""They Asked for Traders Amongst Them": Buffalo Robes, the Santa Fe Trade, and Social Change on the South Plains 1817-1858”

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the South Plains during the Mexican period and investigates how the Santa Fe trade network increased interest in the region from all sides even as the people who did the actual trading played tribes and nations off each other in pursuit of profits and advantages. Buffalo robes processed by Native women sat at the foundation of this trade system. Accounts left by American traders, their mixed-ancestry children, and ethnological interviews from the reservation era reveal a complex system, created by Indians and the traders they allowed to enter their territories, where news traveled through informal networks and political developments from the surrounding nations, both Native and settler, influenced decisions in multiple registers. Similarly, information about isolated events on the Plains reached back to the United States, the Republic of Texas, and Mexico and further impacted policy at the national level as the three countries positioned themselves to dominate one of the last parts of North America that was still firmly under Native American control in the mid-19th century. The project broadly shows how the uneven process of national expansion occurred on the edges of empire, as well as how indigenous polities positioned themselves to benefit from the initial opportunities posed by the pull of the region into broader markets.