Comanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne: Plains Indian Law in Development, Ch 7 from Law of Primitive Man by Hoebel



Before the white man, riverbound people, not going far, vast, poorly watered stretches of grassland. The Spaniard introduced the horse and thereby the means of extensive penetration of the Plains. Huge herds of buffalo and fleet antelope. Pushed early some indian tribes by white displacement, fur trade. Imperialistic rivalry. British companies encouraged their tribes to drive off the French ones, and gave them guns. Relatively unpopulated lands of the West.

(wiki:) "The earliest Spanish explorers in the 16th century did not find the Plains Native Americans especially warlike. The Wichita in Kansas and Oklahoma lived in dispersed settlements with no defensive works. The Spanish initially had friendly contacts with the Apache (Querechos) in the Texas Panhandle. Three factors led to a growing importance of warfare in Plains Indian culture. First, was the Spanish colonization of New Mexico which stimulated raids and counter-raids by Spaniards and Indians for goods and slaves. Second, was the contact of the Indians with French fur traders which increased rivalry among Native tribes to control trade and trade routes. Third, was the acquisition of the horse and the greater mobility it afforded the Plains Indians. What evolved among the Plains Native Americans from the 17th to the late 19th century was warfare as both a means of livelihood and a sport. Young men gained both prestige and plunder by fighting as warriors, and this individualistic style of warfare ensured that success in individual combat and capturing trophies of war were highly esteemed. 


COMANCHES in the 16th. Around Yellowstone and Missouri rivers headwaters. Unlikely they were distinguishable from other Shoshoneans. In the 18th, moved down into Southern Plains (while Shoshones driven back over the Rocky Mountains by invaders from the east. Became one of the first, if not the first, Plains tribe to acquire horses. “Digger Indians” culture. No great social organization. Small isolated family bands. Almost no ceremonial structures. Not many arts. Few satisfactions. War was a thing to be avoided, for the Shoshoneans had no military organization and lacked fighting prowess. With horses and food bands increased size. They never forsook band autonomy for tribal government and never changed from a mostly individual religeon. It was in warring and rading the transformation took place. Successes against Apache, Spanish, Pecos. Slave and booty taking raids in Old Mexico. Blocked westward expansion of Texas frontier for several decades. Developed a crude and effective system of law to deal with clashes of individuals.

Girl had no formal choice in her husband (theoretically) (brothers gave her away). Working against the stability of such marriages was a strong current of romantic idealism among the young. The ambition of a young girl was to be a naisi, a beautiful young maiden with lustrous, black hair hanging in braids, and dressed in a fine fringed buckskin dress. Young bucks strove to attract their attention by playing the role of ‘a handsome young man who looks good on a horse.''

Incorporating captives. Adoption of ‘brothers’ or ‘sons.’

He assumed the spirits were generally benign towards him. If he fasted and waited in a lonely place, they would help him. They did put conditions on the use of the power they gave him.

Comanche postulates: Brother to brother is strongest social tie. Incest is subhuman. War is essential (prosperity and self-expression). Each Comanche ought to cooperate with others and help them in their life's activities.

Headman the magnet or core, but his influence was subtle. He worked through precept, advice, good humor, expressing wisdom through well-chosen words and persuasive common sense. In making decisions the wiser old head, whose time-tested judgement the people respected, was leader, in routine matters like camp moving, and he merely made the announcement through a camp crier. If ignored, another had quietly superceded him. War a national pastime or a national political policy. Prepared from infancy, rich psychological awards for bravest in face of enemy and running off horses. Hostile tribes and Texas ranchers. Tribal standards of right conduct hammered out through individual cases, not legislative nor judge-made. They were a most litigious people. Their way of life engendered considerable internal friction. Custom impelled men to violate the marital rites of others, wrongdoer fully expected to pay the legal price. No trial. Evidence rarely if ever entered. No desire to conceal deed, rather to flaunt his prestige in the face of the challenged husband. Men who share a wife are brothers / This man has assumed a share in my wife / Therefore, he is my brother / But he is going to pay for this privelege. Haggling over demands, refuse first, prestige. Theoretically the husband has recourse to physical force, but retaliation would happen. Regardless of rightness of his original greivance. In enforcing the law he lost his life. However much the Comanche law fell short in this respect, custom remedied the defect in another. Blood-revenge killing was only of the first killer and retaliation did not lead to feud. There were always outside enemies to be confronted. It is evident that Comanches had a strong sense of the fitness of the law and that, willful as they were, wrongdoers submitted to its dictates. Action was not initiated unless acts were predetermined. The elopement pattern worked to tone down the first burst of anger. Usage saw to it that the husband could in the final resort always muster a greater amount of force than could the defendant. Deputation, not good form to marshall help, look bad if not carried through alone. The plaintiff who called on his brothers naturally lost prestige to some degree, and in addition he had to turn over all that he received in damages. Weak men could turn to ‘a brave, well-known warrior.' Gives chance to upstart warrior to serve his own self-glorification while acting in the interest of the general social welfare--not against it. Entered with the aim of FORCING the defendant. Adultery, however, was usually surrepticious. Choked her for information. Or take her to a lonely spot, smoke pipe, and do oaths. In 45 adultery and wife-absconding cases 7 women were slain by their husband (1 in 7). 3 adulteresses, 4 absconders. We see it as additional evidence that mere severity of the law is not enough by itself to make people behave. Husband killing wife--with or without good cause--not murder. It was an absolute privelege-right, which not even her family would move to challenge. A man for a horse. “Should I have done nothing?" The quarrel was in the family, no one else could take it up or do anything about it.

