Participant observation is a strange thing for a historian to talk about. Normally it is something that anthropologists think of. But there is a deeper problem to probe here: Should a historian have some sort of personal experience in the thing that they are talking about? If yes, then how does that not demean the historian who does have such an experience? ------------------------------------------------------------ references: Jacoby, Karl. Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History. New York: Penguin Books, 2008. https://amzn.to/2u695x2 Brown, Richard Maxwell. Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. https://amzn.to/2KXI5Xb Brown, Richard Maxwell. No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. https://amzn.to/2zldrFz Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973. https://amzn.to/2KIdn8n Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890. New York: Atheneum Books, 1985. https://amzn.to/2lZiHoO Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Atheneum Books, 1992. https://amzn.to/2KX0jI2 Hutton, Paul Andrew. The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History. New York: Broadway Books, 2017. https://amzn.to/2u9ZV1G Ball, Durwood. Army Regulars on the Western Frontier, 1848-1861. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. https://amzn.to/2m06NLB Ball, Larry D. The United States Marshals of New Mexico and Arizona Territories, 1846-1912. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1978. https://amzn.to/2u39ArX Ball, Larry D. Desert Lawmen: The High Sh