Empire: World History - 164. How the West was Won: The Truth Behind the Westerns

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

A whole genre of movies is based on a relatively short period of nineteenth-century American history. But what is the real story behind battles between Native Americans and white settlers during westward expansion? In the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, settlers flooded to the newly acquired territory and before long, violence was commonplace. Images of battles fought on horseback continue to shape our popular understanding, yet have often overshadowed the cultures and lives that were decimated during this period. Listen as Anita and William are joined by Karl Jacoby to discuss the interactions between Native Americans, settlers, and the US army in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durimple. And we are very, very pleased to say. Today we're joined by Carl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn, an Apache. massacre and the violence of history. You're here to talk about the final stages of the settlement

of the American continent. It's something we've been thinking about an awful lot. Carl, so to give you an idea of what we've been talking about in earlier episodes and to remind our listeners who may have listened a few weeks earlier, we've been taking the story forward, starting with Pocontas and Jamestown, working our way through the American Revolution and what that meant for the indigenous nations. And in the most recent episodes, we were discussing the history of the American Westward expansion beyond the appellations, the skirmishes between the U.S. Army and the Native nations near the Oregon Trail. We've looked at the life of Olive Oatman, who was adopted by peaceful Mojave indigenous tribes in Arizona in the 1850s. But that is a period when things are distinctly

looking worse and worse for the Native American tribes and the Indian Removal Act, forcing the tribes to migrate eastwards. Carl, I've been looking at some of your lectures online, and I was fascinated by the picture you present there. There's not as if there's some sort of eternal equilibrium that's going on on the Great Plains. Things are moving. Horses are being introduced. History is changing every year in that area. It isn't as if the Europeans arrive and history begins. There's an absolutely massive churning going on before that. Could you set the scene from that point view from that vision, looking from the West, looking east in the sense? Wow, that's a big question. So there's all sorts of ecological changes going on.

I mean, the introduction of horses is a massive one that you'd like to think about really two American revolutions going on in the late 18th century. So one of them, of course, is the American Revolution we're familiar with, which is the British colonists rising up and forming the United States. But at almost the same time in the 1770s, that's when the horse reaches Great Plains. And it really transforms what had been this fairly lightly inhabited territory, which is rich with Buffalo, but very difficult to hunt. And it really transforms it into this densely inhabited area where you have all of these indigenous peoples who move out onto the plains. And so really the classic image that we have of the American Indian from all the

movies and everything else, which is an American Indian on horseback, riding, hunting buffalo. Almost all of that is really a post-1492 post-contact phenomena because they didn't have the horse and there wasn't these large populations. So before that, just to clarify this, I mean, the hunting of buffalo did go on and predates this by many centuries, but they would have hunted on foot instead of on horses. Yeah, they hunted on foot, which was a pretty risky undertaking. Buffalo are extremely large animals. They can weigh 2,000 pounds or more. And so they did occasionally hunt these on foot. But a great sort of example of this change would be a group like the Lakota or the Sioux, which are quite well known. So they actually were people who were living up in the Great Lakes in the forested areas. And they're pushed out because of the Ojibways and other groups of the East to initially have access to trade goods, particularly guns.

And so the Sioux initially are kind of like refugees. They're being pushed out of what was good beaver hunting territory by their rivals, the Ojibways. And they're pushed out unto what is seen initially at the time is sort of the desolate areas where you don't want to be, which is the Great Plains. But they have the good fortune to move on to the Great Plains right as the horse is being introduced. And so what begins as a sort of refugee group who's sort of in desperation fleeing to the Great Plains becomes, at least in the sort of American popular imagination, the quintessential American Indian group. They become equestrian. They dominate this huge portion of the Great Plains. This is the group of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and all those sorts of theme.

Most Americans know very few indigenous people by name, but if they know any indigenous people by name, they know Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and then as we'll probably get to, they know Geronimo. Carl, one of the things I was most interested in your book, which I absolutely love, and we should say Shadows at Dawn and Apache Massacre, the Violence of History, is a spectacular read, recommended very strongly to all our listeners. One of the things you say in there, which I had no idea, was that a lot of the names that we know these tribes by and indeed their leaders. So the Apaches, someone like Geronimo,

are basically made up Western names. They're not the actual names that these people knew themselves by. No. So, I mean, I kept switching between Lakota and Sue. La Cota is a sort of term allies. So that's what the people themselves would call themselves. But Sue is the name that actually was given to them by Shoshone, which means enemies. And so what happened early on, if you take the case of the Sioux or Lakota, is when the French asked the Shoshone, who are these people?

