The end of the eighteenth-century saw major reorganization and investment in the northern provinces of New Spain, supported from the highest levels of Spanish colonial administration. The successive reorganizations of defenses against Comanche, Apache, Ute, and Navajo raids served only as the best known and most obvious manifestation of the new concern with making the northern provinces prosper.[7] In addition, Spanish officials took specific fiscal measures to encourage economic development and strengthen settler society.

As one of the northernmost provinces of New Spain, New Mexico responded with more vigor than any of the borderlands provinces to the general economic conditions of late colonial northern New Spain and the particular interest of Spanish officials in stimulating development. During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, New Mexico reestablished and recast its economic ties to northern New Spain. In an extraordinarily short span, roughly between 1785 and 1810, the Vecino population of the province replicated New Mexican versions of economic and social patterns characteristic of areas closer to the center of New Spain, such as the Bajío, Guadalajara and Oaxaca.[8] The number of Vecinos living in the province grew significantly, mostly through natural increase and, to some degree, through the incorporation of Hispanicized Plains Indian captives, theGenízaros. By the late 1770s, the Vecino population had approximately doubled in two decades to between 8500 and 9500 people, and it had more than doubled again just after the turn of the nineteenth century to over 20,000. The Pueblo Indian population, on the other hand, had remained relatively stable, numbering from 9000 to 10,000 through most of the period from 1750 to 1821. Sometime during the decade before 1782, the Vecino population permanently surpassed that of the Pueblos. By the end of the colonial period the Vecino population of New Mexico numbered over 28,000.[9] In comparison, Texas had a population of 2,510 Spanish settlers in 1790, and about 4,000 in 1821 at the end of the colonial period; Alta California had even fewer.

The rapid population growth among the Vecinos during the last quarter of the eighteenth century coincided with a burst of economic activity beginning in the mid-1780s. Beginning in the 1750s, and intensifying during the 1770s, Apache, Ute, Navajo, and Comanche Indian hostilities checked the rate of growth of the province's population, limited access to agricultural land, and slowed commercial activity. The period between 1760 and about 1785 saw close cooperation and proximity between the Vecinos and Pueblo Indians, encouraged by their common defense of the province against the attacks of Indian raiding parties.[10] Pressure from Comanche raids. in particular, threatened the continued existence of the province until the defeat in 1779 of an important Comanche leader, Cuerno Verde, which made possible a peace formalized by the subsequent Spanish-Comanche treaty alliance in 1785.[11]

Freed from the burden of the Plains Indian onslaught, the Vecino economy quickly responded with a tremendous expansion of the overland trade to Chihuahua and the Northern Presidios and the production of a wide range of export items. With a far larger population than Texas, Alta California, or Florida, New Mexicans found themselves in a favorable position to expand trade to Nueva Vizcaya and Sonora in the mid-1780s, spurred by increased demand and the conclusion in 1786 of an alliance with the Comanche. The market for New Mexican woolen textiles and finished blankets and clothing grew along with the population of the urban centers of Nueva Viscaya and the establishment of new presidios in the north during the 1770s. Sheep and their by-product, wool, became the mainstays of the late New Mexican colonial economy. Other livestock, grain, punche (a native tobacco plant), and the traditional export of hides rounded out a group of products which, by the 1790s, looked more like those of other provinces of New Spain. Analysis of the tithe records from New Mexico between 1731 and 1821 also indicate that, after 1785, Vecino per-capita productivity grew significantly.[12]

Population growth and economic development in New Mexico provided the impetus for the creation of a Vecino cultural identity at the end of the colonial period.[13] Beginning in the 1780s, Vecinos suddenly expanded their repertoire of forms for cultural expression and acquired new channels for the social articulation of a self confident, distinct Spanish subculture on the northern frontier of New Spain.

Understanding the Comanche reasoning behind the alliance with the Spanish, and the later extension of the peace to the Ute, Navajo, and Jicarilla Apache requires a different perspective on the meaning of trade and warfare from that presented in the reports written by Spanish colonial officials. Anthropologists and archaeologists have begun to assemble a picture of Pueblo-Plains interaction in the proto-historic period that emphasizes a mutualistic, almost symbiotic relationship based on trade, raiding, and latent competition over some resources, most notably buffalo on the southern plains. The basic items of exchange consisted of buffalo meat, fat, and hides from the Plains and corn, cotton blankets, and ceramics from the agricultural peoples of the Río Grande Valley.[14]

Two cultural and ecological systems interacted simultaneously to produce the Plains-Pueblo relationship suggested by archaeologists working on southern plains sites and recognizable in the earliest observations of Spanish explorers. The hunter-gathering and settled agricultural peoples generally experienced potentially lean periods in food production at different times of the year. For groups dependent on buffalo and on foraging for varied resources on the southern plains, winter and spring could be the most dangerous seasons. Once a band depleted stores of dried or preserved food, it had to hunt during the very period during which the animals had depleted their fat supplies and therefore afforded fewer calories for the hunter. The survival of the group might depend on its ability to move great distances to reap diverse sources for food until the end of spring.[15] Further, nutritionists argue that a limit exists to the amount of protein that a person can safely consume. When protein consumption exceeds about half of a person's total caloric intake for any length of time, the body cannot metabolize it quickly enough, leading to liver and kidney damage and other serious health problems. This aspect of life on the Plains may have contributed to trade with the Pueblos in order to obtain carbohydrates.

Wintertime could prove difficult for Pueblo groups as well, but the ability to store maize for long periods and the communal nature of their farming meant that often a pueblo could store the surplus from crops harvested during the previous two or three years. In seasons when crops failed, raiders carried away stored food, or a similar calamity occurred, the period of greatest difficulty would tend to fall during the summer and early fall, between the planting of the crops and their harvest. Hunting also became more constrained at this time because of the labor and care required to grow a successful crop. These differences in timing of Plains and Pueblo food shortages suggest that a mutually desirable opportunity for trading Plains meat for Pueblo grain arose during two periods each year: in the Spring before planting and when excess meat did the Plains peoples less good nutritionally; and in the Fall after the Pueblo harvest and when buffalo achieved their highest fat content and best hides.

Katherine A. Spielmann argued recently that during the proto-historic period the difficulty of both penetrating the defenses of the Pueblos and carrying large amounts of grain made Plains groups wary of raiding the Pueblos except under the most dire circumstances when meat and hides were not available for trade.[16] Similarly, the ability of the Puebloans to combine maize, squash, and beans gave them a stable protein source, which they supplemented by hunting in the Río Grande Valley and surrounding areas. Over time, as game near the settled areas became depleted, the Pueblos possessed a greater incentive to trade with the Plains peoples for meat and hides. Competition with Plains groups over buffalo ordinarily did not make sense if trade could serve the same purpose. Further, hunter-gatherer groups had reason to discourage Pueblo hunts for buffalo and may have employed various coercive means to protect the source of their trade goods from the Pueblos.

