The Spanish Frontier in North America: The Brief Edition
Abstract
From the Publisher: In 1513, when Ponce de Leon stepped ashore on a beach of what is now Florida, Spain gained its first foothold in North America. For the next three hundred years, Spaniards ranged through the continent building forts to defend strategic places, missions to proselytize Indians, and farms, ranches, and towns to reconstruct a familiar Iberian world. This engagingly written and well-illustrated book presents an up-to-date overview of the Spanish colonial period in North America. It provides a sweeping account not only of the Spaniards' impact on the lives, institutions, and environments of the native peoples but also of the effect of native North Americans on the societies and cultures of the Spanish settlers. With apt quotations and colorful detail, David J. Weber evokes the dramatic era of the first Spanish-Indian contact in North America, describes the establishment, expansion, and retraction of the Spanish frontier, and recounts the forging of a Hispanic empire that ranged from Florida to California. Weber refutes the common assumption that while the English and French came to the New World to settle or engage in honest trade, the Spaniards came simply to plunder. The Spanish missionaries, soldiers, and traders who lived in America were influenced by diverse motives, and Weber shows that their behavior must be viewed in the context of their own time and within their own frame of reference. Throughout his book Weber deals with many other interesting issues, including the difference between English, French, and Spanish treatment of Indians, the social and economic integration of Indian women into Hispanic society, and the reasons why Spanish communities in North America failed to develop at the rate that the English settlements did. Hismagisterial work broadens our understanding of the American past by illuminating a neglected but integral part of the nation's heritage.
... But it is also worth recalling that this border across the North American continent, like the northern borderlands of Roman Britain, changed over time, and fruitful comparisons might also be made with the period when this region was the northern boundary of the Spanish Empire in the Americas (e.g. Weber 2009;Heyman 2012;see Gardner In Press). Historical specificity must be integral to such comparisons, as no two borders are the same, but comparing the practices and processes of borderland societies will still yield much of relevance to contemporary debates. ...
Hanscam and Buchanan (2023) have written a timely and important contribution to the evolving discussion about the politicisation of archaeology, and the prominent role that intersections with Border Studies might play in future debates. I concur with many of their substantive points. Focusing on boundaries and bordering processes is a natural extension of the work on identities that has been a dominant theme in archaeology since at least the 1990s; it also provides a counterbalance to recent trends that seek to extend globalisation deeper into the past, not least in Roman studies (e.g. Pitts & Versluys 2014). As Hanscam and Buchanan note for the public sphere, there are also numerous academic contributions within the Border Studies literature that draw upon archaeological or historical examples, though often framed within outdated understandings of the meanings of these boundaries (e.g. Nail 2016; see Gardner 2022). Our role in engaging with these contributions is not simply to point out mistakes, but also to learn from this range of perspectives on the significance of boundaries in human societies, to fuse them with our own interpretations of ancient borderlands, and to contribute to contemporary debates that crystallise many of the most important issues of our times.
... Between the arrival and formation of the Navajo as a people in the southwest in the 1500s, and the Long Walk in 1864, there were multiple centuries of Spanish colonialism in northern New Mexico (largely involving failed efforts, at first, and later more brutal and enduring in its effects); raiding, alliances, and wars with numerous other Indian groups in the region and with American settlers, much of which formed an international relations of a different register 20 ; and then the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) that resulted 17 I am not a specialist in the region, nor a scholar of Navajo history, but I have tried to do justice to the events and experiences around the Long Walk in the narrative below. The account below draws on the following historical accounts of the Long Walk and related histories, by Navajo and non-Navajo scholars: Bailey (1964) , Iverson and Roessel (2002 ), Sides (2006 ), Denetdale (2008), Weber (2009), Lerma (2017) , and Treuer (2019. It is also supplemented by two field visits to Bosque Redondo and northeastern Dinétah. ...
