Chiricahua and Janos: Communities of Violence in the Southwestern Borderlands, 1680-1880

Borderlands violence, so explosive in our own time, has deep roots in history. Lance R. Blyth’s study of Chiricahua Apaches and the presidio of Janos in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands reveals how no single entity had a monopoly on coercion, and how violence became the primary means by which relations were established, maintained, or altered both within and between communities.
For more than two centuries, violence was at the center of the relationships by which Janos and Chiricahua formed the...