The entrance of the Spanish into the Pueblo-Plains relationship did not disrupt the basic forces in favor of mutually beneficial exchange on what now became the northern frontier of New Spain. However, new goods for trade brought by the Spanish subtly altered the options available to non-Pueblo peoples. During the seventeenth-century, before the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the Spanish governor and his officials found trade in hides and captives from distant Native American groups a lucrative form of commerce.[17]] With the addition of livestock to the food resources of the Spanish settlements and Río Grande Pueblos alike, bands of Apache, and later Comanche and other Southern Plains peoples, had a target that could be more easily carried off in a quick raid than stores of maize. The diffusion of horses to neighboring non-Pueblo peoples during the second half of the seventeenth-century served to increase the viability of raiding in times of scarcity as an alternative strategy to trade with the Spanish and Pueblo settlements of the New Mexico.[18] Besides the quickness and range which the horse added to the repertoire of the Plains warrior, the beasts could transport bulkier prizes from a target village or pueblo.

A series of incidents that took place in 1771 illustrates the different perceptions of the Spanish and Comanche on the relationship between trading and raiding. Spanish commentators rarely understood the motivation of the Indians, how a band of Comanche could carry out a furious raid at a pueblo like Pecos and then appear a day or two later at Taos expecting to dispose of their goods -- even captives -- at a trade fair, often the very ones they had just stolen.[19] Spanish officials often noted that, just after having raided another location, the Indians expected welcome at a pueblo to trade as if nothing had happened. Governor Pedro Fermín de Mendinueta remarked that between September 1771 and January 1772, while the Comanches carried out six raids on different locations, they appeared at Taos an equal number of times to conduct trade fairs (ferias), offering at one a young Spanish man who had been captured three years previously. To the nomadic and semi-nomadic groups these events looked quite different. The settlements had iron tools, weapons, utensils, trinkets, corn and other food crops, tobacco, sheep, and until the early 1770s, horses that the Comanche and Apache desired. For these materials they could trade surplus dried meat, buffalo, deer, and elk skins, and captives taken from other Indian tribes or from other Spanish settlements. Further, the "nonhierarchical" nature of the social structure both the Apache and Comanche meant that no permanent position of status and leadership could control the various bands or divisional or multi-divisional groupings.[20] As Visitor-General Fray Atanasio Domínguez astutely remarked in his report on New Mexico in 1776: "Whether they are at peace or at war, the Comanche always carry off all they want, by purchase in peace and by theft in war."[21]

Two elements made the Comanche attacks on the New Mexico settlements particularly frequent and damaging during the 1770s. Severe droughts in 1758-59 and from 1772 through 1776 affected the Apache, Ute, Comanche, and Navajo ability to accumulate goods of their own to trade with the Pueblos and Spanish settlements.[22] In addition, by the 1750s, the Comanche had become the dominant suppliers of horses in a trade network extending northward to the Woodlands peoples entering the Northern Plains to hunt buffalo and toward the northwest, following the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. Comanche raids on Spanish and Pueblo horse herds intensified during the 1760s and 1770s, fueling the rapid spread of the "horse culture" to the developing buffalo hunting immigrants to the Plains such as the Assiniboine, Atsina, Arapaho, Blackfeet, Crow, Dakota, Hidatsa, Mandan, and Salish (see figure 1).[23] At the same time, raids in New Mexico and the effects of drought reduced the Spanish and Pueblo horse herds to the point that the Governor concluded that without Royal support they could not be rebuilt. In August, 1775, Pedro Fermín de Mendinueta wrote the Viceroy that, "if Your Excellency's piety and deep desire to develop this province does not aid it, at the expense of the King, to the number of 1,500 horse if possible, in order to give to this unhappy and valiant population, I fear that the province will arrive at its desolation."[24]

Figure 1: Northward spread of the horse in the western United States.
Francis Haines, "The Northward Spread of Horses Among the Plains."
American Anthropologist 40 (1938), 430, Figure 1.

A number of factors converged in the mid-1780s to bring the Spanish and Comanche together in an alliance against the Gileño Apache and to emphasize the commercial side of Comanche relations instead of raiding. The passing of Louisiana from the French to the Spanish as a part of the Treaty of Paris at the end of the Seven Year's War reduced the market for Comanche booty in the villages of the Pawnee and Witchita on the Kansas and Nebraska prairie, as well as the easy flow of French trade goods in return.[25] The growth of horse herds among Native peoples throughout the trans-Mississippi West by the 1780s had also begun to lessen the demand for horses that the Comanche obtained in one way or another from Spanish missions and settlements in Texas and from the Vecinos and Pueblos in New Mexico. In addition, a smallpox epidemic struck the Comanche, perhaps carried from New Mexico, where it appeared in 1780-81 following the lines of transportation and communication north from Mexico City, where a severe epidemic struck in 1779. During 1778, however, another variola disease vector moved west from the Indians of the Mississippi River, Louisiana, and into Texas.[26] Both may have converged on the Comanche on the plains between the Santa Fe and Natchitoches, where in 1785 Pedro Vial and Francisco Xavier Chaves reported that, "[s]ince smallpox so devastated them, this nation has been greatly reduced. Nevertheless, there may be nearly 2,000 men at arms, and there are many women and children." [27]

Further, the establishment of the Commandancia General of the Provincias Internas in 1776 led to a coordinated policy among Spanish officials in New Mexico, Texas, Nueva Viscaya, and Coahuila. The strategy decided upon by Commandante General Teodoro de Croix in 1778 consciously placed the responsibility for success upon the decisive action of the New Mexican governor in bringing the Comanche into line.[28] Despite the damage it sustained during the 1770s, New Mexico represented the only province in direct contact with the Comanche that had sufficient population and resources to mount any serious campaign against them. This policy, executed by the new Governor of New Mexico, Juan Bautista de Anza, led in 1779 to the major defeat of the Comanche and their war leader Cuerno Verde.

By the 1780s, Croix had also reorganized the defensive line of presidios that stretched across the Northern frontier from Sonora to Texas. The presidial frontier had just been realigned in the mid-1770s in order to follow the recommendations made after the frontier inspection of the Marqués de Rubí. Croix rearranged the line of Presidios to make their garrisons' defense of the Northern settlements more effective and efficient. He founded a series of new frontier settlements organized in two defensive arcs to bolster the line of Presidios in Nueva Vizcaya. Croix intended these settlements to provide settler militia in defense of the interior of the province, supplementing the points of military strength that the Presidios represented. Croix also strengthened, reorganized, and redistributed an elite corps of cavalry intended to respond quickly to raiding parties and to provide escorts to commercial caravans, the Companias Volantes (literally Flying Companies).[29] The serious efforts of reform and reorganization of the frontier soldiers and militia played an important role in bringing the Lipan and Mescalero Apache bands to peace in Nueva Viscaya, and no doubt aided the successful negotiations in New Mexico between Governor Anza and the Comanches in 1785 and 1786.

