Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860 by Anne F. Hyde

Author:Anne F. Hyde [Hyde, Anne F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS036010
ISBN: 9780803245839
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 2012-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

Retrenchment and Resistance

Few tribes had as much success as the Comanches in protecting their interests and their land. For most Native nations, the presence of new peoples changed the way they lived, forcing them to retrench and remake their worlds. But their homes remained Indian Country, and Euro-Americans who ventured there still had to accommodate to Native ways. In California the end of Spanish rule and a new Mexican government and economy changed the lives of many Native people there. The huge expansion of the hide and tallow industry, and the horse and mule trade that accompanied it, came along with the end of the missions along the coastal strip and made a great difference in the lives of Indians. Europeans and Californios now needed their skills and labor more than they needed their souls, but Native people were often not willing to participate on European terms. Californians of all races and classes had to figure out new ways of living together. Along the Arkansas River, in what would become Indian Territory, new groupings of Native people had to figure out how to live together. We’ll focus there primarily on the experience of the Osages. In both places Native people faced bad choices imposed on them by a new political economy and, ironically, by new and enthusiastic liberal republics.

In the 1820s and 1830s both Mexico and the United States experienced a wave of republican and liberal feeling. The Mexican Revolution and the Jacksonian political persuasion created an appetite for extending democracy and building a more inclusive polity. In both Mexico and the United States politicians, policymakers, and citizens supported this political stance with programs to give vast numbers of new citizens access to the blessings of land ownership. Such ideologies and policies had significant impact on Native nations living in regions claimed by Mexico and the United States. Though it is very difficult for us not to be cynical about this ambition now and to focus on the racist limitations of such visions, Anglo-Americans and Mexicans recognized the problem and tried to come up with policies that served the national agenda and protected Native people. The national agenda, of course, came first, but the effort to make sensible and liberal policies was real. The effort, the Native response to it, and its serious failures evolved in surprisingly similar ways in the two nations.

In Mexico, leaders saw the political and cultural challenge of building a nation that included indigenous people. They abolished racial distinctions and granted Indian men full citizenship in their first revolutionary acts. Mexican political leaders saw this as a generous act that would free Native people from oppressive Spanish rule and allow them to abandon their backward and unenlightened ways. Native people, on the other hand, often saw the citizenship and land policies as more oppression and a threat to their lives and land. They resisted these changes by fleeing, by refusing to participate, and with armed revolt. Many Mexican officials saw this response as proof of the barbarity of Indians, which made their use of force legitimate.

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