North American West Research Articles

Paleoethnobotanical identification criteria for bulbs of the North American Northwest

Paleoethnobotanical assemblages from the Northwestern region of North America often yield geophyte subterranean organs, but these carbonized remains are difficult to identify to species or genus level. We examine 11 species (8 genera) of the most ethnographically prevalent Northwest geophyte foods for macro- and micro-morphologic geophyte features, with a focus on bulbs from the Asparagales and Liliales orders. In this contribution, we discuss ethnographic practices which may affect archaeological material and provide digital photographic and quantitative references for both fresh and carbonized geophytes. We determine that pavement epidermal cells are the most diagnostic criteria for identifying bulbs in paleoethnobotanical assemblages. These identification standards provide researchers with comparative material to address questions of plant use, preparation, and stewardship across the greater Northwest Coast and Columbia-Fraser Plateau cultural and geographic regions.

Whither the “Hindoo Invasion”? South Asians in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, 1907–1930

ABSTRACT The first decade of the twentieth century saw several thousand men migrate from India to the North American West Coast. While most settled in British Columbia or California, a smaller number moved to the US Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon. A series of violent riots in 1907–8 drove many from the region. The basic contours of this population in the region after this time remain unclear. I uncover evidence that Indians persisted for a longer time period, and in more varied locations and occupations than some previous research suggests, but that ultimately violent exclusion led them to disappear almost entirely from the region. I investigate the conditions in which these men lived and toiled, and the ways in which they were viewed by the larger society, particularly in terms of evolving concepts of race and assimilation.

Influenza’s Progress: The Great Epizootic Flu of 1872–1873 in the North American West

Research Article| January 01 2021 Influenza’s Progress: The Great Epizootic Flu of 1872–1873 in the North American West Thomas G. Andrews Thomas G. Andrews THOMAS G. ANDREWS is Professor of History at the University of Colorado Boulder. His first book, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War (2008), won six awards, including the Bancroft Prize. His most recent book, Coyote Valley: Deep History in the High Rockies (2015), is an environmental history of the Colorado headwaters region of Rocky Mountain National Park. He is now working on a multi-book project on human-animal relationships in U.S. history. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Utah Historical Quarterly (2021) 89 (1): 4–30. https://doi.org/10.5406/utahhistquar.89.1.0004 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Thomas G. Andrews; Influenza’s Progress: The Great Epizootic Flu of 1872–1873 in the North American West. Utah Historical Quarterly 1 January 2021; 89 (1): 4–30. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/utahhistquar.89.1.0004 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressUtah Historical Quarterly Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2021 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2021 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Ecology and Ethnogenesis: An Environmental History of the Wind River Shoshones, 1000–1868