The sincere interest on the part of Spanish officials, New Mexican Vecinos, Puebloans, and Comanche Indians alike in renewing and deepening the connections brought by trade constituted for the actors by far the most compelling reason for the success of peace in 1786. New Mexicans of course repeatedly voiced their keen awareness of the link between peace and beneficial economic activity. In 1757, as the pressures of Plains raids began to lay bare New Mexican defenses, Governor Cachupín eloquently summarized the relationship:

The conservation of the friendship of this Ute nation and the rest of the allied tribes is of the greatest consideration because of the favorable results which their trade and good relations bring to this province. This is especially true of those settlements dependent upon the villa of La Cañada, which without peace, cannot conserve themselves or their neighborhoods, or increase their haciendas engaged in raising cattle, sheep, and horses. Besides, this nation, with its trade in deerskins, benefits the province in such a way that it stimulates in its settlers the disposition to go to La Vizcaya and Sonora to purchase whatever they may need for their subsistence or their families.[30]

To obtain peace once again, Spanish officials of the Provincias Internas ultimately offered to supply to the Comanche both markets for mutual exchange of goods at regulated prices and an annual gift of goods that the Comanche previously could only consistently obtain through the dual system of trading and raiding, along with barter for French merchandise among the Caddoan villages to the East. In his report of 1781, Commandante General Teodoro de Croix described the Spanish offer quite directly:

[The Comanche] possessions are reduced to the horses which they need for their hunts and firearms whose advantages they understand. They can have everything at the hands of the Spaniards. In a few years they would see in their country the procreation of horses in the same abundance as that of deer and buffalo, and then not needing these animals, the acquisition of firearms in barter for hides and herds would be less difficult for them.[31]

At the end of 1787, the majority of Comanche divisions agreed to accept the Spanish offer:

The captains who came together are consequently the greater part of the nation.... Accordingly, having considered themselves competent to treat and agree upon what was convenient concerning a general peace which all covet, they resolved to elect one among them in order that, in the name of more than six hundred camps or rancherías which they composed, he might go to seek a new adjustment and establishment of their commerce in New Mexico.[32]

By and large, the Comanche got "everything at the hands of the Spaniards" as a part of the alliance during the next generation. Toward the conclusion of the talks leading to the treaty between the Spanish and the recently promoted Comanche Commandant General Ugarte approved the establishment of a fund, variously known as the fondo aliados, or fondo extraordinario, for the purpose of purchasing gifts for the Indian treaty partners.[33] Beginning in 1787, Ugarte requested six thousand pesos per year "for all the extraordinary attentions of this province."[34] The following year the expenditures on the "Indian Allies" totaled almost twelve thousand pesos.

Each year the governor of New Mexico sent a full account of how he had managed the "gastos extraordinarios de Paz y Guerra" (extraordinary expenses of peace and war), along with receipts for each transaction.[35] A good portion of the goods given to the allies came from outside of the province. The Governor provided many of the Comanche, Navajo, Ute, and friendly Apache allies with complete sets of clothing, complete with shirt, trousers, vest, blankets, brightly colored cape, hat or headdress, and sometimes ceremonial silver medallion. The New Mexicans also gave tobacco, cigars, hoes, pipes, candles, needles, cones of raw sugar (piloncillo), bits for horses, and all sorts of cloth brought from Europe and other parts of New Spain.

In addition, a substantial portion of each year's funds went to New Mexican Vecinos for the purchase of goods and materials and in payment for the labor needed to manufacture, assemble, and transport these purchases to the Indians. New Mexicans provided sheep and other livestock, meat, maize, beans, bread, tortillas, salt, and some wheat for consumption, all products of local farmers and ranchers. The Comanches and the other allied groups consumed New Mexican punche (a native variety of tobacco) in large quantity, in addition to tobacco brought from Mexico. Vecino crafts people provided woolen stockings (medias de lana), and a variety of blankets, textiles, and cloth to supplement the material imported from the south.[36] The Vecino tailors, Juan Rafael Pineda and Pedro Rendón, made a good portion of the wardrobes given to the Indian allies out of both local and imported materials, presumably with the aid of assistants. The Extraordinary Fund also paid for the transport of goods and materials from the province to the Indian rancherias, the salaries of interpreters, gunsmiths, guides, and other incidental expenses related to the tremendous effort made to "gratify" the Indian allies.

These gifts had a lasting effect on the material culture of the Western (Occidentales) Comanche. Numerous Spanish descriptions note the uniforms, medals, and other Spanish accouterments worn by Comanche leaders on diplomatic and ceremonial occasions. In 1830, Jean Louis Berlandier remarked, after describing the Comanches that he saw on his travels in Texas, that, "[t]he Comanche around Santa Fe are better dressed than those from the rancherias along the eastern borders."[37] These bands still wore shirts and dresses patterned after Spanish clothing of the late eighteenth-century, in particular the Pueblo-style Teguas, "stockings, which also serve as slippers ... made of specially prepared deerskin."

Not only did the expenditures of the new fund provide a shot in the arm to the sectors of the New Mexican economy that led the way in the resurgence of long-distance trade to Nueva Viscaya, Sonora, and further south, but the large amounts of Spanish goods and other policies relating to the alliance substantially altered the tenor of both official and ordinary contacts between Vecinos and the Comanche groups. The governor of New Mexico undertook two important programs to help directly with food and shelter, in addition to the gifts extended to the allies. Both of these efforts bore with them stronger cultural overtones and social connections.

During the peace negotiations with Governor Anza, the Comanche "Captain" Ecueracapa and other leaders requested permission to establish a ranchería near the New Mexican settlements. In his instructions to Anza in response, Commandante General Ugarte urged Anza to grant the request, in order "to make gentle little by little the customs of the [Comanche]." Ugarte suggested that Anza prevail on the "nation" to "organize settlements and cultivate the land in appropriate places and regions, so that by accustoming them insensibly to maintaining themselves by its fruits, they might forget hunting which today is the only means of their livelihood."[38] Though paternalistic in tone, Ugarte did not mention the establishment of a mission, or suggest that Anza implement coercive measures to effect the desired change in Comanche culture. Ugarte envisioned a Comanche people availing themselves of both agricultural resources and buffalo, but perceptively noted that "as they were already beginning to find, that the animals they hunt with such effort for their sustenance are not at base inexhaustible...."

