An award-winning look at how Apaches, Navajos, Kiowas, and especially Comanches played a decisive role in America’s watershed victory over Mexico"An engaging book that enlivens the debate over the clash between Indians, Mexicans, and Americans in the Southwest."—Gary Clayton Anderson, Western Historical Quarterly"Action-packed and densely argued."—Larry McMurtry, New York Review of BooksIn 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.

Since the early colonial period, historians have been fascinated with North America’s borderlands – places where people interacted across multiple, independent political and legal systems. Today the scholarship on these regions is more robust and innovative than ever before. North American Borderlands introduces students to exemplary recent scholarship on this vital topic, showcasing work that delves into the complexities of borderland relationships. Essays range from the seventeenth through the late twentieth century, touch on nearly every region of the continent, and represent a variety of historical approaches and preoccupations. Anchored by a substantial introduction that walks students through the terminology and historiography, the collection presents the major debates and questions most prominent in the field today.

Since the early colonial period, historians have been fascinated with North America’s borderlands – places where people interacted across multiple, independent political and legal systems. Today the scholarship on these regions is more robust and innovative than ever before. North American Borderlands introduces students to exemplary recent scholarship on this vital topic, showcasing work that delves into the complexities of borderland relationships. Essays range from the seventeenth through the late twentieth century, touch on nearly every region of the continent, and represent a variety of historical approaches and preoccupations. Anchored by a substantial introduction that walks students through the terminology and historiography, the collection presents the major debates and questions most prominent in the field today.

An award-winning look at how Apaches, Navajos, Kiowas, and especially Comanches played a decisive role in America’s watershed victory over Mexico"An engaging book that enlivens the debate over the clash between Indians, Mexicans, and Americans in the Southwest."—Gary Clayton Anderson, Western Historical Quarterly"Action-packed and densely argued."—Larry McMurtry, New York Review of BooksIn 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.

Since the early colonial period, historians have been fascinated with North America’s borderlands – places where people interacted across multiple, independent political and legal systems. Today the scholarship on these regions is more robust and innovative than ever before. North American Borderlands introduces students to exemplary recent scholarship on this vital topic, showcasing work that delves into the complexities of borderland relationships. Essays range from the seventeenth through the late twentieth century, touch on nearly every region of the continent, and represent a variety of historical approaches and preoccupations. Anchored by a substantial introduction that walks students through the terminology and historiography, the collection presents the major debates and questions most prominent in the field today.

Since the early colonial period, historians have been fascinated with North America’s borderlands – places where people interacted across multiple, independent political and legal systems. Today the scholarship on these regions is more robust and innovative than ever before. North American Borderlands introduces students to exemplary recent scholarship on this vital topic, showcasing work that delves into the complexities of borderland relationships. Essays range from the seventeenth through the late twentieth century, touch on nearly every region of the continent, and represent a variety of historical approaches and preoccupations. Anchored by a substantial introduction that walks students through the terminology and historiography, the collection presents the major debates and questions most prominent in the field today.