In Ecology and Ethnogenesis, Adam R. Hodge presents a deep history of an Indigenous community too often overlooked by historians. This is a book of remarkable depth that tracks a group of people as they morphed culturally and politically during nearly a millennium. The book focuses on this group’s transformation from the Numu, the Eastern Shoshones, to the Wind River Shoshones over the course of that thousand-year span. Hodge argues that movement between vastly different ecologies prior to arrival of European colonists, as well as the changes to those environments wrought by European colonialism, played key roles in the development of modern Wind River Shoshone society. It is fundamentally an environmental history, showing how one Indigenous society’s environmental context, and their adaptation to ecological changes, shaped their social and cultural structure. “If we hope to grasp [the Wind River Shoshones’] past,” Hodge writes, “it is especially important to explore the interplay between their ancestors and the physical environments that they historically utilized” (3).The focus on the intersection of culture and ecology is well maintained throughout the book but is particularly strong in Hodge’s analysis of changing gender norms and roles within Eastern and Wind River Shoshone society. Hodge provides sensitive and nuanced discussions of polygyny and plural marriage among the Shoshones, arguing that such practices served important economic roles. “Gender complementarity and the practice of polygyny distributed critical labor practices and helped ensure productive Shoshone households and communities” during the high era of the mountain western fur trade in the early nineteenth century, Hodge argues (216–17). Gender is a major theme in this work as, in the author’s words, “ecological interrelationships that contributed to Eastern Shoshone distinctiveness often manifested in the form of gender dynamics. . . . I strive for a ‘genuine incorporation’ of Indian women’s history” (9). In this, Hodge succeeds wonderfully.Ecology and Ethnogenesis could have used another round of editing. This is not merely a matter of aesthetics—though, to be sure, word and phrase repetition can be distracting in the text. Some sentences and paragraphs run on long enough to obscure the central point the author is making, and unnecessarily wordy phrases similarly cloud meaning throughout the book. To cite one example of unnecessarily bulky sentences, in an early chapter Hodge writes: “The far northwestern portion of the Great Plains, a vast area that encompasses the grasslands of present-day Montana and Alberta, situated between the Yellowstone River on the south and the North Saskatchewan to the north, pulled Numic-speaking peoples northward along the eastern foot of the Northern Rockies because it afforded tremendous hunting opportunities” (86). Sentences of this size abound and do not clarify the story Hodge tells. This is a relatively minor drawback, but a noticeable one nonetheless.Adam Hodge’s Ecology and Ethnogenesis is a strong work of history, and the author’s emphasis on precontact Numu society and on the relationship between ecological change and gender history are welcome emphases in a field that too often ignores both. While some dense and occasionally unclear writing may mean this work appeals to a strictly academic audience, it will be of considerable use to any scholar working on the history of the North American West and those who have called that place home.

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural America

Despite considerable social scientific attention to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on urbanized areas, very little research has examined its impact on rural populations. Yet rural communities-which make up tens of millions of people from diverse backgrounds in the United States-are among the nation's most vulnerable populations and may be less resilient to the effects of such a large-scale exogenous shock. We address this critical knowledge gap with data from a new survey designed to assess the impacts of the pandemic on health-related and economic dimensions of rural well-being in the North American West. Notably, we find that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural populations have been severe, with significant negative impacts on unemployment, overall life satisfaction, mental health, and economic outlook. Further, we find that these impacts have been generally consistent across age, ethnicity, education, and sex. We discuss how these findings constitute the beginning of a much larger interdisciplinary COVID-19 research effort that integrates rural areas and pushes beyond the predominant focus on cities and nation-states.

Review: Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote, by Ellen Carol DuBois

Book Review| December 24 2020 Review: Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote, by Ellen Carol DuBois Ellen Carol DuBois. Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020. 383 pp. Illustrations. Hardcover $28.00. Gayle Gullett Gayle Gullett Gayle Gullett is an associate professor emerita of history in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. She specializes in American women’s history, the American West, and urban history. In Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women’s Movement, 1880–1911 (2000), she examines how California women at the turn of the twentieth century created a social movement that enabled them to win the vote in 1911. She has also published several articles on women and politics in the American West. Her most recent suffrage article is “Winning California: The 1911 Suffrage Victory” (in Western Legal History 30, 2019). From 2003 to 2012, Gullett coedited, with Susan E. Gray, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. In 2014, Gray and Gullett published Contingent Maps: Rethinking Western Women’s History and the North American West, an anthology of recently published Frontiers articles that borrows tools from feminist geographers to analyze gender and the West. Gullett is currently working on a book manuscript, “New Women, New Journalism, and a New City: Gender, Modernity, and Los Angeles, 1910–1920.” In this project she investigates how newspaper women, members of diverse communities of women, and communities of print and politics responded to and shaped modern conversations about gender, sexuality, and citizenship. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2020) 97 (4): 163–166. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2020.97.4.163 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Gayle Gullett; Review: Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote, by Ellen Carol DuBois. California History 24 December 2020; 97 (4): 163–166. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2020.97.4.163 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCalifornia History Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2020 by the Regents of the University of California2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Influences of Atmospheric Rivers on North Pacific Winter Precipitation: Climatology and Dependence on ENSO Condition