In 1787, the recently arrived Governor Fernando de la Concha ordered his lieutenant, Don José Maldonaldo, to oversee the building of a new pueblo on the Río Napestle (Arkansas River, near present Pueblo, Colorado) for the Jupe division of the Comanche.[39] New Mexican soldiers and Vecinos carried out construction of the settlement from July through November, 1787, transporting the bulk of the materials and provisions used from within the province. Figure 2 shows the location, and the larger cultural landscape of the Southern Plains as it looked from New Mexico in the 1790s.[40] The Jupe probably did not stay in the new pueblo for very long, and although we know very little about the kind of interaction this episode entailed, the investment from both sides in this experiment indicated the larger context for relations stemming from the alliance. In 1805, three captains from the Yamparica division of the Comanches made a similar request of Governor Joaquin Real Alencaster, that the Vecinos build a pueblo, this time near the Río Colorado (Canadian River). Alencaster granted the request and reported it to his superiors, but it is not clear whether the project ever came about.[41]

More significant in terms of impact on the Indian allies, throughout the period from 1786 to 1791, New Mexican grain and meat sustained large numbers of Comanche, Jicarilla Apache, and Navajo through periods of intense famine, especially during the summer of 1789 and the spring and summer of 1790. The receipts attest to the dire situation experienced by many of the Plains Indians bands:

Value of eighty fanegas of maiz to rescue the Comanche nation from the extreme necessity in which it finds itself, according to the personal representation of their general, accompanied by one hundred and thirty individuals. Today, thirtieth of June, 1789. Concha.[42]

Spanish officials delivered at least three hundred and twenty fanegas of maize alone to Indian rancherias between March 1789 and August 1791.[43] These years of diplomatic contact and humanitarian concern had a lasting effect on Comanche behavior toward Nuevomexicano and Tejano interaction during the rest of the colonial period. José Cortés, a lieutenant in the Spanish Royal Corps of Engineers, reported in 1799 the sense of "honor and rigid justice" with which the Comanche treated Spanish visitors:

He who travels through their lands is lodged, regaled, and treated with the greatest friendship. From the moment the traveler arrives they take charge of caring for his horses and baggage, and if anything is missing at the time of his departure they detain him until it turns up.[44]

The ranchería then offered the visitor an escort to the next Comanche encampment.

The new alliance system of the Spanish in the 1780s renewed and encouraged the expansion of both the formal trade fairs, such as the ones held annually at Taos and Pecos Pueblos, and informal contacts that resulted in commerce and cultural interchange between Vecinos and non-Pueblo peoples. The cessation of war with the Comanche, Ute, and Apache: a growing population, and renewed exports helped to create an entrepreneurial attitude in the 1780s and 1790s among New Mexicans that affected the intercultural language of commerce with Indian peoples. An illuminating example concerns the mission of Vicente Troncoso, an officer from the Santa Fe presidio, assigned by Governor Concha to lead an expedition to return an imprisoned Navajo chief to his people.[45] In October of 1787 a Navajo leader named Antonio "El Pinto" entered Isleta Pueblo with an unauthorized trading party. In view of the recent alliance between the Spanish officials and the Navajo, trade fairs could only take place with preparation and a proper license from the governor to prevent any misunderstanding from endangering the peace. The Alcalde at Isleta arrested El Pinto and brought him to Santa Fe where Governor Concha imprisoned him. Responding to pleas from other Navajo chieftains, and recognizing the chance to garner some goodwill and learn more about the Navajo rancherias at the same time, Concha decided to release El Pinto under a Spanish escort.

The report of Troncoso describing his journey, his reception by the Navajo, and his observations of the erstwhile enemy affords a rich picture of late eighteenth-century tribal life. However. when Troncoso saw the textiles produced by the Navajo, his response transcended his interest as a dedicated officer engaged in a delicate diplomatic mission for his superior.[46] He saw Navajo women weave "sarapes, cotton shawls (tilmas), cotton blankets (cotones), stockings, sashes, and other materials for their clothing and for sale." In addition, Troncoso admired "the small vessels or jícaras that they call Navajosas." Immediately this New Mexican soldier thought of the commercial opportunities suggested by Navajo manufactures. In the only deviations from the businesslike recounting of the events that transpired and his observations, Troncoso wrote of the Navajo weaving:

These well-deserved praises that I gave without flattery cause much pleasure among all of the gathering. And even better received was the proposal that I made to them for their benefit and to better stimulate this labor with the interest that it will generate for them, ... that their sarapes being so worthy even to the officers of the Presidio, they should make all that they can until the convoy [to Chihuahua] departs. Then they should deliver them to me that I might remit them [to Chihuahua], sell them, and with the proceeds bring back spun wool yarns in good colors so that with these [the Navajo] can make them more attractive and command higher prices and of equal utility. My ideas seemed very good to them, remaining to be executed.

No record shows whether this venture ever got any further, but the incident nicely connects the sense of new commercial opportunities on the part of New Mexican Vecinos to forces generating cultural change on the part of indigenous peoples. Within a dozen years the Navajos achieved general recognition for their "frieze, blankets, and other weavings of coarse wool," which they exchanged at trading fairs in New Mexico.[47]] As for the Navajo vessels, Troncoso apparently did attempt a commercial venture. He described the "Navajosas" as "pretty and useful, much valued not only in the Provincias Internas, but even in Mexico, as I will prove with letters from persons that have placed orders for them from me." In his drive to realize the economic possibilities of the era, Vicente Troncoso's natural reaction to Navajo material culture exhibited a heightened spirit of enterprise that characterized the new commercial foundation of the New Mexican economy. The Navajos responded in kind.

A case of unknown identity will serve to indicate how thoroughly a decade of commerce, diplomacy, and military alliance with Indians in the region had complicated cultural boundaries in colonial society on the northern frontier.[48] At eleven at night on November 1, 1795, the Indendant of the provincial town of Valladolid, now in the State of Morelia, was called to deal with a vagabond in the streets. After warning the man to retire to his own house, he saw that the man did not understand, and that he was making signs that he wanted to be baptized. The Indendant brought him to the sanctuary and left him in the care of a priest, Doctor Don Juan José de Michilena. At the time, the man apparently could not say more than "Concha, Chihuahua, and Nuevo Mexico, making signs of being very far away." He appeared to be 23 or 26 years of age, "of good presence, liveliness, and disposition," and made signs of veneration in front of the image of Jesus Christ the Redeemer and the Most Holy Mother. He wore only a mid-length cape. When asked who had given it to him he replied "Concha." The Indendant and priest took him to be Comanche, in part because Fernando de la Concha had retired in 1794 as Governor of New Mexico, and because of the frequency of joint Spanish, Comanche, and Pueblo auxiliary expeditions against the Apache after 1786.[49]

Upon further investigation, the priest reported that the man claimed he was Comanche, that he had accompanied General José Antonio Rangel when he entered New Mexico with the title of "ambassador of my people," and had shed his blood in defense of the Crown. He asked again for baptism. Due to an altercation in the house of the priest Michilena, the authorities felt obliged to place the unknown man in the town jail. Nevertheless, Michilena proceeded with his catechism and baptized him Juan de Díos and the new Catholic added the surname Michilena.

