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  • Chiricahua and Janos: Communities of Violence in the Southwestern Borderlands, 1680-1880 by Lance R. Blyth
  • Paul Conrad
Chiricahua and Janos: Communities of Violence in the Southwestern Borderlands, 1680-1880. By Lance R. Blyth (Lincoln, Nebraska University Press, 2012) 296 pp. $60.00

In Chiricahua and Janos, Blyth draws upon interdisciplinary methods to cast new light on recurrent violence between Apaches and Hispanics in the American Southwest. Although discussion of violence is not new to the study of Apache-Hispanic relations, Blyth's analytical focus and attention to native perspectives break new ground. His broad conclusions regarding the role of violence in "borderland" settings have implications beyond the history of southwestern America that will prove provocative for scholars interested in interethnic conflict in other global contexts.

Drawing inspiration from David Nirenberg's Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1998), Blyth argues that violence was the central means through which Chiricahua Apaches and Hispanics related to each other in the post-contact period. Past surveys of Apache-Hispanic relations around northern Mexican settlements have described the cycles of revenge and retaliation as incomprehensible, but Blyth explains that violence was recurrent because it became central to the basic lifeways of both groups. As he notes, "Men from both communities . . . used violence in campaigns and raids to secure their place in the community as adults (55)." Given the link between male status and success against the enemy, and neither community's ability or willingness to annihilate the other, violence remained endemic to interethnic relations for two centuries. Blyth suggests that these conclusions might be extended to borderlands communities in general, as violence "was how these communities established, maintained, or changed their relationships (211)."

Blyth's examination of violence from both Apache and Hispanic viewpoints is furthered by his interdisciplinary approach. The use of ethnography and oral history in addition to archival sources allows him to place Chiricahua Apaches on a more equal stage with Euroamericans than have past studies. His approach to violence is similarly welcome. He draws from sociological and anthropological theory to view violence as a form of interaction and communication rather than as a necessarily disruptive force. Readers interested primarily in the interdisciplinary study of violence, however, might prefer more analysis of the different meanings of such diverse practices as captive taking, livestock rustling, or hand-to-hand combat, all of which Blyth subsumes under the broad category of "violence."

Oddly, Blyth mentions Nirenberg's distinction between "systemic" and "cataclysmic" violence in his preface, but he does not utilize these categories or offer alternatives, which might have benefited his analysis of how and why forms of violence shifted over time. Greater attention to the relationship between relatively routine raids and the episodes of brutal, even genocidal, warfare that occurred during the 1770s and 1830s, for example, would have strengthened his insights into the [End Page 132] nature of "communities of violence" and interethnic conflict more generally.

Blyth's eye-opening study of violence in a borderlands setting will appeal to scholars exploring similar themes and methodologies in other contexts. Like all path-breaking work, his analysis and methodology at times raise new questions. Nonetheless, Chiricahua and Janos represents a valuable addition to the growing literature examining violence in zones of intercultural contact, both in the Americas and around the globe.

Paul Conrad
Colorado State University, Pueblo
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