The policy of using North American Indian auxiliaries to implement and assist European forces in the New World was established by Hernan Cortes between 1519 and 1521 in the expedition against Aztec Mexico and was employed with great success in quelling the dissident native tribes of Central Mexico and the southwestern regions of the United States in the four centuries to follow. Recognizing the lack of solidarity among the Indian nations, first the Spanish, and later the Mexican and United States military forces, exploited this weakness in recruiting Indian allies against other hostile tribes.

Although the use of such Indian auxiliaries was not the only technique employed by the European and American forces to rout native resistance, this policy did, in fact, greatly facilitate the subjugation of all the North American Indian nations. As the author of Pueblo Warriors and Spanish Conquest points out in the introduction, the white man's most successful stratagem in the New World--that of divide and conquer--effected the conquest of the North American Indian, who united, would have been vastly superior in number and striking force. As it was, the Indians of North America virtually conquered themselves.

Oakah L. Jones Jr., in Pueblo Warriors and Spanish Conquest, has chosen to examine the significance and contributions of the Pueblo Indian auxiliaries as employed by the Spaniards on the northern frontiers of New Spain from 1692 to 1794. The scattered Pueblo tribes had united temporarily in 1680 to drive the Spanish conquerors from the lands of New Mexico, but by 1692 their reversion to disunity allowed the Spanish forces to re-establish their domination of the province. There followed a period of 200 years, spanning the 17th and 18th centuries, when three separate foreign powers, Spain, Mexico, and the United States, utilized the native populations of the New Mexico Pueblos to maintain a line of defense against the indios barbaros, the marauding Apache, Navajo, Commanche and Ute bands that terrorized white and Indian settlements alike.

Pueblo Warriors and Spanish Conquest examines in detail the procedures employed by the Spaniards in organizing, equipping and deploying their Pueblo auxiliaries throughout the province of present-day New Mexico. Not only does this book present the reader with an interesting perspective into the history of the Indians of the Southwest, but it also provides an understanding of the policies undertaken by the Spanish crown in defense of its northern territories against the depredations of hostile Indians and the encroachment of French, British, and American Powers.

Margaret Simpson