Traders and Raiders - by Natale A Zappia (Paperback)

About the Book

Traders and Raiders: The Indigenous World of the Colorado Basin, 1540-1859

Book Synopsis

The Colorado River region looms large in the history of the American West, vitally important in the designs and dreams of Euro-Americans since the first Spanish journey up the river in the sixteenth century. But as Natale A. Zappia argues in this expansive study, the Colorado River basin must be understood first as home to a complex Indigenous world. Through 300 years of western colonial settlement, Spaniards, Mexicans, and Americans all encountered vast Indigenous borderlands peopled by Mojaves, Quechans, Southern Paiutes, Utes, Yokuts, and others, bound together by political, economic, and social networks. Examining a vast cultural geography including southern California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Sonora, Baja California, and New Mexico, Zappia shows how this interior world pulsated throughout the centuries before and after Spanish contact, solidifying to create an autonomous, interethnic Indigenous space that expanded and adapted to an ever-encroaching global market economy.

Situating the Colorado River basin firmly within our understanding of Indian country, Traders and Raiders investigates the borders and borderlands created during this period, connecting the coastlines of the Atlantic and Pacific worlds with a vast Indigenous continent.

Review Quotes

An important and timely contribution to Borderlands, Indian and Western history... provide[s] us with a greater understanding of the contested and colonized spaces of the US-Mexico borderlands.--Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

Filled to the brim with arguments, insights, and interventions. . . . A superb example of a kind of braided history in which different modes of analysis--social, cultural, environmental, and spatial--blend into a seamless whole.--American Historical Review

Joins a growing shelf of books that has recast the narrative of interior American Indian history and brought about a serious reconsideration of the impact of outsiders on indigenous worlds.--H-Net

Makes powerful contributions that add exciting geographies and cultures to an already teeming and complex Southwest borderlands.--Journal of American History

Paints a vivid portrait of a Native-dominated landscape that would otherwise be inaccessible in a history based solely on archival sources.--Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Relevant and significant.--CHOICE

This book contributes to a growing body of scholarship in early American and Native American history that reimagines North America as an indigenous space. . . . Has much to offer those interested in California, borderlands, Native Americans, and early American history.--American Indian Quarterly

Well researched. . . . A solid contribution to the historiography of Native America.--The Historian

About the Author

Natale A. Zappia is assistant professor of history at Whittier College.