Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Fall 2000
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 20, No. 4, Fall 2000, pp. 330-31.
Abstract
This is the most lucid and detailed examination of the political economy of the Southern Plains. At the center of that economy roamed the buffalo; but once Europeans arrived, horses, cattle, firearms, captives, and manufactured goods helped power it. Bonds of kinship and reciprocity drew all peoples in and around the Southern Plains into it, including Pueblos and Spaniards in New Mexico; Spaniards and Mexicans in Texas; Jumanos, Apaches, Wichitas, and Comanches on the Plains; and Caddos and the French in Louisiana. Still, the Plains could be a hard environment, with long droughts and epidemics of European diseases, both of which decimated populations. For any single people to meet these challenges and dominate the economy would require it to change its society, its culture, and itself as well.
Between 1580 and 1830, several peoples rose up to command the economy only to falter or be pushed aside. The Jumanos, an agricultural people of South Texas, controlled it initially but were absorbed by the Apaches, who first learned to use the horse to their advantage. The Nortefios (Wichitas and Caddos) drove the Apaches from the Plains. On their heels came the Comanches, who developed a high mobility and other societal changes, allowing them to dominate until 1830.
And therein lay the paradox: to control the Southern Plains's political economy meant being altered by it. Horses, guns, and manufactured goods-"status goods"-not only changed peoples' physical culture, but brought about an increasingly stratified social structure. Seniors controlled "status goods" and only sparingly doled them out to juniors. Some Comanches possessed hundreds of horses, others none. The need for forage brought smaller bands. Men took more wives to tan more hides to acquire more status goods. The people themselves also changed through what Anderson terms "ethnogenesis." Control required a large population, and to achieve this and replenish those killed by disease and drought Southern Plains peoples, particularly the Comanches, captured then assimilated a variety of other peoples.
This political economy unraveled about 1830 as Americans and removed Indians entered the Plains. These people, geared toward agricultural capitalism, were unwilling to make kinship or uphold reciprocal obligations. Once again, Southern Plains Indians would have to remake themselves.
Anderson has done strong, innovative work here, employing previously unused primary sources from France, Spain, and Mexico to bring new insights to the Indian Southern Plains. His volume sets the bar for future Plains histories.
Comments
Copyright 2000 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln