Community, Power, and Colonialism -The U.S
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Community, Power, and Colonialism -The U.S. Army in Southern Arizona and New Mexico, 1866-1886 Janne Lahti Academic dissertation to be publicly discussed, by due permission of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki in auditorium XIV, on the 3 rd of April, 2009 at 12 o’clock Copyright 2009 Janne Lahti ISBN 978-952-92-5179-7 (print) ISBN 978-952-10-5311-5 (pdf) http://ethesis.helsinki.fi Helsinki University Print Helsinki 2009 Contents Contents iii List of Illustrations vi Abstract vii Acknowledgments viii Part I Introduction 1. A Colonizer Community in the Southwest 1 1.1 The Argument 1 1.2 Postcolonialism as Research Paradigm 7 1.3 Whiteness and Class 12 1.4 Army History, Western Expansion, and Colonialism 13 1.5 Chapters 18 1.6 Sources 19 2. From Apacheria to U.S. Southwest: A Short History of A Place Facing Colonialism 22 2.1 The Spaniards and Apache Power 23 2.2 U.S. Army and Continental Conquest 27 2.3 U.S.-Apache Wars 30 2.4 The U.S. Colonial Regime 36 Part II The Colony 3. Journey to the “Outside”: The Army on the Road to the Southwest 42 3.1 Transient Conquerors 45 3.2 Travel Routes and Transports 50 3.3 Class and Travel 55 3.4 Representations of the Journey 63 Conclusion: Penetrating the Wilderness 69 4. Apaches in White Army Minds 72 4.1 Constructing Apaches as the Enemy of Whiteness 74 4.1.1 Apache Society 76 4.1.2 Apache Rule 81 4.1.3 The Apache Way of War 85 4.1.4 Fear of the Colonized 89 iii 4.2 Representing the Akimel O’odham 92 4.3 Violence: “Apaches Deserve Punishment” 94 4.4 Imagining Apache Futures 103 4.4.1 Reservation Regeneration 105 4.4.2 Abducting Apache Children 111 4.5 Colonial Knowledge and Apache History 113 Conclusion: The Racial Other 118 5. “The Devil’s Garden” or “Our Great Western Empire”: White Army Men and Women and the Place Facing Colonialism 121 5.1 “Lost in Apacheria”: The Landscapes 124 5.2 Borderlands Society 133 5.2.1 Mexicans 133 5.2.2 Whites 137 5.2.3 Settlements 143 5.3 “Inhospitable Wasteland” 148 5.4 “Our Great Western Empire” 155 5.5 Representing the Army’s Mission 162 Conclusion: Wretched Present, Thriving Future 166 Part III The Community 6. The Army Village as White Middle-Class Living Space 170 6.1 Village Locations and Public Space 172 6.2 Domestic Space 178 6.3 Domestic Life 185 Conclusion: Imperfect Islands of Civilization 191 7. Manual Labor, Leisure, and the Construction of Social Order in the Army Villages 193 7.1 Labor 194 7.1.1 The Army Elite and Labor 194 7.1.2 Enlisted Men’s Labor Tasks 198 7.2 Resistance and Leisure in the Enlisted Ranks 207 7.2.1 Resistance at Work 209 7.2.2 Desertion 209 7.2.3 Leisure and Class Consciousness 213 iv 7.3 Leisure as Middle-Class Privilege 218 7.3.1 Life of Leisure 219 7.3.2 Social Control and Disharmony 229 Conclusion: Two Worlds 233 8. Colonized Labor: Apaches as Army Workers 235 8.1 Army Work as Colonial Resistance 239 8.2 Apaches at Work 244 8.3 A Precarious Labor System 252 8.4 White Army Personnel and the Search for Authority over the Colonized Workforce 262 Conclusion: A Race-Based Labor System 267 Conclusion. An Empire of Denial, Difference, and Frustration 270 Sources 275 v List of Illustrations Map of Apacheria x Map of Arizona army villages 169 vi Abstract Empire is central to U.S. history. As the U.S. projects its influence on a global scale in today’s world, it is important to understand that U.S. empire has had a long history. This dissertation offers a case study of colonialism and U.S. empire by discussing the social worlds, labor regimes, and culture of the U.S. Army during the conquest of southern Arizona and New Mexico (1866-1886). It highlights some of the defining principles, mentalities, and characteristics of U.S. imperialism and shows how U.S. forces have in years past constructed their power and represented themselves, their missions, and the places and peoples that faced U.S. imperialism/colonialism. Using insights from postcolonial studies and whiteness studies, this work balances its attention between discursive representations (army stories) and social experience (army actions), pays attention to silences in the process of historical production, and focuses on collective group mentalities and identities. In the end the army experience reveals an empire in denial constructed on the rule of difference and marked by frustration. White officers, their wives, and the white enlisted men not only wanted the monopoly of violence for the U.S. regime but also colonial (mental/cultural) authority and power, and constructed their identity, authority, and power in discourse and in the social contexts of the everyday through difference. Engaged in warfare against the Apaches, they did not recognize their actions as harmful or acknowledge the U.S. invasion as the bloody colonial conquest it was. White army personnel painted themselves and the army as liberators, represented colonial peoples as racial inferiors, approached colonial terrain in terms of struggle, and claimed that the region was a terrible periphery