AmWest Post #3: Roles of Indians in North American Politics

This week’s reading of Brian DeLay’s War of a Thousand Deserts, as well as Bernard DeVoto’s abridged version of Lewis and Clark’s journals (digital version of the entire set here), coincided for me with a trip to Minnesota for the American Association for State and Local History’s 2014 conference. The timing could not have been better, as some sessions at the conference–particularly the keynote by Dr. Anton Treuer at the Awards Banquet–related extremely well to DeLay’s themes.

One of the recurring themes through DeLay’s book is the importance of understanding decisions by various Native American groups as political decisions–rooted in culture and economics, yes, but in the end political decisions. For him, rightfully, the only way to understand Comanche decisions to go to war against Mexico in the 1830s and 1840s is through the lens of politics. Raids on an increasingly large portion of Mexico did certainly yield economic benefits. But Comanches destroyed what they couldn’t take; for DeLay, this was a calculated political move, meant to demonstrate Comanche power.

He also yields insights on why Comanches chose to make war on northern Mexico and not on the United States or the Republic of Texas: They knew Mexico’s state was weaker, and their treaties had fallen apart. In other words, they knew how to play the political game.

Additionally, DeLay argues for the importance of what he calls the War of a Thousand Deserts–his name for this series of raids–on the outcome of the U.S.-Mexican War. The raids had so weakened northern Mexico, and the Mexican state generally, that they paved the way for the U.S. victory.

Treuer’s talk at the AASLH conference detailed another such story from less than two decades later: The role of Hole in the Day, an Ojibwe leader in northern Minnesota, during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. He raised the important point that we cannot simply look at United States versus Indians when discussing these relationships.

Rather, Treuer showed what he called a “web of relationships”–a term that applies to what DeLay discusses, as well. In 1862, Dakotas in southern Minnesota had attacked white settlements throughout the region. The U.S. government, which had already sent two regiments away from fighting the Confederacy to fight the Dakota, was desperate to keep the Ojibwe out of the war. So Hole in the Day won significant concessions from the U.S. government by threatening to intervene. This war was not a pan-Indian effort (indeed, almost none of the so-called Indian wars were) but rather a war between one Native American group and the U.S. government, which another group used to its advantage. Hole in the Day made a political decision with his people (the Ojibwe, not all Indians) not to intervene. Treuer also focused on political dynamics among various Ojibwe groups that played into that decision.

For both Treuer and DeLay, then, politics within and among Native American groups were paramount in the outcome of these wars. Decisions by Comanches, Kiowas, Apaches, and other groups to trade, raid, and deal with the United States, Mexico, and the Texas Republic made all the difference in the U.S.-Mexican War. Ojibwe decisions not to join the U.S.-Dakota War made all the difference in that war’s outcome, and perhaps even in the U.S. Civil War; what would have happened had more U.S. Army regiments been diverted to Minnesota in 1862?

Commenting

This week I commented on Ben’s, Doug’s, Megan’s, and Carol’s blog posts.

To Learn More

Here is a condensed version of the talk Treuer gave at the AASLH conference:

And below is my Storify of his talk.