They said there are enemies. The enemy. And so that that name has been attached to them. And then the example of the Apache, which seems to be also from a word, Apache, which was a Zuni, Pueblo word for enemy again, that they call themselves in they usually or in day, depending on the dialect,

which means the people, just us, basically. But, you know, people never know that. They only know this term. Apache. And so often it's kind of ironic or painful that often the words that by which these communities are known are not the words they gave themselves and often the words that were given to them by outsiders. Yeah. I mean, the other thing as well is that often in the non-native imagination, there's a sense that the tribe is a very coherent unit, that there's a chief and he controls everything. So the Apache would never really be considered a tribe. They're sort

of a loose coalition of people who speak a similar language. A confederacy, would you say? Something like that, or even closer to an ethnic group, and they're united by certain political arrangements and certain clan lineages. But they're really not a tribe, which has this very strict organization in the way that a lot of outsiders thought. And this made things difficult because if you're signing a treaty with a member of the Apache tribe, you often thought you were signing a treaty with the whole tribe, as it were,

in your imagination. but it's really a bunch of different people. And so you're thinking, Apache don't respect these agreements. Oh, they're untrustworthy. But they're saying we didn't sign. Yeah, they're saying we don't know who these people are. We have no relationship with them.

We can't be held to that agreement. Can I ask just a question just looking to now? Do you have tribes now who are reclaiming the name that they had for themselves? So would the N.A. call themselves the N.A. today? Or would they reclaim the word Apache? And even though these were not good terms at the time that were given. That's interesting, and it seems to vary a lot. I mean, obviously we have hundreds of different indigenous groups in the United States.

The Navajo, for instance, they often call themselves Dene, which would be their Navajo speak a language close related to the Apaches. And so that's the term they often use, although it's technically the Navajo Nation. They're often sort of saddled with these colonial titles. I have not heard a lot of Apaches reclaim sort of publicly. Because so few Americans will know what they're talking about. Yeah, I think they found a certain leverage to having that well-known Apache term. So that's the weird situation they're in. If they reclaim the name, then no one knows who they are. Carl, another thing that I thought was brought out very beautifully in your book is that we're sometimes also up to romanticize the indigenous nations and present them as a great sort of pre-colonial harmony, living close to nature, studying the stars, not wrecking the environment.

But you present a picture in your book of deep competition and often great violence between different groups, particularly the Ottam and the N.A. You sort of touched on this earlier. It is a world in motion before. And so there are all these migrations that are happening. And there's different theories as to where the Apache came from. But they speak in Athapascan language, which is similar to what natives actually speak all the way up in Alaska. And so it seems that these from linguistic perspectives, that this was a group that was moving. south and came into an area. And there were already other indigenous people living there, which would be the Otham, the Achnolatham, two different groups which called themselves the desert people and the river people. And so there was occasionally friction between these groups because they're obviously trying to claim the same spaces, particularly in a desert environment like the southwest, where there's not a lot of sources of water. There's only a few fertile places where you can grow agricultural goods. These became particular flashpoints. And

in many respects, I think there were pre-existing tensions between these groups. I also think the arrival of, you know, European colonialism first in the guise of the Spanish and then later in the guys of the US, like this tends to exacerbate these tensions because often these colonizers are trying to play these groups off one another. They find these divisions helpful and they can sort of exacerbate them. Let's dig into that because this is our area of focus in today's podcast. We're looking at Arizona. We're looking at the southwest of America, right up to the Mexican border, where, as Carl has just said, you know, you have displaced people being pushed south. You have also, you know, ever since the American Revolution, the Americans have had their eyes on Spanish territories you've

just touched on. Just, I mean, just talk us through some of the movements of that, because 1845 is a really important year for the United States to claim land that wasn't theirs before. Talk us through what happened there. Sure. So 1845 would be the year that the United States annexes Texas. And Texas had been independent for a decade, basically. Independent, I guess I could use loosely from its own perspective. It's independent from the Mexican perspective. It's a breakaway rebel province, which they are intent on trying to reclaim. And Texas, they're fairly weak. They're actually invaded at least once or twice by Mexico trying to reclaim them. So they're quite anxious to get American protection. And you write in the book quite subject to frequent Apache

raids, which is weakening them and making the territory unlivable for many of the groups who are indigenous there. So one of the things that happens as well to set the scene even broader is that Mexico gains its independence in 1821, and it's a very long war of independence. It takes them about 10 years to get their independence from the Spanish. Yeah. And so Mexico kind of enters into independence in a very economically reduced status, and it had previously had this system that we could liken to reservations, establishments de pass,

sort of piece establishments with the Apaches, where they would give them supplies and everything else. They stopped doing that. And then what happens is the Apaches basically start taking what had previously been given to them. So they start this pattern of raids on northern Mexico. And like you're saying, this weakens northern Mexico. And I think some of the new scholarship that's coming out has suggested one reason why Mexico is not able to resist. the U.S. as much as they would have hoped during the U.S.-Mexica war is that they've already been tremendously weakened by Apache Raiders for about two decades. And also a lot of the people in the North are quite outraged that the Mexican government has kind of abandoned them. And so they don't

feel necessarily as inclined to oppose the U.S. invaders when they come in as they might have otherwise. What were the conditions in those peace establishments, you know, before the supplies dried up, were they protein reservations as we think of them today? The one thing I should say is My own theory about this is the Apaches are kind of the quintessential society that's created by European colonialism, which is to say they're there before, but they also create this incredibly fluid band structure, which makes them very difficult for European colonizers to get them. So if you think about, say, the Aztec Empire, it's a very sort of set structure. You take Magathuma and then you control the whole Aztec Empire.

