Books>Review

Homicide, Race, and Justice in the American West, 1880-1920
University of Arizona Press

In a chilling scene in the film Unforgiven Clint Eastwood, as the gunman, stands over a wounded Gene Hackman, the sheriff, aiming a rifle at his head. “I don’t deserve this, to die like this,” says Hackman. Eastwood replies, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it,” cocks his rifle, and fires point-blank at his helpless victim. This scenario dramatically brings home to the viewer what historians have long debated and hundreds of other films and books suggest: the turn-of-the-century West was a violent time and place. Ranchers, miners, deputy sheriffs, teenagers, old men, and even housewives and mothers, found themselves at the business end of a shotgun or a .38 revolver. Yet, since western historians tend to portray violence as essentially episodic-frontier gunfights, range wars, vigilante movements, and the like–solid data have been hard to come by.

As a beginning point for actually measuring lethal violence and assessing the administration of justice, here at last is a detailed and well-documented study of homicide in the American West. Comparing data from representative areas–Douglas County, Nebraska; Las Animas County, Colorado; and Gila County, Arizona–this book reveals a level of violence far greater than many historians have believed, surpassing eastern cities like New York and Boston.

Clashing cultures and transient populations, a boomtown mentality, easy availability of alcohol and firearms these and many other factors come under scrutiny as catalysts in the violence that permeated the region. By comparing homicide data-using coroner’s inquests, indictments, plea bargains, and sentences-across both racial and regional lines, this book offers persuasive evidence that criminal justice systems in the Old West were weighted heavily in favor of defendants who were white and against those who were African American, Native American, and Mexican.

Packed with information, this is a book for students and scholars of western history, social history, criminology, and justice studies. Western history buffs will be captivated by colorful anecdotes about the real West, where guns could and did blaze over anything from love trysts to vendettas to “too much foam on the beer.” From whatever perspective, all readers are sure to find here a well-constructed framework for understanding the West.

“[This book] is unique in dealing with the different races that make up the West, centering one chapter on the urban black experience, one on the immigrant/Italian experience, and one on Apaches. This is the ‘real’ West, the real history of violence in the West.” Sidney L. Harring, author of Crow Dog’s Case: American Indian Sovereignty, Tribal law, and United States Law in the Nineteenth Century

“No one could study frontier violence without considering Homicide, Race, and Justice in
the American West …The author concludes that the frontier West was a violent and deadly place for a number of reasons but, most importantly, because the men there were often intoxicated, always armed, and honor bound not to accept any kind of offense.” Roger D. McGrath, author of Gunfighters, Highway men and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier

“This is an ambitious and important book. It fills a gap caused by western historians who have tended to portray violence as essentially episodic…By using quantitative methods and sources, including coroner’s inquests, criminal registers of action, criminal court case files, prison registers, and census data, McKanna documents that another form of violence, one at once more common and racist, existed between 1880 and 1920. One result is that the sepia-toned melancholy that infuses our mental images of the episodic West is spirited away. For those readers who view the American West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a charming and warmish blend of unadulterated nature and industrial technology…this will be a disturbing account of violence, discrimination, racism and biased criminal justice systems. J. Robert Lilly, History of the Human Sciences