This is a lively effort to pierce the thick fog of Falsehood, calumny, ignorance, and legend surrounding the four years Sam Houston spent among the Cherokees in what is now northeastern Oklahoma, the broken years in Tennessee, and his advent in Texas on the eve of the War for Independence."-Virginia Quarterly Review"

In "Indian Justice," Grant Foreman presents John Howard Payne's first-hand account of the trial of Archilla Smith, a Cherokee charged with the murder of John MacIntosh in the fall of 1839. The Cherokee Supreme Court at Tahlequah (in present-day Oklahoma) found Smith guilty and sentenced him to die.

Occurring immediately after the Cherokee Removal to west of the Mississippi River, the trial involved people on both sides of the bitter factional controversies then raging in the Cherokee nation. Payne's account of this important Indian case first appeared in two installments in the "New York Journal of Commerce in 1841."

In his foreword to this new edition, Rennard Strickland places the case in historical and contemporary context, exploring the evolution of tribal court systems and Indian justice over the past century and a half.

How do Native Americans maintain their identity and culture in a hostile society, and to what end? This book is a passionate attempt by a leading Native American scholar to reassess the Indian world view and its importance to all Americans. His deeply felt essays project a vision of how Native Americans can recapture the power of their cultural legacies. ""What we have witnessed over the last five hundred years,"" states Rennard Strickland, ""is the domination of an ideologically superior world view (that of the Native Americans) by a technologically advanced but spiritually bankrupt civilisation (that of the discoverers)."" He proposes a reversal of this pattern, arguing that ""values must prevail over technology,"" especially if people are to attain balance and peace with themselves and their surroundings. He delineates the enduring cultural heritage of Indians in essays on law, literature, history, art, film, and culture.

This is an account of the complex political, legal and social history of the Chippewa's struggle for justice, which should appeal to both the general public and serious scholars.

"The Indians of Oklahoma," a survey of the sixty-seven tribes residing in the state, explains the colonizing process that populated Indian Territory (the future Oklahoma) with Native Americans from all parts of the United States during the nineteenth century and interprets the striking cultural diversity of the Indian communities thus formed. The author separates the Native American experience in Oklahoma into four periods.

This book is one of a series entitled "Newcomers to a New Land" which analyzes the role of the major ethnic groups that have contributed to the history of Oklahoma.

Volume 133 in The Civilization of the Americas Series This book traces the emergency of the Cherokee system of laws from the ancient spirit decrees to the fusion of tribal law ways with Anglo-American law. The Cherokees enacted their first written law in 1808 in Georgia. In succeeding years the leaders and tribal councils of the southeastern and Oklahoma groups wrote a constitution, established courts, and enacted laws that were in accord with the old tribal values but reflected and accommodated to the whites' legal system. Thanks to the great gift of Sequoyah-his syllabary-the Cherokees were well versed in their laws, able to read and interpret them from a very early time. The system served the people well. It endured until 1898, when the federal government abolished the tribal government. The author provides a brief review of Cherokee history and explains the circumstances surrounding the stages of development of the legal system. Excerpts from editorials in the Cherokee Phoenix and the Cherokee Advocate, letters, and tribal documents give added insight into the problems the Cherokees faced and their efforts to resolve them. Of particular interest is a series of charts explaining the complex Cherokee spirit system of crimes (or "deviations") and the punishments meted out for them. A legal historian of Osage and Cherokee heritage, Rennard Strickland is considered a pioneer in introducing Indian law into university curriculum. He has written and edited more than 35 books and is frequently cited by courts and scholars for his work as revision editor in chief of the Handbook of Federal Indian Law. Strickland has been involved in the resolution of a number of significant Indian cases. He was the founding director of the Center for the Study of American Indian Law and Policy at the University of Oklahoma. He is the first person to have served both as president of the Association of American Law Schools and as chair of the Law School Admissions Council. He is also the only person to have received both the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) Award and the American Bar Association's Spirit of Excellence Award. Strickland was the dean of the law school from 1997 to 2002.