Traders and Raiders: The Indigenous World of the Colorado Basin, 1540-1859

FOUR: The Expansion of Interregional Raiding

chapter 4 The Expansion of Interregional Raiding For many years previous to 1853, the county of Santa Barbara was depredated on by the Indians and immense numbers of horses were stolen, so much as materially to increase the heavy expense of raising cattle, so as seriously to interfere with its increase. —Pablo de la Guerra, 1857 Our journey through the interior world has focused on Indian power emanating in the waters of its geographic center, the Colorado River.1 In 1829, the establishment of the Old Spanish Trail shifted some of this weight away from its shores northward, deeper into the stark terrain where farreaching Indian roads funneled new sources of horses and captives from the Great Basin. The contours of the Old Spanish Trail rested on older Indian networks that connected the interior with the coast. Yet prior to 1829, the major arteries cutting through the interior world largely resided further south. The more extensive use of the Old Spanish Trail by EuroAmericans , then, also connected the trading and raiding networks of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts with other raiding economies further east, violently connecting the interior world with the rest of the Indian continent through livestock and captives. Thus during the Mexican period as Californios and Nuevo Mexicanos finally realized their dream to trade coastal mules, hides, and tallow with interior wool, Ute, Yokuts, Mojave, Cahuilla, and Kumeyaay raiders also began to shape these economies.2 As late as 1857, the Californio Pablo de la Guerra reminded California senator David Broderick just how recently interior raiding disrupted Mexican/Anglo California: “It was impossible to inhabit. . . . I have made these statements to you in order to explain the importance of the reservation at its present location. . . . I would urge you in all your propriety [to use] all your influence to secure the location of the reserve as it is as present active.”3 The U.S. Army established this reservation in 1853 alongside Fort Tejón, at the junction of the Mojave Desert, San [100] the expansion of interregional raiding Bernardino Mountains, and San Joaquin Valley northeast of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. The army used this outpost to thwart raiders entering and leaving the strategic point at what became known as Tejón Pass. Such military actions reflected the trepidation of recent Anglo-American arrivals , while the sentiments of de la Guerra echoed those shared by ranchers, farmers, and merchants across the northern edge of Mexico in a region where state authority had always been weak.4 In the period after Mexican independence, Indigenous raiders systematically swept across every farm and rancho where horses and cattle grazed from Santa Fe to Los Angeles to Santa Barbara to San Antonio, shaping emerging state and national economies, including those of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Chihuahua, Sonora, and the Californias. In between small Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American settlements, powerful Indigenous equestrian societies such as the Apaches, Utes, Navajos, Comanches, Kiowas , Mojaves, and Yokuts seized mules, sheep, cattle, horses, and people from their more sedentary neighbors. As we have explored already, raiding emerged as early as the seventeenth century. But as livestock became a central source of food, manufactured products (including hides, tallow, wool, leather), and transportation for both Euro-Americans and Natives in the nineteenth century, so too did livestock raiding become the raison figure 13. The interior world, ca. 1829–59. the expansion of interregional raiding [101] d’être for the expansion of Indian borders and political-economic power. The ability to move in and out of territory and steal property with relative ease mutually threatened Indigenous neighbors and Euro-Americans, further complicating the boundaries within and between borderlands across the continent. In this way, the interior world experienced an influx of raiders who entered from other Indigenous regions and borderlands (Ute territory and the Southwest borderlands, for instance). Simultaneously , these new groups also reshaped the interior world beyond its eighteenth -century boundaries. Pinpointing the effects of raiding across this vast territory is filled with challenges and inconsistencies. However, by more closely analyzing the quantitative and qualitative impacts of interregional horse raiding during the period between Mexican consolidation and American expansion, the parallels between expanding Euro-American and Native economies come into clearer focus. as a focal point of exchange during this period, the Old Spanish Trail sheds light on the many ways that the interior world affected regional economies.5 By 1829, the Old Spanish Trail...