The Apaches have this incredibly sort of just an ameathees. that's always shifting this band structure. And so it's really hard to get control of it. And so they become this incredibly difficult set of raiders. They figured out that basically one of the ways that they can almost take advantage of the presence of the violent Spanish is they can actually raid them. And the Spanish have new goods that have never been in the region before. They have cattle.

They have sheep. They have horses. They have mules. And all these things are transportable. Right? You can seize them and run off with them. And so they really figure out that this is one of the ways they can almost take advantage of the Spanish presence. So they become this incredible barrier and what ultimately the

Spanish figure out is it's cheaper in some ways to give them supplies and create these peace establishments than have them raid us. And so that works pretty well for several decades. So in fact, one of the towns that I study a lot in my book, which is Tucson, now Tucson, Arizona at the time, Tucson Sonota, at one point there were more Apaches living in this town than there were Mexicans. It's a small town at the time. You know, I forget 500 people. And of those 300, Apaches, 200s are Mexicans. And then you begin to see intermarriage and all of this sort of mingling so that Apaches

are learning Spanish and some Mexicans are learning Apache. And that whole world kind of collapses when the Spanish Empire collapses and go back to this sort of raiding environment, but only in a more extreme way. Because at this point now the Apaches have learned more about the Mexicans and they're almost better at rating them and exploiting their weaknesses. So suddenly these tribes who've been living in this territory for some time find the Spanish are no longer ruling them, the Mexicans are no ruling them. Instead, it's a new group, the Americans. And you even give, what's the name that they know the Americans by? At one point they call them the bear enemy, don't they, when the first Americans come in. Because the first Americans that the Apaches interact with are actually like mountain men and they're all dressed up in furs. And they find this very strange. And so they call them the bear men. of the bare enemy, yeah. But they are now in charge of these guys. They are now ruling this.

I mean, I just want to know what they were like. I mean, who were the kind of people under the first? You know, who were these early settlers? So initially, actually, the interactions between the Americans and the Apaches are quite good. So we're talking now, this would be in the late Mexican period, 1830s or so. In some ways, these Americans who come in are, I guess, to use a term, we use a lot in the United States now. They're illegal immigrants. They're not supposed to be in Northern Mexico at this time. They're coming in to hunt fever. They're taking advantage of a kind of loosely monitored Mexican frontier. And they actually strike up very good relationships with the Apache that initially they have these trade relationships. Because they benefit both sides.

They're trading. And they're both kind of not particularly close to the Mexican. So they sort of have this alliance of convenience. And so initially there's a very close relationship. I don't want to over-glamorize it. And one of the things that happens during this time, Mexico is more and more beset by these Apache Raiders, and eventually it creates a scalp policy, which is to say they will pay anyone who gives them the scalp of an Apache Indian, they will pay them money. A lot of these American fur traders, you know, they initially they trade with the Apaches. The Mexicans are not happy about this because often they're trading weapons to the Apaches and making them only more dangerous for the Mexicans.

But then once this scalp policy comes in, some of these Americans begin to take advantage of this, they'll have a meeting where they begin to trade, and then they'll surprise the Apaches and kill them. And so you get a sense of this really violent borderland milieu that's happening here where no one can be completely trusted. Is this what we see in the Revenant, that's the United DiCaprio world, where you've got these fur trappers on the edge of things interacting? But this is not interacting. This is murdering. This is murdering and scalping, isn't it? Well, in the Revenant, too, yeah. The murdering is a perversion. That world is really interesting because a lot of the fur traders actually

do intermarry with native groups, on the other hand, then they're also engaged in these acts of genocide, I think you can call them, against native people as well. Can I ask a really horrific question? It's a very grim history. I should say sort of at the outset, I've sometimes being asked to be on, you know, history documentaries. And I think people want the heroic narrative of the winning of the West. And that's really not my perspective at all. I see it as a very grim world. We're very grateful for your perspective. And also it's sort of, you know, there is this balancing out of the things that we've been fed since childhood, you know, how the West was and all of this kind of heroism.

Exactly. But this idea of paying for a murder, I mean, I hate to ask a question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. I mean, how much were they paying for a scalp, for example? Because this is state-mandated murder in many ways. I want to say 100 pesos, which would have been about $100 at the time, for a man-scalp. Right. And I'm going to get the numbers a little bit wrong.

