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Reviews
| Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands. By Juliana Barr. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. 397 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $59.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).
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In this carefully researched work, Barr analyzes interactions between Spaniards and the native peoples of Texas—including Apaches, Caddos, Comanches, and Wichitas—from the 1690s through the 1780s. Barr explains that in Texas, "The primary power relations were not European versus Indian, but relations among native peoples" (p. 6). Spain's grip on the province was tenuous and—lacking the power to force their culture on local Indian groups—settlers and administrators were forced to adapt to native social, political, and economic norms. Too often, Barr argues, historians of early America cast their stories in racial terms. She demonstrates that race, while certainly present in the minds of Spaniards, had little influence in eighteenth-century Texas, where Indian constructions of gender and kinship defined social relations. |
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La Salle's inauspicious entry into the land of the Tejas sets the tone for the first portion of Barr's narrative. Taking a cue from Daniel Richter's Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, MA, 2001), Barr begins each of the three parts of her book with a vignette using ethnohistorical methodologies to reconstruct important events. This storytelling device allows the reader to see La Salle's men as Caddos must have—unimpressive, fractious stragglers with little visible wealth or power. In the decades after La Salle, both Spaniards and Frenchmen attempted to settle east Texas, a land which the three allied Caddo confederacies had long dominated. As in the pays d'en haut (upper country), Indians and Europeans bumbled through their early encounters and frequently misconstrued the meaning behind one another's actions. (See Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 [Cambridge, MA, 1991]). As Barr demonstrates, European survival in Texas depended upon native goodwill. Spaniards repeatedly floundered when they violated Indian women, refused to abide by the rules of kinship, and attempted to force their cultural standards upon mission Indians. |
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According to Barr, Spanish settlements became more prosperous when they emulated or at least accommodated native peoples. At missions, Spaniards and Indians created a mutually beneficial alliance to protect themselves from Apache raiders. Barr demonstrates that Indians did far more than resist acculturation; they controlled mission life. Eventually, many Spaniards and Indians intermarried and transformed diplomatic alliances into true bonds of kinship. Raids by semi-nomadic Indian groups, however, continued to plague missions. Spaniards realized that their security in Texas depended upon alliance with these powerful Indian nations. When Spanish men failed to meet Apache standards of masculinity, the Apaches rejected them as allies. However, Spanish, Caddo, Wichita, and Comanche political leaders gradually eked out peace agreements. Women, including female captives, played prominent roles in forging these alliances. As Barr explains, "A critical corollary to manly diplomatic efforts became women's role in expressing peace rather than hostility, and strength rather than aggression" (p. 246). |
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In many ways, early Texas seems a topsy-turvy realm where dominant Indian nations called the tune for obsequious colonizers, a far cry from eighteenth-century Virginia, New England, or even New Mexico. And yet, as Barr reminds her readers, "By the 1790s, much more than half of North America was in native hands" (p. 289). Here, Barr challenges other historians to rethink their assumptions about gender, race, and power in early America. Surely, those who look will find native-dominated historical spaces across the continent. Historiographically significant and beautifully written, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman will enjoy a wide readership among those interested in early American, Native American, and Borderlands history.
Christina Snyder
University of Pennsylvania
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