Maurice S. Crandall

Maurice Crandall is a citizen of the Yavapai-Apache Nation of Camp Verde, Arizona. He is a historian of the Indigenous peoples of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (primarily New Mexico, Arizona, and Sonora). From 2016–2017, he was the Clements Fellow for the Study of Southwestern America at the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Prior to that, Professor Crandall worked as the Historical Projects Specialist at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a museum, archives, and cultural center owned and operated by New Mexico’s nineteen Pueblo Indian nations. His first book, These People Have Always Been a Republic: Indigenous Electorates in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1598–1912 (University of North Carolina Press, David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History, 2019), examines the ways in which Indigenous communities in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands implemented/adapted/indigenized/subverted colonially imposed ideas of democratic town government and voting during the Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. Territorial periods. These People Have Always Been a Republic is the winner of the 2020 Caughey Western History Prize (most distinguished book on the history of the American West) from the Western History Association, the 2020 Weber-Clements Prize (best non-fiction book on Southwestern America), a Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association, and Honorable Mention for the 2020 Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Book Award (best book-length contribution to ethnohistory) from the American Society for Ethnohistory. 
Professor Crandall's current book project explores the crucial role played by Yavapai and Dilzhe'e Apache Scouts in building and strengthening their communities after the so-called Indian Wars.