with little value before the arrival of white “civilization.” Officers and wives also wanted to place themselves at the top of colonial hierarchies as the refined and respectable class who led the regeneration of the colony by example: they tried to turn army villages into islands of civilization and made journeys, leisure, and domestic life to showcase their class sensibilities and level of sophistication. Often, however, their efforts failed, resulting in frustration and bitterness. Many blamed the colony and its peoples for their failures. The army itself was divided by race and class. All soldiers were treated as laborers unfit for self-government. White enlisted men, frustrated by their failures in colonial warfare and by constant manual labor, constructed worlds of resistance, whereas indigenous soldiers sought to negotiate the effects of colonialism by working in the army. As colonized labor their position was defined by tension between integration and exclusion and between freedom and colonial control. vii Acknowledgments Several institutions and many individuals helped me in making this project come true. The work began in 2003 when the ASLA-Fulbright fellowship, together with the funding from the Academy of Finland, enabled me to spend three semesters at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Time in Lincoln proved invaluable. I not only had the opportunity to participate in excellent courses and seminars in my special field, but was introduced to postcolonialism and whiteness studies, and managed to do much of my primary source research in excellent facilities. I first would like to extend my profound appreciation to my advisor John Wunder for his hospitality, kindness, and guidance. His breadth of knowledge, ability to offer constructive criticism, and his empathy serve as a model to all historians. Margaret Jacobs, Victoria Smith, and Michael Tate deserve thanks for their patience in hearing my ideas, for their encouragement, and for sharing their thoughts on colonialism, the Apaches, and the army. Also thanks to David Wishart, Kenneth Winkle, and Peter Maslowski. Research fellowship from the Arizona Historical Society allowed me to finish my research in the U.S. In Tucson, James Turner and Bruce Dinges made we feel welcome in what was my first visit to the heartlands of old Apacheria. Erkki Kouri served as my dissertation advisor at the History Department, University of Helsinki. I wish to express my gratitude for his supervision and for believing in me. At all times he has been very supportive of my research and always found the time to help me and listen what I had in mind. I also want to thank Hannes Saarinen for his counsel during the final stages of the project and Markku Peltonen for his support when I got started. I am also more than thankful to my advisor Markku Henriksson. His remarks, direction, and friendship made my work much better. The year-long grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation provided me with the wonderful opportunity to write my study full time and University of Helsinki’s grant for finishing the doctoral dissertation allowed me to concentrate on the final revisions of the manuscript. I am also appreciative of the financial assistance from the History Department at the University of Helsinki, the Chancellor’s Travel Grant, and the Finish Doctoral School of History that made my research and conference trips possible. In addition to my three advisors, many people read parts of the manuscript offering advice and corrections both on the language and on the contents. I benefited greatly from their insightful evaluations and suggestions. Thanks to Margaret Jacobs, Sherry Smith, Kevin Adams, Robert Wooster, Michael Tate, Todd Kerstetter, Lorraine viii McConaghy, Bruce Dinges, James Turner, Durwood Ball, Merry Ovnick, and Colleen O’Neill. Also, thanks to Erika Bsumek and Bruce Vandervort for their observations. Finally I wish to thank my parents for their love and support and my wife, Sanna, who has been there for me. She alone knows how much I owe to her. ix Map of Apacheria Source: Kenneth T. Jackson & James Truslow Adams, Atlas of American History . x Part I INTRODUCTION Chapter 1 A Colonizer Community in the Southwest “In the colonies it is the policeman and the soldier who are the official, instituted go-betweens, the spokesmen of the settler and his rule of oppression…The intermediary does not lighten the oppression, nor seek to hide the domination; he shows them up and puts them into practice with the clear conscience of an upholder of the peace; yet he is the bringer of violence into the home and into the mind of the native.” 1 -Frantz Fanon “Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.” 2 -Friedrich Nietzsche 1.1 The Argument This dissertation offers perspective on the structures of power, identity, and community and on the significances and meanings of whiteness and class in nineteenth- century colonial encounters by discussing the United States Army in southern Arizona and New Mexico during the post-Civil War era of military conquest (1866-1886).