These People Have Always Been a Republic: Indigenous Electorates in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1598–1912

David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History

by Maurice S. Crandall

Spanning three hundred years and the colonial regimes of Spain, Mexico, and the United States, Maurice S. Crandall's sweeping history of Native American political rights in what is now New Mexico, Arizona, and Sonora demonstrates how Indigenous communities implemented, subverted, rejected, and indigenized colonial ideologies of democracy, both to accommodate and to oppose colonial power.

Focusing on four groups--Pueblos in New Mexico, Hopis in northern Arizona, and Tohono O'odhams and Yaquis in Arizona/Sonora--Crandall reveals the ways Indigenous peoples absorbed and adapted colonially imposed forms of politics to exercise sovereignty based on localized political, economic, and social needs. Using sources that include oral histories and multinational archives, this book allows us to compare Spanish, Mexican, and American conceptions of Indian citizenship, and adds to our understanding of the centuries-long struggle of Indigenous groups to assert their sovereignty in the face of settler colonial rule.

Genres: History, Indigenous, Native American

384 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 2019

Reviews

[David Nichols · Rating 4 out of 5]

Native Americans received formal citizenship from the United States in 1924, but this is not necessarily something for which white Americans should congratulate themselves. Some states withheld for decades the rights of Native residents to vote or make use of public services. Notably, Arizona and New Mexico did not enfranchise their Indian populations until 1948. As Maurice Crandall points out in this provocative book, white officials weren’t the only ones hesitant to naturalize and enfranchise Native Americans. In the Southwest, the Pueblo, Tohono O’odham, Hopi, and Yaqui Indian nations all believed U.S. citizenship would endanger their communities’ autonomy, and all had mixed feelings about elections based on three centuries’ experience of them - first under Spanish rule, then Mexican, and finally during the American territorial regime.

In the seventeenth century Spain set up republicas de los indios in mission towns, where Indigenous officials - governors, alcaldes, and fiscales - were popularly elected. In practice, town chiefs and caciques selected new officers, who served as intermediaries in interactions with Spanish officials and (later) American courts. Such was the case among the Pueblos. The Tohono O’odham also accepted elections and official governance, but both institutions remained weak and nearly collapsed during the Mexican era. The Hopis rejected Spanish authority altogether, destroying the only town friendly to Spain in 1700, and they never came under Mexican jurisdiction. The Yaquis also preserved their autonomy until their participation in a rebellion against Mexico obliged them to flee to the American borderlands, where they accepted American legal authority and instituted local elections for self-protection.

Most of the nations studied in this book avoided involvement in the territorial courts or in American-style elections. Instead they tried to retain their old leaders and place themselves under federal wardship, believing that U.S. citizenship would expose their communities to exploitation by white settlers. As they did with many other Euro-American innovations, Native peoples generally only accepted “republican” government if they could indigenize it, if they could use it to preserve not individual rights but community sovereignty. Otherwise they preferred to remain aloof from colonial settler states or only paid lip service to their political ideals.

[Josh Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impressive accomplishment -- four different tribal nations, across several hundred years and three different colonial regimes. I appreciate the very different perspective that Crandall provides, complicating what we think we know about the history of Indigenous governance.

[Alex Milton · Rating 4 out of 5]

In These People Have Always Been a Republic: Indigenous Electorates in the U.S. - Mexico Borderlands, Maurice S. Crandall concentrates on Pueblo, Hopi, and Yaqui political systems that engaged with democratic principles. Beginning with discussions of colonial Spanish towns in the American Southwest, Crandall argues that indigenous peoples incorporated Spanish forms of town governance and electoral systems into their own representative governments. The book draws primarily from Catholic mission documents, government records, correspondence, and legal codes from archives in Mexico and the United States. Through political organization within their own electoral systems, Yaqui and Pueblo people maintained significant political sovereignty in Northern Mexico. Crandall effectively connects political organization of Southwest Native American people with resistance towards American citizenship and Federal wardship, instead focusing on engagement within local community political organization.

[Jason S · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting account of Native suffrage in what is now the American Southwest beginning with the Spanish empire in that region. Centers the account on Native American practices and shows how those extended into the period of US colonization.