AbstractThe atmospheric river (AR) is a unique mover of moisture from the low latitudes to mid- and high latitudes and a potential cause for regional flooding. This study explores the ARs’ influence on wintertime precipitation (including extreme precipitation) over the pan-North Pacific during 1996–2018 from the climatological perspective and during the ENSO condition, via distinguishing precipitation and moisture transport between the AR-group and the non-AR-group. Climatologically, the AR-group contributes 30%–45% of total winter precipitation, and up to 70% of total extreme precipitation over the eastern Pacific and along the North American west coast between 25° and 45°N. The above area is the core region of the ARs’ influence on precipitation. The AR-group’s precipitation in the core region is mostly determined by AR-produced in situ moisture convergence, while the non-AR-group’s precipitation is attributed to evaporation from Earth’s surface. The AR frequency is increased (decreased) in the core region during El Niño (La Niña) winters. As a result, the AR-group contributes more than half of the positive (negative) anomalies in total precipitation in the core region, due to AR-related moisture convergence anomalies. Besides, during El Niño winters, the AR-group also contributes almost half of negative anomalies in total precipitation over the middle basin between 40° and 55°N. An anomalous moisture sink (source) always acts to increase (decrease) in situ precipitation for both the AR-group and the non-AR-group. It is also shown that the moisture transport and its divergence anomalies are primarily decided by changes in wind fields and second by moisture. Furthermore, changes in moisture can cause asymmetric features of anomalies in moisture transport and its divergence between El Niño and La Niña but with limited effects.

International Dimension in Colonization of the North-West of America and California at the End of the 17-18 <sup>th</sup> Centuries

The article reviews the initial period of European colonization of the North Pacific Ocean and California within the context of diplomatic relations between Russia and Spain during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. It tries to understand the policies of European powers in the American Northwest and the reasons for pursuing their colonial interests there. It analyses the history of exploration of these territories, expeditions to the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, and historical maps of this region. For the first time in Russian historiography the authors touch upon the exploration of California in the 18th century.The exploration of the North Pacific Ocean, the northwestern American coast, including certain areas of California, Alaska and the Aleutian Islands has long attracted the attention of European powers. It was a process in which government authorities and private merchant companies took part. The expansion of the Spanish Empire into California was made possible in part because of the concerns of the Madrid court about the strengthening of the Russian and British empires in the North Pacific Ocean. The Spanish documents from the archives of Madrid, Seville and Simancas – the article introduces them into research communication the first time - show the validity of the fears of the Madrid court regarding the inevitable development of Russian colonization in the region. The advance of Russia to the shores of America has economic reasons: Cossacks and merchants reached the Pacific Ocean pursuing the desire to profit from the fur trade. As the economic influence expanded, the state interests of annexing territories and bringing the local population into citizenship followed behind. The territorial advance of the Russians to the Pacific Ocean was facilitated by the ambitious, but at the same time balanced diplomacy of Peter I, which managed to ensure the expansion of the borders of the Russian Empire.Spanish consolidation in certain territories in California was aimed at a possible containment of the Russian advance. Russian-Spanish relations in the Northwest Pacific at the end of the 17th – 18th centuries contributed to the nature of the subsequent development of territories in the North Pacific Ocean.

Observations of the Electrodynamical Ties Between Sporadic E and the Plasmasphere