It's a sliding scale for women and children. Yeah, women were 50 and children were like 25, something like that. It was a sliding scale. We should say this thing is also happening elsewhere in the world, such as Tasmania, other hideous bounty offerings like that. And I think the other thing about this is, I mean, how do you know a scalp is from an Apache versus something else? And so, I mean, one of the many, many complaints here, but is that often it just leads

into just random acts of violence because any Indians scalp will do. I've written a different article. I argue also that a lot of this is based on bounties that they had for predatory animals. that wolves, for instance, at this time, you would bring in what was called the scalp of a wolf. This sort of scalp policy is a way that settlers at the time are often sort of animalizing indigenous others. That's a very instructive and hideous parallel to draw. But by 1848, the United States, you know, it starts off with these bare men who are coming in and intermarrying and these sort of like slightly raggedy edges. But by 1848, the United States has managed to take

almost half of Mexico's territory into its own national domain, something we now know is New Mexico. So does that change the balance and the way in which those interactions go? What was once a permeable border between two peoples becomes less permeable? Eventually it does. I mean, it takes a longer process than you would think. And it kind of unfolds in this slightly piecemeal fashion, which is to say the U.S. annexes Texas in 1845, Texas had been part of Mexico. Then during the war in 1848, they take not only New Mexico, which they do take, but they take. take what now becomes Arizona. They take a big chunk of Colorado and Nevada and then they take, of course, California. And really, this is the goal that the Americans want at the time. They want

California. They want the harbors on the Pacific. And in fact, a lot of people at the time think that New Mexico and Arizona are worthless. It is a pretty bleak landscape. But they feel like, well, this is the area between Texas, which we do want and California, which we do one. So we're going to take it as well. One of the things, too, about, you know, the United States does take half of Mexico, but at this time, Mexico really does not control very much of this territory that they're seizing. It's almost all indigenous controlled territory. What you're seeing is these two nation states, they actually call themselves sister republics. There was this brief moment where Mexico and the U.S. really liked each other. And Mexico models one of its constitutions on the U.S.

Constitution. They see each other as sisters. This is in the 1820s, right? Mexico gets his independence. And then, you know, two decades later, they're at each other's throats during the war with Mexico. And the final moment of annexation, there's one more chunk that comes in 1854, the Gadsden purchase. Yeah, so this is really the last continental expansion of the United States, you know, the 48, the lower what we call in the U.S., the lower 48 states, this is the last expansion. And basically, one of the issues that came up is this whole territory was so little known that they used this mass. called the Sternell's map when the US and Mexico are negotiating the end of the war in 1848.

And it has all the features wrong. And so when they're trying to map it on the ground, they have trouble figuring it out. And it turns out that the US thought that it had enough land that would be suitable for a railroad from Texas over to California. And that ends up not being the case. And so eventually, and you have to realize this is right before the civil war, there's a lot of pressure wanting to have a southern route for the railroad, which would strengthen the southern interests. And in fact, Jefferson Davis, who becomes the president of the Confederacy at this time as a secretary of war and very involved in this process, they need more land, basically, to make the railroad. And so poor Mexico is basically bankrupt. So under President Franklin Pierce, they really pressure Mexico, which feels like either we sell this land to the United States or we risk another invasion by the United States. so they kind of make that difficult decision to sell this chunk of land.

What they sell would now be southern Arizona and would be where you find Tucson and Nogales, which is the border town between Mexico and the United States. And this brings into American territory a great number of in the Apaches. Yes, exactly. So this sets the scene in terms of the story that I'm telling in the book because there's a very small Mexican settlement in Tucson, a even smaller settlement just southward in a place called Tubac, and then almost all the rest of the territory is controlled by indigenous people, predominantly by various bands of Apache.

So all of these Apache peoples, they don't initially know it, but they're now within the boundaries of the United States. Right, and this is the stuff that intrigues or has intrigued Hollywood of yesterday year. I mean, the John Ford, you know, the great epic westerns, was a Fort Apache stagecoach, you know, all of these swaggering, swaggering cowboys who are trying to, according to the Westerns, trying to create some kind of civilization and a lawless turmoil. Yeah, I mean, so most of the Westerns are all exactly from this very short period of time,

actually. 1850s is when they acquire the Gaston Purchase, and then 1886 is when Geronimo surrenders. So at most is kind of three decades of really, I mean, spectacularly violent conflict, which is what Hollywood is so fascinated with. So we have this deep interest, I wouldn't say deep knowledge, but this is, this is that very short period of time. And I think it's actually one of the things when you talk to contemporary Apaches that they get frustrated with is, you know, our history continues after 1886. We're not only for this very short period of time when we're fighting the United States, but that's the only, if people know anything about this indigenous history or anything, they only know this tiny period where there's, you know, just a couple decades long, basically. And, Carl, just fill us in on who Geronimo or the man we know as Geronimo actually was.

How would I explain this? The Apache are not a single tribe. They are a variety of different, I guess you would call them bands. Usually you're arranged in family groups and the family groups fall under the head of a leadership of a particular male figure. They're also united by maternal lines, which are called clans. And so this makes for a very flexible structure. And so Geronua is actually never a chief. he's actually seen as a sort of healer, surprisingly.

