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Winner of
the William P. Clements Prize for the Best Non-Fiction
Book on Southwestern America Published in 2007
 Peace
Came in the Form of a Woman:
Indians
and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands
(University of North
Carolina Press: 2007)
Honoring
Juliana Barr
Revising the standard
narrative of European-Indian
relations in America, Juliana Barr
reconstructs a world in which
Indians were the dominant power and
Europeans were the ones forced to
accommodate, resist, and persevere.
She demonstrates that between the
1690s and 1780s, Indian peoples
including Caddos, Apaches, Payayas,
Karankawas, Wichitas, and Comanches
formed relationships with Spaniards
in Texas that refuted European
claims of imperial control.
Barr argues that
Indians not only
retained control
over their
territories but
also imposed
control over
Spaniards.
Instead of being
defined in
racial terms, as
was often the
case with
European
constructions of
power,
diplomatic
relations
between the
Indians and
Spaniards in the
region were
dictated by
Indian
expressions of
power, grounded
in gendered
terms of
kinship. By
examining six
realms of
encounter--first
contact,
settlement and
intermarriage,
mission life,
warfare,
diplomacy, and
captivity--Barr
shows that
native
categories of
gender provided
the political
structure of
Indian-Spanish
relations by
defining
people's
identity,
status, and
obligations
vis-à-vis
others. Because
native systems
of kin-based
social and
political order
predominated,
argues Barr,
Indian concepts
of gender cut
across European
perceptions of
racial
difference.
The
judging committee wrote,
"the Barr book soars. It not only
takes on some large
historiographical questions, but
makes its argument in clear and
lively prose."
2007 William
P. Clements Prize for the Best
Nonfiction Book on Southwestern American
2008 Berkshire Conference First Book
Prize, Berkshire Conference of Women
Historians
2007 Liz Carpenter Award, Texas State
Historical Association
2007 Murdo J. MacLeod Prize, Latin
American & Caribbean Section, Southern
Historical Association
2007 Charles S. Sydnor Award, Southern
Historical Association
2008 Texas Old Missions and Forts
Restoration Book Award, Texas Catholic
Historical Society
The $2,500
Clements Book Prize honors fine writing and original
research on the American Southwest. The competition is
open to any nonfiction book, including biography, on any
aspect of Southwestern life, past or present. The
William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies is part
of SMU's Dedman College and affiliated with the
Department of History. It was created to promote
research, publishing, teaching and public programming in
a variety of fields related to the American Southwest.
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