A Bad Peace and a Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795–1799 by Mark Santiago (review)

As Mark Santiago notes in the introduction to his book, A Bad Peace and a Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795–1799, “the history of the northern frontier of New Spain between 1765 and 1821 is most particularly a military history” (6). Santiago demonstrates this by studying the “separate and discernable” war between the Mescalero Apache and the Spanish from 1795 to 1799 (5). (The book’s publisher disappointed him by using “uprising” in the subtitle—which is how the Spanish saw it—rather than “war”—which is how both sides experienced it.) He starts by questioning the aphorism attributed to Viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez that a “bad peace was better than a good war,” finding that, at least in this instance, it was not true: a “bad” peace turned in a “good” war, which resulted in peace.

The war began in 1795 when Mescaleros, for reasons uncertain, resumed large-scale raiding into New Spain following several years of peace. For the next four years, during the early spring and late fall, the Spanish responded with sophisticated, sustained, coordinated, multi-column campaigns into Mescalero lands, particularly the Quitman, Davis, Hueco, and Guadalupe Mountains of what is now the trans-Pecos region of Texas. These were timed to interdict the twice-annual Mescalero buffalo hunts on the Llano Estacado. Mescaleros, in response, broke into smaller family groups to avoid detection and, deprived of buffalo, increased their cattle raids. The Spanish, in turn, spread smaller detachments across the countryside positioned to pursue Indian raiders, encouraged Comanches and Lipan Apaches to attack the vulnerable Mescaleros, and deported any captured Apaches to central Mexico and beyond. Ultimately the Spanish lost nearly one hundred soldiers, mostly in two ambushes in 1795, while more than seven hundred Mescaleros were killed or deported, which was possibly one-fourth of the population. By 1799 some three hundred Apaches, unable to hunt buffalo or take cattle for provisions, agreed to settle once again in peace establishments, while the rest ceased their large raids across the Rio Grande.

Santiago narrates all this through an accounting of Spanish strategic and operational planning, including the tactical execution of each campaign. He attempts to provide the larger geopolitical context with diversions in his story to Europe or the Caribbean, but this technique at times seems distracting. The narrative cries out for at least one map, if not more, showing Spanish campaign routes and general targets of Mescalero raids, which would sharpen the reader’s comprehension. But still missing is any enduring understanding of the war from the Indian point of view. Santiago begins by noting that Mescalero “actions were formed out of the milieu of their own independent volition and societal beliefs” but does not follow through fully or consistently on that insight (9). While indigenous motivations are difficult to locate in the Spanish archives, as Santiago points out and I am well aware, it is still incumbent upon borderland scholars to include the Native view wherever it can be found, however tentative it may be. Otherwise, we risk having Natives disappear from their own histories. Bringing all sides together, albeit violently, is the greatest value of a borderlands, military, and war history. Overall, A Bad Peace and a Good War certainly is a valuable contribution, and Santiago has definitely returned military history to the borderlands.