Really? A religious figure? A religious character, yeah. And he's seen as having religious power. In fact, he has this vision early on that he will never be killed by the guns of a non-native person, which he's right. He's wounded several times, but he lives a very long life, actually, which is rather amazing, given the very violent world that he was living in at the time. He's actually in a group called the Chiricahua, which is predominantly in southern New Mexico.

but they were a group that was closest to a lot of the Mexican settlements. So this was a group that both knew the Mexicans really well, but also had this tradition of a lot of violence and raids and counter raids with the Mexicans as well. And, Carl, is their reputation in the Hollywood movies of being the really serious fighters, the main men of the resistance? Is that justified? Yeah, the tropes that I grew up with is John Wayne saying, you know, you can't sleep because they don't sleep.

They'll ride for miles. You know, they don't stop to eat. They're not like us. You know, all of those tropes that were kicked up. in those westerns? The Athapaskans are moving in to the southwest, part of the Athapascans are moving in around the same time that the Spanish are moving in. And this is why I think they kind of mutually create each other in certain respects, that the Spanish empire takes, at least in northern Mexico, takes on certain features in response to the Apache presence. And then the Apache,

the way the society becomes organized in certain respects is a response to the Spanish presence. And so they become this very fluid society that's very difficult for the Spanish to grab hold of and conquer. And it also, they figure out how to exploit the Spanish presence and how to raid. And so there is a little bit of truth to that. But I think the Chiracawa are in these Establishments de Pazas. They're in these peace settlements during the end of the Spanish Empire so that they actually are not, it's not a constant history of warfare. Actually, it's a much more fluid sort of thing. And again, when the Americans first come in, the Cherokawa actually strike up good relationships with the Americans.

But you've got, I mean, you've got borders then, which sort of sour all of this, because the American policy has always been push them west, push them west, push them west. But when you've got no more west to push people into, there seems to be a turning point in both the American psyche and the American policy towards Native Americans and the reaction to it. Just talk a little bit about that. Sure. I mean, so this is, I think, one of the ironic outcomes of the war with Mexico. So the United States, you're entirely right. The policy had been Indian removal. So the famous Cherokee Trail of Tears, 1830, the U.S. signs the Indian Removal Act. Everyone talks about the Cherokee, but actually it's targeting almost all the indigenous people east of the Mississippi. And so this is really an effort, I think we could call it to ethnically cleanse the United States east of the Mississippi. people. Well, I was really surprised. I thought it was Cherokee, but the Choctaw talk about it as well. I mean, there was a really strange relationship between Ireland and the Choctaw, where they actually raised money for the Irish potato famine because they say, we have followed the trail of tears, and you are following it now. So that does not just apply to one people. It applies to all

indigenous people. The United States goes through this whole process of removal. Then it wins the war. No sooner does it do that, then it fights a war with Mexico, and it has this continental empire. And it realizes that the previous policy, which was pushing indigenous people to kind of the far western frontier, there is no Western frontier anymore. And so it actually takes the United States a while to figure this out. And this is one reason why I think the Apache history is so violent is that they don't actually have a policy. So they're like, we can't remove, where are we going to remove people to so they don't remove them? They haven't seized on what we eventually becomes the paradigm, which is the reservation. when they encounter Apache, they're like, I don't know what to do it. They just kill them.

So they kill them. So there's violence. Now, there's a man who's very central to when you think about violence with the Apache's, Colonel B-L-E Bonneville. Tell us a little about him and what his role was to, you know, using military force against the Apache as some kind of coherent. I mean, it seems like a coherent plan. This is 1857, which is the same year as the Great Uprising in India, where you have massacres going on, other indigenous groups are being gunned down with great violence. So this is sort of one of the first efforts by the United States. It's just completed the Gadsden Purchase that Bonneville is the head of the Department of New Mexico, which at the time includes what becomes a state of Arizona. What was he like? Who was he? What's his origin story? He actually was born in France. His family is good friends with Thomas Paine, the radical writer. And so Payne encourages them to migrate to the United States. And then Bonneville, as a lot of the officers at the time did, he went to West Point.

The military academy. Military Academy, exactly, the United States Military Academy. And then he's involved in various Indian wars. A lot of these guys from West Point is sort of ironic. They're all trained at West Point, how to fight Napoleonic battles in Europe. But all of them, what they end up doing is fighting these guerrilla warfare against indigenous peoples for most of their careers, the civil war being a great exception. So Bonneville comes out and he's trying to get control of New Mexico and finding the Apaches difficult to, manage at this time. Well, let's say it's a good point to take a break. Let's come back after the break

where we find out what the West Point graduate friend of the Thomas Payne. That's a revelation to me decides to do in how he wages his war. Welcome back. So just before the break, we introduced you to Colonel B.L.E. Bonneville, who is acting commander of the Department of New Mexico. And it is now for him to regain control of the full region. He has that mandate. He has that instruction. How does he go about doing it? The short answer is incredibly violently and also incredibly unsuccessfully, which I think is revealing as well. Yes, that's interesting. I mean, are they using the wrong tactics? Are they using Western Field Army tactics against the Apatians and finding that they're being run around, rings around? Pretty much. I mean, so he sets out, he has,

I can't remember the exact number of men, I'm going to say a thousand. He was a large force of American soldiers, which he then supplements with various sort of local auxiliaries. What, the spy companies? Are we talking about the spy company? Yeah, so he has a group of Pueblo Indians that are brought in, and then also a group of local Mexicans, so people who have been there. And they're out in the field for six or seven weeks chasing the Apaches. The Apaches, you know, they just move, basically. They're much faster than Bonneville's horses. And the other thing they do is they'll often set fire to the terrain, which would deprive Bonneville's horses of any, you know, food so that it slows them down even further.

