UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Cruel Embrace: War and Slavery in the Texas Borderlands, 1700-1840 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2q08b3nd Author Flomen, Max Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Cruel Embrace: War and Slavery in the Texas Borderlands, 1700-1840 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Max Flomen 2018 © Copyright by Max Flomen 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Cruel Embrace: War and Slavery in the Texas Borderlands, 1700-1840 by Max Flomen Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Stephen A. Aron, Chair This dissertation examines the role of slaving during the encounter between indigenous societies and Euro-American empires in the Texas borderlands from 1700 to 1840. Historians have generally overlooked the structures that bound continental and Atlantic slave systems together. In this multipolar borderland pastoral and plantation modes of production conflicted and comingled, drawing all participants into a “cruel embrace” rife with possibilities for exploitation, destruction, and reinvention. The dissertation charts the formation of French and Spanish colonies in Louisiana and Texas during the eighteenth century, where forced, long-distance transfers placed indigenous and African populations into plantation and mission regimes. Within the indigenous world of the Southern Plains, epidemics, firearms, and horses catalyzed the emergence of powerful equestrian societies. Slaving figured prominently in the confrontation of these band societies and European empires, and captives themselves assumed significant roles during a period of protracted inter-cultural warfare. Following Mexican independence in 1821, ii the arrival of Native American and Anglo-American colonists introduced new contenders for control of land and labour in this fractious borderland. During the ensuing conflicts of the 1830s and 1840s, new multi-ethnic cohorts emerged to contest the expansion of plantation slavery. iii The dissertation of Max Flomen is approved. Jessica R. Cattelino Benjamin L. Madley Stephen A. Aron, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 iv Table of Contents Introduction: Engines of Capture, Ethnographies of Violence……………………………………1 Chapter 1: Origins of a Slaving Zone, 1700-1770……………………………………………….17 Chapter 2: Slaving Communities and the Pastoral-Plantation Borderland, 1770s-1780s……….61 Chapter 3: War and Slavery in the Borderland, 1785-1795…………………………………….107 Chapter 4: Newcomers, Revolution, and Divergent Slaveries, 1800-1825…………………….142 Chapter 5: The Long War for the Texas Borderlands, 1825-1840……………………………..188 Conclusion: Slaving, Borderlands, Fragments………………………………………………….236 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………241 v Acknowledgements This dissertation was completed with financial support from the UCLA History Department, UCLA Graduate Division, the University of Texas Center for American History, the Center for French Colonial Studies, the Newberry Library, and the Gilder-Lerhman Institute of American History. Steve Aron and Ben Madley played integral roles in helping me bring this project to fruition. I wish to thank my teachers, colleagues, friends, and family at UCLA and beyond for their advice, help, and support. All errors are mine. vi Curriculum Vitae EDUCATION M.A., Department of History, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, 2011 B.A., Department of History, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, 2009 AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS Dissertation Year Fellowship, UCLA Graduate Division, 2017-2018 Newberry Library-Jack Miller Center Short-Term Fellowship, 2016-2017 Carl J. Ekberg Research Grant, Center for French Colonial Studies, 2016 Samuel and Marion Merrill Graduate Student Travel Grant, Organization of American Historians, 2016 Conference, Providence, RI Gilder-Lerhman Institute of American History Fellowship, 2015-2016 University of Texas, Center for American History, William and Madeline Smith Travel Award, 2015-2016 and 2017-2018 UCLA Gary B. Nash Graduate Fellowship in Early American History, 2014-2015 LANGUAGES Fluent in English, French, and Spanish vii Introduction: Engines of Capture, Ethnographies of Violence At dawn on March 6, 1836 Mexican troops commanded by President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna stormed San Antonio’s Mission de Valero, known as El Alamo. Regarding the Anglo-American rebels inside as pirates, before the assault Santa Anna’s flagbearer hoisted the red banner that signalled “no quarter.” As the sun rose over the smoking ruins of the mission, Joe, an enslaved African-American brought to Texas by one of the rebels, was