AbstractA joint investigation was conducted of coherent backscatter radar observations of irregularities within the E and F regions and tomographic mapping of corotating plasmaspheric irregularities (CPIs) near Japan and the American northwest from June 2018. Within both areas, the amplitudes/detection rates for CPIs associated with ionospheric phase fronts aligned northwest‐to‐southeast peaked at night, predominantly premidnight. Likewise, the line‐of‐sight velocity dispersion measured within the E region from coherent backscatter in both areas peaked during the same time periods. Additionally, there were several instances of southwest propagating phase fronts within the E region backscatter data, with speeds ∼100 m s−1 and wavelengths ∼300 km. Both the CPI amplitudes and E region velocity dispersions were typically larger near Japan. In both geographic areas, detections of sporadic E (ES) were prevalent during all times, as is typical at midlatitudes in northern summer. Such southwestward propagating phase fronts have often been observed within summer nighttime ES layers and have been tied to electrobuoyancy waves in the F region. Simulations of plane wave electric field disturbances within ES layers with amplitudes constrained by the backscatter velocity dispersion measurements were able to reproduce the observed CPI properties. These simulated disturbances had smaller wavelengths (50 km) and speeds (20 m s−1) than those observed within the backscatter data but had similar oscillation periods. This may imply a population of smaller‐scale wave‐like disturbances that contribute significantly to the observed velocity dispersion but are too small to be resolved within the radar data.

Ontogenetic patterns in the calcification and element incorporation in fin rays of age-0 White Sturgeon

White Sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus) are a long-lived, slow-growing, and late-reproducing anadromous fish common in estuaries and coastal habitats along the North American West Coast. These life history characteristics make populations vulnerable to human impacts and a challenge to study and manage. Previous studies in the San Francisco Estuary, California have provided insights into rearing habitats and migratory patterns but are limited in spatial and temporal scope. Fin ray geochemical analysis can provide a non-lethal approach to reconstruct migratory patterns and environmental conditions experienced throughout an individual fish’s lifespan. However, it is not known how soon post hatch age-0 White Sturgeon fin rays begin to calcify, reducing confidence in early life history temporal resolution using geochemical approaches. We used osteological (clear and stain) and geochemical techniques (laser-ablation-ICP-MS) to describe calcification initiation and completion, and element incorporation in the leading fin ray of known-age White Sturgeon reared at constant water temperature (18.6 °C) from 1 to 76 days post hatch (dph). We found that fin rays begin calcifying as early as ~20 dph (~27 mm total length) and are >95% calcified by ~72 dph (~70 mm total length). Consequently, the first ~20 dph are not likely to be recorded in the fin ray. Observed element (Li, Mg, Cu, Zn, Rb, Sr, Ba, Pb, U) incorporation patterns suggest that fin rays can provide a powerful tool to study White Sturgeon early movement and migratory patterns, habitat use, and environmental exposure.

“An Outlet to the Western Sea”: Puget Sound, Terraqueous Mobility, and Northern Pacific Railroad’s Pursuit of Trade with Asia, 1864–1892

Abstract The Northern Pacific Railroad saw Puget Sound harbors as environments uniquely suited to connect the North American interior with the Pacific Ocean and enable U.S. trade with East Asia. But in building the physical infrastructure to link transcontinental trains with transpacific ships, Northern Pacific significantly altered Commencement Bay’s shoreline and displaced Puyallups from their traditional territory. The articles uses a terraqueous perspective, emphasizing movement between terrestrial and aqueous environments, to demonstrate how U.S. pursuit of transpacific trade shaped the North American West.

Frontier Violence and Law and Order: Historical and Geographical Variance in the Great Plains of the North American West

Stark differences between the United States and Canada in the post-Civil War/post-Confederation frontier West of the Great Plains and Prairies regarding the role of government, levels of interpersonal violence, and access to firearms (especially handguns) helped to shape the two countries’ divergent developmental paths. Utilizing the alternative approaches of Seymour Martin Lipset’s “origins thesis” and borderlands studies to structure its analysis, this article contrasts the frontier experiences of both countries in the nineteenth century concerning gun laws, violence, and the enforcement of law and order. Canada’s frontier West was demonstrably more orderly and peaceful than was the American frontier, yet the closer one came to the 49th parallel, the more rowdy and violence-prone were the Canadian towns and settlements. Nevertheless, despite occasional instances of lawlessness, even the Alberta borderlands were not as violent or unruly as the American frontier, due in large measure to a strong central government and the effectiveness of the North-West Mounted Police.

