A History of New Mexican-Plains Indian Relations

A History of New Mexican-Plains Indian Relations PDF

Author: Charles L. Kenner

Publisher:

Published: 1969

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 9780806108292

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Cultural influence of Plains Indians on the sedentary Pueblos and the Spanish Americans is given full treatment with some interesting sidelights on the famous folk drama Los Comanches.

The Comanchero Frontier

The Comanchero Frontier PDF

Author: Charles L. Kenner

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780806126708

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This is a history of the Comancheros, or Mexicans who traded with the Comanche Indians in the early Southwest. When Don Juan Bautista de Anza and Ecueracapa, a Comanche leader, concluded a peace treaty in 1786, mutual trade benefits resulted, and the treaty was never afterward broken by either side. New Mexican Comancheros were free to roam the plains to trade goods, and when Americans introduced, the Comanches and New Mexicans even joined in a loose, informal alliance that made the American occupation of the plains very costly. Similarly, in the 1860s the Comancheros would trade guns and ammunition to the Comanches and Kiowas, allowing them to wreck a gruesome toll on the advancing Texans.

Depredation and Deceit

Depredation and Deceit PDF

Author: Gregory F Michno

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2017-09-14

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0806159448

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The Trade and Intercourse Acts passed by Congress between 1796 and 1834 set up a system for individuals to receive monetary compensation from the federal government for property stolen or destroyed by American Indians. By the end of the Mexican-American War, both Anglo-Americans and Nuevomexicanos became experts in exploiting this system—and in using the army to collect on their often-fraudulent claims. As Gregory F. Michno reveals in Depredation and Deceit, their combined efforts created a precarious mix of false accusations, public greed, and fabricated fear that directly led to new wars in the American Southwest between 1849 and 1855. Tasked with responding to white settlers’ depredation claims and gaining restitution directly from Indian groups, soldiers typically had no choice but to search out often-innocent Indians and demand compensation or the surrender of the guilty party, turning once-friendly bands into enemy groups whenever these tense encounters exploded in violence. As the situation became more volatile, citizens demanded a greater army presence in the region, and lucrative military contracts became yet another reason to encourage the continuation of frontier violence. Although the records are replete with officers questioning accusations and discovering civilians’ deceit, more often than not the army was forced to act in direct counterpoint to its duties as a constabulary force. And whenever war broke out, the acquisition of more Indian land and wealth began the cycle of greed and violence all over again. The Trade and Intercourse Acts were manipulated by Anglo-Americans who ensured the continuation of the very conflicts that they claimed to abhor and that the acts were designed to prevent. In bringing these machinations to light, Michno’s book deepens—and darkens—our understanding of the conquest of the American Southwest.

War of a Thousand Deserts

War of a Thousand Deserts PDF

Author: Brian DeLay

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-11-01

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 0300150423

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In the early 1830s, after decades of relative peace, northern Mexicans and the Indians whom they called "the barbarians" descended into a terrifying cycle of violence. For the next fifteen years, owing in part to changes unleashed by American expansion, Indian warriors launched devastating attacks across ten Mexican states. Raids and counter-raids claimed thousands of lives, ruined much of northern Mexico's economy, depopulated its countryside, and left man-made "deserts" in place of thriving settlements. Just as important, this vast interethnic war informed and emboldened U.S. arguments in favor of seizing Mexican territory while leaving northern Mexicans too divided, exhausted, and distracted to resist the American invasion and subsequent occupation. Exploring Mexican, American, and Indian sources ranging from diplomatic correspondence and congressional debates to captivity narratives and plains Indians' pictorial calendars, "War of a Thousand Deserts" recovers the surprising and previously unrecognized ways in which economic, cultural, and political developments within native communities affected nineteenth-century nation-states. In the process this ambitious book offers a rich and often harrowing new narrative of the era when the United States seized half of Mexico's national territory.

The Comanche Empire

The Comanche Empire PDF

Author: Pekka Hamalainen

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 508

ISBN-13: 0300145136

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A groundbreaking history of the rise and decline of the vast and imposing Native American empire. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a Native American empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet, until now, the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in American history. This compelling and original book uncovers the lost story of the Comanches. It is a story that challenges the idea of indigenous peoples as victims of European expansion and offers a new model for the history of colonial expansion, colonial frontiers, and Native-European relations in North America and elsewhere. Pekka Hämäläinen shows in vivid detail how the Comanches built their unique empire and resisted European colonization, and why they fell to defeat in 1875. With extensive knowledge and deep insight, the author brings into clear relief the Comanches’ remarkable impact on the trajectory of history. 2009 Winner of the Bancroft Prize in American History “Cutting-edge revisionist western history…. Immensely informative, particularly about activities in the eighteenth century.”—Larry McMurtry, The New York Review of Books “Exhilarating…a pleasure to read…. It is a nuanced account of the complex social, cultural, and biological interactions that the acquisition of the horse unleashed in North America, and a brilliant analysis of a Comanche social formation that dominated the Southern Plains.”—Richard White, author of The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815

The Indian Frontier 1846-1890

The Indian Frontier 1846-1890 PDF

Author: Robert M. Utley

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 2003-10-30

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0826329985

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First published in 1984, Robert Utley's The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890, is considered a classic for both students and scholars. For this revision, Utley includes scholarship and research that has become available in recent years. What they said about the first edition: "[The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890] provides an excellent synthesis of Indian-white relations in the trans-Mississippi West during the last half-century of the frontier period."--Journal of American History "The Indian Frontier of the American West combines good writing, solid research, and penetrating interpretations. The result is a fresh and welcome study that departs from the soldier-chases-Indian approach that is all too typical of other books on the topic."--Minnesota History "[Robert M. Utley] has carefully eschewed sensationalism and glib oversimplification in favor of critical appraisal, and his firm command of some of the best published research of others provides a solid foundation for his basic argument that Indian hostility in the half century following the Mexican War was directed less at the white man per se than at the hated reservation system itself."--Pacific Historical Review Choice Magazine Outstanding Selection

Los Comanches

Los Comanches PDF

Author: Stanley Noyes

Publisher:

Published: 1994-04-01

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780826315489

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This book offers a large, sweeping history of the Comanche Indians, who dominated the Southern Plains from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century. No plains people was more feared or admired for its mastery of warfare and life in a harsh, arid environment. Euro and Native Americans alike anxiously dreaded the ferocity of Comanche enmity yet avidly sought the uncertainty of Comanche friendship. In this richly textured history, Stanley Noyes explores the golden century of Comanche domi-nation of the Southern Plains. 'While his narrative recounts the relations of Comanches to Spanish, French, Mexican, American, and Native American neighbors, his vignettes provide vivid glimpses into Comanche culture and society. This is a sensitive portrait of human society and physical place. By the end of the book, we understand the Comanches both as a peerless warrior society and as an embattled people.