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The Indian Southwest, 1580–1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention (Volume 232)
The Indian Southwest, 1580–1830 demonstrates that, in the face of European conquest, severe drought, and disease, Indians in the Southwest proved remarkably adaptable and dynamic, remaining independent actors and even prospering. Some tribes temporarily joined Spanish missions or assimilated into other tribes. Others survived by remaining on the fringe of Spanish settlement, migrating, and expanding exchange relationships with other tribes. Still others incorporated remnant bands and individuals and strengthened their economic systems. The vibrancy of southwestern Indian societies today is due in part to the exchange-based political economies their ancestors created almost three centuries ago.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
About the author
Gary Clayton Anderson
22 books9 followersA specialist in American Indians of the Great Plains and the Southwest, Gary Clayton Anderson is a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma.
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November 11, 2019
After several decades spent researching the Lakotas and Dakotas, Gary Anderson shifted his region of specialization to the Southern Plains. THE INDIAN SOUTHWEST focuses on a seldom-studied region - Spanish-era Texas - and uses skillful research and well-chosen details to illuminate the challenges Native Americans faced there. Recurrent drought killed crops and wild plants, seeds deposited by Spanish livestock turned grassland into chaparral forest (which drove bison away), imperial politics deprived the Wichitas of their access to French trade goods, and epidemic diseases cut down hundreds of people in their prime.
As in other parts of North America, Texas Indians pursued creative solutions to the problems these crises caused. The Apaches adopted or captured refugees, like runaway Pueblos and Jumanos, and turned (most likely with the adoptees’ assistance) to equestrian hunting and cattle-raiding to make their living. The Wichitas replaced the lucrative French-Louisianan trade with the sale of agricultural produce to the Comanches. The Jumanos took refuge with missionaries who offered them, they believed, a straightforward exchange of food for baptism; they left when the Franciscans increased their religious demands. The Comanches, who became the dominant Indian nation in the province, relied on a high-volume trade in Pueblo and Apache slaves to supply them with labor and capital, then used both inputs to power a lucrative “status-good” commerce in horses*, slaves, bison robes and guns. By 1830s they had proven themselves the masters of ethnogenesis.
If Anderson’s book has a significant flaw, it lies in his vague and imprecise treatment of that term, “ethnogenesis.” The author focuses less on how new Indian peoples were generated, and more on how existing Indian nations survived and even prospered through the adoption of newcomers and new economic strategies. His is a tale of persistence, rather than radical change. Indeed, one might argue that the long-term survival of pre-Columbian nations like the Apaches makes Native Texans’ experiences more typical of the Southwest than the Southeast, where old Indian chiefdoms, decimated by disease and the slave trade, coalesced into new nations (like the Creeks). Southern historians might claim Texas as part of their region, but Native American historians, after reading Anderson’s seminal book, know better.
* The Comanches had approximately 200,000 horses, about ten per capita, by 1790.
As in other parts of North America, Texas Indians pursued creative solutions to the problems these crises caused. The Apaches adopted or captured refugees, like runaway Pueblos and Jumanos, and turned (most likely with the adoptees’ assistance) to equestrian hunting and cattle-raiding to make their living. The Wichitas replaced the lucrative French-Louisianan trade with the sale of agricultural produce to the Comanches. The Jumanos took refuge with missionaries who offered them, they believed, a straightforward exchange of food for baptism; they left when the Franciscans increased their religious demands. The Comanches, who became the dominant Indian nation in the province, relied on a high-volume trade in Pueblo and Apache slaves to supply them with labor and capital, then used both inputs to power a lucrative “status-good” commerce in horses*, slaves, bison robes and guns. By 1830s they had proven themselves the masters of ethnogenesis.
If Anderson’s book has a significant flaw, it lies in his vague and imprecise treatment of that term, “ethnogenesis.” The author focuses less on how new Indian peoples were generated, and more on how existing Indian nations survived and even prospered through the adoption of newcomers and new economic strategies. His is a tale of persistence, rather than radical change. Indeed, one might argue that the long-term survival of pre-Columbian nations like the Apaches makes Native Texans’ experiences more typical of the Southwest than the Southeast, where old Indian chiefdoms, decimated by disease and the slave trade, coalesced into new nations (like the Creeks). Southern historians might claim Texas as part of their region, but Native American historians, after reading Anderson’s seminal book, know better.
* The Comanches had approximately 200,000 horses, about ten per capita, by 1790.
Displaying 1 of 1 review