Walking is a nearly universal activity, even given the many contrivances invented to avoid it, yet it is widely absent from the sedentarist disciplines of politics and international relations. This absence is perhaps not surprising, given that so much political thought and practice are deeply tethered to the inventions of the boot and the chair that remove walking from our view, as Tim Ingold has observed. Yet, given the significance of events such as forced death marches as parts of war and genocide; formative collective walks such as Gandhi's march to the sea, the Long March in China, or the Selma to Montgomery marches; or the everyday politics of walking in global cities, such absence might be mistaken. This article suggests instead that walking be understood as integral to the operation of internationality. In particular, it argues that walking is part of a mobile field of power and agency that generates, stabilizes, and unsettles internationality in equal parts. The article diagrams some key conceptual nodes of walking and political power, and then traces their operation in the case of the Long Walk of the Navajo.
While issues of race in relation to teacher identity have been addressed in language education research, they have often been confined to special issues. Factors contributing to the “absent-present” nature of race include an imbalanced focus on intersectionality which tends to prioritize the teacher's linguistic identity over other social categories, such as race and the persistent dichotomy between the idealized native speaker and non-native speaker. To broaden the understandings of race in teacher identity research within postsecondary language classrooms, this chapter advocates for considering the notion of multiraciality. To support these arguments, results from a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of four empirical studies are presented. The analysis demonstrates that race is often perceived as fixed and singular. The findings suggest that language educators and researchers should engage in critical thinking about how they describe and racially classify students and participants.
Figurines are rare in the remains of Spanish Florida. Surprisingly, however, 141 fragments and 1 complete ceramic figurine were recovered at the last two of the four locations of the presidio in Spanish West Florida on Pensacola Bay. Throughout the presidio’s existence (1698–1763) the population was sent directly from the central Basin of Mexico, where figurines have a long history. The West Florida figurine assemblage and distribution is here described in detail and compared to those found at contemporaneous settlements and shipwrecks. An argument is made that figurines are likely associated with the 1740 shift in Spanish-colonial policy from almost exclusively male garrisons to military colonies with soldier-settler families. This demographic shift brought women and children to the presidios from central Mexico in increasing numbers starting in 1741, and the argument is made that they are the reason for the appearance of figurines.
This chapter offers a wide overview of the recent scholarship on modern boundary-making in different languages and cultural contexts. It aims to bring together the main outcomes of empirical research and the conceptual issues and theoretical debates having arisen both in the context of the so-called spatial and global turns (e.g. new spatially oriented forms of research in global or transnational history) and in border studies over the last decades. The chapter first elaborates on this wider intellectual background; then highlights the specific contribution made in the book (thematic, methodological and historiographical); and, lastly, introduces the chief insights of each chapter of the book.
Zooarchaeological research at Spanish colonial missions in the U.S.-Mexico border region indicates that cattle ranching formed the basis for economic colonialism in the region. Animal remains from Mission Nuestra Señora del Pilar y Santiago de Cocóspera add to this expanding body of research and demonstrate heterogeneity in mission economic strategies, particularly influenced by local ecology, and sociopolitical history. Located at a higher elevation, subjected to many years of livestock raiding, and rarely hosting a resident priest, the O’odham community at Mission Cocóspera continued to rely a great deal on the exploitation of wild game, even as they adopted cattle ranching.
This chapter is divided into two parts. First, we will view the structure and dynamics of the Afro-Eurasian world-system in the centuries preceding the Age of Discovery. We will give particular attention to the issues of this world-system’s connectivity and prerequisites to its subsequent global expansion. Second, we will view the main directions of this world-system’s expansion during the Age of Discovery, which formed the basis of early modern globalization. Then we will proceed to investigate some of the most prominent manifestations and consequences of early modern globalization, namely the intensification of existing transregional flows and interactions, as well as the emergence and sudden spread of new ones. For example, the “Columbian exchange” in flora and fauna led to a gradual globalization of the world’s staple foods, which changed the sociodemographic dynamics in most societies; globalization of pathogens led to severe cases of depopulation in some societies, dramatically changing the balance of power in the regions integrated into the now global World System; the structure of the world trade network transformed as new regions and their resources entered it; and the formation of a “global silver network” led to a sort of global “quantitative easing.” A truly global network space of flows and interactions emerged, which was to increase in density, variability, and importance in the subsequent centuries, prompting humanity to enter the era of modernity.