Peace chiefs didn't do much except hold the band together. Headman.

Mean medicine men. Older, not war.

Repeated sorcery. The sole communal action Comanches took against any offender. His fate was discussed and ordained in a meeting of all the men of the band. Excessive sorcery thus became the sole crime in the Comanche legal system.

CHEYENNES. Before 1600, a lake country near the Mississippi River headwaters (Algonkian heritage), simple food gathering people. Shortly before the opening of the century they began moving westward until they came to the Missouri River in the Dakotas and settled into earth-lodge villages and took to tilling corn in the manner they learned from the Arikara tribe. Toward the end of the 18th, they were moved on again, this time onto the Plains to become a nomadic horse tribe (Grinnel's The Cheyenne Indians). Militaristic, fought for booty and pleasure, war cult. But unlike Comanche had a sense of forrm, a feel for structured order. Had a ritualized tribal goverhment, well-developed system of military societies. Sun Dance, Animal Dance, Sacred Arrow Renewal ceremonies, expressed their consciousness as one people, common experience, bond of common tribal loyalty. Law system sedate, calm, mature, effective, revealing a social purpose for law. Social position by individual striving (as all Plains indians, warriors). Cheyanne who achieved high position could rest on it (unlike Comanche who had to constantly add to his deeds or be passed by others) and did not have to be contentious to prove and re-prove his greatness. Precautions to see that women remained chaste. Postpubescent girls reputed to have worn chastity belts, and married women when husband away on a journey or when alone away from her lodge.

But they were organized, although not a tactical body of standing armies or even a militia companies.

For them it was clearly a tool to be used in adjusting the balance between freedom of action for the individual and the need for constraint among the members of the society. As a medium to be manipulated and not as an absolute verit before which they had to prostrate themselves.

Cheyenne postulates: Supernatural forces (benevolent). Killing of a Cheyenne pollutes the tribal fetishes and also the murderer, have to be purified. Temporarily separated. Tribal council, authority derived from supernaturals. Individual is subordinate to the group. Rehabilitation after punishment extremely important. War is necessary (defend interests of tribe and for individual self-expresssion of male). Sexual activity should be held to a minimum.

Immediately rehabilitated miscreant boys, when they showed no wilful defiance, and made clear they had learned their lesson, by the very law enforcers who had destroyed their guns, killed their horses, and given them a whipping. Severely punished. The law was sustained. Aim of law conformance to essential rules, not social vengeance. Act of contrition, an open confession of error.

Band. Had tribal chiefs, not just headman as in Comanche. Council of chiefs numbered 44 (5 priest-chiefs among them, and among those 5, 1 supreme peace chief). Explicitly appointed with a definite tenure. Renew their numbers every 10 years. Council along had the peace-making authority. Banishment. Commuted sentence when he had expiated his offense. Tribal Council could not impose death penalty.

The character of the Cheyenne tribal chief was expected to be exemplary. First duty to care for widows and orphans. Second to be a peace-maker, a mediator between any in the camp who quarelled. The dignity of a chief did not permit him to take part in any quarrel; he might not take personal vengeance for an offence committed against himself; to do so would result in loss of influence. Since so much depended on his example and precept, a chief must be brave in war, generous in disposision, liberal in temper, deliberate in making up his mind, and of good judgement. A good chief gave his whole heart and his whole mind to the work of helping his people. In the exemplary behaviour of a chieftain such a man would studiously--nay, ostentatiously, ignore his wife's defection. ‘A dog has pissed on my tent.’ A scalp-shirt wearer was brave beyond all other men and not subject to any reflections cast on his status by an interloper.

