Native American Borderlands

388 S. Grand Mesa Dr,Cedaredge CO 81413

09 June, 2022

Description

The area we now think of as the United States-Mexico Borderlands was mostly uninhabited by European colonists until well into the 1800s. Dr. Pamela Krch, Instructor of History at Colorado Mesa University​, is our special guest speaker for this week's very exciting Pioneer Town Talk. The area we now think of as the United States-Mexico Borderlands was mostly uninhabited by European colonists until well into the seventeenth century—in some areas even later—but fully inhabited by America’s Indigenous peoples who maintained considerable power until the mid-nineteenth century. The Indigenous peoples who inhabited this region were not monolithic, nor did they have any sense of shared pan-Indian identity. Different groups moved into and out of this area as the power dynamics changed over time. Even the Spanish were responsible, for example, for bringing in Native peoples from southern and central Mexico to work as laborers or soldiers. Spain also introduced African slaves into the region. The colonists who lived here were no more monolithic, ethnically, than the Indians. Many of them were of mixed-ethnic mestizo or Basque origin, for instance. The frontier society that developed by the mid-eighteenth century was unique to New Spain (and later to Mexico) and was a product of violent confrontations, pragmatism, and cultural exchange between the relatively few Spanish settlers, clergy, and military officials and the region’s Indigenous peoples. While the “Indios Bárbaros” made life on the frontier difficult for European settlers, the presence of the Spanish and then Mexican settlers profoundly changed life for the region’s Indigenous peoples as well. Although conflict both waned and intensified at times, it remained a constant on Mexico's northern frontier until after the U.S.-Mexico War. American arrival after 1848 sounded the death knell for Indigenous power in the borderlands as U.S. capital meant the growth of the ranching and mining industries and the introduction of railroads into the region. Pioneer Town Talks takes place every Thursday evening at Pioneer Town and is FREE for all Surface Creek Valley Historical Society Members. There is a nominal fee for non-members. You can join the SCVHS here.