Five years later, in an unguarded moment, Juan de Díos Michilena revealed that he had made up his identity because it had seemed convenient a the time. He said that he was a Comanche born in Tarca, at the seashore below the Río Grande. He had held the title "Captain of Spies" among his people, who had named him Zapato Bordado, or Embroidered Shoe. The information passed quickly to the Commandante General of the Provincias Internas, and Juan de Díos Michilena, alias Zapato Bordado, found himself back in the Valladolid jail.

At this point officials in charge of the case wrote to the Governor of New Mexico to attempt to verify the prisoner's identity. At the same time, Commandante General Pedro de Nava and other important officials tried to determine whether to send Michilena to Havana to spend his days laboring on the Spanish fortress and harbor, "like the others of his Nation." Having given up hope of an answer from New Mexico, Pedro de Nava told the Indendant of Valladolid that he could use his own judgment of character to free Michilena or condemn him to servitude. By December 1800, Michilena had been transferred to a jail in Mexico City, in preparation for his journey to San Juan de Ulua near Veracruz, and from there to Havana.

Finally, in March 1801 the current Governor of New Mexico sent a response to the inquiry of the Commandante General. He pointed out that in a frontier country such as New Mexico, divided into Comanche, Ute, Jicarilla, and Apache rancherías, or those of the other Nations that frequent the region, he could not verify the Indian's claim to be a Comanche. He did not know of a location named Tarca, nor did anybody else. As for the name Zapato Bordado, that referred to the practice of decorating the shoes or Teguas commonly given to the "gentile" Indians. Chacón feared that Zapato Bordado represented yet another alias, and he might really be Juan de Díos Rodríguez, "of the genízaro caste."[50] Rodríguez had married a woman and had one daughter, when in 1791 he left the province in the service of the Fernando de la Concha, the previous Governor. He disappeared for good when the contingent got to Chihuahua, which, Chacón thought, might explain his first words to the Indendant of Valladolid.

The saga has one last, equally ambivalent chapter. In light of the information of Governor Chacón, the matter received the consideration of Fiscal (Royal attorney) of Civil Justice, who concluded that it would be impossible to certify that Michelena and Rodríguez were the same. Here the documentary record ends, but one cannot escape the presumption that Michelena spent the rest of his life a prisoner, doing labor in Havana.

Not all of the ramifications of this tale end with ambivalence. None of the elements in the story of the Comanche of Valladolid -- the successful deceptions; the specific information about Comanchería; or the presence of cultural markers and signifiers that crossed Vecino, Pueblo, and non-Pueblo boundaries (such as the genízaro) -- could have occurred without the impact of the Comanche Spanish alliance. The alliance brought with it commercial, diplomatic, and military connections of profound cultural consequence. Like the construction of the Pueblo of San Carlos de los Jupes, New Mexican famine relief for "the allied nations," and Troncoso's entrepreneurial connection with the Navajos, Zapato Bordado represented the development of a cultural economy on the northern frontier of New Spain, one that accompanied the economic development, and encompassed the intercultural connections forged during the late colonial period. Further, the effect of the new cultural economy did not remain within New Mexican borders or frontiers.

A very unusual set of objects in figure 3 will serve as a starting point to explore the historical implications of the Vecino-Pueblo-Southern Plains cultural economy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century. The illustration shows a painted shield made out of buffalo hide, and an associated cover, decorated as well, made from deer or elk skin. We know very little about the history of these pieces. During the Spring of 1990, a local antique dealer purchased this shield and shield cover in an auction of a small estate in a rural Connecticut town. The antique dealer took the pieces to a regional fair in Massachusetts where it sold to two well-known Indian Art dealers. A New York art dealer partnership that then acquired the items brought them to my attention. During these transactions, no one has found out anything about how the shield and cover got to Connecticut or came into the possession of its first known owner. The original estate sale may have contained two other pieces of supposed "Indian" origin, perhaps a bow case and quiver, the case decorated with pony beads and porcupine quills. If these other items did come from the same source, they could provide added clues, but so far they have not come to light. Valuable pieces of oral history and material context may well have been lost before the known threads of the story began.

The direction of my thinking about what I call the cultural economy began took shape while following these skimpy pieces of information trying to explain the origin of the shield and cover. The shield is made of a single piece of buffalo hide about 5/8ths of an inch thick, and measures 18 to 18 1/4 inches in diameter. Originally shaped to form a circular and convex shape, the outer edges of the shield have warped over time to turn inward. At first glance it appears typical of a Plains Indian defensive weapon.

The concentric rings of different colors on the shield, the positions of the leather straps used to attach a neck or shoulder sling in the back, the use of buffalo hide, and the matching shield cover, all point to aspects of traditional shield manufacture used by Plains, Prairie, or Pueblo Indians. The construction of the shield and cover and the mineral paints applied all appear authentic -- that is all seem contemporary with the crafting of the shield and not of recent manufacture. The figure depicted in the center of the shield forms its most puzzling and interesting feature. The man does not look like a Native American of any tribal group. He appears to be a soldier, dressed in boots, wearing a mottled jacket, a bandoleer or quiver across his chest, holding a spear or lance in his left hand, and pointing some sort of gun in his right. He displays a smile or grin that seems almost impish, and wears a cap with what looks like a feather streaming out of the top. In a display of perverse perspective, or a wonderful demonstration of athletic ability, the shaft of the weapon in his left hand passes behind his neck, a very awkward position in battle indeed.

Two experts in the fields of Pueblo and Plains Indian objects of material culture both expressed considerable surprise at the human figure depicted on the shield. Both concluded that the figure could not have been painted by a Native American. Barton Wright responded that "the figure of a man holding a spear (not a lance) in his right hand, and a pistol (horse pistol) in his left, and carrying a quiver full of arrows and I believe a bow suspended from it is exotic enough, but when the figure is dressed in the manner of a French provincial the entire decoration becomes bizarre."[51] Of the figure on the shield, John C. Ewers, the dean of scholarship on Plains Indian art, wrote:[52]

1) I have never seen any shield like this before.

