Turning Adversity to Advantage by Minor Nancy McGown;

Author:Minor, Nancy McGown;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UPA
Published: 2009-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Juan de Ugalde’s War against the Apaches of Coahuila, 1779-1790

“Making war with perfidious treachery”1

After 1770, the Lipans in Texas and the Lipans in Coahuila faced two very different sets of problems. By 1780, the Texas Lipans were weakened by a half century of Comanche aggression, Spanish intrigue and sporadic attacks by other Texas tribes. Their main focus was the dismantling of the Spanish-Comanche alliance and the continuation of the horses-for-guns trade. The situation was very different in Coahuila. In Texas, the Lipans used political manipulation to break a Spanish alliance with the Comanches, but in Coahuila, the Lipans turned to warfare to preserve their alliance with the Mescaleros.

From the time of the Lipan entry in 1751, the poor settlers of Coahuila had not known more than three years of peace (1776-1779). With a total area half the size of Arizona and with a climate and terrain similar to west Texas, the Province contained only 5,043 non-Indian inhabitants in 1770, a population insufficient to defend Coahuila from incessant Lipan and Mescalero raids (Gerhard, 1920; 332). The constant menace of Apache attack had profound consequences. The arable farmland was never fully developed, settlements remained small and isolated, and the population remained sparse. The raw reality of life on the Apache frontier had become so terrifying after 1765 that many settlers in the Santa Rosa Valley attempted to flee to the neighboring Province of Nuevo Leon. The Coahuilan Governor ordered all settlers to forego the eating of meat because so many cattle, sheep and horses had been stolen (Cabello, 1784: 117-119). The cost of maintaining the presidios and soldiers necessary to protect the populace drained the Royal Treasury. While there was some mining and a number of large haciendas producing and marketing cattle and some food crops, the Province as a whole produced little wealth or resources capable of offsetting the large military investment. A contrasting situation existed in the neighboring Province of Nuevo Leon. There, large mining operations and rich farmlands produced great wealth, aided no doubt by the fact that the Province was spared wide-scale Apache depredations until after 1780, thus lessening the cost of military investment necessary to protect the populace. Neighboring provinces to the west, Nueva Vizcaya and Sonora, produced enough mineral wealth to offset the cost of Apache attacks. Only poor Coahuila, the playground of Lipan and Mescalero raiders, remained undeveloped and impoverished, its settlers and livestock killed or carried away every spring and summer as Apache raiders returned year after year for their annual “harvest.”

The Lipan and Mescalero raiders of Coahuila were generally unrestrained by fears of Comanche aggression into the interior of Coahuila. Comanche war parties only occasionally crossed the Rio Grande in hot pursuit of Lipans and when they did, the Spanish cavalry from the Rio Grande presidios was sufficient to chase the Comanches back across the river into Texas. Yet, the Lipans and Mescaleros had penetrated deep into Coahuila, almost as far as Saltillo, by 1782. This feat was not duplicated by the Comanches until 1840-1841 (Kavanagh, 1996: 208).

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