Lower Androscoggin Valley

This proved more intriging than I'd originally expected:

As with the Michigan example, this is a bare-bones 20-mile map of the area requested by Sterling.  It's a collection of European incursions established on the edges of Abenaki native lands, so that in calculating the infrastructure it's a mash of both cultures hex-by-hex.

Each "patent" here is a grant made by the monarch of England to an individual or company, in exchange for a service rendered each year.  In this case, most likely a set amount of timber to be cut and provided into the hands of the sovereign.  The patent grants the specific right to trade with the Abenaki or Penobscot natives.  I haven't gone deep enough into the subject to determine exactly what was granted or what specifically the trade desired ... that's going to need my going into old books on the net, because wikipedia is notably scant in its information.  The patents all failed as it happened, though not at once.  And they did help establish a foothold on the shoreline, which is more important than their intention.

'Course, in Earth's actual history, this was done with the natives as the loser.  The Abenaki here, whose settlements can be understood by their unfamiliar non-English names, have been given benefits by elves in America that the real natives did not have.  These benefits are based on things that existed in North America, that might have been exploited if the natives had known to do so.

First, the wheel.  This gives the natives a better pottery and the potential for taking advantage of moving rivers.  And since the elves came to North America first, and brought horses with them, they've been here since long before the Europeans came in the 15th century.  Thus there are carts, and with carts, roads.

Second, metal forging.  The natives therefore have swords, axes, spears and so on with metal parts.  Thus they're able to take a firm stand in war, and the use of metals enables a lot more in the way of tools and farm implements.  This allows better planting of crops ... though existing staples are beans and squash rather than cereals, which were never established in the New World prior to the Europeans.

This creates a whole new dynamic, turning history on it's head.  The Europeans cannot simply bully their way into America; there are several well-established groups who could fight them to a standstill, and several scattered Elven kingdoms within the large deciduous forests east of the Missouri.  For those who may wonder how to predict what the natives have compared to the Europeans, it's best to assume they have everything.  After all, what they didn't have prior to 1600 has been since traded by Europeans who began to arrive.  There are likely some individual natives planting grain crops, since those too were brought across the Atlantic.

One thing: it paints the Europeans clearly as the invaders, who in this history must give respect to the native tribes or find themselves quickly wiped out.  On the map above, the Europeans number about 2,000 persons.  There are more than 16,000 Abenaki, as skilled and able, with comparable magic, as the non-gun-toting Europeans here.  There are no guns in my game world.