Undermining Manifest Destiny: Interethnic Relationships in Tucson, 1860-1930

Sal Acosta

University of Arizona

Early in 1848, as the Mexican War was winding down, Sam Houston spoke to the

Democratic Party in New York. In a narrative that he must have repeated many times since the

independence of Texas in 1836, Houston recounted his interpretation of the events that led to the

conflict, essentially, laying all the blame on Mexico. He proceeded to call for the annexation of

the entire Mexican territory.

American expansionist ambitions with regard to Mexico existed well before John

O’Sullivan coined his famous phrase of manifest destiny in 1845 and they persisted in some form

into the twentieth century, though the 1840s and 1850s produced their most vitriolic enunciation.

These two decades witnessed the military and cultural encounter between the peoples of both

countries and largely set the tone for how Americans viewed Mexicans for decades to come. A

focal shift occurred during this period: the denigration of Mexico as a nation evolved into

racialized characterizations against Mexicans as a people. The topic of difference had existed as

narrative motif before 1845, but most accounts employed exotic, rather than racial undertones.

The annexation of Texas in 1845 brought the imminence of military confrontation to national

attention and produced an increasing interest in Mexico, its culture, and its people. Thus, the so-

called Mexican question started to receive much coverage from travelers, pseudo-scientists,

periodicals, and expansionist politicians. As these pundits offered answers to the Mexican

question, race became the primary concern, especially, when they discussed whether the U.S.

should condone the national and personal amalgamation of the two countries.

2

The tenet of manifest destiny rested on the premise that Anglo-Saxons naturally

dominated darker races, and since Mexicans were an inferior race, Americans were destined to

rule over them. Any privileges Americans granted Mexicans would simply prove their

benevolence. The discourse of manifest destiny next concluded that Mexicans, as members of a

mixed race, were not only inferior to whites but that they belonged to a different species

altogether, or that, at the very least, they needed American supervision because they lacked

republican virtue. Pseudo-scientists first approached the Mexican question by asserting that

Mexican skulls and the organization of their brains appeared more “animal than intellectual.”

Similarly, they contended that the small size of Mexicans—and Mexican animals as well—

demonstrated their increasing degeneration. They added that their physical, behavioral, and

intellectual inferiority resulted from racial mixing, since they retained the deceitfulness and

immorality of Spaniards and the stupidity of Indians. The descriptions of the complexions of

Mexicans revealed as much racism as mere perplexity. Narrators used terms such as yellow,

Indian, black, slightly white, brown, swarthy, olive, and combinations of all these. These experts

argued that animals from different species could not produce healthy and fertile offspring, and

since humans descended from many different and incompatible origins, mixed children would be

weak and infertile. Naturalists concluded that Mexican mestizos, like their mulatto counterparts

in the U.S., would fade into extinction. Some Americans openly worried that mixed breeds could

decide political outcomes or that a person of Mexican origin could, in theory, become president.

Thus one must reconcile the contradiction between the anti-Mexican rhetoric of the

discourse of manifest destiny and the prevalence of interethnic unions after the Mexican War. It

becomes clear that the racial theories of the nation-building project held little sway over the

Americans who migrated to the southwest.

3

Sam Houston concluded his speech to the Democratic Party by inviting his audience to

visit the conquered territories and “look out for the beautiful señoritas…, and if you should

choose to annex them, no doubt the result of this annexation will be a most powerful and

delightful evidence of civilization.” The suggestion that Americans enter into relationships with

Mexican women, even within the context of conquest, was in fact a controversial issue, since it

squarely drew attention to the sensitive issue of ethnic amalgamation. Most politicians,

newspaper editors, and fiction writers generally embraced the discourse of manifest destiny and

depicted Mexicans negatively, but Mexican women frequently escaped their scorn.