Well, scorched earth, predated, way predating, scorched earth. At some point Bonneville, he does surprise one small encampment of Apaches. He kills all the men there, even takes some of the Apache men prisoner. Quite small numbers, though, isn't it? I mean, 24 dead. It's something like 24 men, the few men that he captures alive, he then executes. He tries to bring the Apaches in with a flag of truce, which he's then hoping to violate and kill.

And this actually all touches on a debate that was going on in the U.S. at the time, which is There's a notion of civilized warfare, as you would fight in Europe or whatever, against the Canadians when they're during the war of 1812. And there's a notion of savage warfare, which is that you don't have to obey the rules of war at all. And so the U.S. had already violated this. You know, during the war against the Seminoles, they fly a flag of truce and then they seize a lot of the Seminole leaders. They violate the flag of truce. And President Jackson says, well, we don't have to obey the laws of war. Same rules don't apply to these guys.

To these people. I would say obviously there's this poor one Apache band is caught and killed, but more or less it's a huge failure. They're out in the field for all this time. Bonneville's orders, and this reveals, I think, how incredibly violent this is, as he says, we are to stay in the field until we destroy the Apaches as a known group. So what do they do to the women and children? Because if you have that mandate to eradicate people. It's not very clear in the archives, but often they actually end up. Selling them as slaves or servants in the local society, there was a tradition in Mexico of basically de facto slavery where you would take young, what are seen as pliable people. So, you know, young children and sometimes women and make them be forced servants of household servants and a lot of your households. And just to be explicit about this, also prostitutes and effectively sex slaves.

I mean, I'm sure there was a lot of sexual violence as well, yes. But this act of killing all the men and taking the women in children, it's. does disgust some people at the time, does it not? Yeah, so one reason we know about this is when Bonneville orders the Apache male captives to be killed, that one of the soldiers is outraged by this and the sort of mistreatment of what's going on. When he says, he says, hands are tied and he was shot like a dog by a Puebla Indian. Brutish and cowardly, he says. Right. And the other thing as well is that at the time, the Apaches are actually not injuring Americans.

So they're in the border region, and they have now been told you in the U.S. United States, you can't injure Americans. They are continuing to raid into Mexico, which as far as they're concerned, like, we're not hurting Americans. We're not, we're not injuring you. Originally, the Treaty of Guadalupe de Algo, the United States is supposed to stop this rating, but that's so difficult for them to do that they actually get rid of that in the Gassan Treaty. So it isn't as though actually these Apaches pose an immediate threat to the United States. I think it was just the desire of the United States to control. Or to clear the land, clear the land and make it easy. I mean, man you're talking about as a man called Dubois, I find him fascinating because he does also,

right, and you know, describing what you were talking about before, that if a group of Apaches came to parley under this flag of truce, that would not be observed. You would welcome them and then you'd kill them all. We say, I could not avoid asking myself, why we'd killed these poor harmless savages. It is not pretended that they ever did any harm to us, robbing only from the Mexicans of Sonora. Like, they never hurt us, but we're still doing this to them. But also referring to them as savages, so there's human pity that it goes only so far. All of this literature at the time, the Americans are quite deeply invested in this notion of the divide between civilization and savagery and quite clear that they are the civilized side

of it. Although I think what's very fascinating about this incident is the Americans are acting in ways that I think the Apaches would consider quite savage and are really in some ways the savages in this particular encounter. Okay, but no matter the violence, no matter how much Bonneville tries, this is not a region that is coming under control. So what is the next step? for their settlers or the colonizers. What do they do next? So they then begin to do these sort of informal treaties. And I call them informal because, you know, the United States has signed something like over 300 treaties with various native groups, which continue to be in place today. But prior to this, they come up with what's known in the region there in Arizona as Calico treaties,

which are basically informal agreements. Is Calico, is Calico an indigenous word? What does it mean? No, it's the cloth. So basically one of the things they would give gifts, usually often Calico was a gift that a lot of the Apache women's camp dresses are made from Calico, something that they've actually learned from earlier during the Estabas Mendoz de Pas when they were closer with the Spanish. So they've kind of adopted certain European fabrics and then incorporated them into their culture. They make these informal treaties, but they're done on a very localistic level, which is what I want to emphasize. And in that respect, the Apaches have a very localistic sense of their society. They say you don't go any further than this. They give

you're raiding, and you will only, is that one of treating you in the life? Well, they'll say, like, you know, we're here. A lot of mining is an early thing there. So, like, I have this mine here, and we'll have this agreement. I'll give you some supplies. But don't raid me in my mine. But if you go and raid the, you know, the Mexican mine across the border or these people over there, it's fine. And so the Apaches felt like we're being peaceful, we're honoring this, but they don't necessarily grasp all the implications of what's going on. We should say also the Calico comes from the word Calicut. It's an Indian cloth. Yes, that's right. That's right. That's right. That's what I thought.

