Comparative Multiethnic Predation in Borderland Context

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Beyond “Barbarians”: Dimensions of Military Organization at the Bleeding Edge of the Premodern State" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The 1847–1848 US annexation of northern Mexico is often referred to as a “bloodless conquest,” in that there was no organized military defense. Yet we see dozens of small-scale guerilla actions by units of mixed-ethnic attribution against Americans. Observers noted that their “Mexican” opponents included Pueblo, Ute, and Apache Indians, as well as “half-breeds” known locally as genízaros. Prominent among the latter reference was a mysterious fighter Manuel Cortés, who led “two or three hundred Mexicans, and a large party of Indians” in lightning raids. As raiders like Cortés waged hit-and-run wars against the intruding Americans, the Comanche engaged in similar raiding. Attacking pueblos, the Apache, and settlers in northern Mexico, they gathered multitudes of horses and captives. Yet their ethnic composition resembled that of Cortés, in that as much as one-third of the Comanches were Mexicans captured in childhood. Comanches developed a complex relationship with the Northern Frontier of Mexico, raiding at times but also attending trade fairs in Taos and Pecos. This paper explores the phenomena of Cortes’s and similar units as militarized social groups that dwelt and prospered midway between the Indigenous and the colonial, and midway between stateless landscapes and formal nation states.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Beyond “Barbarians”: Dimensions of Military Organization at the Bleeding Edge of the Premodern State   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35625.0