Like Houston, other Americans spoke with a similar sense of entitlement. A traveler

maintained that it must be “in order of Providence, that [Mexican] women, so justly to be

admired, are to become wives and mothers of a better race.” Others said that Mexican women

developed the strongest of attachments once their “heart [was] touched by the blue eyes, light

hair, and fair complexion of some…Anglo-Saxon.” They advised “all timid bachelors to go to

Mexico at once.” No one, however, expressed the sense of entitlement better than the editor of

the Mexico City volunteer newspaper, The American Star. He cheerfully summed up the attitude

some soldiers had towards their relationships with Mexican women when he described a recent

interethnic wedding: “Hurrah for annexation!” he wrote, “No more arguments on the policy of

annexing Mexico, but go to work and annex her daughters.”

Indeed, American qualms over the racial impurity of Mexicans differed when they

focused their attention solely on the value of women as the spoils of war. Some voices claimed

that the war had begun in part because of the jealousy of Mexican men over the admiration

Mexican women felt towards the superior American men. The discourse of manifest destiny also

shaped what some men wrote about Mexican women. Early in the war, a Philadelphia newspaper

4

predicted that Americans would eventually Anglo-Saxonize Mexico, but, the paper explained,

first “Yankee young fellows and the pretty senoritas” should complete the annexation. After the

war, two Cincinnati newspapers disagreed on how the U.S. should civilize Mexico, but both

maintained that intermarriages should be part of the project: one proposed that Americans should

break the stubborn spirit of Mexicans, Christianize them, and “marry their young women,” while

the other responded that the effort need not involve violence, that if the nation indeed believed in

its “manifest and inevitable destiny to infuse Anglo-Saxon notions, liberty, and blood into the

Mexicans,” then marriages offered the best path to reaching that objective. More than just

informal liaisons, the practice of intermarriage became visible during and after the Mexican war.

Some Americans probably welcomed newspaper accounts that more than a dozen volunteers

returning with Mexican wives, but others most likely reacted with disdain at the reality of

interethnic relationships.

Travel narratives of the war period almost always delineate a clear distinction between

Mexican men and women. American male travelers made a connection between their interests,

their attitudes about Mexican men, and their admiration for Mexican women. They almost

universally vilified Mexican men as ignorant, indolent, inefficient, treacherous, and mendacious,

but consistently included positive descriptions of women in their letters and accounts of the war,

typically by underscoring that the women were superior to the men. American men most likely

viewed Mexican men, not simply as war enemies, but also as competitors or obstacles in the

post-war period.

Some narratives, however, frequently offered warnings that focused on racial

characteristics. In some cases, a traveler might repeatedly pay compliments to Mexican women

for their beauty and manners, yet make occasional generalizations to explain that “their

5

complexions are far from good, the mixture of Spanish and Indian blood giving a sallow clayish

hue to their skin.” Similarly, an American volunteer expressed disappointment when he visited

New Mexico and, speaking for his group, stated, “Instead of the black-eyed Spanish woman, we

found ourselves amongst a swarthy, copper-colored, half-Indian race.” Another soldier exposed

his conflating attitudes towards race, beauty, and intelligence when he wrote that he found the

women of Monterrey “not beautiful,” for even though he liked brunettes, he “never fancied very

deep colours… The features and expressions…are unmistakable evidences of their Indian origin.

But few have intellectual countenances.”

Overall, however, the ambivalence of the discourse of manifest destiny was largely

absent from the narratives of soldiers. They wrote glowing depictions of Mexican women,

focusing much attention on their form of dress, their hair, their voices, and their feet. The

positive depictions in the accounts of soldiers demonstrates that one must underscore important

differences in the nature of the various texts that informed Americans of the racial traits,

character, and culture of Mexicans. Depictions from politicians, boosters, and men of the nascent

sciences appeared authoritative but in reality lacked the acumen that only direct contact and

personal experience can provide. Indeed, most speeches and essays originated from politicians

and specialized writers who never visited the people and places they so confidently described.

They sought to advance their specific agendas and portrayed Mexicans as it best suited their

arguments. Thus, when they discussed the degradation of the Mexicans and expressed their scorn

towards the amalgamation of the races, they in fact spoke of a national, large-scale project in

which Mexicans and intermarriages represented obstacles. Yet, the narratives of soldiers and

migrants included both positive and negative depictions of Mexicans, and, of course, some in

fact paralleled the national discourse. Most visitors, however, primarily expressed admiration

6

towards Mexican women. These narratives offer insight into why lower-class American men

would account for the great majority of intermarriages after the Mexican War. Their personal

goals clearly superseded the directives of the national discourse.

