War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War

by Brian DeLay

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.

 

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Native American, Grad School, Native American History, Westerns

496 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 2008

About the author

A specialist in colonial and 19th century U.S. and Mexican history, Brian DeLay is Preston Hotchkis Chair in the History of the United States at the University of California, Berkeley. He earned his BA (1994) from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his MA (1998) and Ph.D. (2004) from Harvard University.

Reviews

[Zach Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brian DeLay saw a gap in the history of the Mexican American War and knew he needed to fill it.

The gap for DeLay, as is the gap in many of the histories of the United States, was the role that Native Americans played in shaping the countries they inhabited. DeLay shows how the Comanches, Apaches, and other Southern tribes were all undeniably influential in this history. In fact, DeLay posits and proves that, had it not been for the presence of these tribes and their interactions with Mexicans and Texans, then there is a good chance that the Mexican American War might not have ever happened.

If you want a resource on the war or the changing face of the West throughout the early nineteenth century, then there is no better source than "War of a Thousand Deserts."

[D.A. Vega · Rating 5 out of 5]

War of a Thousand Deserts is an excellent book concentrating on the expansive raids of the Comanche Empire throughout Mexico and the Southwestern territories of the burgeoning United States. I was very impressed by the amount of information collected from Mexican government reports and the documented impacts of raiding in both Mexico and Texas.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always appreciate a book that fills in a historical gap for me. DeLay does a solid job connecting the ongoing wars between Plains Indians and Mexicans to the Mexican American War by showing how devastating the Indian raids were to northern Mexico.

In my limited exposure to history of this period I had never heard this connection, but it makes a lot of sense and really illuminates what was going on in the Mexican north.

The book was held back a bit for me my its dry, academic writing. Perfectly serviceable, but I wanted to like it more.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book makes me realize once again how biased our education system is - that the Comanches, and others, provided the key to the US-Mexican war and barely get a footnote in most textbooks. Plus, for a history book this was quite readable and well-organized. Read for grad school.

[Alex Milton · Rating 5 out of 5]

War of a Thousand Deserts is a borderlands history focusing on indigenous actors in the years surrounding the U.S.-Mexican War. DeLay contributes to the narrative of the U.S.-Mexican War through his inclusion of Native Americans and focuses on Northern Mexican territories in his analysis of the conflict. Although the title emphasizes the U.S.-Mexican War, coverage of the war begins in the book's final two chapters. In addition to the imperial actors of the United States and Mexico, DeLay argues that Comanche, Apache, and Kiowa were critical players in the conflict. Built upon extensive archival research, DeLay argues that Native American raids on settlements in Northern Mexico presented the United States with the opportunity to capture the region.
Focus on Native American raids leading up to and during the U.S.-Mexican War, DeLay develops the regional power of plains as a vital aspect of the war between two imperial powers. War of a Thousand Deserts excels in spotlighting Native American influence within the story of American Westward expansion. Both the United States and Mexican governments envisioned indigenous people as subservient groups within their empire. Although lacking a centralized government, DeLay convincingly argues that kinship and community ties organized indigenous politics in Northern Mexico. DeLay builds upon prior discussions of Comanche raiding by focusing on Native American influence in the U.S.-Mexican War while providing context to Comanche raiding. While other historians covered Comanche raids within the Southwest before the War of a Thousand Deserts, the book provides new insight through its detailed focus on the years leading up to the U.S.-Mexican War.

[Adrian R. Rosales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Con una profunda investigación de fuentes mexicanas y estadounidenses, DeLay presenta a través de una atrapante narración la Guerra de los Mil Desiertos, un conflicto que llevó a que el norte de México y lo que hoy es el sur de Estados Unidos se encontrara vacío de almas humanas ante las devastadoras incursiones indígenas, especialmente aquellas realizadas por los comanches, entre 1835 y 1849. DeLay aborda estas destructoras campañas, los motivos económicos y socioculturales que las impulsaron, la organización detrás de ellas, el ámbito político que las rodeaba a ambos lados de la frontera, y sus consecuencias dentro de la Guerra entre México y Estados Unidos, así como la marca que dejaron en la región.
Un trabajo académico altamente recomendado no solo para quien esté interesado en los comanches, sino en la historia de México y Estados Unidos también. Además, es de notar la amplia base de datos que proporciona al final y el enfoque político y sociocultural del estudio.

[Tim]

Throw out everything you thought you knew about the US war with Mexico and about the violence and warfare with Southern Plains tribes. Delay is here to issue a massive corrective to both of these. This is a phenomenal work laying out the true foundations of the decades of bloodshed and violence in Northern Mexico and its effects on Mexican, Texan, and American cultures. An instant classic.

[Chesney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for a class in graduate school. Very interesting details about the US-Mexican War in the fights between white Americans, Mexican citizens, and Native Americans.

