The University Of Chicago, Publications In Anthropology, Social Anthropology Series.

The University Of Chicago, Publications In Anthropology, Social Anthropology Series.

The fierce bands of Comanche Indians, on the testimony of their contemporaries, both red and white, numbered some of the most splendid horsemen the world has ever produced. Often the terror of other tribes, who, on finding a Comanche footprint in the Western plains country, would turn and go in the other direction, they were indeed the Lords of the South Plains.

For more than a century and a half, since they had first moved into the Southwest from the north, the Comanches raided and pillaged and repelled all efforts to encroach on their hunting grounds. They decimated the pueblo of Pecos, within thirty miles of Santa Fe. The Spanish frontier settlements of New Mexico were happy enough to let the raiding Comanches pass without hindrance to carry their terrorizing forays into Old Mexico, a thousand miles down to Durango. The Comanches fought the Texans, made off with their cattle, burned their homes, and effectively made their own lands unsafe for the white settlers. They fought and defeated at one time or another the Utes, Pawnees, Osages, Tonkawas, Apaches, and Navahos.

These were "The People," the spartans of the prairies, the once mighty force of Comanches, a surprising number of whom survive today. More than twenty-five hundred live in the midst of an alien culture which as grown up about them. This book is the story of that tribe-the great traditions of the warfare, life, and institutions of another century which are today vivid memories among its elders.

Despite their prolonged resistance, the Comanches, too, had to "come in." On a sultry summer day in June, 1875, a small hand of starving tribesmen straggled in to Fort Sill, near the Wichita Mountains in what is now the southwestern part of the state of Oklahoma. There they surrendered to the military authorities.

So ended the reign of the Comanches on the Southwestern frontier. Their horses had been captured and destroyed; the buffalo were gone; most of their tipis had been burned. They had held out to the end, but the time had now come for them to submit to the United States government demands.

The Cheyenne Indians, in sharp contrast to other Plains tribes, are renowned for the clear sense of form and structure in their institutions. This cultural trait, together with the colorful background of the Cheyennes, attracted the unique collaboration of a legal theorist and an anthropologist, who, in this volume, provide a definitive picture of the law-ways of a primitive, nonliterate people.
This foundational study of primitive law presents the folkways in law of the Cheyennes through the technique of the American case lawyer, adjusted to the requirements of the anthropologist with his scientific understanding of human behavior and realistic sociology. Particularly appealing to the general reader are the law cases themselves. Based on individual episodes that reflect the legal procedure of the Cheyennes over a period of more than sixty years, the cases are heroic narratives in the finest tradition.

A classic work in the anthropology of law, this book offered one of the first ambitiously conceived analyses of the fundamental rights and duties that are treated as law among nonliterate peoples (labeled "primitive" at the time of the original publication). The heart of the book is a description and analysis of the law of five societies: the Eskimo; the Ifugao of northern Luzon in the Philippines; the Comanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne tribes of the western plains of the United States; the Trobriand Islanders of the southwest Pacific; and the Ashanti of western Africa. Hoebel's lucid analysis reveals the variety and complexity of these societies' political and legal institutions. It emphasizes their use of due process in adjudication and enforcement and highlights the importance of general explicit standards of conduct in these societies. In offering these detailed case studies of societies studied by other anthropologists, and in outlining an influential approach to the subject, it remains an illuminating book for both scholars and students.