2) The human figure painted on the shield base does not look like any Indian I have seen painted before.

3) He looks much more like an imaginative rendering of a warrior of the robinhood culture, with his feather in his headgear, short jacket, and boots, and possibly skin tight drawers.

4) Have you considered the possibility that this might have been an Indian shield and cover that was repainted with this un-Indian-like figure for use in a theatrical performance?

These sentiments give you some idea of the unique position of these items, and I confess that a number of times during this research I have been tempted to throw up my hands and conjecture about the "Robinhood culture" instead.

Instead, I have come to these conclusions: The shield and cover come from the eighteenth century, and the figure on the shield represents a Spanish militia soldier, probably from New Mexico. I realize that this summary conclusion leaves obscure as much as it illuminates. However, the story is largely in the telling. In comparing this example with those made by Northern and Southern Plains tribes; placing it within the context of shields made by Plains, Río Grande Pueblo, and other Southwestern tribes; untangling the influences governing shields of Indian and Spanish manufacture; and understanding the changes between shields fashioned in the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, a new appreciation of the complexity of Native American -- European contact and trade over great time and distance emerges. The mix of cultural hands and influences that created this particular shield and cover attests to the cultural effect of the dynamic configuration of Plains, Pueblo, and Spanish peoples along the nebulous "frontier" of the northern provinces of colonial Mexico at the end of the eighteenth-century. In sum, unlocking the cultural economy of the people who fashioned the shield points to a "missing link" of sorts between late colonial New Spain and an emerging style of Plains Indian regalia and warfare that accompanied the tribal migrations to the Great Plains starting in the early eighteenth-century.

Archaeological research has shown that the type of shield in use among Southwestern Native peoples originally followed the construction techniques originating in central or northern Mexico. Prehistoric excavations from the Pueblo region of the Southwest have produced a number of examples of shields, all constructed of willow and yucca basketry, and all of a size, about 3 feet in diameter, that would give protection to a large portion of the body.[53] Some have retained much of their painted decoration and central hand grips made of hard wood. These prehistoric shields could not have defended against arrows, prompting observers to hypothesize that much of prehistoric Southwestern fighting involved clubs and thrown rocks. The archaeological record confirms the use of arrows before the Spanish entered the Southwest, but no lances have been found before the arrival of the Spanish.

Historic examples of shields from the Hopi and Río Grande Pueblo area appear in rock art and kiva murals.[54] The Hopi hold that petroglyphs of shields found in their traditional territory represent early battles fought with regional enemies. Information given to Alexander M. Stephen early this century identified the shield in figure 4b as commemorating the defeat of a large party of Apache attacking Walpi village on First Mesa.[55] The large shield protects the warrior's entire body, in this case including the head. According to Stephen, the shield in figure 4a signifies a Hopi-Tewa battle

Figure 4a, b: Drawings of Hopi petroglyphs after Alexander M. Stephen.
Barton Wright, Pueblo Shields: from the Fred Harvey Fine Arts Collection.
Flagstaff: Heard Museum/Northland Press, 1976, 3, figure 1a-b.

with Utes that took place in the 1700s; "when the moon was half gone with our friends we slew the enemy." This shield represents the bilobed Spanish type defensive weapon called the adarga, whose distinctive shape developed out of the Hispano-Moresque conflict ending in 1492.

The move from Native southwestern shields made of basketry to those made with animal hide may relate to the addition of the lance. The Spanish brought the lance as an offensive weapon, and the Pueblos of New Mexico adopted it for use in warfare during the seventeenth-century. In the sequence of scenes known as the Seggesser Hide Paintings I painted around 1700 (see figure 5), the Native American defenders face their attackers on foot holding decorated body shields, clearly made of hide. The event depicted appears to show a group of Plains Apache meeting an attack by Spanish auxiliary Opata warriors, perhaps from northern Sonora.[56] The discovery of 3 hide shields in 1925 found in a cave along Calf Creek near Torrey, Utah appears to confirm that the hide shield appeared with the Spanish. These shields, probably post-1600, consisted of 2 sheets of buffalo hide lashed together and measure almost 2.5 feet in diameter. Buried under sand, their colorful decoration remained intact.[57]

Although many Pueblo shields from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries show a similar construction, using 2 hides stitched together, Pueblo examples consistently measure between 21 and 24 inches in diameter, 8 or more inches fewer than the Calf Creek or prehistoric basketry examples. The reduction in size of the Pueblo type of hide shield by the eighteenth-century resulted from a dramatic change in the nature of Pueblo warfare after the first Spanish colonists led by Juan Oñate occupied New Mexico in 1598. In theory, Spanish men at arms protected the Río Grande Pueblos from attack by outside peoples such as the Apache during the 1600s. In the eighteenth-century, after the Spanish reconquest of the Pueblos following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the presidio soldiers of Santa Fe increasingly relied on settler militia and Pueblo auxiliaries to defend the province from Apache, Comanche, Ute, and Navaho raids.[58] Spanish governors and military officials led expeditions to punish nomadic and semi-nomadic incursions and to prevent the French from establishing alliances with Native groups that could threaten the northern provinces of New Spain. The need to make more extensive expeditions on foot prompted the Pueblos to reduce the size of their shields to better accommodate mobile campaigning, resulting in the development of the Pueblo war shield into its eighteenth and nineteenth-century style.

The construction of the mystery shield differs in three important points from items of Pueblo construction. It measures only 18 in diameter instead of over 21 inches, has only one thickness of hide, and the hide came from a buffalo, unlike that used in most Pueblo shields. All of these elements place the construction of our shield in the tradition of the Southern Plains.

Early battle scenes on rock faces at Writing on Stone, located in southern Alberta just north of the Montana border, show scenes of eighteenth-century combat on foot and horseback.[59] These diagrams clearly show an earlier type of large shield that protected the warrior's full body (as in the Southwest), and a smaller shield adapted to fighting on horseback reflecting the need for greater maneuverability and less weight. Prior to the cultural adaptation of Native groups to the horse and buffalo hunting on the Plains, almost all indigenous peoples used body shields of a similar form, if dissimilar in construction. Among the Plains and Prairie peoples that changed their shields as a result of the integration of the horse into their military culture, the Southern Plains tribes such as the Southern Cheyenne, Kiowa, Oto-Missouri, and Comanche developed a shield of smaller size that functioned as a spiritually powerful emblem as well as a defensive weapon.[60] The average diameter of a Southern Plains shield measures about 18 inches, the same size as the shield here under investigation. Like most Southern Plains examples, it too was fashioned from a single sheet of thick buffalo hide.

