OUTLINE
I. Background of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
II. Link to United States Expansionist Policy
II. Treaty Impact On Comanche Nation
III. Treaty Impact On The Apache Nation
IV. Comparison Between Comanche And Apache Experiences
V. Conclusion
INTRODUCTION:
The United States of America (USA) annexed Texas in 1845. In
that same year, the USA was quickly expanding its territorial
boundaries through lands illegally appropriated from Native American
nations in the Pacific Northwest. American ‘civilization’ embodied
the concepts of conquest and territorial expansion. These two major
ideologies began to merge in the nineteenth century as cultural
superiority and scientific biological racism, which justified
American goals of continental expansion.(1)
During the Spanish colonial era, from the sixteenth to the
eighteenth centuries, ‘Pueblo’ populations in the American Southwest
remained predominanty Indian and Mestizo. As more of these small
agricultural pueblos started to serve growing urban centers, the
American war with Mexico began. Interestingly enough, the war did
not immediately disrupt these growing towns. But during the post
war era the southwest and its indigenous population suffered
politically and economically. Three major factors are associated
with these problems: first, the presence of military forces in the
southwest during the 1846-1850′s; second, the exodus of labor to
northern California gold mines; and third, an introduction by
American settlers to a new system of arranged or contractual labor.(9)
Another contributing factor was that during the period of the war,
Mexican pueblos were occupied by American military personnel and
newly arriving white settlers which decided pueblo leadership.
Military servicemen after the war with Mexico were paid with prime
pieces of land in the area they were assigned to.(11)
It was the acquisition of the Oregon territory, together with
the Californian ‘gold rush,’ and other strikes that further pushed
white colonists ever westwards,(9) but, it was the wars with the
various Indian nations of the southern plains, the southwest and
Mexico, that set the stage for Indian-white relations in the U.S.,
during the nineteenth century.
The Jackson Administration made this plain on January, 1836,
when Texas, which was still a Mexican province, was invaded by the
United States Cavalry under the direction of General Edmund Gaines.
This was territory clearly defined as Mexico’s through treaty. The
Administration’s reply was that the main objective was to protect the
border against "Indians and Mexicans." This access gave the U.S. the
thrust it needed into the Texas frontier. It encouraged white
settlement into the far Southwest region, a region vital to the link
that existed between the military and legal right to control, over
yet another very important oceanic port-of-entry, the Pacific
Coastline. 
This was a process that was to spread white settlement
throughout the northern and western regions west of the Mississippi
River well into the 20th century.
In the same year as war broke out between America and Mexico in
1846, General Stephen Watts Kearny’s Army of the West marched along
the Santa Fe Trail. The campaign was an attempt to win dominance,
through a show of force, over powerful indigenous nations, such as
Cheyennes, Comanches, Apache. Two years later, the American war with
Mexico ended with the signing of the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty. With
this treaty came the seizure of Mexico’s former Northwest territories
(including California), a major loss for Mexico, and the beginning of
significant changes in the history of Indian-white relations in the
Greater Southwest. .
When the USA defeated Mexico in 1848, Congress debated annexing
all of Mexico, only to reject this idea, however, when some leaders
expressed the "danger" posed racially to white America by
miscegenation with Mexican Native Americans.(2) Furthermore, a group
of Whigs argued that "the acquisitiion of 150,000 hostile people,
unwilling to be united to us and unfit to be trusted with a
participation in our free forms of government" would pose an
additional threat to the nation. Thus was their reasoning in not
initially accepting the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at this time.
This treaty was signed in 1848.(3)
By the mid-nineteenth century, Native Americans as a whole were
perceived as a savage people, to be "civilized" and "Christianized"
by superior Americans. As Robert F. Berkhofer argues in the White
Man’s Indian, Americans would not defend the belief that Native
American people were driven to war in order to defend their lands
from the threatening invaders. Native American were then cast as a
"victorious, haughty and insidious enemy driven to war, whose terms fo
r peace were disgraceful to the American character."(5)
By casting Indian people during war time as savages impeding
the progress of white America, intellectuals presented Native
Americans as the ultimate "danger." But when making peace, Americans
believed that Indian people were "more the misrepresentation of bad
people, than any hardened malignity of the human heart" or
"blood-thirsty savages."6) Still, images such as these served well
those Americans who advocated the genocide, either literally or
culturally, of Indian people.
