Booknotes: Confederates and Comancheros

New Arrival:
• Confederates and Comancheros: Skullduggery and Double-Dealing in the Texas–New Mexico Borderlands by James Bailey Blackshear and Glen Sample Ely (OU Press, 2021).

Beginning in the late 1700s, trade relationships between mostly Hispanic "Comancheros" operating out of New Mexico and several Plains tribes (the most significant partner lending its name to the trader moniker) prospered and spread their influence over both legal and illicit commerce across large areas of the Southwest. James Blackshear and Glen Ely's Confederates and Comancheros: Skullduggery and Double-Dealing in the Texas–New Mexico Borderlands "takes us to the borderlands in the 1860s and 1870s for an in-depth look at Union-Confederate skullduggery amid the infamous Comanche-Comanchero trade in stolen Texas livestock."

After the 1861-62 Confederate campaigning in New Mexico Territory ended in clear defeat for the southern forces, it is often assumed that control of the region was conceded to the enemy and Confederate strategic intentions redirected elsewhere. However, as Blackshear and Ely demonstrate, "administered by Union troops under martial law, the region became a hotbed of Rebel exiles and spies, who gathered intelligence, disrupted federal supply lines, and plotted to retake the Southwest."

"Using a treasure trove of previously unexplored documents," the authors also "trace the complicated network of relationships that drew both Texas cattlemen and Comancheros into these borderlands, revealing the urban elite who were heavily involved in both the legal and illegal transactions that fueled the region’s economy."

More from the description: "Peopled with Rebels and bluecoats, Comanches and Comancheros, Texas cattlemen and New Mexican merchants, opportunistic Indian agents and Anglo arms dealers, this book illustrates how central these contested borderlands were to the history of the American West." The "contested borderlands" of the Civil War era and beyond remain a popular target of scholarly study, and this book looks like yet another interesting contribution to that expanding literature.