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▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ chapter 1 desert empire Shortly after the Mesilla Treaty (also called the Gadsden Purchase) transferred what would become southern Arizona from Mexico to the United States in the mid-1850s, hundreds of Americans moved into the territory to improve their fortunes.1 Among them was Sylvester Mowry, a lieutenant in the army. Mowry was stationed at Fort Yuma when he began to dream about the potential that the new territory held for would-be entrepreneurs like himself. After resigning his commission in 1858, he began to prospect for gold and silver. He also served as a special commissioner in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA),2 with instructions to report on the region’s indigenous peoples. In this capacity, he began to map and classify material resources and human inhabitants according to their value to U.S. interests and their potential for citizenship.3 As Benedict Anderson has argued, colonial states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries imposed their rule in part by such mapping and classifying practices. They did so in an attempt to comprehend “the nature of the human beings [they] ruled, the geography of [their] domain, and the legitimacy of [their] ancestry.” Census takers held onto the “fiction” that “everyone has one—and only one—extremely clear place,” and therefore that people could not tolerate “multiple, politically ‘transvestite,’ blurred, or changing identifications.”4 James Scott has expanded on Anderson’s argument , demonstrating that states in the twentieth century also attempted to create a “standard grid” to “monitor” populations and resources within their own borders. In the process, they often developed oppressive policies to regulate and transform indigenous social relationships and clarify the relationship of various groups to the state.5 Mowry’s effort to map Arizona’s geography and population exemplifies 16 border citizens this process. As he surveyed the region, the peoples who seemed most similar to his own won highest honors. He described the Pimas (the Akimel O’odham, or “river people”) along the Gila River as “a brave and hospitable race—they live in villages and cultivate the arts of peace. Their regular fields, well-made irrigating ditches, and beautiful crops of cotton, wheat, corn, pumpkins, melons, and beans have not only gladdened the eye, but also given the timely assistance to the thousands of emigrants who have traversed Arizona on their way to the Pacific.” He had similar praises for the Maricopas, a smaller group who had moved from the Colorado River centuries earlier and had settled near the Pimas, adopting many of their economic and cultural practices.6 He judged the Papagos (today they prefer to be called the Tohono O’odham, or “desert people”) who were closely related to the Pimas, to be “inferior to the Pimos [sic]” because they “do not cultivate so much, and live in scattered villages in the Central and Western parts of the Territory.” For the nomadic Apaches he expressed only opprobrium: “They are best compared to the prairie wolf, sneaking, cowardly, revengeful, quick to assassinate the weak, and to fly from or yield to the strong.” It seemed impossible that Apaches would ever become independent farmers or workers, and he saw only two options for them: “They must be fed by the Government, or exterminated.”7 Mowry also suggested that certain groups—such as the Yaquis and Opatas in Sonora—were more naturally suited for manual labor than others . Mowry purchased a mine in the Patagonia Mountains, just north of the new international border, which supported four hundred workers by 1862.8 He wrote that the full potential of Arizona and Sonora had yet to be tapped, from the Salt River valley in central Arizona to the Yaqui River delta in southwestern Sonora, where indigenous and mestizo farmers grew wheat, maize, beans, squash, peas, and cane. To exploit these resources, labor would be provided by those peoples who had proven themselves, in Mowry’s eyes, to be “cheap, and under proper management, efficient and permanent” workers: “My own experience has taught me that the lower class of Mexicans, with the Opata and Yaqui Indians, are docile, faithful , good servants, capable of strong attachments when firmly and kindly treated. They have been ‘peons’ for generations. They will always remain so, as it is their natural condition.”9 At least two other scholars have quoted Mowry to argue that by the 1860s Anglos in Arizona already viewed Mexicans and Indians in strict racial terms that justified their subordination.10 Indeed, Euro-Americans moving into the territory already...

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