The objective was to gain access to Native American lands as
quickly as possible, and with the victorious outcome of wars such as
those between the U.S. and Mexico, to gain continental status.
Treaties or agreements were used as vehicles towards this end, a
diplomatic strategy practiced since the arrival of the Spanish, and
later the French and English. Treaties represented a method of
getting "voluntary consent" or "rights of occupancy" to aboriginal
lands, and over time functioned as the main precursor, especially
through the American judicial system, in the usurpation of this
territory.(7)
After 1848, the Rio Grande River, or as it is called in
Mexico, the Rio Bravo, was used as a natural geographical separator
of territorial gains and losses for the USA and Mexico,
respectively. As a result, indigenous nations’ territories were divid
ed along the Rio Grande in a manner that had never separated Native
American people before.
The cultural and political effect the signing of the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo, and similarly other treaties, had on Southwest
United States Native American Indian groups, especially as it relates
to the systematic decimation of the Comanche and Apache nations is
emormous.
GEOGRAPHY:
The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded to the United States
territories extending from the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains to
the shores of the Pacific, containing an area of well over one
million square acres. This vast region, exceedingly diversified in
topographical features, climate, and soil, was vaquely named Upper
California and New Mexico.
The Upper Rio Grande is an extensive district, hemmed in and
surrounded in all directions by barren mountains, whose summits
average ten to thirteen thousand feet above sea level. The
table-lands, forming the great Mexican plateau, are filled with a
ngular fragments of basalt, trap, and amygdaloid. The valleys are
rich in top soil, and many run in different angles into the Rio
Grande.
New Mexico is geographically divided into three areas; the
Northern, the Middle, and the South-eastern. In 1848 the richest
area was the valley Del Norte, composed of rich agricultural growth
environments, containing at that time a population of fift
y-thousand. The population of the whole state after the
American-Mexican War was estimated at one hundred thousand (The
Pueblo Indian could have increased this population to 160,000).
The territory was known to be rich in gold, silver, lead, and
copper, with plentiful deposits of coal, brimstone, gypsum and salt.
The agricultural valleys produced grain, pulse, pepper, onion, and
most important of all, grapes. Cattle, horses, and mules were
plentiful, and the introduction of sheep looked promising to the
area. New Mexico was thus a welcomed addition for American
enterprises and manufacturing.
From a commercial and political point of view, the southwest
culture region was an important and even necessary possession for the
USA. But first, the Native American Indian nations who rightfully
held title to it, had to be effectively suppressed. It is important
to note that during the negotiation of the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, Native American nations from the region were not brought in
into the process of signing away their territories from Mexican to
American control.(12)
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: Art. XI And Indian Policy Of 1840.
The Mexican War did not greatly affect the Apaches nor the
Comanches, but the treaty which closed the war would have profound
consequences for both Indian Nations. Article XI of the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo states that the territory was occupied by Native
American people, but, through this treaty the area would be within
the future jurisdiction of the United States. Furthermore, the
document states that the territory was occupied by ‘savage’ tribes
who would now be under the control of the government of the United
States, and whose incursions within the territory of Mexico would be
prejudicial in the extreme. The USA and Mexico agreed that all such
incursions by Native Americans would be forcibly restrained by the
government of the United States, whenever it was necessary; and that
when Indians cannot be prevented, they would be punished by
government as if the same incursions "…were committed within its
own territory, against its own citizens." It was unlawful for
Indians to take captives or to acquire stolen horses, mules, cattle,
or property of any kind, stolen from within Mexican territories: nor
to provide Native Americans with fire-arms or ammunition, by sale or
otherwise.
And in the event of any person or persons from the USA being
capatured by Native Americans it would be the responsibility of the
Mexican government, if these captives were taken into the newly
divided Mexican territory, to rescue them and return them to the
USA. It was also the Mexican authorities responsibily to the
government of the United States to give notice of such captures,
giving American agents the right to pay for the expenses incurred in
the maintenance and transmission of the rescued captives. But if the
government of the United States, before receiving such notice from
Mexico, should obtain intelligence, through any channel, of the
existence of Mexican captives within its territory, it would proceed
to effect their release and delivery to the Mexican agent.
