1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910778086303321

Autore

DeLay Brian <1971-, >

Titolo

War of a thousand deserts : Indian raids and the U.S.-Mexican War / / Brian DeLay

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Haven, : Yale University Press

[Dallas, TX], : Published in association with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University, c2008

ISBN

9786612351976

1-282-35197-4

0-300-15042-3

1-282-08868-8

9786612088681

9780300150421 (electronic book)

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xxii, 473 pages) : illustrations, maps

Collana

The Lamar series in western history

Disciplina

972/.100497

Soggetti

Mexican War, 1846-1848 - Indians

Mexican War, 1846-1848 - Mexican-American Border Region

Mexican War, 1846-1848 - Mexico, North

Indians of North America - Wars - Mexican-American Border Region

Indians of North America - Wars - Mexico, North

Mexican-American Border Region History, Military 19th century

Mexico, North History, Military 19th century

Mexican-American Border Region Ethnic relations History 19th century

Mexico, North Ethnic relations History 19th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 425-455) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- Prologue. Easy stories -- Part One. Neighbours -- 1. Danger and community -- 2. Buffalo-hide quiver -- 3. Plunder and partners -- 4. The politics of pengeance -- Part Two. Nations -- 5. Indians don't unmake presidents -- 6. Barbarians and dearer enemies -- 7. An eminently national war? -- 8. How to make a desert smile -- Part Three. Convergence -- 9. A trophy of a new kind in war -- 10. Polk's blessing -- Epilogue. Article 11 -- Appendix. Data on



Comanche-Mexican violence, 1831-48 -- Introduction to the data -- Table and figures -- Data -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

In the early 1830s, after decades of relative peace, northern Mexicans and the Indians whom they called "the barbarians" descended into a terrifying cycle of violence. For the next fifteen years, owing in part to changes unleashed by American expansion, Indian warriors launched devastating attacks across ten Mexican states. Raids and counter-raids claimed thousands of lives, ruined much of northern Mexico's economy, depopulated its countryside, and left man-made "deserts" in place of thriving settlements. Just as important, this vast interethnic war informed and emboldened U.S. arguments in favor of seizing Mexican territory while leaving northern Mexicans too divided, exhausted, and distracted to resist the American invasion and subsequent occupation. Exploring Mexican, American, and Indian sources ranging from diplomatic correspondence and congressional debates to captivity narratives and plains Indians' pictorial calendars, War of a Thousand Deserts recovers the surprising and previously unrecognized ways in which economic, cultural, and political developments within native communities affected nineteenth-century nation-states. In the process this ambitious book offers a rich and often harrowing new narrative of the era when the United States seized half of Mexico's national territory.--