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1 The Indian Wars of Texas A LIPAN APACHE PERSPECTIVE Thomas A. Britten The AMeRICAN INdIAN wars of Texas began centuries before Francisco Coronado led his expedition of Spanish explorers, treasure seekers, and missionaries across the Texas Panhandle en route to Quivera. The archeological record suggests that Indian violence was common in the Southwest and Great Plains, and archeologists have recognized its occurrence in human skeletal remains dating back to A.D. 400. Anthropologist Clayton A. Robarchek writes that precontact warfare was a “regional cultural institution, a complex of values, ideas, and behaviors that persisted for at least two thousand years.”1 Scholars examining skeletal remains unearthed on the southern plains, and in the Texas Panhandle in particular , have determined that violence in the area was frequent during much of the fifteenth century. Disarticulated remains indicate that fifteenth-century combatants took trophy skulls, dismembered bodies, and burned the dwellings of their enemies. Although the specific causes of warfare remain unclear, scholars speculate that competition over valuable commodities such as bison hides and meat or over the use of the Alibates flint quarries (north of Amarillo) may have been precipitating factors.2 Following European contact and the subsequent introduction of guns, horses, and manufactured goods, Indian warfare in Texas intensified as native peoples jockeyed for advantage in the ever-changing political landscape. Some tribes sought new commercial opportunities and to gain access to high-status trade items like horses and firearms, while others desired to make alliances with the Europeans as a means of subduing (or gaining protection from) their traditional enemies. As time passed and the new imperial powers shifted their attention to and from Texas, some Indian peoples seized upon changing circumstances to bolster their pursuit of selfsufficiency , independence, and the expansion of their tribal domains. Others 18 Thomas A. Britten watched helplessly as their traditional economies, cultures, and homelands evaporated in the face of intense competition by powers both larger and stronger than they had ever encountered. That being the case, there was no monolithic “Indian perspective” on the various conflicts that raged across the region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but a collage of conflicting attitudes and interests . The experiences of the Lipan Apaches provide a useful window for viewing the Indian wars of Texas since they faced off against practically every Indian and non-Indian group that crossed their path. A fiercely independent and remarkably adaptable people, the Lipans were the dominant tribe in Texas during the seventeenth century. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the consequences of frequent warfare, epidemic disease, and near-constant displacement led to demographic collapse. And when the Indian wars of Texas finally ended in the 1880s, the Lipans wavered on the brink of extinction. The factors that compelled the Lipan Apaches to engage in warfare were typical of most other Indian peoples inhabiting Texas in the three centuries following European contact. The Lipans, for example, possessed a rich oral tradition that featured cultural hero Killer-of-Enemies (or Enemy Slayer). They looked to Killer-ofEnemies as the originator of raiding for horses, making weapons, scalping, and of warfare itself. To follow his example was a lifelong goal of all Lipan men.3 A host of more-mundane causes and motivations also led Texas Indians to make war. In general , these fall into two broad categories: Those attributed to various material and socio-cultural concerns—the de facto causes of war, and those credited to the various psychological needs or motivations of individual warriors. The former group included competition over critical resources (bison herds, fertile soils, water, wood, pasturage , and holy places), defense of homeland or territory, and a variety of economic issues such as gaining access to or control over commerce, high-status trade items (European weaponry and manufactured goods), and other valuable commodities such as horses and enemy captives. The psychological motivations that help explain why individuals were willing to engage in warfare include their desire for status, prestige, respect, and social mobility. Warfare also provided opportunities for men to fulfill familial obligations to exact revenge on enemies who had killed or captured relatives.4 During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, control over the bison lands of northern and central Texas provided the crucial impetus for a ferocious war that pitted the Comanches and various Wichita tribes (whom the Spaniards called Norteños, or Nations of the North) against the Lipan Apaches. The Comanches, who entered Texas in the early 1700s, soon carved out an...

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