War of a Thousand Deserts

American author and historian Brian DeLay’s non-fiction book War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (2008) discusses the series of deadly attacks carried out in Mexican territory by Comanche raiding parties between 1834 and 1847, and how these raids helped lead to the U.S.-Mexican War.

Long before the conflict erupted, U.S. Army General James Wilkinson called the Comanche "the most powerful nation of savages on this continent." However, their influence began to decline following the expulsion of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Chocktaw, Creek, and Seminole Indians from the East. Their forced migration to the Great Plains created a huge surge in conflict over land and resources among the various tribes. Moreover, these new migratory tribes were often better armed than the Comanche, having been directly or indirectly involved in various conflicts between colonists and European powers, such as the French-Indian War and the American War of Independence. In addition, at this time, the Comanche were experiencing heavy losses to diseases like smallpox that had been introduced over the previous decades by European settlers. Finally, there was the influx of American pioneers and frontiersmen who now threatened their land.

Against this backdrop of increased hardship, the Comanche sought help from neighboring Mexico. The Mexican government had helped the Comanche in the past, as part of an alliance against the Apache. Unfortunately, ever since Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, it lacked the resources of the Spanish Empire and could no longer provide much aid to the Comanche nation. Another important contextual factor was the sudden demand for horses and mules from migratory white Americans looking to start a homestead in Texas. Though risky, a young Comanche man with little prospects could stage a daring raid of horses in Mexican territory and then sell the horses at great profit to white frontiersmen. As this trend continued, DeLay argues that the frontiersmen actively encouraged young Comanche men to undertake these raids.



By the 1840s, Comanche raids in Mexico had become bolder and bloodier. DeLay describes a raid in December 1840 in which a band of four hundred Comanche crossed the Rio Grande River into Mexico and went on as far south as San Luis Potosí. There, residents said they had not seen raiding parties of "los barbaros" that far south in more than a century. On the way back to Texas, the raiders grew even more daring, attacking Saltillo, a major city and the capital of the Coahuila province, and killing one hundred of its residents, including its former governor, Don José María Goribar. Things got worse before they would get better. In time, DeLay says, the raiding almost became more about blind rage and savagery than about practical economic incentives: “The violence was so frequent, determined and severe that it often deprived the raiders of some or all of their spoils and put their own men at grave risk.”

Meanwhile, Mexico's efforts to stop the Comanche raids were terribly uncoordinated. While one province entered into a peace treaty with the tribe, another would be simultaneously fighting for its life against an active raiding party. Mexico's ineffectual response to the raids, DeLay argues, was one of the biggest reasons U.S. President James K. Polk felt confident entering into armed conflict with Mexico over a contested piece of land across the Texas-Mexico border known as the Nueces Strip. Assuming Mexico's military capacity and organization were severely lacking based on its response to the Comanche raids, Polk commanded Major General Zachary Taylor to move 3,500 American troops into the disputed area. Also under consideration was the land of Alta California. The idea of Manifest Destiny influenced Polk's vision of an America that extended all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

However, while Polk perhaps expected the overwhelmed Mexican government to give up the land without a fight, the political situation in Mexico made that virtually impossible. In the span of a year, four different people held the presidency in Mexico. Meanwhile, the war ministry changed hands six times over that same period. Holding onto these lands became a matter of national pride for the majority of Mexicans, who considered leaders like former President Jose Joaquin de Herrera traitors to the cause of Mexican nationalism. Moreover, it was much easier for Mexico to mobilize troops around a defined area of contested land than it was to defend against the guerrilla-style attacks of the Comanche. In this way, the author writes, Polk was influenced by the Comanche raids in his decision to provoke Mexico into war, but he seemed to take the wrong lesson from it.



War of a Thousand Deserts is another example of scholarly research from twenty-first-century historians that helpfully re-contextualizes the role Native American tribes played in shaping some of the biggest events in American history.