Samuel Truett is Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Elliott Young is Associate Professor of History at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon; he is the author of Catarino Garza’s Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border, published by Duke University Press.

Continental Crossroads

Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2004 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-3353-1

Contents

Foreword DAVID J. WEBER…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..ixAcknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..xiiiMaking Transnational History: Nations, Regions, and Borderlands………………………………………………………………………..1RAL RAMOS Finding the Balance: Bxar in Mexican/Indian Relations……………………………………………………………………..35LOUISE PUBOLS Fathers of the Pueblo: Patriarchy and Power in Mexican California, 1800-1880……………………………………………….67BRBARA O. REYES Race, Agency, and Memory in a Baja California Mission…………………………………………………………………97ANDRS RESNDEZ An Expedition and Its Many Tales…………………………………………………………………………………….121ELLIOTT YOUNG Imagining Alternative Modernities: Ignacio Martnez’s Travel Narratives……………………………………………………151GRACE PEA DELGADO At Exclusion’s Southern Gate: Changing Categories of Race and Class among Chinese Fronterizos, 1882-1904………………….183KARL JACOBY Between North and South: The Alternative Borderlands of William H. Ellis and the African American Colony of 1895…………………209SAMUEL TRUETT Transnational Warrior: Emilio Kosterlitzky and the Transformation of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1873-1928……………………241BENJAMIN JOHNSON The Plan de San Diego Uprising and the Making of the Modern Texas-Mexican Borderlands…………………………………….273ALEXANDRA MINNA STERN Nationalism on the Line: Masculinity, Race, and the Creation of the U.S. Border Patrol, 1910-1940……………………..299Conclusion SAMUEL TRUETT AND ELLIOTT YOUNG Borderlands Unbound………………………………………………………………………..325Contributors……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..329Index……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………331

Chapter One

Frontier Legacies

RAL RAMOS

Finding the Balance: Bxar in Mexican/Indian Relations

We should all live with the peace and security like the beautifully feathered birds that fly through the air livening the fields, and we should destroy the thieving birds that stir up trouble.-CHEROKEE CAPTAIN GUONIQUE, translated by Francisco Ruiz, 10 January 1823.

In my opinion, the southern Lipans (Apache) are the most cruel of all the barbaric nations I know … I have been told by some of these Indians that they sometimes eat those they kill in war.-FRANCISCO RUIZ, Report of Observations and Additional Information about Indians living in the Department of Texas, 1828.

In these accounts in the epigraphs above, Francisco Ruiz, the Indian commissioner for the Mexican Department of Texas, presented two indigenous groups as almost polar extremes. Ruiz’s contact with a Cherokee leader emphasized peace and cooperation, while his notes on the Lipan Apache culture stressed war and barbarism. Depictions of indigenous people in narratives of the Spanish colonization of northern New Spain frequently raise these and other binomial opposites. In these stories, indigenous groups were either civilized or barbarous, made peace or war, hindered settlement or assimilated into missions. Indigenous people figured in with a larger set of obstacles to settlement on the frontier, including environment, geography, economic conditions, and the Spanish empire itself. Taking a closer look at the establishment of relations, both peaceful and bellicose, between a variety of indigenous groups and the citizens of a borderland settlement such as Bxar, Texas (present-day San Antonio) provides one way to move beyond binomial categories. Attention to indigenous relations at the local level helps us to understand these contacts as part of a more complex network of interests and identities. When seen in this light, relations with indigenous groups served not as a hindrance but a significant advantage in constructing Bexareo civil society and developing negotiating strategies with other actors, such as the Mexican state and Anglo-American immigrants.

For Bexareos, life on the frontier meant being aware of indigenous people on a daily basis. While this awareness occasionally took the form of direct contact through trade or violence, indigenous people mainly affected the lives of Tejanos by controlling large portions of Texas, thus limiting Spanish colonization and movement. The focal period of this study examines indigenous relations at a critical juncture as Spanish colonial power waned and American economic and demographic pressure loomed. As the Mexican independence movement grew in strength in the early nineteenth century, colonial power on the frontier declined, leaving Tejanos on their own to establish security with the diverse and expanding number of indigenous groups in Texas. More than just an “Indian fighter” culture, Tejanos also participated in an ongoing search for negotiated peace with the people of the region. The fierce and frequent violent interactions made a siege mentality among Bexareos and other Tejanos understandable and peace efforts more remarkable. The inhabitants of the border region craved stability and turned to town leaders to carry on the efforts started by the colonial government. In fact, the negotiations and treaties described in this essay point to a larger shift in the project of the region from colonization and settlement to state building.

Bxar’s location on the far reaches of the colonial frontier, its sizable population, and its regional economic importance put the town at the center of the effort to forge contact, if not coexistence, with the indigenous people of Texas. A wide range of interactions, from violent to commercial, emerged from a combination of the cultural and political differences among tribes. While this essay does not attempt to provide a comprehensive account of these relations, especially from the indigenous perspective, it provides a general overview of Tejano approaches to establishing some stable arrangement with the inhabitants of the region. Tejano policies toward Indians took into account both the history of previous policies and their own limited understanding of indigenous culture. Rather than reacting to violence or imposing their will on the indigenous groups, leaders in Bxar set up a complex system of treaties, gift giving, and trade along with military enforcement that shaped their community and political organization.

