Session Abstract

The past few decades have seen a radical revision of traditional borderland studies, as scholars throughout the Americas have recognized both the centrality of such spaces to broader colonial projects and the active role played by native peoples in their development. Numerous investigations from North and South America revealed borderlands to be unique zones of conflict and accommodation in which imperial or state dominance was conditioned by the interests of native peoples. Independent indigenous people became key players in understanding these spaces of encounter and exchange. However, their role in shaping major historical developments in the Americas remains unclear, as scholars have struggled to challenge entrenched categories of analysis that drive historical studies. How significant was the participation of independent native peoples in shaping major historical trends like the mapping of colonial empires, slave trade, nation-state building, and the expansion of global commerce? With what we know now about borderland spaces, do our categories of analysis suffice to explain North and South America’s diverse histories?

This panel aims at addressing these questions by exploring the role of independent indigenous people in borderland regions in North and South America. The papers combine historical, anthropological, and geographical sensibilities to assess the relationship between territory and interethnic relations in opposite ends of the hemisphere. They seek to incorporate actors and spaces that have long been deemed marginal to the history of the Americas, and in doing so compare local cases as a means to rethink the imperial and national designs that have structured regional histories. Elizabeth Ellis examines the impact of the Indian slave trade for peoples of the Lower Mississippi Valley, particularly the petite nations that lived in contested spaces between Indian and French territories. She argues that as the slave trade destabilized this zone in the eighteenth century, Indian nations and imperial settlers alike abandoned earlier efforts at exterminating local communities. Jeffrey Erbig discusses the Luso-Hispanic mapping efforts that aimed to divide the extreme south of Brazil from the Viceroyalty of La Plata at the end of the eighteenth century. He contends that Charrúas, Minuanes, and other mobile native peoples both shaped the trajectory of the demarcation and took advantage of the imagined border, even as it cut through their lands. Jesse Zarley addresses Mapuche defense of their territorial claims against Spanish, Chilean, and Argentinian states during the first half of the nineteenth century. He focuses specifically on the ways in which Mapuche kinship groups maintained internal cohesion in lands that stretched from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Geraldine Davies Lenoble analyzes practices of treaty making and interethnic alliances in Northern Patagonia during the second half of the nineteenth century. She argues that Pehuenches, Huilliche-Tehuelches and other indigenous groups acted as patrons and policymakers, while creoles oftentimes found themselves to be clients or tributaries. By comparing these local cases that span the Americas and cut across imperial and national boundaries, the panelists aim to generate a broader discussion that situates independent native peoples as the driving agents in American history.