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White Justice in Arizona: Apache Murder Trials in the Nineteenth Century

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Murder cases against Apache Indians in the territory of Arizona in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are recounted much as cases against blacks in the South have been done in other books and media. McKanna goes beyond the by-now familiar charge that the Apaches, as a minority ethnic group in lands taken over by white settlers, got no justice to speak of. His main concern is how the system worked against the defendants, even when circumstances and in some cases physical evidence raised questions about the murder charges. The author also views the acts of the Native Americans against the backdrop of ill-defined laws and jurisdiction in the recently-formed territory and age-old Apache culture, which was undergoing a combination of forced and voluntary transition. McKanna's accounts are like popular case-book studies of the cases against the Indians with a sociological factor brought in. He teaches American Indian history at San Diego State U. and has written previous books on the inter-related subjects of crime and race.

Clare V. McKanna Jr. has been teaching Native American history at San Diego State University since 1987. In White Justice In Arizona: Apache Murder Trials In The Nineteenth Century, McKanne Jr. focuses upon how the judicial system of nineteenth-century Arizona denied Apaches justice. Apaches learned the hard way that their customs and methods for maintaining social control were drastically at odds with a new, alien, and mystifying legal system. Many did not know English, and the public defenders appointed to them were largely inexperienced or neglectful, as there was no money to be made representing indigent clients. White settlers and juries had been conditions to believe, through popular culture, word of mouth, and sensationalized newspaper headlines, that Apaches were the most dangerous and bloodthirsty of Native Americans; and so any Apache accused of killing a white person was likely to be treated as a blood enemy to be destroyed in the all-white courts, rather than innocent until proven guilty. A stark, sharply critical, and edifying look at the iniquities of false justice.