As a year ends, there’s a strong impulse to come up with things like “The 10 neatest gadgets in 2010 that will populate landfills by this time next year” or “4,852 iPhone apps of 2010 that several people have managed to live without.”
But I like to read, and one book from last year stands out because of its excellent writing and because it answered a question that had long intrigued me.
That book is “Empire of the Summer Moon” by S.C. Gwynne, and it’s a lively if sometimes gruesome history of the Comanche, who dominated the territory from the Arkansas River on our plains south to the Hill Country of Texas and beyond. It might be worth noting that “Comanche” derives from a Ute word for “enemy.”
My question was one of those amateur geographer musings: How did Colorado avoid becoming a satellite of Texas, the way that Nevada and Arizona have been dominated by California?
Texas has the nearest seaport to Colorado; Corpus Christi is closer than Los Angeles or San Francisco, and there’s no wall of Rocky Mountains in the way. Texas is a big economic engine, especially compared to our state, and has an attitude expressed in Donald W. Meinig’s 1969 work on cultural geography, “Imperial Texas.”
Further, the Republic of Texas once claimed boundaries that included some of current Colorado — the southeastern corner and a swath up through the middle. That’s one seriously extended Texas panhandle, and I live in it. (After joining the United States, Texas had a choice of keeping this land north of the Missouri Compromise line or keeping slavery. It chose to keep slavery and have the United States pay off the debts it had accrued during its decade as an independent nation.)
So there are considerable economic and historical forces to put Colorado in the Texas orbit. Why didn’t it happen?
There are two practical routes between Texas and Colorado. One is up the Rio Grande from El Paso, and the other is up through the Great Plains.
Texas claimed the entire Rio Grande as its western boundary, and it tried to enforce that claim in 1841 with a small military and diplomatic expedition that aimed to annex Santa Fe. The Texan invaders were routed and marched in irons to Mexico City.
During the Civil War, a Confederate army of Texans marched north from El Paso, aiming to conquer New Mexico and Colorado. Hispanics in New Mexico refused to sell supplies to the Texans and harassed the procession. The Confederates were defeated by New Mexico militia and the First Colorado Infantry at Glorietta Pass on March 28, 1862.
So the New Mexicans defeated Texas invasions on that route. As for the other course, across the Great Plains, it ran through Comancheria — the Staked Plains where there were no landmarks and water was hard to find. The Comanche were tough and resourceful fighters who held the Texans at bay until the 1870s.
So in Colorado’s formative years, it was connected to the Midwest and West Coast by trails and railroads, but not to Texas. The famous Goodnight-Loving cattle trail from Texas didn’t reach Colorado until 1878, and by then, Coloradans were raising their own beef. The first direct rail connection wasn’t completed until 1888, by which time Colorado was pretty well tied to Chicago.
Although “Empire of the Summer Moon” never addressed the question directly, it did help me understand how it came about that we Coloradans don’t greet each other with “Heidi, yawl.” It’s on account of New Mexico militia and Comanche warriors.
Ed Quillen (ekquillen@gmail.com) of Salida is a regular contributor to The Denver Post.
