alliance and enmity all played a part in shaping different

Last updated: 2/29/2024

alliance and enmity all played a part in shaping different Indian nations geographic dominion Yet no matter the political economy all of them governed and defended bounded sovereign domains Let us look briefly at those three case studies in Texas and the southern plains in order to get the conversation about Native borders going It is often assumed that hunter gatherers may be better understood for what they lacked as opposed to what they had but they maintained clearly delineated ethnic domains defined by kinship and marriage For hunter gatherers such as Coahuilteco and Karankawa speakers territories were maintained often shared spaces of control within which certain groups exclusive rights to collective ranges and resources The allegiances among the groups meant that they joined together to hunt and to defend the lands they held in common The boundaries of their territory were well estab lished known to all and marked by natural sites such as rivers or bays and manmade phenomena such as watering holes petroglyphs pictographs or painted trees Trespass was a legal concept and once Europeans arrived in the region they were subject to that charge Sedentary agriculturalists such as Caddos exercised control over a more expansive bordered domain made up of rings of settlement Hunting ter ritories manned and defended by small family groups in hunting lodges made up the outermost ring Moving inward the next ring was a space made up of farming homesteads surrounded by cultivated fields and small hamlets each represented by a subchief At the core one found the cer emonial complex and primary township of the head political and religious Caddo leadership To secure their domain Caddos had border control as well as passport and surveillance systems and within their territory were internal boundaries between member nations For mobile groups such as Comanches and Apaches raiding served geo political as well as economic purpose in aiding territorial expansion Both groups evinced clear growth strategies by extending control over greater and greater subsistence zones Their boundaries might move regularly but that did not diminish the security of their borders indeed mobility was the key to border defense and resource management within extensive territories Apaches and Comanches too marked their borders with land marks cairns and trees made to grow in particular forms or directions Thus when Europeans arrived all set to colonize the region they found their border making aspirations ran smack up against the border defense and horder expansion of Indian nations Spaniards and Frenchmen found nnires they had to seek