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chapter two AGENT OF EMPIRE The U.S. Army Having determined that a garrison in the Trans-Pecos was necessary for frontier defense, Bvt. Maj. Gen. Persifor F. Smith and his escort reached Painted Comanche Camp in early October 1854. He was impressed by the site’s strategic locale, about 475 miles west of San Antonio and near trails to Presidio del Norte and El Paso. Grazing, water, fuel, and building materials could be found nearby, and Indian attacks were frequent , a mailbag carrying several of Smith’s communications having been lost in one such incident. Smith named the new position Fort Davis, in honor of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. Hoping to protect his regulars from cold winter northers, Smith tucked the fort into a canyon flanked on two sides by steep rock walls. The initial garrison comprised six companies and the headquarters, staff, and band of the Eighth Infantry Regiment. But only twelve of the twenty-three commissioned personnel assigned to the units stationed there were actually present, the others being away on courtsmartial , recruiting details, and temporary staff detachments. Two hundred twenty enlisted men rounded out the garrison.1 Like a hundred other western posts, Fort Davis was part of a process of conquest in which American soldiers and settlers pushed inexorably forward, linking the Pacific Ocean with the east. Most of these men and women were certain that a Christian God supported their quest to civilize the barren lands. “We are the most favored people on the face of the earth,” Pres. James K. Polk had proclaimed in his 1848 annual message. Settling this wilderness, they must brush aside what they perceived to be the uncivilized occupants of times past. But in reality they were not occupying an empty landscape. Indians, conquistadores, missionaries, rogues, and settlers—all had passed through the vicinity of what Americans once referred to as Painted Comanche Camp.2 By annexing Texas, resolving the Oregon dispute, and seizing the Southwest , the United States had staked its claim as a continental power. Completed with dramatic suddenness, the new acquisitions also changed the relationship between the federal government and western Indians. Traditionally , U.S. policy had been predicated on the assumption that a permanent frontier had been reached. Indians were removed to areas west of this imaginary line; military forts, constructed ahead of white settlement, theoretically preserved the peace. Yet reality was far different. The “permanent” line was always shifting west, invariably into lands Indians had once been presumed to occupy “in perpetuity.” By shattering the myth of a permanent Indian frontier, the most recent expansion had rendered an unrealistic and ineffectual policy obsolete. Furthermore, a diverse array of cultures and peoples lived in the lands now claimed by the United States. Many of these occupants, including Apaches and Comanches, posed a significant military threat to east-west communication routes.3 In 1849, Congress made a somewhat halfhearted effort to address these problems by creating the Department of the Interior. Along with pensions and the federal domain, the new department’s responsibilities included Indian affairs, formerly housed in the War Department. Few government officials explicitly advocated the extermination of American Indians; at the opposite extreme, few saw much value in tribal cultures or lifestyles. The consensus instead held that Indians should adopt the ways of Western civilization . With missionaries and teachers in their midst, they would give up their outmoded ways and become respectable Christian farmers. Accordingly , Indians must be separated from the evil influences of the very culture they were supposed to accept—alcohol, disease, and greed. Although rarely acknowledging this essential paradox, policymakers hoped that reservations might at least allay the problem, for a final military solution was neither desirable nor practical. As Secretary of War Charles Conrad (1850–53) reasoned , “It would be far less expensive to feed than to fight them.” Arguing that contact between Indians and the general public inevitably led to trouble, Conrad advocated a “rigid adherence to the policy . . . of setting apart a portion of territory for the exclusive occupancy of the Indians.”4 Texas posed special challenges to the reservation scheme, for unlike other states and territories, it retained ownership of its public lands. In order to establish reservations for the thirty thousand Indians of the Lone Star State, the United States would have to convince Texans to cooperate. In 1854, a reluctant Texas legislature did just that, granting jurisdiction to the United States to establish two reservations (known as the Brazos...

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