comanche vs Mongol and take away the guns and all of the urban folklore:
- both are horse nations. Neither has an advantage in horsemanship. Both can ride fast and had great horses.
- both use bow and arrow. However the Mongol composite bow was more powerful than Comanche wood bow, it was designed to be used over longer distances against opponents wearing some kind of armor (it wouldn't penetrate plate armor but it could sometimes go through chain mail). Comanches could shoot faster, though, but not by a whole lot, and over a shorter distance.
- Mongols used front and skull armor, Comanche were for all intents and purposes naked
- Mongols had far better melee weapons, although they preferred to wear the opponents down from the distance. But in case of a close-quarter melee, mongols would've been far superior. Comanche didn't have much other than small axes and spears. Mongols had a part of their cavalry dedicated to shock combat (not much different from European knights) and even their archers carried shields and swords.
- Mongols had superior battlefield tactics, which were honed in the battles against very diverse, technologically advanced (for the time) opponents, from Chinese to Russians to Western Euroeans to Central Asians to Indians to Arabs. It was their level of organization, command and control on the battlefield that made them such a terrible force. Comanche, while undoubtedly very brave and very well organized, were mainly used to fighting other Indians.
Could the Comanche use the guerrilla tactics against the Mongols ? Sure, but they were used to that. And their very lifestyle was greatly adapted to protect against guerrillas. Remember, they were not living in vulnerable isolated small communities spread over the countryside, like the White farmers. They were the steppe nomads, traveling in huge forces from one pasture to another. A 20,000 strong army that invaded Hungary was considered a reconnaissance group. They had a very simple answer to guerrilla warfare - total genocide.
I just don't see how the Comanche could've won, the tactics were very similar but the technology, the experience, and the battlefield tactics were squarely on the Mongol side.
Nevertheless, it took European settlers 30 years to defeat the Comanches, and even then it was only because we killed all the buffalo, decimated their population with diseases against which they had no immunity, and had modern firearms. The Mongols didn't have firearms either, and the original question doesn't consider factors such as diseases or the extermination of the buffalo herds - it just asks who would have won in a head to head fight.
The plains tribes didn't need to field a standing army - they just sat back in the Comancheria, waiting for you to bring your army to them. And then when your horses were dead from thirst because you didn't know where the waterholes were, and what was left of your cavalry troop was drinking the horses' blood to stay alive, they swooped out from behind a 2-foot tall mesquite bush and scalped you. It worked quite effectively against us for over 30 years, and I'm inclined to believe it would have worked against the Mongols as well.
Not so sure, the Mongols were used to fighting in Central Asia deserts which are far closer to Sahara than American plains.
Also, the White Americans were not a very well organized or led force; they were not a single force at all, for most part. If the US army was given a clear order to eliminate all the Indians, and equally importantly if it was grown to the size required for the task, it wouldn't take 30 years. However this was politically impossible even back then.
Okay, but the Mongols then have Imperial Walkers and light sabers.
Hey... this was a serious answer to a serious historical question of great importance.
Get your facts straight... Khan clearly would of had mind control ear-worms, a stolen starship and a Genesis Device at his disposal, not light sabers and walkers.
I doubt that the outcome would have been determined by battlefield tactics. The great vulnerability of the Plains tribes was their logistics. Theirs was not a lifestyle which permitted conducting the sort of war which the Mongols would have brought against them. Destroy the buffalo herds and you destroy the means for subsistence for the tribes.
Disease, combined with wiping out those herds, is the manner in which the European Americans defeated the Plains tribes, not any grand battle. The Indians were forced into a situation of starvation and were compelled to submit to reservation life in order to get food from the US government with which to feed their families.
The tribes could not sustain a large field army, they were incapable of conducting winter operations, and they had no means for placing the non combatants out of harm's way. Any enemy which did have such capacities would have an enormous advantage over them, be it the US or the Mongols.
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What Indian Army?