Paying close attention to the dynamics of relations with indigenous groups from only one town instead of the entire region or nation highlights the complexities and deep social impact of this element of border life. While regional approaches are important in developing a general sense of the indigenous contact of the times, they gloss over the way these relations fit into a wide variety of other social relationships internal and external to the locality. A focus on the local level reveals the importance of social hierarchies within the town as well as the other negotiations townspeople were simultaneously undertaking.

By making and maintaining peace and trading with indigenous people, local Bexareo leaders increased their social status within their community. Furthermore, the absence of Spanish authority bolstered their position, allowing them to negotiate directly between the Mexican state and Anglo-American immigrants. At the risk of understating the frequently violent nature of Mexican/Indian relations, an examination of peaceful negotiations and contacts provides insight into another set of considerations and issues facing inhabitants of the borderlands. In the process of surviving in the frontier, Bexareos lived on the balance between several extremes: between war and peace of encroaching nations, between force and treaty with indigenous people, and between trust and suspicion in international and local trade. But the outcomes of these negotiations were not wholly in their hands. Indigenous political and cultural systems defined the parameters of peace and undoubtedly affected Mexican society in Bxar.

* * *

Bexareo Francisco Ruiz’s activity among the indigenous groups of Texas illustrates the complexity of relations between Mexicans and Indians. After the royalist victory at the Battle of Medina in 1813 and the reestablishment of the Crown’s authority in Texas, many insurgent Tejanos fled northward out of Bxar. An active Mexican insurgent, Francisco Ruiz is thought to have lived with and among Comanche groups until Mexican Independence. Except for along the strips of highway to Nacogdoches and San Sab, indigenous people occupied most of the province of Texas to the north and west of Bxar. This land, sometimes called “Comanchera” by Mexicans after its most populous indigenous group, provided an anonymous and safe haven for rebels escaping the reach of the Spanish military.

Reports coming back to Spanish officials in Bxar and to Arredondo in Monterrey located Ruiz and other insurgents hiding out in the hinterlands around Nacogdoches in 1814. The Spanish government feared these insurgents would unite with other rebels living in the United States or with indigenous tribes to mount another attack on the capital of Texas. While the reports never identified a new movement, they mentioned the commerce and treaties established between the northern groups, such as the Comanche, and Ruiz and his fellow insurgents. Later descriptions of Comanche culture by Ruiz suggest his relationship with the Comanche extended beyond trading, perhaps to include living in the Comanche camp for a lengthy time. In return, Comanches provided every courtesy to Ruiz and helped him survive through rough times living on the frontier. Later, he used his connections to individuals and knowledge of Comanche culture to serve as the Indian Commissioner in Texas for the Mexican government. During the early years of the Republic, Commissioner Ruiz produced a detailed description of various indigenous groups living in Texas, with emphasis on Comanche culture, and crafted several peace treaties with many of these tribes.

Ruiz’s actions during this period take on added significance when we note his status as one of the only two Tejano signatories of the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. In other words, Francisco Ruiz often took a lead role in negotiating with other groups, whether indigenous or Anglo-American. Taking on such responsibility to broker relations often fell to notable families among the town elites. As one of the town elite, Ruiz maintained his social standing by staying instrumental in forging relations with outsiders such as Indians and Anglo-Americans. As Louise Pubols notes in her essay in this volume, political power in colonial and early national Mexico relied on patriarchal family social structures. Patriarchy and status in these communities transcended typical class identifiers such as wealth to include reliance on reciprocity and benevolence to maintain status. Francisco Ruiz, then, represents an element of the local Bxar elite who maneuvered among and negotiated between Mexicans, Indians, and Anglos in Texas.

Ruiz’s stay among Comanche groups contradicts general portrayals of Comanches as wild, violent savages, intent on killing or enslaving any non-Comanche person. The historical record thus suggests a much more complex picture. Ruiz’s friendship with Comanches came not as an anomaly but a result or by-product, of an Indian policy initiated by the Crown in the eighteenth century and continued by Bexareos. Initially, Catholic missions and military presidios formed the first line of contact with indigenous groups. By the mid-eighteenth century, conversion among the sedentary tribes and armed conflict with nomadic tribes reached the limit of their effectiveness. Some Spanish government officials also turned to gifts and treaties with northern tribes to negotiate peace between the many indigenous peoples on the frontier. By the end of the colonial period, the Mexican insurgency siphoned away funds for these gifts, along with other elements of the Spanish colonial frontier apparatus. By independence in 1821, the Catholic missions were secularized and the system of presidios left with skeleton crews. Tejanos reestablished the level of relations initiated by the Spanish government but tailored trade and treaties to suit their needs. Tejano arrangements differed from Spanish colonial policy by allowing indigenous groups greater amounts of trade and movement. At this point, Tejanos reduced their reliance on a central authority for their Indian policy, reflecting the federalist bent Mexican nationalism took in Texas.