Amplified Madden–Julian oscillation impacts in the Pacific–North America region

The Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) is a slow-moving tropical mode that produces a planetary-scale envelope of convective storms. By exciting Rossby waves, the MJO creates teleconnections with far-reaching impacts on extratropical circulation and weather. Although recent studies have investigated the response of the MJO to anthropogenic warming, not much is known about potential changes in its teleconnections. Here, we show that the MJO teleconnection pattern in boreal winter will likely extend further eastward over the North Pacific. This is primarily due to an eastward shift in the exit region of the subtropical jet, to which the teleconnection pattern is anchored, and assisted by an eastward extension of the MJO itself. The eastward-extended teleconnection enables the MJO to have a greater impact downstream on the Northeast Pacific and North American west coast. Over California specifically, the multi-model mean projects a 54% increase in MJO-induced precipitation variability by 2100 under a high-emissions scenario. The Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) is a band of convection that travels eastward through the tropics and impacts mid-latitude weather via teleconnections. Under climate warming, these teleconnections are predicted to extend eastward in the Pacific–North America region, amplifying MJO impacts there.

Spatial Bias in Medium-Range Forecasts of Heavy Precipitation in the Sacramento River Basin: Implications for Water Management

AbstractForecasts of heavy precipitation delivered by atmospheric rivers (ARs) are becoming increasingly important for both flood control and water supply management in reservoirs across California. This study examines the hypothesis that medium-range forecasts of heavy precipitation at the basin scale exhibit recurrent spatial biases that are driven by mesoscale and synoptic-scale features of associated AR events. This hypothesis is tested for heavy precipitation events in the Sacramento River basin using 36 years of NCEP medium-range reforecasts from 1984 to 2019. For each event we cluster precipitation forecast error across western North America for lead times ranging from 1 to 15 days. Integrated vapor transport (IVT), 500-hPa geopotential heights, and landfall characteristics of ARs are composited across clusters and lead times to diagnose the causes of precipitation forecast biases. We investigate the temporal evolution of forecast error to characterize its persistence across lead times, and explore the accuracy of forecasted IVT anomalies across different domains of the North American west coast during heavy precipitation events in the Sacramento basin. Our results identify recurrent spatial patterns of precipitation forecast error consistent with errors of forecasted synoptic-scale features, especially at long (5–15 days) leads. Moreover, we find evidence that forecasts of AR landfalls well outside of the latitudinal bounds of the Sacramento basin precede heavy precipitation events within the basin. These results suggest the potential for using medium-range forecasts of large-scale climate features across the Pacific–North American sector, rather than just local forecasts of basin-scale precipitation, when designing forecast-informed reservoir operations.

Beyond the Borders of the Law: Critical Legal Histories of the North American West

Beyond the Borders of the Law: Critical Legal Histories of the North American West

Biogeography of American Northwest Hot Spring A/B'-Lineage Synechococcus Populations.

Previous analyses have shown how diversity among unicellular cyanobacteria inhabiting island-like hot springs is structured relative to physical separation and physiochemical differences among springs, especially at local to regional scales. However, these studies have been limited by the low resolution provided by the molecular markers surveyed. We analyzed large datasets obtained by high-throughput sequencing of a segment of the photosynthesis gene psaA from samples collected in hot springs from geothermal basins in Yellowstone National Park, Montana, and Oregon, all known from previous studies to contain populations of A/B′-lineage Synechococcus. The fraction of identical sequences was greater among springs separated by <50 km than among springs separated by >50 km, and springs separated by >800 km shared sequence variants only rarely. Phylogenetic analyses provided evidence for endemic lineages that could be related to geographic isolation and/or geochemical differences on regional scales. Ecotype Simulation 2 was used to predict putative ecotypes (ecologically distinct populations), and their membership, and canonical correspondence analysis was used to examine the geographical and geochemical bases for variation in their distribution. Across the range of Oregon and Yellowstone, geographical separation explained the largest percentage of the differences in distribution of ecotypes (9.5% correlated to longitude; 9.4% to latitude), with geochemical differences explaining the largest percentage of the remaining differences in distribution (7.4–9.3% correlated to magnesium, sulfate, and sulfide). Among samples within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, geochemical differences significantly explained the distribution of ecotypes (6.5–9.3% correlated to magnesium, boron, sulfate, silicon dioxide, chloride, and pH). Nevertheless, differences in the abundance and membership of ecotypes in Yellowstone springs with similar chemistry suggested that allopatry may be involved even at local scales. Synechococcus populations have diverged both by physical isolation and physiochemical differences, and populations on surprisingly local scales have been evolving independently.

