The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West by Megan Kate Nelson (review)

Megan Kate Nelson’s new book on the Civil War in the American Southwest is characterized by a page-turning narrative style. It is organized around nine people—Apache chief Mangas Coloradas, Navajo matron Juanita, Confederates John R. Baylor and Bill Davidson, and Unionists Louisa Canby, Alonzo Ickis, James Carleton, Kit Carson, and John Clark—whose stories are woven together to describe the region’s role in the national crisis of the 1860s. The author writes that the overlapping fortunes and misfortunes of these individuals show “the ways that New Mexico became a pivotal theatre of the Civil War, the center of a larger struggle for the future of the nation, of Native peoples, and of the West” (p. xx). Many historians have covered this topic and advanced similar arguments over the past two decades. What is intriguing about this work is not, therefore, its historiographical or analytical contributions to the fields of Civil War and southwestern history but rather its creative character-centered approach. In short, this is a narrative-driven book, not a thesis-driven one.

Based on research at archives in five states and Washington, D.C., Nelson’s book is organized into three parts, each with several short chapters revolving around one of the nine aforementioned protagonists. Part One explains each character’s place in New Mexico at the beginning of the Civil War: Baylor as a Rebel invader, Mangas Coloradas as the defender of Apache homelands, Carson as a veritable frontier celebrity, Canby as an army wife, Juanita as the fourth spouse of Navajo headman Manuelito, Davidson as a greycoat in the Sibley Brigade, Clark as surveyor general, Carleton as the California Column’s commander, and Ickis as a Colorado gold miner and eventual Union enlistee. Drawing on her prior work, the author emphasizes difficulties that the Texans endured during their march from San Antonio to the Mesilla Valley and closes the first section with a notably dramatic account of the Battle of Valverde in February 1862, told from both Union and Confederate perspectives.

Part Two opens with Baylor’s controversial effort to exterminate groups of Chiricahua Apaches, including his unsanctioned raid into Chihuahua and an infamous order to Captain Helm involving the treacherous enslavement and murder of Indians under flag of truce. Colonel James Reily’s diplomatic missions to northern Mexico are also covered in this section. A lengthy chapter on the Battle of Glorieta Pass examines the downfall of Confederate expansionism in the mountains east of Santa Fe with a spotlight on the roles of Ickis, Davidson, and Louisa Canby, who nursed wounded soldiers in the nearby territorial capital. The ensuing Rebel retreat down the Rio Grande and back into Texas leads into a discussion of Carleton’s eastward march from Los Angeles, during which his bluecoats skirmished with Sherod Hunter’s men at Picacho Peak before reclaiming Tucson and eventually all of southern New Mexico. Specific attention is given to violent interactions with Cochise and Mangas Coloradas at Apache Spring in the Chiricahua Mountains.

Part Three covers Carleton’s campaigns of total warfare against regional Indians, resulting in the murder of Mangas Coloradas at Fort McLane and the Navajo Long Walk to Bosque Redondo. With an emphasis on Juanita and Manuelito, the author describes the miseries of Navajo life at the wind-swept reservation along the Pecos River and the 1868 treaty that finally allowed the tribe’s return to Diné Bikéyah. A six-page epilogue briefly recounts what happened to each character after the Civil War.

Nelson’s brisk writing style and drama-filled narrative will appeal to many readers, especially those interested in good stories like James Carleton’s dubious application of the wartime Confiscation Act to justify the theft of a Tucson blacksmith’s enormous meteorite, or Kit Carson winning a bet...