Bricklayers, Bronc Busters, and "Peddlers from the Spanish Country": Nuevomexicanos and the Paradox of Labor and Trade in the Great Plains, 1834–1884

Abstract:During the mid-nineteenth century, Nuevomexicano workers and traders played a crucial but paradoxical role in Great Plains economic and political life. Expert artisans, superb livestock wranglers, and shrewd bargainers, they were essential to the solidification of fur trade infrastructure and trade along the Santa Fe Trail. Yet the same skills that made these men successful—especially their successful dealings with Native peoples—also made them targets of Anglo-American suspicion, fear, and resentment. The same entrepreneurs who valued Nuevomexicano labor and skill worried that these traders represented a threat to the United States' tenuous hold on the region. Between the tense years preceding the US-Mexican War and the end of the Red River War in 1875, territorial officials and military officers attempted to restrict the movement and activities of Nuevomexicano traders and hunters, with little success. Not until the final confinement of the Comanche and Kiowa to reservations in Indian Territory did commerce end and these men cease to be viewed as a potential threat to Anglo-American sovereignty in the Great Plains.