A dynamic link between high-intensity precipitation events in southwestern North America and Europe at the Last Glacial Maximum

Both hydroclimate proxies and modeling studies alike present compelling evidence for abundant precipitation in southwestern North America and Europe at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). However, model simulations exhibit an apparent disagreement between changes in precipitation and the orientation of the midlatitude jet streams relative to modern. This is surprising, as it is well known from modern observations that the jet streams and storm tracks closely follow one another in the time mean. The present study shows that a substantial fraction (between 35 and 50%) of the precipitation along the western seaboards of the Northern Hemisphere continents at the LGM is due to short lived high-intensity events, rather than a permanent rearrangement of the circulation. Moreover, these precipitation events are shown to be dynamically linked by a wavenumber-5 stationary wave packet that is trapped in a midlatitude waveguide. When the wave energy is concentrated in the eastern North Pacific, an atmospheric river is excited that makes landfall along the North American west coast. Days later, when the wave packet has reached Europe, the North Atlantic jet stream assumes a zonally oriented state that brings abundant precipitation to the western Mediterranean sector. Understanding the dynamics of this teleconnection pattern is not only key for interpreting proxy-data signals in past climates, but may also be important for improving predictions of storm track dynamics and water resources availability in the face of climate variability and change.

Projected Changes to Extreme Precipitation Along North American West Coast From the CESM Large Ensemble

AbstractPrecipitation events along the North American (NA) west coast are strongly modulated by atmospheric rivers, yet the mechanisms of their influences on the probability distributions of precipitation events are not well studied. Simulations from the Community Earth System Model (CESM) large ensemble under global warming are investigated using a moisture budget conditioned onto precipitation events for the recurrence intervals ranging from 0.1 to 50 years. In the midlatitudes, the increases in precipitation intensity and accumulation for all events over the NA west coast are predominantly controlled by moisture increases. In contrast, changes in the subtropical precipitation distributions in southwestern NA are associated with moisture increases and duration decreases for all events, with additional dynamical amplification for the heaviest precipitation events. These interpretations from the conditional moisture budget are more consistent with future projection of atmospheric rivers than the conventional mean and transient decomposition of the moisture budget.

‘Last of the buffalo’: bison extermination, early conservation, and visual records of settler colonization in the North American west

ABSTRACTFollowing their rapid extermination from North America in the nineteenth century, bison became an icon of the early conservation movement. The acquisition of the last free-ranging bison herd by the Canadian government in 1907 was celebrated as a critical measure in preventing extinction. This article examines a photographic souvenir booklet that documents the round up, ‘Last of the Buffalo’. The booklet’s celebratory narrative of early-twentieth century conservation is also a visual record of settler colonization. Beginning with a history of Canada’s acquisition of the Pablo herd, this article examines how the round up of these animals converged with processes of enclosure, dispossession, and the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty. Turning to a visual analysis of the ‘Last of the Buffalo’, this paper then identifies settler logics and framing at work in the material and symbolic transformation of bison into objects of consumption. As an instance of settler colonial ways of seeing, the photographs establish a visual account of conservation that naturalizes the dispossession of Indigenous land and life. Finally, the article turns to the work of Tasha Hubbard (nêhiyaw), Zoe Todd (Métis), and Leroy Little Bear (Kainai), to indicate possible counter-readings of the photographs, as documents of a radical shift in a world of shared human-buffalo relations.