This treaty gave the government of the United States carte
blanche to vigilantly enforce such laws as the subject of this treaty
may require. The treaty finally stated that the "sacredness" of this
obligation shall never be lost sight of by both governments when
providing for the removal of Indians from any portion of the
territory, or for it being settled by the citizens of the United
States; but, on the contrary, special care would be taken to place
its Indian occupants under the necessity of seeking new homes, by
committing those invasions which the United States have solemnly
obliged themselves to restrain. (13)
The true intent in American policy towards Native Americans can
be examined through the writings of the the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs, T. Hartly Crawford, on November 25, 1839. Crawford argued
for manual labor schools, allotment of ‘Indian’ lands to individual
Native Americans, and the consolidation of Native Americans in the
West. At one point in his argument he states, " To teach a savage
man to read, while he continues a savage in all else, is to throw
seed on a rock…if you would win an Indian from the waywardness and
idleness and vice of his life, you must improve his morals, as well
as his mind, and not merely by precept, but by teaching him how to
farm, how to work in the mechanic arts, and how to labor profitably;
so that by enabling him to find his comfort in changed pursuits, he
will fall into those habits which are in keeping with the useful
application of such educations as may be given him." (14) In
essence, this called for the creation of a new value system to be
instilled on Native American people.
On November 30, 1848, (same year as treaty) Indian Commissioner
William Medill submitted his report on the structuring of ‘Indian’
colonies. The plan called for consolidating Native Americans. This
was an early and forceful message to concentrate Native Americans on
two colonies "one north, on the head waters of the Mississippi, and
the other south, on the western borders of Missouri and Arkansas, the
southern limit of which is the Red River." The policy was to
colonize indigenous Indian tribes beyond the reach of white
migration, thus confining each tribe within a small district of
country, so that as the game decreased and became scarce, the adults
would gradually be compelled to resort to agriculture and other kinds
of labor as a form of subsistence. Aid would be afforded and
facilities furnished them out of the means obtained by the sale of
their former possessions. It was a means of devising a system of
manual labor schools for the education of the young, the males were
relegated to the practice of agriculture and the various mechanical
arts, and women to the different branches of housewifery, including
spinning and weaving. These schools were modeled after those already
in operation in the Easteran United States. Charge was given to the
missionary societies of different Christian denominations in the
country which were gaining momentum in the American government for
the conversion of indigenous religious beliefs. The Indian children
were forced to learn the religious and moral code of these Christian
institutions. (15)
HISTORICAL REVIEW OF THE AREA:
Native American societies in the Southwest went through tremendous
transformations during the period of 1848-1886. Adjusting to Mexican
Colonialism, and after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, greater American immigration and settlement, many Native
Americans chose war as a final recourse.
Mexico in the first half of the Nineteenth century was a rural
country with over a third of its population composed of ‘Indios.’
The countryside was spotted with many small villages in which an
isolated and meager existence was carved socially and economically,
an existence that was derived separate from the larger city. Each
pueblo maintained its own unique system of government, little altered
from the early Spanish colonial period. Spanish was not the
dominant language spoken. White schools and Christian churches were
uncommon, and medicine was usually entrusted to the local curandera/o
or medical practitioner. Private gardens normally provided beans,
corn, squash and chiles, with fruits and vegetables varying is some
areas. Markets were the chief locations used for trading goods and
exchanging information.
The clash of two cultures, Euroamerican and the Native
American, in many ways caused the intermingling found in the
Southwest, especially as it relates to California, Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, Colorado and Nevada. Mining, sheep-herding, cattle raising,
irrigation, farming, laws, railroads, town-cities were a growing
reality in the Native American Southwest culture region. The
westward push took three distinct forms during the 1840′s in New
Mexico, California and Texas; first, a strategic offensive against
Native Americans by separating them from their lands in order to make
way for American immigration, a process called "Indian Separation,"
readily practiced in the 1830′s, second, American passage and
settlement into "Indian Country" causing intense Native American
resistance against this movement, resulting in the formulation of new
treaties to remove Native Americans. This was a process called
"Indian Removal," third, treaties that were later broken and Native
Americans confined to reservations.
