Author: Taylor Dipoto

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A revision of American history, which places the American revolution in the context of a world governed and informed by the “law of nations” undoubtedly forms the backbone of Eliga H. Gould’s Among the Powers of the Earth. As this idea has been so clearly defined by several other blog posts already (I particularly like the definition posted by 20perez16, which notes that while peace was the ultimate goal, it had the inherent ability to create conflict), I would like to focus on an aspect of the book that I think teaches us about the motivations of the Founding Fathers to become “treaty-worthy” in a concrete way: the treatment of Native Americans.

20perez16’s post notes that while Gould paid nowhere near the amount of attention to Indians as Comanche Empire did, he “acknowledged that the Indians had some say in their political relations with the Spanish and British.” While I do see Indians as an important part of this text, I would argue that Gould does not give them credit for much agency at all. While Britain made the effort to treat them as friends (if only to their faces), Gould’s examples demonstrate that the British were merely using the Indians as a tool to undermine first American rebels during the revolution, and later as an attempt to prevent American ascendancy to power. In discussing the First Seminole War, Gould notes that the Ghent peace talks included a British bid to guarantee “the rights of a few thousand…[to] nearly one third of the territorial dominion of the United States.” (199) I interpret this as the complete weaponization of the Native Americans. While the British (and Spanish as well) may indeed have given Indians what looked like a say when it came to their relations with the two European powers, the Europeans clearly attempted to manipulate Indian opinions and loyalty to their benefit. The British in particular, treated Indians with respect at times, only to abandon them in treaties when they had finished serving their wartime purposes.

I would also argue that the context of Gould’s “law of nations” framework of early American history does a good job of explaining the American drive to beat Native Americans into submission in the 19^th century. Americans believed the pacification of Native Americans was necessary to complete and maintain their claim to treaty-worthiness among the European powers. Gould notes that while critics may have disapproved of Andrew Jackson’s methods of Indian removal, they universally seemed to share an understanding that Native Americans were inferior. He cites the specific example of Chief Justice John Marshall, who acknowledged the Indians “lacked the standing both of European nations and of colonial people in other parts of the world.” (206) If Americans were unable to achieve complete dominion across their own territory, how could they ever expect respect from European nations? By claiming supreme power for themselves in this territory as a sovereign nation and demonstrating power against internal threats, America could take a step closer to their goal of becoming completely treaty-worthy.

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The “body” chapters (2 and 3) of Comanche Empire that we were assigned were undoubtedly interesting, and did quite a good job of expanding upon author Hämäläinen’s general argument that Comanches were able to establish a Southwestern “empire” by exploiting Spanish and French colonies for their own gain. At times I feel like these chapters do veer into a bit of redundancy; it seems that the conclusion to every section, whether about the Comanche-Apache Wars, Western Comanches’ rise to power in New Mexico, or Eastern Comanches’ similar rise in Texas, was some variation on the idea that Comanches succeeded due to their economic prowess and Spain’s tendency to underestimate them.

What I absolutely love about this book however, is the introduction. Hämäläinen’s argument and the overall trajectory of his work is laid out so clearly that it is impossible to miss any of the major points he makes (I assume that because the major arguments of first two chapters were part of his introductory remarks, the rest of the book flows this way as well). He also presents a very comprehensive and widespread historiography that does not just situate Comanche Empire within the confines of 19^th Century America, but within a much wider field that I feel underscores the importance of his work. His discussions of important current historians in his specific field, as well as more famous (although often considered “outdated”) historians and ideas such as Frederick Jackson Turner and the Frontier Thesis. This wide-ranging examination of not only the important works in the field, but how they specifically inform and diverge from Hämäläinen’s own work, makes the importance and place of his book very clear. Drawing upon relatively recent scholarship that sees Native Americans as powerful historical actors with agency, and combining it with cultural history as well as an amalgamation of other ideas, he equates Comanche dominance in the Southwest with the classic idea of an empire.

In his historiography, Hämäläinen acknowledges that he engages in “the broader debates about colonialism, frontiers, and borderlands in the Americas” (6), but I would argue that he sells himself short – it reaches further than just the Americas. By considering the Comanches an empire, I think he opens his work up for comparison with world and European history as well. Andrew mentioned in his response a comparison of sorts: the Comanches were able to modify their worldview in order to advance, while it was impossible for Spanish colonial leaders to change theirs due to their deep-seated conviction that not only the Comanches, but Indians in general, were somehow inferior despite their losses at Comanche hands. This is basically the extent of Hämäläinen’s comparisons. I think this idea of comparisons could be taken further by future historians: by examining the Comanches alongside more traditionally studied empires, they could possibly come to new conclusions regarding the characteristics of empires as a whole.