Making Indian Law: The Hualapai Land Case and the Birth of Ethnohistory (The Lamar Series in Western History)

I have long had an interest in native American stories, and have collected pottery from the New Mexico reservations. This book added to my knowledge of the Southwest and one of its important legal decisions concerning land issues.

This book give a good history of the Indigenous struggle aganist predatory laws created to steal their lands while destroying their peoples' will to survive and their successful struggle to use those same laws to restore their Tribal lands as a part of their Tribal reservation. Good analysis of the process used to take lands and Tribal leadership to understand those laws and locate data to authenticate the ethnohistory of their claims to land rights. Deni Leonard

Great history of Fred Mahone fighting for tribal rights.

This is a very detailed, well-organized book. A must for anyone interested in Indian history and law.

This remarkable book is a must-read for any student of Southwest history (in which the Hualapai too seldom receive recognition for their accomplishment) or Indian law (which is still grappling with many of the same questions as it did in the landmark Hualapai case). What are indigenous property rights? Can we respect centuries-old systems of land tenure if they conflict with Western law? What is owed to a nation whose land was blatantly stolen out from under them, and how do you determine the legitimacy of either claim? McMillen gives a detailed account of both the issue and its context in American case law, with attention also paid to concurrent developments in the rest of the English-speaking world. While some of his claims about anthropology and ethnohistory are a tad incomplete, this is to be expected in a work that is and needs to be a work of advocacy as well as history. The work begun by Fred Mahone and his Washington allies is by no means finished, and as many eyes turn to a Hualapai Nation once again situating itself on the losing end of a significant public legal case, the history that McMillen airs here, more than just an ethnohistory, has become critical once again. I recommend this title to any interested party.

This is a well written study of the landmark /United States v. Santa Fe Pacific Railroad/ case in which the Hualapai nation successfully defended its claims to its lands. It marks the dawning of a new age in which American Indians would come to master the use of historical arguments to defend their communities and natural resources in front of federal courts and the Indian Claims Commission. If you are looking for a clear narrative that tells this important story well, this is your book.But if you are drawn to the book by its subtitle, you very well might be disappointed. The emergence of "ethnohistory," either as a methodological perspective or academic organization, really is not that significant to the argument or narrative within the book, despite the subtitle. Second, I'm not sure McMillen's definition of "ethnohistory" is one that would be embraced widely today. MacMillen overlooks work by anthropologists such as Oscar Lewis, William Fenton, Edward Spicer, John Ewers, that was clearly ethnohistorical in its approach (all influenced by Boasian historicism) but predated or was contemporaneous with the Hualapai case but had very little to do with litigation, at least initially. MacMillen's definition of ethnohistory, essentially history used instrumentally in courts to the benefit of American Indian litigants, is problematic today when American Indian plaintiffs sue American Indian defendants and both parties bring out their hired gun "ethnohistorians." The American Society of Ethnohistorians was founded directly out of the experience of historians and anthropologists in courts, but the organization did not originate the principles of ethnohistorical inquiry. Rather its founding was a signal that they were coming into maturity, in large part b/c the courts and the Indian Claims Commission gave it such an important public role. At times MacMillen's argument appears to suggest that ethnohistory should be unconcerned with the experiences of historic Indian peoples if they are unimportant to or contradict the legal interests of contemporary American Indians. This is an important issue that should be addressed forthrightly, not in a footnote.

Symptoms of broken covenants torment nations for hundreds of years. Covenants are very serious matters before God. Insights crwate the way for our precious America to free herself of the greed misjudgements and errors of some of her forefathers. Let Freedom For All Reign here and abroad. Our cry for Freedom for the Oppressed rings out across time and culture.

The Hualapai land case is truly "history in the making." Christian W. McMillen's account of the Hualapai Indians' legal struggle to hold on to their land takes the reader beyond the courts to the question of the nature of law: how is it formed? what legitimizes it? who decides? Refreshingly,white hats and black hats are essentially absent from this study of peoples who did not understand each other, but who, in the end,actually learned from one another, in many different ways. Does the individual make a difference? Take a look at Hualapai activist Fred Mahone and Felix Cohen, who established modern Federal Indian law. And behind them are unnamed others. Making Indian Law is an unsentimental story of heroes, and we don't need to stifle our cheers for the good guys and hope they win.(In the interest of transparency, I am Christian W. McMillen's mother.)