An 18th-century colonial settlement, Presidio San Sabá was the largest and, indeed, the most remote military frontier outpost within the Spanish Borderlands of northern New Spain in Texas. Garrisoned with 100 Spanish soldiers who resided there with their civilian families, the presidio numbered nearly 400 people. Historical records reveal that this resident population lived under adverse conditions, suffering from malnutrition, disease, and chronic shortages of food and other supplies. Analysis of the faunal assemblage recovered during archaeological excavations conducted at the presidio site indicates that the San Sabá people managed to survive by subsisting primarily upon the food products of their livestock herds. Moreover, they secured some additional animal protein for their diet by occasionally trading, fishing, hunting, and collecting locally available natural resources.
The chapter provides an overview of the Hispanic population and distribution in the United States, and then focuses upon the Southwest. Hispanic landscapes represent both early as well as contemporary movements of persons of Spanish ancestry into the nation, and these Hispanics include persons who are racially white, black, Indian, or various mixtures and who have come to the U.S. from many different countries. Chapter 5 describes the Hispanic landscapes within the Southwest, from Texas through California, with short discussions provided regarding Spanish colonial landscape legacy in Arizona and California. The Hispano Homeland in northern New Mexico is one of the most visible and highly studied ethnic homelands in the U.S. by geographers, historians, and landscape scholars, whose work regarding land tenure, village patterns, urban plans, and vernacular architecture informs this review. The Hispano Homeland represents the earliest sustained European settlement in the nation (excepting St. Augustine, Florida), and it is marked by a conspicuous ethnic landscape, one that is both similar and different from ones that have resulted from contemporary Mexican immigration. Recent geographic study has focused upon the Hispanic settlement astride the Lower Rio Grande, which comprises the Tejano Homeland. In addition, the Mexican-American ethnic landscape in several cities of the Southwest is described, and the chapter provides a brief discussion of the recent movements of Mexicans into other parts of the U.S. and how that immigration is creating a new Mexican ethnic imprint across much of the South and Midwest.
This chapter discusses the Hispanic landscapes that are linked with the former Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. Thus, it includes the Spanish colonization of Florida, which did not result in a continuing homeland such as in New Mexico, but it did leave an architectural imprint upon St. Augustine that has influenced later building styles. Cuban refugees shaped Florida’s cultural landscape in the late 19th Century, when many settled in Tampa and Key West, and again during the last half of the 20th Century, creating a Cuban “homeland in absentia” within metropolitan Miami. The 20th Century saw the establishment of large Dominican and Puerto Rican settlements in such metropolitan areas as New York and Chicago, which now display distinct ethnic imprints upon the landscapes of several neighborhoods. The arrival and distribution of other Hispanics from Central and South America are briefly discussed.
The Gulf of Mexico played an important role in the power struggles between Europe and the United States for control of access to valuable resources in North and South America. Spain, France, Great Britain, and the burgeoning United States utilized this vast body of water to jockey for positions of power, especially for control of New Orleans. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries these countries wrangled for control of the Gulf through treaty, trade, warfare, and privateering. Serving many different roles, ships engaged in transporting commodities, protecting places and resources, and antagonizing rivals. Between wars, commercial competition, and disasters at sea, many vessels were lost to the depths of the Gulf. One such vessel, the Mardi Gras Shipwreck, may have served in one or more of these roles during its career. By examining the historic record, archaeologists can reconstruct the sociocultural, political, and economic milieus to establish the historical context in which the shipwreck and its story reside.
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Beginning in the late 18th century, Spanish and Mexican colonization introduced the system of missionization into what is today described as Alta California. Missionaries and soldiers, using native labor, directed the construction of 21 missions along the Alta California coast. The mission complexes––churches, quadrangles, and outlying buildings and structures––were intended to bring about a new order on the native landscape by means of the introduction of European-style architecture, agriculture, and animal husbandry. This introduction began the ecological transformation of the landscape. European plants and weeds came to dominate coastal California well before the California Gold Rush occurred in 1849. This transformation had an immeasurable impact on the local environment, and on the daily life of the native Californians who lived in the missions.
