Contested Spaces of Early America

Chapter 6. Blurred Borders: North America’s Forgotten Apache Reservations

PART III  Spaces and Resettlements This page intentionally left blank chapter 6  Blurred Borders: North America’s Forgotten Apache Reservations Matthew Babcock On October 29, 1790, Lieutenant Ventura Montes’s Spanish patrol escorted Chief Volante’s group of Mescaleros off their protected reservation at Presidio del Norte (modern Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Mexico, across the river from Presidio, Texas) and onto the open and exposed southern Plains to hunt buffalo. Volante knew this territory well because Mescaleros had once controlled it, and he hoped that Spanish troops might help them reclaim it from their Comanche archenemies. Upon making camp south of San Antonio along the Nueces River in late November, Volante and his people breathed a sigh of relief. Six Mescalero women, held captive in Coahuila and recently released by Commander-in-Chief of the Interior Provinces Jacobo Ugarte, had arrived to help prepare the hides and meat. But their reconciliation was short-lived. The women explained that ‘‘a party of Comanches ’’ had killed their escort, the interpreter Francisco Pérez, in a driving ‘‘snow and hail storm.’’ Incensed at this unprovoked violent act and unbeknownst to Lt. Montes and his troops, Volante and the Mescaleros ambushed a Comanche rancherı́a (camp) the following day, ‘‘which they attacked repeatedly, killing three and taking various captives of both sexes’’ before returning to their reservation.1 This chaotic series of events highlights the complicated nature of Indian relations on early North American frontiers, and reveals the blurred cultural and spatial borders between Apaches, Comanches, and Spaniards in the colonial Southwest. As the historian David J. Weber has argued, through the acquisition of new values, skills, sensibilities, and technologies, 164 Matthew Babcock enlightened Bourbon officials and powerful independent Indians were relating to each other in new ways across the frontiers of the Americas in the late eighteenth century.2 Yet what was transpiring between Spaniards, Apaches, and Comanches on the ground in the fall of 1790 was not what any of the parties, especially Bourbon policy makers, intended. Several key questions come to mind: Why were freedom-loving Mescalero Apaches, who had warred successfully with Spaniards for decades, residing on a Spanish-run reservation? Why were Spaniards, who had negotiated peace treaties with Comanches in Texas and New Mexico, escorting Mescaleros into the Comancherı́a (Comanche homeland) to hunt buffalo? And what efforts, if any, would these groups make to reconcile relations? Between 1786 and 1793 increased military pressure from Spaniards and Indian allies influenced thousands of Mescalero, Chiricahua, and Western Apaches to resettle in eight reservation-like establecimientos (establishments or settlements), which stretched from Presidio del Norte, in the east, to Tucson, in the west (see Figure 6.1). These so-called peaceful Apaches (Apaches de paz), who comprised more than 30 percent of all Mescaleros and Chiricahuas and less than 5 percent of all Western Apaches, shared similar reasons for choosing a more sedentary life under Spanish protection .3 By 1790, they had faced four straight years of sustained and coordinated military campaigns from Spaniards and their Comanche, Navajo, and Ópata Indian allies amid an extended drought.4 These offensives were the culmination of a prolonged war, which Apaches and Spaniards had been waging with varying levels of intensity since at least the 1660s.5 Apache families who settled in the establecimientos, then, sought protection from military attacks, especially for women and children. They also hoped to recover their captured kinsmen; to receive gifts, rations, and trading privileges ; to obtain information about Spanish troop movements; and to gain closer proximity to Spanish livestock for small-scale raids.6 Just as Apaches had their own reasons for making peace, Spanish officers had specific motives for offering it to them. Carrying out the enlightened Indian policies of Viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez and Commander-inChief Pedro de Nava, presidial commanders conducted a dual strategy of peace and war to pacify Apaches.7 On the one hand, they offered gifts, rations, protection, and plots of ‘‘fertile land’’ to those Apache bands who requested peace in the hope of curbing their livestock raids and turning them into productive sedentary farmers subject to the Crown authority. At the same time, however, Spanish troops and their Indian allies, including Figure 6.1. A map of the Spanish-Apache frontier, 1786–1793, originally drawn by Scott Cassingham, Foscue Map Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. [3.16.83.150] Project MUSE (2024-04...