to protect settlers in new mexico, the spanish paid comanche and navajo allies to attack the

Raids and counter-raids claimed thousands of lives, ruined critical sectors of northern Mexico’s economy, stalled the north’s demographic growth, depopulated much of its vast countryside, and fueled divisive conflicts between Mexicans at nearly every level of political integration. In pursuing their own material, strategic, and cultural goals, indigenous polities in the Mexican north remade the ground upon which Mexico and the United States would compete in the mid-1840s. These events had powerful but virtually forgotten consequences for the course and outcome of the U.S.-Mexican War. Raids expanded, breeding reprisals and deepening enmities, until the searing violence touched all or parts of nine states. When able, Mexicans responded by attacking their enemies with comparable cruelty and avarice. Indian men raided Mexican ranches, haciendas, and towns, killing or capturing the people they found there, and stealing or destroying animals and other property. While contexts and motivations varied widely, most of the escalating violence reflected Mexico’s declining military and diplomatic capabilities, as well as burgeoning markets for stolen livestock and captives. In the early 1830s, following what for most had been nearly two generations of imperfect peace, Comanches, Kiowas, Navajos, and several different tribes of Apaches dramatically increased their attacks upon northern Mexican settlements. This cross-border conversation had a broad and tragic context. From Durango’s perspective, Americans were “impelling” and “inviting” Indians across the frontier, encouraging “the evils that always attend the depredations of the savage,” all with an eye to acquiring lands that excited the “insatiable greed” of the United States. The paper’s editors admitted that Comanches posed a tremendous threat, but blamed their “philanthropic” American neighbors for that. According to the editors, the whole of the Mexican north would soon be “engulfed in a terrible Indian war.” This fact would “powerfully influence political relations” and “would have to be considered as a new element in diplomatic calculations.” The translated article soon appeared in Mexican newspapers, including Durango’s Registro Oficial. In the summer of 1845, amid mounting concern that the United States and Mexico would go to war over Texas, the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin reported that a Comanche Indian force of “extraordinary magnitude” was preparing to descend upon the “weakened population” of northern Mexico.

To protect settlers in new mexico, the spanish paid comanche and navajo allies to attack the