In contrast to the British constitutional model, whose political and legal system progressively evolved in response to the twists and turns of history, in the last third of the eighteenth century there appeared in western constitutional history a new model based on a revolutionary break with the past. This occurred first in the United States of America, a new country spawned by a colonial rebellion against the English Crown. The colonists’ revolt became a full-fledged revolution when the 13 colonies agreed to become 13 independent states, whose representatives, gathered in Congress, approved constitutional prescripts to govern the relationships between them: the Articles of Confederation. This process was facilitated by the fact that from the outset the English colonists had enjoyed considerable autonomy from London; the English monarchy (in stark contrast to the Spanish) had always employed a colonial model essentially based on private initiative. The fact that the colonists governed themselves almost from the very beginning explains how after their break with the Crown they were able to establish the first viable republican regimes in contemporary western history with relative ease. The American states and the federal constitutions they would endorse were based on a rejection of the monarchical principle still prevailing in Europe, the establishment of assembly-based government based on popular sovereignty, and limits set down in written constitutions. The American Revolution’s importance as a landmark event in Western constitutional history was magnified when many of its principles triumphed across the Atlantic during its European corollary: the French Revolution.
The southwestern United States provides an opportunity to study the environmental impacts of culturally diverse peoples within a single geographic region. Using palynological data from a 600-year period, we examine the effects of differing land-use strategies employed by Pueblos, Spanish colonists, and Anglo-Americans around the village of La Cienega, New Mexico. The data indicate that, prior to Spanish colonization, Puebloan peoples had successful agricultural practices that created a diverse anthropogenic landscape. Successive waves of Spanish colonists, beginning in the 16th century, and Anglo-American colonists, in the 19th century, brought new plants, animals, and agricultural technologies that interacted with existing indigenous strategies. This history of the landscape of the Southwest reveals the subtle reorganization of the anthropogenic landscape resulting from the interaction and persistence of these three cultural traditions.
In the twenty-first century historical archaeologists have increasingly drawn on post-colonial theory to analyze the European conquest and colonization of the Americas, Australasia, and Africa. However, few have employed feminist theories to gain insights into the patriarchal power dynamics that were fundamental to institutionalized colonial ideologies and practices. This paper provides feminist theorizing of new concepts and a heterarchical model of multiple interacting powers that increase understanding of complex gender and sexual power dynamics between colonizers and colonized.
The diary Christopher Columbus composed on his first voyage to what came to be called America relied on certain assumptions, expectations, and tropes to set the places he visited beyond biblical time and to construe the many people he met as Indians. His ideas were of foundational importance to the development of subsequent Spanish histories of the Americas and, in turn, also shaped the French and English narratives of exploration and discovery. Together, the three imperial historiographies set the baseline from which all subsequent American histories would be written.
Millions of Indians—probably as many, if not more, as lived in Europe—had been living throughout North America for thousands of years when the colonial encounter began.1 Their cultures and economies differed between places and times but indigenous culture was thriving. The continent was a “stunningly diverse place, a tumult of languages, trade, and culture, a region where millions of people loved and hated and worshipped as people do everywhere.”2
Many observers of globalization have commented on the impact that global processes appear to be having on group identities. The changing loci of capital accumulation and power, the greater global flows of goods, labor, culture, and information, and the new global political and rhetorical conventions accompanying these changes, are having significant repercussions for forms of social organization, including identity. This should come as no surprise, given our current understanding of ethnic, national, and other identities as products of social relationships and not s imply of cultural inheritance. The anthropologist Jonathan Friedman, one observer of these matters, has explained how globalization should be expected to affect identity (Friedman 1999a, 1999b, 2000). Friedman has focused on two primary tendencies relating to identity: a hybridization and cosmopoli-tanization of identity among class and cultural elites, and an indigenization of identity among lower and middle classes. I have engaged briefly with Friedman’s ideas on the indigenization of identity (Haley and Wilcoxon 2005) to support his contention that people not considered indigenous by standard definitions are now asserting indigenous identities, and to suggest that their reason for doing so may not be to seek territory and autonomy from a weakened state, as Friedman proposes. Here I wish to expand my engagement with Friedman’s ideas on the indigenization of identity by once again taking a look at the Mexican diaspora in the southwestern United States, but widening the discussion this time to address three distinct waves of migration rather than just one.
