Editing The Gift:The World (section)

=A Brief History of Mages in New Spain=

Nobody is certain when Native American and European mages first became aware of each other, but they were trading and fighting long before Columbus “discovered” the Americas.  With European colonization came widespread and brutal magewar as factions competed for territory.  This was not the clash of two unified armies, but the brawlings of countless independent sects.  Native and European groups allied with each other frequently for defense or conquest; the Europeans were not thinking in terms of establishing European control of the Americas and the Native Americans were not thinking in terms of preventing this from happening.  All the same, the mortal conquests would not have been possible if the Native American mages had not been busy with magewar.  The mage war never ended.  It simply blended into all the other mage wars, large and small, that took place in the Americas.

Mages have fought large mage wars whenever mortals have fought large wars, either because they take a side or because a faction is taking advantage of the political instability to make a grab for power.  Other major mage wars have occurred right after the revolutionary war, in the 1880s and 1890s, and throughout the 1950s.  In 1959, 31 traditions of magi joined together in a non-aggression pact known as the Peace.