Originally Posted by Anteater

I also think it was inevitable, though the specifics would have changed depending on what country made the most inroads. There is also a branch of history somewhere out there in the great macroverse where the Aztecs simply continued expanding their empire north and west, eventually enslaving and/or wiping out all of the other tribes in the continental U.S. within a century or so. If the conquistadors, Vikings, some African country, whatever had come to the New World at that point, there would have been one hell of a war.