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.

This book deals with the wars of the Cheyennes. A fighting and fearless people, the tribe was almost constantly at war with its neighbors. This account follows the local tribal wars and the eventual Indian wars between the westward moving settlers. A reprint of the 1916 edition with a additional appendix that has been added from the Smithsonian Institutions Handbook of North American Indians Bulletin 30.