Police and Tribal Welfare in Plains Indian Cultures

Abstract

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,

Military societies: self-governance and criminal justice in Indian country

“…Humphrey ( 1942 ) analyzed data from 32 distinct tribes in the Plains regions that established “warrior” or “police” societies, with a focus on the Blackfoot, Crow, Cheyenne, and Kiowa tribes (not enough data were available on the Comanche to include in his study), along with Southern Plains tribes, and a village in the upper Missouri River’s reaches (Meadows 2002 reported information on the Comanche that aligns with earlier research). Humphrey’s emphasis was on the ways military societies were organized from the time of European contact through the mid-nineteenth century, though his interview accounts provided special insight into the nature and function of these societies circa 1850.…”

“…In some tribes, the councils had formal authority to veto military society proposals, such as among the Crow. Members of military societies were typically appointed, with definitive tenures that varied (for a year, a season and, for some tribes, a day) (Humphrey, 1942 , pp. 147–149).…”

“…The types of offenses that military societies policed could be divided broadly into offenses against tribal goods and those against the units of the group (Humphrey, 1942 ). An example of the type of policing performed by military societies is policing the buffalo hunt: hunting buffalo on foot with a spear or bow is exceedingly difficult for an individual; thus, group hunts were far more efficient.…”

“…While buffalo hunting became much easier after the acquisitions of the rifle and horse, Plains Indians continued their group hunts, and similar organizational concerns prevailed. As a result, governance structures emerged and were quite strong: as Humphrey ( 1942 , p. 150) puts it, “complete, almost inexorable control over the population of a camp was exercised primarily during the period of the communal buffalo hunt.”…”

“…Military societies often relied on superstition and it appears to have conferred greater legitimacy on them. The Cheyenne’s Dog Society, for example, enforced banishments (the penalty for wrongful deaths), justifying the need for penalties based on superstition: Since the death of a Cheyenne at the hands of a tribesman “bloodied” the arrows of the Medicine Arrows and the Medicine Hat (upon whom tribal welfare rested), resulting in game shunning the country and the failure of war parties, it was necessary to discover the culprit (Humphrey, 1942 , p. 157). …”