As a result of intensified Indian warfare, New Mexican and
Texan settlers were kept in a state of turmoil during the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. The southwest region in geographical
terms is a natural extension in which a "distinctive settlement
pattern emerged of this frontier, with smallholding,
village-orientated farmers and shepards working a pastoral-mercantile
economy and living in a symbiotic relationship with surrounding
Indians."(16) The vangard to colonization in the southwest were
Franciscan missionaries, eager to increase Spanish colonial rule of
power through church and state. Thus during the seventeenth and
eighteenth century Spanish policy was to promote a moving Native
American Indian frontier with Missions and Pueblos serving as the
main catalyst for change. The Apaches and Comanches took advantage
of the horse in raiding deep into settled territories, many of which
were Ladino-type pueblos. With the destruction of the buffalo as a
source of food, many of these nations resorted to attacking Mexican
border communities, which were in many instances were defenseless.
The Apaches became fierce raiders with the adoption of the horse.
Jicarilla Apache resistance ended in the 1850′s; but the western
Apaches were still fighting the United States well into the
1880′s. The Western Apaches also fought longer than their Navajo
cousins, principally because the Navajos learned agricultural and
stock raising techniques. Apacheria, or Apache territory, was
rugged and rough to live on and discouraged invaders. Additionally,
because of the newly separated nation states of Mexico and the
U.S.A., it became easier for the Apache to find refuge in Mexico’s
northern desert lands.
The Apache had remained unimpressed by the Spanish presence in
the Southwest. American jurisdiction of Apacheria, in the first
quarter of the eighteenth century, was first viewed by the Apache as
a possible tool which could be used to their advantage in their war
with the Mexicans. After the U.S.-Mexican war, the Apache learned
that the U.S. would not join them in their war against Mexico, and
instead were informed by the Americans that they must end raiding as
a form of existence. This would have a major impact on relations
between the U.S.A. and Apaches who could not understand why the
U.S.A. had seized the right to tell them what to do. With new
intruders such as prospectors and ranchers entering their country,
Apaches conducted a thirty-year offensive against white trespassers.
They fought alongside members of different bands within the western
Apache Nation.
Whites and Indians maintained distinct branches of historical
development and experience. Native Americans believed that the
practice of writing agreements to settle political and territorial
disputes was strange and unfamiliar to their way; yet it was the
‘white-mans’ way of telling the truth. By the 1850′s the usual
treaties were drawn up with the Apaches and the Comanches. The
government agents displayed pieces of paper, replete with the marks
of Native American leaders, willing to accept the enticement of
annuities, that purported to give the USA the right to enter their
territories. Despite these treaties the predicament for Native
Americans worsened, and with the defeat of Mexico in 1848, the
Southwest was open to American colonialism. The American quest for
gold further exacerbated the problem, with greater number of
emigrants passing through Indian territories in violation of treaty
agreements. Most violence between white Americans and Native
Americans occurred because treaty promises were not being adhered to
by whites. Instead these same documents extinguished Native American
ownership of the land.
Treaties shaped relations between Native American and European
Americans since the days of the first settlers. In spite of the
lapse of years and the increasing power of whites, American officials
treated Native Americans in the mid-eighteenth century much the same
as their colonial predecessors had two centuries earlier.(17) Land
possession and title were obtained north and south through two means:
Native American cession through ‘legal’ purchase, or, through
warfare. The English demanded and got title to lands from the tribes
they encountered on their expansion westward. Thus, through this
gradual process of cession, the colonists brought their actual
control of native resources and population, into line with the
exaggerated terrtitorial claims made by earlier English explorers for
the Crown. (18)
Treaties were first used by European Americans to forge
relationships with powerful Native American nations in an attempt to
ally with and to influence them. Agreements in principle did not
eliminate intra-tribal factional divisions and rivalries, nor did
they give "chiefs" the ability to control their warriors from
raiding. ‘Friendly’ ties with the Indians was actively pursued in an
attempt to open trade and insure safe passage through hostile lands.
The legal process of establishing contact with Native Americans
through treaty writing, established in the early sixteenth century by
Spanish lawyers, was to place the flag of absolute ownership over the
‘New World. ‘
The conquistador lacked claim to the land through this
process. Sufficient claim still lay on ‘aboriginal title’ to the
land. The attempt then, by the Americans, was to obtain "voluntary
consent" for being on the Indian’s land. The offering of annuities
and supplies to ‘Good Indians’ who placed their marks on treaties,
functioned well to split the Nation. Finally, the meaning and
interpretion of what was written in these treaties was left in the
hands of the American courts, further usurping the Indian’s right to
her own land.
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