In this noteworthy study Natale Zappia argues that raiding and commerce permitted the Amerindian societies of the Colorado River Basin to create a distinctly indigenous “interior world” (6) between 1540, when Spaniard Hernando de Alarcón led the first European expedition into the area, and 1859, when Anglo-Americans finally asserted their hegemony over the region in the aftermath of the Mojave War. Trade and plunder, Zappia argues, were central to the political economies of the native communities of the interior world, permitting them to remain largely independent, both politically and economically, from peoples of European descent prior to 1859.
The resource-rich Colorado River served as the economic and cultural backbone of the interior world. “Indian highways” (8) originating on its banks extended hundreds of miles in every direction, permitting a perennial flow of people, trade articles, and ideas from as far afield as the Pueblo settlements of New Mexico or the...
