Welcome to Lippon to Lippon Apocalypse.

Episode 5, Leponis at last.

I'm Brandon Seal.

Whether apocryphal or not, the Norteño defeat of the Plains Apache in 1724 at the Battle of Gran Sierra del Fierro coincided with a major change in the geography of the Apache Empire.

Plains Apaches would no longer control the Texas Panhandle.

The headwaters of the Colorado and the Brazos would mark the line between Apache and Comanche

worlds for most of the next century, during which time the Plains Apaches would double down

on protecting their hill country homeland and the ranges in and around San Antonio.

Because the truth is that the Plains Apache economic model was still sound. Indeed, the reason

that the Norteños continued to so relentlessly attack the Plains Apaches for the next century

was that the Apaches still filled a very profitable economic

niche in Texas. Even if they couldn't broker an outright alliance with the Spanish in the same way

that the Norteños had done with the French, Apaches still controlled the geography of Spanish

trade. Even as Spanish administrators in San Antonio remained standoffish and hostile to the Apaches,

San Antonio themselves, Dechanos, developed increasingly close relationships with them.

And here we see the subtlety of the Plains Apache absorption strategy at work.

Apaches began to trickle into the San Antonio community,

quote, in the registers of baptism, marriage, and burial for San Antonio de Balero from 1721 through the 1780s,

129 Apaches can be counted, end quote.

Spanish slaving expeditions, however, remained a major impediment to a closer relationship.

When times got tough, residial commanders and even less scrupulous types would just head

outside of San Antonio and enslave the first Indians they found, which increasingly were the

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