The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was one of the most successful indigenous revolts of the colonial period in all of Latin America. The Pueblos succeeded in expelling all Spaniards from their homeland in New Mexico—a feat few other indigenous groups were able to accomplish in the New World. It was so well known that it sparked other Indian rebellions—to the extent that Spanish authorities feared that the “flames of rebellion” would “engulf the entire northern frontier” of New Spain (or what is now called Mexico).1 Soon after Diego de Vargas had regained nominal control of New Mexico (1692), he intercepted a cord of maguey fiber with four knots in it that was being sent from pueblo to pueblo. A knotted cord had been passed around in August of 1680 to alert Pueblo communities that the revolt was imminent. Thus, the knotted cord that Vargas intercepted was “an eerie echo of the 1680 rebellion” and was an indication that the Pueblos were ready to go to war with the Spaniards once again.2 The reconquest—called “bloodless” up to that point due to Vargas’ diplomacy and ability to negotiate Pueblo submission—turned violent.
Histories of the early colonial period of the remote New Mexican colony (A.D. 1540-1680) are framed in terms of pueblo conversion, conflicts between church and state, and accommodation-resistance between the pueblos and the colonizers. Missing from these histories are detailed discussions of mining and metal production, even though it is widely recognized that Spaniards came north looking for metal beginning with Coronado's entrada in A.D. 1540. Accumulating archaeological evidence is beginning to change historical understanding of this neglected part of colonization history. In north-central New Mexico, San Marcos Pueblo is a microcosm of early colonial mining activity in the colony. To elucidate the San Marcos story, relevant histories, geology, archaeology, and materials are used. This broad methodological approach helps reveal the pattern of 17th-century metal production in the colony. The results are important for building knowledge about metal production in the New Mexico colony and for expanding scholarly understanding about this significant part of Spanish colonization on the far northern frontier.
In the late fall of 1597, Guale Indians murdered five Franciscan friars stationed in their territory and razed their missions to the ground. The 1597 Guale Uprising, or Juanillo's Revolt as it is often called, brought the missionization of Guale to an abrupt end and threatened Florida's new governor with the most signifcant crisis of his term. To date, interpretations of the uprising emphasize the primacy of a young Indian from Tolomato named Juanillo, the heir to Guale's paramount chieftaincy. According to most versions of the uprising story, Tolomato's resident friar publicly reprimanded Juanillo for practicing polygamy. In his anger, Juanillo gathered his forces and launched a series of violent assaults on all five of Guale territory's Franciscan missions, leaving all but one of the province's friars dead. Through a series of newly translated primary sources, many of which have never appeared in print, this volume presents the most comprehensive examination of the 1597 uprising and its aftermath. It seeks to move beyond the two central questions that have dominated the historiography of the uprising, namely who killed the fve friars and why, neither of which can be answered with any certainty. Instead, this work aims to use the episode as the background for a detailed examination of Spanish Florida at the turn of the 17th century. Viewed collectively, these sources not only challenge current representations of the uprising, they also shed light on the complex nature of Spanish-Indian relations in early colonial Florida.
This contribution traces the history of Brazilian immigration to Paraguay and the emergence of ‘Brasiguaio’ communities, arguing that the enclaves are products of the development policies of each country's military dictatorship. Although Brasiguaios are currently associated with wealthy Brazilian agriculturalists in Paraguay, the majority of these immigrants have been poor workers who face constant marginalization from state bureaucracies and unequal access to land. Paraguay's eastern border region is among the most complex spaces in Latin America of cultural, economic and national hybridity. The transformation of this borderland is predicated on a highly unequal social hierarchy that resulted largely from the evolution of Brasiguaio immigration.
