Carceral Colonialism in Arizona Territory

The 1890s were a period of tremendous social and political upheaval. The intimate nature of boom-bust economies and the end of the Indian wars influenced US–Mexico borderlands social life, forming the basis of this article. A 23 March 1893 murder-suicide attempt by ex-Congressman Hiram Stevens against his wife Petra Santa Cruz in the Arizona territory sets the stage for how larger socioeconomic shifts in racialized capitalist production influenced historical memory. In particular, analyzing Petra Santa Cruz Stevens’ life history in the context of capitalism provides a window for a reassessment of borderlands history as it is currently practiced, the ways in which material objects account for the affective and social labor of producing legible subjects, the ways in which sexual and racial modalities informed property relations of capital, and finally, a feminist critique of social history and national formation by shifting our attention to how borderlands negotiations of violence and history were, and continue to be, central to US history. I argue that the murder-suicide reordered systems of meaning, serving as a microeconomic index of racial capital and nation-state formation.

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Arizona Territory, 1863-1912, A Political History

American Journal of Legal History ◽

10.2307/844341 ◽

1970 ◽

Vol 14 (4) ◽

pp. 368

Author(s):

John S. Goff ◽

Jay J. Wagoner

Keyword(s):

Political History ◽

Arizona Territory

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Camera on the Mogollon Rim: Nineteenth century photography in Flagstaff, Arizona Territory, 1867–1916

History of Photography ◽

10.1080/03087298.1988.10442111 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 93-101

Author(s):

Bruce Hooper

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Mogollon Rim ◽

Arizona Territory

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“Standing in the Crater of a Volcano”

California History ◽

10.1525/ch.2021.98.3.2 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 98 (3) ◽

pp. 2-27

Author(s):

Brent M. S. Campney

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

American West ◽

The United States ◽

Diplomatic Relations ◽

White Americans ◽

Mob Violence ◽

National Minorities ◽

Arizona Territory ◽

Definition Of

This study investigates anti-Chinese violence in the American West—focusing primarily on events in the Arizona Territory between 1880 and 1912—and the role of diplomatic relations between the United States and China in tempering the worst excesses of that violence. Recent scholarship asserts that the Chinese rarely suffered lynching and were commonly targeted for other types of violence, including coercion, harassment, and intimidation. Building on that work, this study advances a definition of racist violence that includes a broad spectrum of attacks, including the threat of violence. While affirming that such “subtler” violence achieved many of the same objectives as the “harsher” violence, it seeks to explain why whites used such radically different and less openly violent methods against this minority and explains why this difference mattered. Using these insights to interrogate the complex relationship between the United States and China, this essay shows that Chinese diplomatic influence stifled anti-Chinese mob violence by white Americans. It argues that this relationship denied white racists the same agency against the Chinese immigrants as they possessed against other racial and national minorities and thus forced them to “choose” the “subtler” acts of violence against this group rather than those usually employed against these others.

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The Rise and Fall of Mob Violence against Mexicans in Arizona, 1859–1915

10.5406/illinois/9780252037467.003.0004 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

William D. Carrigan ◽

Clive Webb

Keyword(s):

Mexican Descent ◽

The State ◽

Mob Violence ◽

Strong Reaction ◽

Arizona Territory ◽

Ethnic Persecution

This chapter reviews conventional narratives of racism and lynching, examining the extensive mob violence directed against persons of Mexican descent in Arizona Territory. While demonstrating the historical depth and contours of anti-Mexican animus in Arizona, the chapter also traces the pivotal social and political changes that shifted opinion against the lynching of Mexicans in the era of statehood in the 1910s. Moreover, there is no record of the illegal hanging of any Mexicans in Arizona after 1915. The strong reaction of Arizona's constituted authorities to the lynching of Mexican outlaws Jose and Hilario Leon did not end discrimination against Mexicans in the state, but it did close the door on what was agreed as the most symbolic and visible form of racial and ethnic persecution—community-sanctioned, extralegal murder.

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Wild Apaches in the Effete East: A Theatrical Adventure of John P. Clum

Theatre Survey ◽

10.1017/s0040557400007043 ◽

1965 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 147-156

Author(s):

Pat M. Ryan

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Indian Reservation ◽

Indian Agent ◽

Arizona Territory ◽

San Carlos

No one at the Indian Bureau, in Washington, seemed interested when, early in the summer of 1876, Indian Agent John P. Clum suggested taking a carload of his San Carlos Apaches back East –“to see the greatness of our United States and become impressed by the progress of their white brothers.” So Clum relates in the semi-autobiographical book Apache Agent.Two years before, in Feburary, 1874, he had been commissioned :by President Grant as Agent for the Apaches at the San Carlos Indian Reservation, Arizona Territory.

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