‘This man dismounted and hugged me. He wept, he felt so bad at seeing my plight. It was High Backed Wolf.’ ... 'Until he is fixed up, I shall ask no questions. Then we shall learn how ...' ... 'This is my first good act as a chief. Help this man to tell the truth.' ‘If it had been that I had not ridden out into the hills today you would have died. No one would have known the end of you.' ... ‘I had a sweetheart in the south, but when these people did this for me, I felt ashamed. I had all those things with which to look beautiful, but I did not dare to go back, for I knew she would have heard what the Bowstrings had done to me....’ I never amounted to much with the Southern bands. Those people always remembered me as a no-good.

Going out to hunt too soon (although common, may have been a kind of dangerous sport). Made a careful search for fresh meat. Destroyed his tent, beat him, broke his weapons. If he offered resistance, he was likely to be killed on the spot.

Aborting a fetus. Banishment.

... he gave 5 horses to the Fox Soldiers. They converted this ‘fine’ into a barrel of whisky in a deal with a trader. No compensatin passed from Sleeping Rabbit to Bird Face (shot in arm with arrow for a rebuke for letting a niece walk in the snow).

Murder was, in the first instance, a sin. The sanctions were supernatural and automatic. Out of camp for 1-5 years, whatever the people decide. The smell of them. In other words, evil was evil for it's own sake. The consequences, though supernatural, were in the nature of things. The consequences were most salubrious, for they placed an immediate check on the impulse for a counter-killing. Revenge could not rest in the hands of the deceased victim's kinsmen. That would merely compound sin with sin. ... Homicide was a crime against the people. The tribe as well as the man was stained. Purification through Renewal of the Medicine Arrows. ... If there was no objection from the kin of the murderer's victim, the Council usually granted a communion of exile to the murderer who promised to walk straight. ... forever barred from smoking the common pipe in manly gatherings or eating and drinking from a common bowl.

Suicide. Daughters in resentment against overstrict maternal controls. Brothers who had promised a sister, fought conspiciously in order to get themselves killed. These acts of driving a close relative to suicide were looked upon as killing that person: the responsible person was banished and the Arrows were usually renewed.

In sharp contrast to the Comances and Eskimos, the Cheyennes turned the prestige struggle among men away from the arena of sex. Adultery raised its head rarely, and wife-absconding was faced as a legal issue only in an indirect way. It may be said from this that the Cheyennes had successfully channeled the prestige competition among men (which they encouraged) into other lines. With their institutionalized cheiftanship ... Sex competition was ruled out as a vehicle for status achievment.

Marital shifts took place with moderate frequency, commonly devoid of tension.

Took a horse and other goods to a chief with the request that the chief carry his pipe to the husband and proffer him the restitutive gifts. ... the real meaning of ritual smoking among the Plains indians was that it bound the parties to an agreement to keep their word.

Attempted rape was a delict of the first order. ... She who had yielded was disgraced forever. A ‘feast’ on the prairie.

A fair amount of petty pilfering, but theft was never made a legal issue. ‘If I had known you wanted that thing, I would have given it to you.’ Did not strive to discover the less proper persons who lifted that which was not thiers.

No third degree techniques were used of any kind. Search tipi, inspect all women's breasts for lactation.

he was truly Cheyenne in the skill with which he built up the situation to serve his ends.

KIOWAS came onto the plains at a fairly late date. Thus each group came to the Plains from the periphery. All had different languages and cultures, but on the plains with interaction, details of subsistence, general features of clothing, housing, war, and religeon they developed broadly similar ways of life. Aggressive, called insolent by army. But could be held in check by use of certain tribal fetishes. Kiowa could achieve high rank like Cheyenne.
(All three were clanless. Vision quest in search of power.

The formal religious-legal mechanisms made it possible to disturb the peace without intent actually to break it. Led to bogus vociferousness rather than genuine intent to do violence in retaliation for a wrong. Almost always status challenges among ondegupa. They knew people would intervene and stop them. Loud noise prolongued. Reluctantly subside and accept the pipe without loss of status. Thanked by officials.

Could easily lose control of themselves.

Saondeton in turn replied, ‘Guibede, if you had laid a finger on your wife, I would have killed you.’ ... Son of a wealthy man, adulterer. ... ‘Even the Ten Medicine tipis were no sanctuary for him now that the angry Guibede had refused four pipes.’ ... Guibede sat. Then the Tonkongya tore down his tipi, packed it up, saddled Guibede's horse, put him on it ...