To reiterate, the national discourse of manifest destiny derided Mexicans and often

opposed interethnic relationships, but the personal narratives of volunteers and informal travelers

were generally devoid of scientific-sounding language and typically spoke well of Mexicans,

especially of Mexican women. A similar dichotomy developed in Arizona.

Americans who visited Tucson in the mid 1800s tended to make negative descriptions of

Mexican residents and of interethnic unions. Tucson, an American traveler averred, must be near

the headquarters of Satan, and he explicitly referred both to the high temperatures and to the

purportedly questionable character of its people. Another visitor noticed the abundance of

children with interracial traits, which he attributed to the mongrelization that derives from mere

idleness. He described these children as “an abominable admixture” that was prone to crime and

immorality. He concluded that the descendants of these “miscegenous” couples “may now be

ranked with their natural compadres—Indians, burros, and coyotes.” Yet, even these depictions

demonstrated ambivalence towards Mexican women. An early visitor to Tucson noted that the

women were far superior to the men and that they naturally refined life in the frontier due to their

Catholic upbringing and their great ability to run households.

Racial attitudes that afflicted Mexicans in Arizona were part of the national discussion

that had existed since the Mexican War. All along, however, white men were marrying Mexican

women at significant rates. One can thus view these marriages as forms of social and cultural

transgression, but only if one looks at Arizona as a monolithic entity whose anti-Mexican

rhetoric represented the entire white population. Such was not the case. The territory did witness

7

several waves of hostility towards various groups, including Mexicans, but such intolerance did

not target all groups uniformly. Newspapers and politicians generally maintained highly

antagonistic views towards the Chinese and Indian populations—and Mexicans often joined

whites in those attacks. Yet, the voices that targeted Mexicans came primarily from the northern

part of the territory, where white populations predominated, and from mining towns, where labor

competition led to racial antagonism. These tirades emerged to a large extent from economic and

political agendas—typically appearing during election seasons and occurring primarily during

the first three decades under the American flag.

For example, newspapers in northern Arizona frequently made accusations against

Mexicans and called for the annexation of more Mexican states. The candid antagonism of these

papers, however, did not pervade in the entire territory, particularly not in Tucson, where

Mexicans remained a majority until 1900 and most white men were married to Mexican women.

Tucson newspapers, in fact, underscored American criminal incursions into Mexico and called

upon the American government to guard against such activities. Failure to act, they warned,

might lead Mexican nationals to cross the border to retrieve their property and thus provoke

other papers to complain of Mexican lawlessness. Similarly, when Tucson papers addressed the

prospect of annexation, they simply reprinted articles from other states, reporting, for example,

that there were rumors that the United States might acquire parts of Mexico or that New Orleans

was promoting the idea of intervention in order to stimulate its local economy by serving as a

base. Furthermore, they explicitly called on other newspapers to stop rumors of annexation

because they only served to worry Mexicans and to incite feelings of distrust towards Americans.

Nonetheless, migrating white men typically favored their own visions of individual

happiness over the discourse of manifest destiny—if they were even aware of such rhetoric.

8

Similarly, white men in Tucson did not join their northern Arizona counterparts in their attacks

against Mexicans and interethnic relations. Furthermore, as it turned out, between 1850 and

1880, interethnic unions accounted for 70, 80, and even 90% of all relationships for white men in

Tucson. In some way, as the following images demonstrate, those numbers remained

surprisingly high as late as 1930.

IMAGES FROM POWERPOINT (Number of intermarriages, etc.)

Table 1. Population, couples, and single men and women, Tucson, 1860-1880.

Endogamous couples Exogamous couples Single people, sixteen years old and over

Census year Population White Mexican

Mexican-white

Mexican-nonwhite

White men

White women

Mexican women

1860 940 8 104 16 1 137 0 40

1864 1568 2 150 22 1 203 2 98

1870 3224 15 397 54 2 332 6 221

1880 7007 136 461 97 1 1168 40 291

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17