Beyond the Borders of the Law: Critical Legal Histories of the North American West ed. by Katrina Jagodinsky and Pablo Mitchell

Reviewed by: Beyond the Borders of the Law: Critical Legal Histories of the North American West ed. by Katrina Jagodinsky and Pablo Mitchell Benjamin C. Montoya Beyond the Borders of the Law: Critical Legal Histories of the North American West. Edited by Katrina Jagodinsky and Pablo Mitchell. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2018. Pp. 368. Illustrations, notes, index.) Beyond the Borders of the Law argues against a long-held perception of the American West as a historically lawless borderland region of the United States. Instead, this edited volume contends that an "abundance of law" played a key role in tying nascent, distant territories to U.S. society (viii). Even as law covered the land, however, the meanings and applicability of law in the borderlands were fluid and negotiated between the colonized and the colonizers. The volume demonstrates how marginalized peoples used "cracks and fissures" in the law to their advantage in the liminal spaces of the American West (ix). The volume's introduction highlights the various scholarly approaches that underline a critical legal history of the North American West. First is the new western history approach that focuses on histories of conquest and dispossession as a way to critique the Turner thesis; second, critical race theory, whichindicates how race, racism, and racialism were central to legal and historical formations of American authority over western border territories; third is new western legal history, which accounts for the statutory and social factors that marginalize nonwhite peoples in the West; and fourth is critical legal history, which signals how law is complicit in establishing and preserving inequality. The ten contributors to this volume offer compelling case studies of how law is interpreted, negotiated, and made across various borderlands spaces. Chapters 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9 will be of particular interest for readers [End Page 229] of southwestern history. Alicia Gutiérrez-Romine analyzes how American women increasingly crossed the border into Mexico to seek abortions as medical-legal constraints on the procedure became more prevalent in California between the 1930s and 1960s. Not coincidentally, increasing legal restraints on abortions led to the creation of an underground abortion market, which, in tandem with increasing restrictions against immigration, led to a "more visible" border between the United States and Mexico (117). Dana Elizabeth Weiner demonstrates how African Americans viewed property ownership as a way to forge autonomy and citizenship in mid-nineteenth century California. Land ownership represented independence at a time when the legal standing of African Americans and the institution of slavery itself were being fundamentally challenged nationwide. Tom Romero emphasizes how water law and policy created racism and racial hierarchy in the American West between the 1890s and 1930s. Access to water rights often paralleled the distinction between "desirable" immigrants who were considered fit for U.S. citizenship and "undesirable" immigrants who were deemed inferior. Kelly Lytle Hernández shows how the U.S. Bureau of Prisons designed programs to deport Mexican nationals to Mexico in the early twentieth century. Such actions were concurrent with increased federal efforts to restrict Mexican immigration during the 1920s and 1930s. Allison Powers Useche discusses how during those same years Mexican nationals filed claims to the U.S.-Mexico Claims Commission to seek legal redress for relatives who had been harmed while residing in the United States. These "now-forgotten claims" represented an "unanticipated challenge" to U.S. notions of political economy and to U.S. diplomatic power (282). Beyond the Borders of the Law shows how even as law was important in codifying the colonization of territory and the marginalization of borderlands peoples, it was utilized by colonized and marginalized persons to protect their interests and to provide for their needs. The chapters' vignettes of personal experiences along with the various liminal spaces of the American West are particularly suited for classroom use, especially at the graduate level. As such, a glossary explaining such terms as "the doctrine of prior appropriation" (167) and "mens rea defense" (241) would make this book more usable for student and non-scholarly readers. Benjamin C. Montoya Schreiner University Copyright © 2020 The Texas State Historical Association