Apart from size, the major difference between Southern Plains and Pueblo shields around the turn of the nineteenth-century revolves around elements that demonstrate a divergent function in battle. Pueblo warriors who fought on foot and carried their shield slung around the neck and over their left shoulder. The shield hung by a long, adjustable leather loop. The loops attached to thongs on the shield a few inches from the inner edge, generally further from the center than their Comanche or Southern Plains counterparts. In addition, when the warrior needed the shield in an engagement, he

Figure 6: Río Grande Pueblo Use of a Shield.
Barton Wright, Pueblo Shields: from the Fred Harvey Fine Arts Collection.
Flagstaff: Heard Museum/Northland Press, 1976, 14, figure 4.

held a leather hand grip at the center of the shield which allowed its direct manipulation. The Southern Plains style shield, used on horseback with the shield hand used to guide the animal, did not have a hand grip. Neither does the mystery shield.

Earlier material from the Southern Plains nations has survived into the twentieth-century only rarely, but the travels of Jean Louis Berlandier through the Province of Texas around 1830 provide a description of the Eastern Comanche, and a number of objects that found their way into the collections of the Smithsonian. Lino Sánchez de Tapia painted a watercolor (see figure 7) of the Comanches after the sketches and description of Berlandier[61] Despite the license taken by the artist, particularly with the elegant elongation of the shields, the details of the Comanche costume coincide with the painting that George Catlin did of the Comanche Chief Little Spaniard a few years later (see figure 8).[62] Painted in 1834, Catlin described the Comanche as:

A gallant little fellow...represented to us as one of the leading warriors of the tribe, and no doubt... one of the most extraordinary men at present living in these regions. He is half Spanish, and being a half-breed, for whom they generally have the most contemptuous feelings, he has been all his life thrown into the front of the battle and danger; at which posts he has signalized himself, and commanded the highest admiration and respect of the tribe for this daring and adventurous career.

I have here represented him as he stood for me, with his shield on his arm, with his quiver slung, and his lance of fourteen feet in length in his right hand. This extraordinary little man, whose figure was light, seemed to be all bone and muscle, and exhibited immense power, by the curve of the bones in his legs and arms.[63]

In this painting, the lance, quiver with its arrows open at the top and fringe hanging down towards the ground, and the circular shield decoration, all appear closer to the elements on the mystery shield. Notice the single leather strap that attached to the shield on either side of the center of the shield, a little above the middle. The strap to hold the shield over the left arm, typical of Southern Plains shields, also describes the system of attachment found on the unknown shield. The four holes punched through the shield held two leather thongs which crossed in the back to hold the carrying strap in the Southern Plains manner.

If the construction of the unknown shield appears Southern Plains, perhaps even Comanche, the image on the front of the shield, as John Ewers observed, does not. In stylistic terms, the drawing of the features of the man's face, and the delineation of the forms in outline bears some resemblance to the painting of the Seggesser II hide paintings (see figure 9). In the Seggesser Hide Paintings II, an unknown Spanish or Spanish-influenced Native artist depicted the disastrous defeat of the New Mexican expedition led by Lieutenant Governor Pedro de Villasur in 1720 at the hands of the Pawnee and Oto warriors and their French allies. The Spanish soldiers from the Santa Fe presidios and the Pueblo warriors were surprised at the junction of the Platte and Loup Rivers in eastern Nebraska.[64] Note the Spanish soldier and Pueblo auxiliary on horseback at the upper right. The Spanish presidial soldier carries an adarga, a shield type developed in thirteenth century Spain as one result of the Almohades (Moorish) invasion. Officers wore the adarga to show their rank and decorated it with heraldic devices to show family lineage and heritage, akin to their use by the Plains Indians.[65]

The style of the figure on the mystery shield appears far closer to the painted santos, figures of saints depicted on wooden statues and retablo (retables) made by New Mexican Vecino artists beginning in the 1790s.[66] Figure 10 depicts retablo a painted by the santero (saintmaker) Rafael Aragón, probably in the 1830s. It shows Santiago (Saint James), in the costume of an early nineteenth-century Spanish Presidial soldier, perhaps somewhat obsolete for the time, holding a broad sword and adarga. Aside from the drawing and painting techniques, which varied for different artists, the man on the shield and the santo art have a similar feeling of folk art.

The adarga belonged to the military elite of New Spain, the presidial officers, and occasionally soldiers when they could afford to have one made. The Segesser II paintings depicted mounted soldiers with adargas because in 1720, New Mexican military capability depended upon the small group of soldiers from the Presidio and Pueblo Indian auxiliaries recruited for a specific campaign. The santos of the early nineteenth-century showed soldier saints in the military station that befitted them as people of high rank, but by the 1760s, most New Mexican soldiers did not come from the Presidio. Vecino militia composed of about a third of the forces mustered for a campaign, and a large part of defensive forces.

What did the Vecino militia wear? In the background of the retablo of San Acacio (Saint Acatius of Mount Ararat) shown in figure 11, two troops have gathered to witness the crucifixion of the leader of 10,000 Roman soldiers who converted to Christianity. In typical santero fashion, the troops appear outfitted as soldiers of the day. On the left, they wear the uniforms of Presidial soldiers of the early Mexican Republic (see figure 12). On the right appear the Vecino militia, holding their lances on their shoulders, and wearing a leather jacket and cap. Some of the caps have plumes sticking up from the top, exactly as in the cap worn by the soldier on the mystery shield. Much of the same military equipment still saw use at the end of the nineteenth-century. In figure 13, an old Navajo warrior who posed for a Bureau of American Ethnography photographer in 1893 wears a similar cap, holds a lance and shield, and wears a quiver with a sash attached to it, in imitation of a fox tail adorning a musket case.[67] The equipment on the back of our mystery man may be a quiver with arrow shafts poking out of the top and a bow hanging down. It also fits the description of the standard buckskin musket case worn by Spanish soldiers, usually with a fox tail ornament dangling at its end.[68]

In summary, my version of the production of this shield goes as follows: A New Mexican Vecino traded for a shield newly made by a member of a Southern Plains tribe around 1790 or 1800. Perhaps a Comanche companion on a military campaign gave the shield to him. He painted, or commissioned an artist to paint, an image of himself dressed and equipped for a campaign. Perhaps the background already bore the target design of blue, red, and green circles. To protect the design, he arranged for a Pueblo craftsman to make the deerskin cover. For an emblem to adorn the shield cover, he choose a decoration often found on late colonial Vecino furniture -- the Hands of Fatima adorned with pomegranates modified by Pueblo and Plains usage to represent a crescent with squash blossom arms, and a pendant in the middle.

