"Over the course of several centuries, the Apache peoples repeatedly confronted and confounded the northern movement of the Spanish Empire into what is now the Southwestern Borderlands. From the late 16th century through the beginning of the 19th, Apaches and Spaniards engaged in almost constant warfare. Whether viewed as a series of relatively small, local conflicts, conflated by an imperial perspective, or as a generations-long struggle for control of ancestral lands and resources against outside invasion, the war (or wars) between the Spanish Empire and the various Apache peoples were among the longest and the most important in the history of North America. Haphazardly at first, but then with increasing momentum from the mid 1700s, the Spaniards unleashed all the power and subtleties available to their modern nation-state against a tribal society. Alternating extreme violence with offers of food and security on what were essentially reservations, by the 1790s the Spaniards had imposed on the Apaches a form of mutual accommodation that resembled peace more than war. This talk will examine the origins, course, and results of this long, bloody, and labyrinthine struggle."

See you there!

/s/ webmaster