Weapons

When they first met, the Spanish armies and the warriors of the Southwest followed very different traditions. The Spanish brought horse-mounted troops, and foot soldiers, iron- and steel-bladed lances and cross-bow bolts, chainmail, heavy armor, cannon, swords, pistols, muskets, gunships, oxen- and mule-drawn supply wagons. The Southwestern tribes and Pueblos met them on foot, behind leather shields, deadly recurved or "Turkish" bows, simple long bows, stone-tipped spears and arrows, fire-hardened wooden lances, buckskin hunting shirts and feathered caps, and a single tactical edge--superior knowledge of the land and its resources.

Over the centuries, each learned about each other. By the mid-1600s, the Southwest peoples were becoming expert horsemen; by the mid-1700s, firearms were triggered by native hands. The Spanish were learning the land, and forging alliances with its people. Treaties and promises, and the inequalities these friendships fostered, made for quickly shifting advantages.

Speed and power gave the upper hand to each in turn--first to the horse-mounted militias of New Spain, then to the quick-firing, fast moving native bowmen, then to the Ute and Comanche against the Apache and Navajo, now on horseback, and armed with guns, bows, and lances. Only in the late 1800s would the battles set in motion nearly 300 years before finally come to an end.