Follow up question: What travelled faster: news of white men on east coast or death from the diseases they carried?

Because of the lack of recorded histories, I'm not sure how this question could be answered. I think a more indirect approach would be to break the question down into different aspects that might measure the spread of influences, such as:

1. What is the earliest dating of trade goods showing up in different areas. (iron & copper products, glass, etc)?

2. What are earliest oral histories/stories of "white" men?

3. What's the earliest dating of horse and european livestock remains in Native settlements?

4. Dating of human remains that died from western diseases (if this is possible).

You question might also be confounded by Spanish activities on the west coast.

With regard to the premise of the question, it should be noted that Europeans were landing on the west coast roughly around the same time that they were landing on the east coast, so the news would not have travelled in the way OP presumes. Cartier explored the east coast of North America in 1534, but Cabrillo was exploring the California coast in 1542, only 8 years later.

Hi all.

As some of you have point out, there are a lot of removed comments here. Comments that don't meet the standards of the sub rules will be removed. That's what happened there.

Others have pointed out that this question is pretty difficult to answer. However, it's not impossible. While we wait in the hopes that someone who has the answer shows up, please refrain from posting guesses.

Apologies to anyone who's come here expecting the answer and seeing a comment graveyard instead. Be patient. Good answers often take time.

I'll unsticky this comment when some answers come through because I'm one of those people who doesn't like to see long-term stickied mod-comments.

Thanks for your patience.