Schooling was integral to the process of missionization in many of the places where it occurred throughout the world, yet it has scarcely been explored through the archaeological record. Excavations at Hohi, New Zealand, located a school founded by CMS missionaries in 1816, providing a material record that, in conjunction with documentary sources, enables reconstruction of schooling during the earliest stages of cultural engagement in this part of the Pacific. The motivations of both missionaries and indigenous Maori in the establishment and erratic progress of this school are examined, highlighting the role of indigenous agency in the cultural engagements that played out there.
San Jose de las Huertas was established as a land grant community by the Spanish crown in 1765 and occupied for about 60 years.
Many of its residents returned to the area after a brief respite, to found the village of Placitas, which exists today. Archaeological
excavation at Las Huertas, documentary research and oral history from descendants of the original settlers reveal the shifting
impact of different colonialisms, each accompanied by an image of modernity. Spanish demands were attenuated by distance
and waning power. American impositions are more problematic, involving a new political economy, conflicts over land and water,
as Placitas converts to a bedroom suburb of Albuquerque.
In this article we examine the invention of the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas as the “Magic Valley.” To sell land and water, early-twentieth-century land developers and boosters created the Magic Valley as a place myth comprising claims of abundant irrigation water, pliant and abundant labor, and modernity overtaking wilderness. We use a conceptual framework developed from place-making and place-marketing literatures in which language, iconography, and performance are simultaneously deployed in the creation of place images and place myths. Textual descriptions, visual imagery, and performances relied on material transformations of the landscape. We describe the changes in the Magic Valley place myth, emphasizing characterizations of labor, nature, the good life, and security of investment. Two perspectives are adopted, one that considers a range of promotional literature and one that centers on a prominent individual.
The Rumble of a Distant Drum opens in 1673 when Marquette and Jolliet sailed down the Mississippi River and found the Quapaw living in the area where the Arkansas River flowed into the Mississippi. In 1686 Henri de Tonti would found Arkansas Post in this same location. It was the first European settlement in this part of the country, established thirty years before New Orleans and eighty before St. Louis. Morris S. Arnold draws on his many years of archival research and writing on colonial Arkansas to produce this elegant account of the cultural intersections of the French and Spanish with the native American peoples. He demonstrates that the Quapaws and Frenchmen created a highly symbiotic society in which the two disparate peoples became connected in complex and subtle ways-through intermarriage, trade, religious practice, and political/military alliances.
During an excavation in the 1950s, the bones of a prehistoric woman were discovered in Midland County, Texas. Archaeologists dubbed the woman "Midland Minnie." Some believed her age to be between 20,000 and 37,000 years, making her remains the oldest ever found in the Western Hemisphere. While the accuracy of this date remains disputed, the find, along with countless others, demonstrates the wealth of human history that is buried beneath Texas soil. By the time the Europeans arrived in Texas in 1528, Native Texans included the mound-building Caddos of East Texas; Karankawas and Atakapas who fished the Texas coast; town-dwelling Jumanos along the Rio Grande; hunting-gathering Coahuiltecans in South Texas; and corn-growing Wichitas in the Panhandle. All of these native peoples had developed structures, traditions, governments, religions, and economies enabling them to take advantage of the land's many resources. The arrival of Europeans brought horses, metal tools and weapons, new diseases and new ideas, all of which began to reshape the lives of Texas Indians. Over time, Texas became a home to horse-mounted, buffalo-hunting Apaches, Comanches, and Kiowas and a refuge for Puebloan Tiguas, Alabama-Coushattas, Kickapoos and many others. These groups traded, shared ideas, fought and made peace with one another as well as peoples outside of Texas. This book tells the story of all of these groups, their societies and cultures, and how they changed over the years. Author David La Vere offers a complete chronological and cultural history of Texas Indians from 12,000 years ago to the present day. He presents a unique view of their cultural history before and after European arrival, examining their interactions-both peaceful and violent-with Europeans, Mexicans, Texans, and Americans. This book is the first full examination of the history of Texas Indians in over forty years and will appeal to all of those with an interest in Native Americans and the history of Texas.