If my hypothesis holds, the production of the Vecino militia shield nicely illustrates the product of the cultural economy of the late eighteenth-century northern New Spanish frontier. It also raises some interesting implications for our understanding of the genesis of the High Plains cultures of the later nineteenth-century. For example, consider the background "target" design of concentric circles of green, red, and blue on which the man appears. This type of design appears on Spanish adargas and on Pueblo shields that adopted the alternative Spanish shield type of the "common" soldier, the round rodela.[69] One example of a rodela-type shield collected in Acoma Pueblo in 1906 by buyers for the Fred Harvey Company shows the early Spanish-style of stitching the two hides together in concentric circles with a leather thong (see diagram of shield in figure 14). The thong was looped through a series of paired cuts in the front and back to

Figure 14: Acoma Shield, collected in 1906. Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ, FH 1611 CI
Barton Wright, Pueblo Shields: from the Fred Harvey Fine Arts Collection.
Flagstaff: Heard Museum/Northland Press, 1976, 23, figure 10.

show the circles, and originally painted with alternating red and white rings in the fashion of a target. Comparison of the design with other Pueblo shields confirms the impression that this design, too, came from a Spanish model.[70]

The comparison of this style of shield with examples from the Northern Plains peoples of the nineteenth-century becomes complicated by the fact that so much of the information concerning the use of Plains shields and the meanings of their decoration comes from ethnologists and anthropologists at the end of the nineteenth-century. Just as the U.S. military began to place the Plains Indian groups forcibly on reservations permanently, beginning in the 1870s, a new breed of social scientist began to study Native American groups in earnest, attempting to save information about pre-reservation customs, beliefs, and lifeways. Working for the government as part of the Bureau of American Ethnology, or proceeding from university departments, the famous early researchers among Native groups such as such as James Mooney, Clark Wissler, Franz Boas, Frank Hamilton Cushing, George A. Dorsey, Matilda Coxe Stevenson, and Alice C. Fletcher, collected oral histories, tales, and objects of Indian manufacture, along with explanations from Native Americans about their meaning, creation, and significance.[71]

In the first years of this century, Clark Wissler conducted extensive interviews with the first generation of warriors confined to the reservations. He reported that, although Plains shields did have the strength to ward off glancing blows from clubs, axes, and perhaps some of the arrows which Native groups used in warfare before they had ready access to guns, the spiritual power that the shield contained and represented served an even more important protective function.[72] Plains warriors continued to use decorated shields because of the sacred character of the shield design and as an emblem of their personal power and valor even after the use of firearms became ubiquitous and enemies could easily penetrate the hide. Wissler wrote, "[a]ccording to the statements of some old men who still have faith in protective designs, the ancient shield manifested its power on the mind of the enemy by influencing him to shoot at the shield rather than at the exposed parts of the body of its bearer."

The power of the shield design came from its visionary origin. A warrior either dreamed the design or obtained it from the vision given to a medicine man on his behalf. Generally a shaman-artist, and not the recipient, painted the design on the shield. One example of such a vision shield originally belonged to Little Rock, a Northern Cheyenne chief and, after Black Kettle, the principal Cheyenne negotiator who attempted to ward off the U.S. government's demand for land. On November 20, 1868, after Black Kettle had secured a truce for the peaceful withdrawal of his band, the Seventh Cavalry under George Armstrong Custer attacked the Cheyenne encampment and massacred over 100 people. Custer secured the shield from Little Rock's body and presented it to the Audobon Club of Detroit in 1869. At that time he wrote in his description that, "A great deal of ceremony, or as the Indians term it `Medecisn' is considered necessary to be observed before the shield is dedicated to war."[73] The shield decoration consists of five thunderbirds shown in a night sky, and the Pleiadies constellation at the bottom. The vision imagery painted on the shield often derived from cosmological concepts concerning the nature and power of other-than-human beings.[74] In addition, attachments, such as eagle feathers and bags containing ritual materials, also impart power or medicine and can be renewed when necessary by the owner.

Clark Wissler's investigations of the meanings of shield decorations led him to discover an "older" type of Plains shield design. In an early collection of Sauk and Fox material, Wissler saw a shield captured from the Sioux with a badly worn design similar to his sketch shown here (see figure 15). Upon seeing a similar target-style design on a shield owned by an Assiniboine man at Fort Belknap, MT, Wissler hypothesized that concentric rings painted in different colors constituted an older type of design than most of those extant in the early twentieth-century. Wissler continued:

Figure 15: Clark Wissler. "Some protective designs of the Dakota."
Anthropological papers of the American Museum of Natural History. 1907; vol. 1, pt. 2: 30.

"This idea was supported by the testimony of a number of old men who ought to be competent to speak on the subject."[75] Indeed, a number of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Plains objects depict shield designs reminiscent of that of the captured "Sioux" shield, and of the background of the shield that I claim hailed from late eighteenth-century New Mexico.

The scholarship covering the diffusion from the Southwest onto the Plains of the material culture of military and transportation equipment has always assumed that the complex came together with the horse, beginning in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century.[76] However, the earliest examples of Plains paintings on skin and hides from the 1797-1850 period show a preponderance of target-style shields from which the later nineteenth-century heraldic and vision shields emerged.[77] I suggest that the target style of shield decoration appeared in the Upper Missouri area around the turn of the nineteenth-century. If so, its transmission from Northern New Spain provides one example of successive ripples of usable cultural material arriving on the Plains from the dynamic cultural economy of the late eighteenth-century New Mexican frontier. These waves of cultural influences came through the Comanche in the late eighteenth-century, the Kiowa after their alliance with the Comanche in 1806, and then by transmission to groups moving South and West onto the Plains during the nineteenth-century.[78] The development of Plains military societies, and the heraldic use of emblems to establish kinship and lineages, all contain concepts comparable with colonial Spanish social and military institutions that played important roles in the establishment and development of the cultural economy of the late eighteenth-century. In each case, Plains groups freely took attractive cultural concepts as models, which they transformed into adaptations and elaborations of their developing social and cultural traditions on the Plains.[79]

If this elliptical essay has added to the discussion of the "Business of Borderlands," it should be clear that the interaction of commerce and culture on the "Southwestern frontier" forms a necessary counterpart to the historiographical problems that colonial syntheses have experienced. If one can think of political economy as a concept that describes a process that has historical import, then a concept of cultural economy should exist to illuminate a separate process with its own internal logic, yet one that has the power to interact with -- and affect -- other processes. The film Red River does not fail us at even this juncture. As Thomas Dawson turned to his work to confront the emissaries of Don Diego, he turned from the column of smoke that represented the wagon train that he had so recently left, now destroyed by Comanche warriors. In the world of cinematic irony, Dawson has just experienced the historical effect of the cultural economy brought into being, in part, by Don Diego's forebears.