[Josh Adamek]

Really in-depth look at the US Mexican War and the resulting Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Santa Anna continuing to pop up out of oblivion was so interesting.

[ChoCho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly this was actually interesting. Like wow

[Reader Alpha · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was alright

[Santiago Torres · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book looks at the conflicts between Mexican and Native American peoples in the years between Mexican Independence (1821) to the U.S.-Mexico War (1846-1848). Contrary to most books this piece does not paint Natives as victims, but as aggressors. This book is an easy read as chapters are given sub headings and the sections are short.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent, important book that details the effect the Indians--particularly their raiding and trading patterns-- had on the national policies and boundaries of the US and Mexico. The author backs this up with so much historical data from so many different sources that he convinced me, hands down. It is only shocking that no one really looked at US/Mex history from this angle before! I gave it 4 stars because there was a point about 1/2 way through the book where it dragged me down a bit and felt a bit redundant--SO many raids, SO many pleas for help from the farmers and ranchers to the Mexican gov't, SO much devastation--but once it got into the war between the 2 countries it had all my attention again and was just fascinating. I came away from it shocked, once again, by the way that cultures create vicious circles for themselves that they appear totally locked into. The Indians raid, often for revenge for some death that happened on a previous raid, knowing full well that the odds of more men being killed on this raid are high, and, of course, men do die, so yet another revenge raid follows. The federalists in Mexico don't want a strong central gov't, but then they need help from a strong nat'l military, so they plea for help, and it doesn't come because there is not the money for a strong nat'l military, but the federalists fight against the thought of a nat'l tax and a gov't that is strong enough to collect the tax. A very scary thing was to read about the way the US demeaned the Mexicans and their ability to protect themselves from the Indians, blaming it on cowardice, a lack of intelligence and education, and other awful things. Then they used that debased character that they had created to make the war against them seem like a righteous thing. Oh, how things repeat themselves. I couldn't help but wonder how much of the prejudice against Mexican now is a remnant of that carefully constructed view of them from the 1800's. This book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in either Indian history, the expansion of the US, or Mexican history!

[Harvey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very in depth study, heavy academic writing and research for the most part but I appreciate the figures he put together of figures for the war because the mexican archives are all disparate and very little sources exist for the countless campesinos in the North who suffered the brunt of the raiding. Covers both Mexican and American actions but also gives agency to non state actors and DeLays arguments is that Stateless tribes like the Comanches, Apache and Kiowa had a massive effect on state actors in the region, weakening Mexico before the American invasion, and is also crazy to think about how far into mexico some of these raids got to, like a thousand armed marauders running around nuevo Leon, if they decided to do the same to the US theyd be literally in Philadelphia and New York State. Also recommended to anyone interested in the background and era of Blood Meridian, doesn't really cover the Glanton gang but James Kirkers scalp hunting gang also inspired McCarthy if I remember right.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reconsiders the War between the United States and Mexico in the context of decades of conflict in the Norther Mexican states between Indains (mainly focusing on the Comanche) and Mexicans/ settlers. Mexico's state building project was stymied by an inability to compromise between the centralizing Oligarchs of Mexico City and the federalists of the peripheral states. Thus there was no mechanism in place to defend Mexico's borders, and states had little interest in rushing to one another's defense, 'Mexican' identity was far weaker than local/ village/ family/ other network identity. After years of Indian wars, much of the territory was de-populated and turned (or returned) to desert. The US taking Northern Mexico/ the Southwest is the coup-de-grace.

[Irene]

This book is actually more of a textbook-so it is slow reading but very interesting. The kind of book you might read a bit at a time...I have only read the first couple of chapters but it is very interesting. Most of the time it is easy for us to side with the Indians, but this book is an historical account on the Indian raids and how they affected the US-Mexican War; something I want to know more about. I love history.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly fantastic, thorough, and eye opening work of scholarship that really deserves 5 stars for its coverage of Comanche-Mexico wars and the role they played in greater north American geopolitics but gets docked a star for having the vast majority of the images on the electronic version redacted for kindle-which seems a bizarre publisher oversight.

[William Matthies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure the author intended it to be so but this book does a good job of providing a foundation necessary to understand how linked the fates of native Americans, white settlers and northern Mexicans were as far back as the US-Mexican war.

[Andrew Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

DeLay has written an excellent account of Native American history that pertains to the American as well as Mexican historical record. Why exactly did America win the Mexican American War? Southwestern Native Agency.

[Empanadani · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredibly interesting book that provides for me an alternative history of the US southwest including Texas. It also brings Comanches to the forefront of history and are portrayed as a genuine political force in the struggle for control over this region.

[Christopher Valin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent scholarly work about a little-known part of the U.S.-Mexico War. Highly recommended to anyone interested in this part of history.

[Roland · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scholarly book about a very narrow time in history, but... it is quite readable!