The geographic area known as the Great Plains contained in the early nineteenth century some thirty-two distinct tribes speaking eighteen mutually unintelligible languages. Some of the tribes of the area were marked by the possession of societies or associations. From tribe to tribe enough similarity existed between these societies to induce early investigators to view them as being essentially alike; and they were grouped together under the terms warrior societies, or police societies. The tribes having societies occupied a definite geographic territory, ranging from what is now Saskatchewan to what is now Texas. For the purpose of a comparative study of the police activities of these societies I chose first those tribes which Wissler designates as typical Plains tribes, 2 namely: the Blackfoot, the Crow, the Gros Ventre, and Oglala-Dakota, the Assineboine, the Araphao, the Cheyenne, and the Kiowa (the data on the Comanche was too meager for comparison) 3 ; and second, three of the southern Siouan group, 4 the Iowa, Ponca, and Kansa; and a village tribe of the upper Missouri, the Arikara. That organization of Plains tribes, which for convenience I shall call political, had an "excutive" aspect in the office of the chief, and a "legislative" aspect in the council, while the administration of the rules made by these bodies was in the hands of police, groups, ordinarily societies invested with this power. The Interrelation of Chiefs, Council, and Societies The societies were subordinate to the chiefs and the council in the exercise of authority. The chiefs cooperated with the societies, however, in the maintenance of order and unity. The Crow societies, for example, while cooperating with the chiefs on an even footing,