The Cheyenne Way - by Karl N Llewellyn & E Adamson Hoebel (Paperback)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"The Cheyenne Way is a stepping stone and a landmark in the program of social science. . . . and will prove of great value to social science, anthropology, and to the theory of law, primitive and crystalized."--Lawyers Guild Review

"A remarkable picture of the system of law and jurisprudence evolved by a primitive people . . . and as practiced by them over a long period of years. . . . The individual case histories reveal the working of the warrior societies, the degree of authority exercised by the chiefs, and the mores of a primitive people. . . . More than a study of the jurisprudence of this single tribe, [the book] deals with the evolution of law and legal procedure among various other primitive peoples of the world."--Edward Everett Dale, Journal of Southern History

"Here is pioneering in the Sociology of Law. . . . The cases themselves are so beautifully alive that an elementary school child will forget to go to sleep reading them; so will the adult." --Columbia Law Review

"Llewellyn and Hoebel have made a brilliant contribution. . . . not only to social anthropology and the sociology of law but to social science at large."--Yale Law Journal

"Planned and executed upon a novel and striking pattern . . . this book appeals to the lawyer, the sociologist and the collector of Indian lore, as well as to the general reader."--New York Times Book Review