Most military biographies focus on officers, many of whom left
diaries or wrote letters throughout their lives and careers. This
collection offers new perspectives by focusing on the lives of
enlisted soldiers from a variety of cultural and racial
backgrounds. Comprised of ten biographies, Soldiers in the
Southwest Borderlands showcases the scholarship of experts who have
mined military records, descendants' recollections, genealogical
sources, and even folklore to tell common soldiers' stories. The
essays examine enlisted soldiers' cross-cultural interactions and
dynamic, situational identities. They illuminate the intersections
of class, culture, and race in the nineteenth-century Southwest.
The men who served under U.S. or Mexican flags and on the payrolls
of the federal government or as state or territorial volunteers
represented most of the major ethnicities in the West - Hispanics,
African Americans, Indians, American-born Anglos, and recent
European immigrants - and many moved fluidly among various social
and ethnic groups. For example, though usually described as an
Apache scout, Mickey Free was born to Mexican parents, raised by an
American stepfather, adopted by an Apache father, given an Irish
name, and was ultimately categorized by federal authorities as an
Irish Mexican White Mountain Apache. George Goldsby, a former slave
of mixed ancestry, served as a white soldier in the Union army
during the Civil War, and then served twelve years as a ""Buffalo
Soldier"" in the all-black Tenth U.S. Cavalry. He also claimed some
American Indian ancestry and was rumored to have crossed the
Mexican border to fight alongside Pancho Villa. What motivated
these soldiers? Some were patriots and adventurers. Others were
destitute and had few other options. Enlisted men received little
professional training, and possibilities for advancement were few.
Many of these men witnessed, underwent, or inflicted extreme
violence, some of it personal and much of it related to
excruciating military campaigns. Spotlighting ordinary men who
usually appear on the margins of history, the biographical essays
collected here tell the stories of soldiers in the complex world of
the Southwest after the U.S.-Mexican War.
General
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