I thought suddenly a... Where Vasco da Gama turns up and blows up the Zabberin. Yeah. So you've got these sort of loosely tied small communities, but that does not make a piece. So the rhetoric starts getting worse, the violence starts getting worse because the ambition to actually, as you say, hoover up the land without these troublesome groups in them becomes the imperative. Yes. And also because these things are so localistic, often settlers may think, I'm making a treaty with the Apache.

They're making a treaty. in reality with this local band. Some other band comes along and steals their horses and they think the Apache are betraying me. They're not agreeing. But that, of course, is just the nature of, like I said, it's not a single unified tribe. It's a very diverse sort of confederacy or whatever you want to call it. But then you've got the media. It's always plays a part in this, but the weekly Arizona miner. I mean, you talked about mines and mining being a, but this is a publication for miners. 1860s, I think this is our country, not the Apaches. American blood and treasure secured it from Mexico, the American people cannot now do otherwise and help us to fight

the great battle of civilization, to overthrow the barbarians, to teach them that white supremacy, even in Arizona, is decreed of God. God, that same rhetoric we get today even. Well, you said it really well. I mean, basically, this creates this incredibly violent situation. A lot of the violence now is being done by settlers, which is to say in Arizona, it's, I don't know how else to describe it except genocidal. I mean, basically, as I mentioned in the book, the settlers will shoot in people wherever they see them. I wouldn't balk at it. I mean, they carry on. They write about it. Extermination is our only hope. And the sooner, the better. As says a writer for the Arizona minor. I was doing research. I mean, it was quite disturbing,

but they're quite blunt. They're not sort of using euphemisms or anything. They're quite blunt about what we want to do. And so the term that they use at the time, and there is, of course, the term genocide does not exist, is not invented until after World War II. But the term they're using at the time as extermination, and they're not being at all shy about it. We want extermination, and they will go out and they will organize groups of settlers, and they will go out and they will kill. Often, every Apache they find. I talk about it in the book. There's a little bit of a discussion about, is it okay to kill women and children or not? But a lot of the settlers are even okay with doing that. And it's just incredibly bleak. It's bleak is what it is.

And is it settlers with lynch mobs, or have you got the army now involved? and Gatling guns and all the rest of it. Well, there's no Gatling guns don't exist at this point. But they're, I mean, sort of odd when you read this because the settlers feel the army is not aggressive enough. There even is some rhetoric that, you know, the Army is coddling the Apache, which I don't see to be the case at all.

And the Apache, you know, they have no place to go that's safe. 1861? Yes, it is around the Gala gun. Oh, the Gelligan. I'm sorry. Well, in 1950s, okay. So I knew it was invented right before the Civil War. by Richard Jordan Gatling.

It's not adopted by the US Army until the Civil War. It existed. It wasn't used. They had other things to kill people with. Got it. Okay. Yes. So you've got the army involvement. Now, you mentioned the Civil War, which, again, sort of concentrates troop movements in the area,

which then, I guess, ups the violence even more and the sweeps of indigenous people. Well, in some ways, it de-concentrates the troops in the region. So basically, what happens is during the... the Civil War, most of the U.S. forces pull out because they're all going to the Eastern theaters to fight Virginia and everywhere else out there. And so there's almost no U.S. military presence for a while in Arizona, which means that, of course, it's just the settlers in the Apache fighting each other. There is a brief moment when the Confederacy moves in and occupies

Arizona. Interesting because people don't think about this much, but it has its own Indian policy as well, basically this extremely exterminationist policy. And then the US finally comes in and reoccupies Arizona, and they also come up with an exterminationist policy. So in that respect, even though the north and south they're seen as really different during this time, in terms of their approach towards indigenous people, is pretty much the same. Same. Yeah. And you have a horrific story in your book. They're not content with shooting these guys down or clubbing them. They actually start leaving poisoned sugar around the place. Strickenine is put inside sugar and left where it can be found. And this is what I was talking about earlier about the ways in which the metaphor is attached

or ideas attached to animals get attached to the Apache. So strickenine is developed originally to kill wolves. And so then they put it into, I think it's actually from Nukshamika, which is from India. So if you want to think about the larger notions of empire during this time period, people would put out strickenine lace meat to kill wolves. And then they realize we can do something similar to kill these. They literally call Apaches human wolves. They will put out sugar, for instance, licked with strickenine and hope to kill Apaches, but of course, any poor person who takes that will die. A soldier who'd come to Arizona as part of something called the California column during the Civil War. Alonzo Davis writes about this, you know, the Strickening

and the sugar. He says, this incident may seem harsh to people who know nothing of conditions on the old frontier, but it was the only way we could get hold of those natives who would never stand and fight. Again, this is like the, you know, the wolves are so tricky and you can't catch them. The only way to get them is with the strickenine and then the same notion here. That quote in an interesting way pays homage to the elusiveness of the Apaches and how difficult they were for Americans at this time to really counter by conventional means. And so they end up doing these really just horrific things. Do you get any pushback against this, Carl? Do you find that there are people who are horrified by this, who are putting bills in Congress?

