| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.1

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Ambiguous Justice: Native Americans and the Law in Southern California, 1848–1890. By Vanessa Ann Gunther. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2006. xii + 191 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $29.95, paper.)

Over the past two hundred and thirty-eight years, the indigenous inhabitants of California have endured much from their Spanish, Mexican, and American occupiers. Under Spanish rule, they endured systems of oppression employed throughout most of Latin America. During the Mexican period, patterns of discrimination continued. After the American seizure of the Golden State, Anglo-Americans—with their insatiable appetite for land and other natural resources—commenced to concoct an elaborate and complex legal system in order to subjugate Native Americans and strip them of rights to lands they had possessed for centuries. In Ambiguous Justice, Vanessa Ann Gunther skillfully traces the development of this legal system between 1848 and 1890, underscoring how it affected Native communities and how individuals and groups strived to respond to these unjust circumstances.

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