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Reviewed by:
  • Dominance to Disappearance: The Indians of Texas and the Near Southwest, 1786–1859
  • Charles A. Flowerday
F. Todd Smith, Dominance to Disappearance: The Indians of Texas and the Near Southwest, 1786–1859. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Pp. 320, cloth. $59.95 US.

In Dominance to Disappearance: The Indians of Texas and the Near Southwest, 1786–1859, F. Todd Smith does an exemplary job of documenting the origins, migrations, and deprivations—as well as the depredations—of the Indians of Texas and western Louisiana. In doing so, he does a thorough and outstanding job of meticulously amassing and narrating his voluminous compilation of detail. Smith, an associate professor of history at the University of North Texas, has written extensively on Texas Indians.1

Dominance to Disappearance provides the first detailed history of all Texas Indians, their tribal neighbors, and the eventual (Indian) immigrants from western Louisiana, ranging from the late eighteenth century (the end of the colonial period) to the mid-nineteenth century (the run-up to the Civil War). As the title suggests, Native Americans dominated the region, holding numerical superiority, a factor that Smith says constituted a social and economic fulcrum, until halfway through the period explored. By the end of that period, they were gone. Essentially, this is the story of three-quarters of a century of refugees in time-lapse migration.

Smith divides his book into the following periods: “Dominance: The Indians of Texas and the Near Southwest to 1786”; “Tenuous Coexistence: The Indians and Spain, 1786 to 1803”; “Contested Boundaries: The Indians, Spain and the United States, 1804–1810”; “The Indians and the Breakdown of Spanish Texas, 1811 to 1822”; “Destruction: The Indians, Mexican Texas, and the American Intrusion, 1823 to 1835”; “Defeat: The Indians and the Republic of Texas, 1838 to 1845”; “Desperation: The Indians and the United States, 1846 to 1853”; and “Disappearance: The Indians and the Texas Reserves, 1854–1859.”

The volume’s epilogue begins following the tense and genocide-like pressure applied by ethnocentric Texans, which forced the withdrawal of virtually all Texas Indians to reservations in Indian Country (present-day Oklahoma). Particularly for the formerly agricultural tribes, but also for some of the former nomads, this removal marked the beginning of a fairly successful adaptation to farming and ranching livelihoods. It also marked the beginning of the adaptation that has characterized many of the tribes since: a viable cultural mix that preserves much traditional culture, and reclaims some of the rest, while adopting many aspects of Euro-American schooling and commerce. The relative resilience of most of these tribes is remarkable; and, even if most of the legacy constituted loss, there was muted good news at the end.

With the Spanish return to the area during the first part of the eighteenth century (after Southwest Indians had acquired horses), we are introduced to a period during which emigrant tribes entered the region from parts east, having been pushed aside by [End Page 127] Euro-American settlers, particularly after the Seven Years’ (French and Indian) War, when the area to the east passed from French to English hands. During this period, the region’s Indians, more settled in the east and more nomadic in the west, dominated the region and fended off most Spanish territorial (and military) aggression, as well as the many attempts at Christianization.

Spain saw that most of the province’s Indians had not responded to attempts at conversion and sedentary living; so, in 1772, having won the region from the French, it instituted a new system that mirrored that used in Louisiana, dealing with the Indians solely via trade and gifts. This change offered the region’s indigenous groups a respite from cultural, political, and military harassment and eventual domination by Euro-Americans—a brief interlude during which the Spanish to the west, the Americans to the east (following the Louisiana Purchase), and illegal French traders in the middle vied for their trade and friendship.

But by the 1820s, especially after Mexican independence in 1823, their fortunes were eclipsed by land-hungry Euro-Americans pressuring them on all sides. This period was characterized by a shift from Spanish to American intermediaries and eventual opposition...

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