and so on to try and... Yeah, I mean, you're rewriting John Wayne in a way by telling us these stories, aren't you? John Wayne's not looking good in this story. I had never seen the strickenine story until I dug it up in my research, so I don't know how much that is actually known outside of this research that I did. So one of the things that happens after the Civil War is that a lot of the abolitionists who were very involved in what they called the Negro problem, the issues of slavery, they end up sort of becoming involved.

they then think the next big reform they need to do is the so-called Indian problem. And so a lot of these people then are beginning to speak out against some of the violence of the U.S. army and the settlers towards indigenous people. But I really feel like they're the minority voice. And certainly within Arizona itself, I never encountered any real opposition to this extreme kind of violence that people were unleashing. Are you talking about these people who are saying, you know, let's talk about the Indian problem? Is that what we call the 1869 Congress created Board of Indian Commissioners? I mean, these are evangelicals and, I mean, one would say,

humanitarians who are saying, look, actually we can't behave like this anymore. Yeah, they are. I mean, I think they're, in one way, they're quote-unquote, humanitarians. Clearly, though, what they want to do in this respect, they're really trying to transform Native society. They're not saying we're going to leave indigenous people alone. We're going to give Arizona back to the indigenous people. they're saying there's a sort of Christian Pacific way to do this, which would be to turn Apaches

into good yeoman farmers and Christian Yoman farmers who speak English and wear Western South clothes and all this. Okay, so don't destroy their lives, but destroy their culture and make them. Yes, I mean, I think from today's perspective, we would say it's a form of cultural genocide. So you have the Apaches, you can choose between the physical genocide or the settlers or the cultural genocide of the quote-unquote reformers. it's not a wonderful choice that you're being confronted with. The same year that this Congress created, Board of Indian Commissioners is made,

you also have the election of Ulysses S. Grant. Now, tell us a little bit about him. He's a fascinating character. One of the great names, too. Yes, Ulysses S. Grant. His secretary is Eli Parker, who's actually a Seneca, American Indian. And there's a very famous story that when Grant meets with Lee at Appomattox for Lee to surrender his army of Northern Virginia,

it's Eli Parker who's writing down the terms of surrender. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so Lee turns to Parker and he says something along the lines of, I'm glad to see you a real American here. And then Parker says today we're all Americans, something along those lines. And then Parker also becomes the first native person to head the Office of Indian Affairs. You know, in some ways that's quite remarkable.

And then also Grant sets out what he calls the peace policy, which sounds great that he's trying to be peaceful towards indigenous people, and what he wants to do is get what had been this very corrupt office of Indian affairs out of managing Indian policy and managing some of the reservations. But he suggests turning the reservations over to religious groups, so in many respects, he's working hand and glove with these kinds of reformers who are really trying to eradicate indigenous culture. Very similar to the end of the slave trade, isn't it? Where you've got Christian evangelicals very much working to end slavery, not for, the kind of human rights views that we would have today, but in order to assist conversion

and the Christianization of these people. Australia, taking Aboriginal children away from their families and putting them hundreds of miles away in some really quite harsh Catholic, Jesuit, et cetera, environments, yeah. Exactly, because this is when you get the boarding schools within the United States, which are really these engines of breaking up native families and destroying native culture. And so the peace policy, and sounds good, or you know who is against a peace policy, but it is actually in its own way very, very violent. And the other thing that comes out of the peace policy,

and they're beginning to create reservations at this time, is the notion that indigenous people need to move to the reservation and do what they're supposed to do under these religious authorities on the reservation. And if they're not on the reservation, then we basically have free hand to go and kill them. This is very much the background to the English. Did you see that mini-series with Emily Blunt? That's immediately after the Civil War.

very well done, actually. One of the better, and it has very, very horrific descriptions of violence done to the Indigenous nations with machine guns, I mean, by gunning guns. So, I mean, this is the great irony. So it's called, you know, the peace policy, but actually what it leads to is a wholesale turning on Indigenous people all over, as you say, they don't move into the reservations. I mean, places like Fort Apache created in 1817. If they don't move onto the reservation, they can be wiped out. So the peace policy leads to violence, not just in Arizona, but pretty much wherever there are Native Americans. Look, we're going to end this one here, but join us in the next episode where Carl will be with us again and taking us forward into their next chapter. Focusing in on his extraordinary book, Shadows at Dawn, an Apache massacre and the violence of history.

Till then, is goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Duremple.