Thanks to the horse, Plains Apaches expand their influence over an increasingly broad swath of the Great Plains and Northern Mexico. In the course of one remarkable generation, they drive the Spanish out of New Mexico and absorb their old Jumano rivals, despite an epic last-ditch effort by Jumano Captain Juan Sabeata to frustrate them.  

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Proto-Apaches, Jumanos, and Puebloans vie for control of the Texas Plains in the face of Spanish entradas, epidemics, and slaving expeditions. 

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Following the great peace of 1749, San Antonio becomes the great outlet for native North American trade and for the mediation of Native Texas culture into Spanish society. In turn, Texas Apaches commit to a symbiotic existence with the settler communities around them, and come to take on a distinct identity as “Lipan” Apaches – the "People of the In-Between." 

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A new Spanish outpost on the San Antonio River represents an opportunity and a threat to the Apaches' Texas plains trade. The great empires test each other with equal turns generosity and violence. And a new rival appears on the Texas Plains.

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Spanish army officers prove reluctant to change their mindset, however, even as the Lipan alliance under the great Captain Picax-Andé brings to a definitive halt the advance of Spanish conquest. 

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In the course of a single generation, Spanish policy toward Lipan Apaches shifts from alliance to extermination. But a  generation of alliance-making by Lipan Captain Bigotes makes the Lipan alliance more powerful than ever. They beat back the Comanches to the Red River and the Spanish to a line of presidios that still cuts across the North American continent like a scar as the US-Mexico border.

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In the turmoil of the War for Mexican independence, Lipan Captain Cuelgas de Castro emerges as a beacon of stability in Texas. Perhaps no one saw the Texas geopolitical checkerboard better at this moment. Captain Cuelgas de Castro wins for his people recognition by the new Emperor of Mexico. But it won't be enough to secure true sovereignty for his people.

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Pressed on all sides by European and native rivals, the Lipanes never should have survived into the nineteenth century. Yet not only had they survived, they had done so with their numbers and their range undiminished. They were wealthier than ever, and more powerful too, and would play a vital role in driving the Spanish out of Texas for good.

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No Native Texan captured Anglo-Texians’ hearts like Lipan Captain Flacco the Younger. His exploits as a Texas Ranger and his people’s defense of Texas’ borders against Mexico make him the darling of Texas newspapers. Texas newspapers fail to distinguish, however, between hostile native Texans and Lipanes living in their midst. And Lipan wealth becomes an irresistible target of Texian raiding and retaliation. 

Painting of Flacco the Younger by Jay Hester, available online.

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The Lipan Apaches become proxies for a Texian guerilla war against northern Mexico, until Texian policies cut them off from their lands and their livelihoods. Ever adaptable, the Lipanes flip the script, relocating to their old haunts in Mexico and raiding Texas property. The Texas-Mexico border itself – and the freedom it offers – becomes an artifact of enduring Lipan resistance during these years. The annexation of Texas, however, unbalances the playing field in an oddly legalistic way.

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All pretense of accommodation with Native Americans disappears in the 1870’s. Lipanes are pursued equally and openly by American and Mexican forces on both sides of the border. One-by-one, they see their old native rivals picked off and carted off to reservations. But the Lipan Apaches refuse to play the doomed savage. After a brutal massacre by US Army troops at their sacred El Remolino site, they declare “war with the whole world.”

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