War of a Thousand Deserts Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War
By Brian DeLay, assistant professor of history Yale University
Press In the early 1830s, after decades of relative peace,
northern Mexicans and the Indians whom they called “the
barbarians” descended into a terrifying cycle of violence. For
the next fifteen years, owing in part to changes unleashed by
American expansion, Indian warriors launched devastating attacks
across ten Mexican states. Raids and counter-raids claimed
thousands of lives, ruined much of northern Mexico’s economy,
depopulated its countryside, and left man-made “deserts” in
place of thriving settlements. Just as important, this vast
interethnic war informed and emboldened U.S. arguments in favor
of seizing Mexican territory while leaving northern Mexicans too
divided, exhausted, and distracted to resist the American
invasion and subsequent occupation. Exploring Mexican, American,
and Indian sources ranging from diplomatic correspondence and
congressional debates to captivity na