Missions and Mestizaje

An examination of Mexican relations with indigenous groups in Texas during the late colonial and early national period reveals many of the cultural and ideological roots of Tejano attitudes toward indigenous people. While the experiences of Francisco Ruiz with Comanches demonstrate close contact, most Tejanos avoided or feared Indians. Fear and conflict created a siege mentality in frontier towns, leading to what has been called an “Indian fighter” ethos among Spanish colonists. Labeling Tejanos “Indian fighters,” though, detracts from the full extent of their relations with and attitude toward indigenous groups. While violence undoubtedly existed between Tejanos and indigenous groups, trading alliances and the security of diplomatic overtures led Tejanos to continue the policy of negotiation started by Spanish officials.

The end of the Spanish colonial government elevated the role of local Tejano elites in preserving peace and security in the region. Through this role, Tejanos began to develop two significant aspects of their political identity: autonomy from the central government authorities and the ability to negotiate across cultures. Early-nineteenth-century Indian policy figured prominently in aspects of Tejano ideology relative to the rise of the Mexican nation-state. Autonomy and cultural negotiation are recurrent themes in Bxar during this period, also seen through the dominance of federalist political ideology in Bxar or policies toward other immigrants, especially Anglo-Americans.

Tejano interest in forging a secure frontier arose from their desire to see their province prosper. At the turn of the nineteenth century, an official from Chihuahua emphatically noted, “Population is the central point where all plans must be rooted.” The plan outlined that increased numbers of citizens in the provinces would both spur commerce and industry and secure the territory from encroaching Anglo-American interests. But the largest impediment to reaching these goals was the difficulty in establishing a lasting and stable peace with the indigenous tribes of the land.

Any analysis of Spanish, and later Mexican, relations with the indigenous people of the region must also take into consideration the multitude of tribes and family groups of indigenous people encountered by the colonists coming north from Mexico. Broad generalizations about Mexican-Indian relations obscure the complexity of this interaction and the historical variations in contacts between different tribes. Edward Spicer notes, “Although direct resistance was a universal reaction to contact with the Whites, it did not always come first. There were many tribes whose first reaction was one of friendly curiosity and there were others who sought the advantage of alliance with the Spaniards, or later with Anglo-Americans, against Indian enemies.” Spicer’s suggestion that relations with each tribe should be seen as historically specific underscores the wide variety of experiences between Mexicans and Indians in nineteenth-century northeastern Mexico. The diversity of this task is made even more difficult by the numerous tribes present in that region. Cecilia Sheridan’s research into early colonial settlements among these groups found up to 822 distinct peoples.

Generations of historians have studied and characterized the Spanish conquest of the New World and the effect and impact it had on the indigenous people. The experience of conquest and colonization in Mesoamerica took a different form from that in the northern colonial settlements, principally as a result of the cultural differences between indigenous peoples as well as the region’s distinct environment. As historian Vito Alessio Robles noted of the peoples of the Mexican northeast, “These Indians were completely different than those that the Spanish encountered on the central plateau and on large parts of both coasts … but none of [these studies of the conquest] considers the special conditions encountered by Spaniards in the northeast of Mexico.” Instead of mestizaje and the encomienda, colonial officials developed a policy of Indian relations employing missions and the military. Sheridan characterizes Spanish colonization among indigenous peoples in the north as an incomplete or stunted version of the rapid version that took place in central Mexico.

Mexican colonists constructed their own categories to understand Indian cultures, distinguishing between tribes beyond the classic binary characterizations of indios brbaros (barbarous Indians) and indios civilizados (civilized Indians). Generally, civilizado implied conversion to Catholicism, along with acculturation to Spanish manners. Several Mexican observers of the time wrote lengthy descriptions of the Indians of the Northeast, and in most cases made specific distinctions between these groups. One of these commentators from Bxar, Juan Antonio Padilla, reported on the “customs, habits and modes of life” of the barbarous tribes of Texas in 1819. Within the category of barbarous, Padilla divides his report into two groups of tribes, friendly and hostile. He lists sixteen tribes under “friendly nations,” led primarily by the Caddo, and six under “hostile nations,” with the Comanche and Lipan Apache most prominent. Regarding the Caddo, Padilla writes, “Considering the fact that they are heathens, the moral customs of these natives are good, since they are not ambitious like the Comanches nor deceitful like the Lipanes.” Padilla’s distinction between barbarous tribes complicates simple classifications such as brbaro or civilizado to a gradation of social and cultural markers. Armed with a more detailed understanding of indigenous cultures, frontier Mexicans attempted to create peaceful coexistence in Texas. Forging treaties and restraining military force would test the limits of these definitions.

(Continues…)

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