the only male defender left alive. Santa Anna released Joe to carry news of the battle to the remaining insurgents and then pressed the offensive. But as the Mexican Army advanced on the abandoned plantations of east Texas, another force approached from the west.1 Entering war-ravaged San Antonio just months after the fall of the Alamo, the Comanche leader Casimiro and his men expressed no interest in the ongoing Anglo-Mexican conflict. Casimiro had a message. But first he and his companions wanted something to eat. Entering a storehouse, Casimiro asked the Tejano (Hispanic Texan) soldier Antonio Menchaca if he could have parcels of salty bread, dried beans, and three strings of peppers. After Menchaca obliged, Casimiro turned to depart “but before he left he looked at me in a very strange pitying manner and said to me Manchaca I feel a great deal of compassion for you.” Menchaca asked to know the reasons for Casimiro’s disquiet. Casimiro told him that Comanches “intended to come into San Antonio burn the town and kill all the people.” Listening as Menchaca stumbled from terror to indignation, Casimiro informed his old acquaintance that “I have 20 horses 2 mexican prisoners to wait on me and 4 wives. If you will come and live with me and my band I will devide equally with you each of these articles.” Menchaca demurred but gave six bottles of mescal and some sugar cakes (piloncillos) to the visitors, who promptly left. Mencahca himself 1 For Joe’s account of the fall of the Alamo, see the entry of March 20, 1836, in Paul D. Lack, ed., The Diary of William Fairfax Gray: From Virginia to Texas, 1835-1837 (Dallas, 1997), 128-129. 1 soon departed the beleaguered capital for Nacogdoches, where he hoped to retrieve his family. During their journey home, he learned that in mid-August Casimiro led 1,500 Comanches against San Antonio and a nearby mission, killing six people and taking numerous horses.2 Indigenous-colonial diplomacy intertwined gendered exchanges of goods, animals, and captives during interactions punctuated by violence as well as reciprocity. “Cruel Embrace: War and Slavery in the Texas Borderlands, 1700-1840,” examines the comingling of slaving practices at the intersection of indigenous borderlands and the Atlantic World. It is a history of how slaving defined and shaped borderland peoples. Pushing beyond standard categories (specific colonies or tribes) and chronologies (colonial and national periods), this dissertation investigates the interplay between pastoral and plantation-oriented slaving to demonstrate how alliances, warfare, and the exchange of captives proved mutually-constitutive of unfree labour regimes in a borderland setting. Although the confluence of slaving cultures manifested shared meanings, this collectively-constructed world masked predatory motives that unleashed pain, disillusion, and destruction for tens of thousands of people. Charting these changing patterns, the dissertation foregrounds the experiences of the indigenous bands, Euro-American slavers, and captives of all nations who moved across the borderland slaving zone – both to exploit others and to mitigate their own precarious circumstances. Analyzing the strategies of equestrian raiders, missionized Natives, maroon bands, and slave traders, the dissertation argues that slaving drew the peoples of three continents across vast cultural and geographical distances into a “cruel embrace” – relationships fraught with violence from within and shifts in alliance politics from without. In a multipolar setting where no group was dominant, the unintended consequences of slaving conjured coalescent 2 Antonio Menchaca, “The Unpublished Second Part of the Menchaca Manuscript,” in Recollections of a Tejano Life: Antonio Menchaca in Texas History, Timothy Movina and Jesús F. de la Teja, eds., (Austin, 2013), 155. 2 peoples, galvanized new forms of resistance, and infused regional politics with the constant threat of insurrection or enslavement.3 Applying the borderlands paradigm to build a more complete (but certainly contested) narrative of colonial slavery, this dissertation focuses on the activities of protean formations during a period of biological catastrophes and revolutionary changes. Analyzing slaving as central to inter-communal relations, rather than the product of an institutionalized imperial project, frames a new understanding of how competing modes of production mingled the practices and personnel of different slave regimes. Doing so shifts our understanding of multi- ethnic coalitions, such as raiding bands and fugitive communities, out of a national or racial framework and onto the more fluid social terrain where the dispossessed discovered new methods of recombination.