Table Of ContentFire and the Spirits : Cherokee
Law From Clan to Court
title:
Civilization of the American
Indian Series ; V. 133
author: Strickland, Rennard.
publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
isbn10 | asin: 0806116196
print isbn13: 9780806116198
ebook isbn13: 9780585259086
language: English
subject Cherokee law.
publication date: 1982
lcc: KF8228.C505S7 1975eb
ddc: 340/.09701
subject: Cherokee law.
Page i
Fire and the Spirits
Page ii
Maker of Medicine ,by Joan Hill. Reproduced through the
courtesy of the Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Page iii
Fire and the Spirits
Cherokee Law from Clan to Court
by
Rennard Strickland
Foreward By
Neill H. Alford, Jr.
University of Oklahoma Press : Norman
Page iv
By Rennard Strickland
Speaker’s Sourcebook Series (7 vols.; Fayetteville,
196571)
Sam Houston with the Cherokees (with Jack Gregory;
Austin, 1967)
Starr’s History of the Cherokees (editor; Fayetteville,
1967)
Indian Spirit Tales Series: Cherokee Spirit Tales, Creek-
Seminole Spirit Tales, Choctaw Spirit Tales,
American Indian Spirit Tales (Muskogee, 196974)
Language Is Sermonic (editor; Baton Rouge, 1970)
Hell on the Border (editor, with Jack Gregory;
Muskogee, 1971)
The Cherokee People (with Earl Boyd Pierce; Phoenix,
1973)
How to Get into Law School (New York, 1974)
Legal Rights of Classroom Teachers (New York, 1975)
Fire and the Spirits: Cherokee Law from Clan to Court
(Norman, 1975)
The Indians in Oklahoma (Norman, 1980)
Oklahoma Memories (editor, with Anne Hodges
Morgan; Norman, 1981)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Strickland, Rennard.
Fire and the spirits.
(The Civilization of the American Indian series; no. 133
Bibliography: p. 239.
Includes index.
1. Law, Cherokee. I. Title. II. Series.
KF8228.C505S7 340’.09701 7415903
ISBN: 0-806116196
Copyright © 1975 by the University of Oklahoma
Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University.
All rights reserved. Manufactured in the U.S.A.
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Page v
For my mother and her Osage grandfather;
For my father and his Cherokee grandmother;
For my alma mater, the School of Law of
the University of Virginia, and her
faculty;
And, especially, for my mentor,
Jack Gregory, and for Mary
Page ix
Foreword
NEILL H. ALFORD, JR.
The laws of American Indian tribes receive only
fleeting recognition in most of the early accounts of the
affairs of the English colonies in America and of the
affairs of the new states following the American
Revolution. We have the account by James Adair and
those of a few others, but the history of the American
Indian in the area of English occupation suffers from
the lack of a highly organized and dedicated group of
teachers and chroniclers such as the Jesuit missionaries
in Central and South America. There was no Manuel de
Nobrega and no José de Anchietas in the Carolinas.
There was no Bartolomé de las Casas to plead the cause
of the aborigine at the English Court.
The scholar who now seeks to explore the institutions
of any Indian tribe or nation within the area of English
occupation must deal with bits and pieces of evidence.
The chroniclers of Indian “affairs” in the English
settlements viewed those affairs as “troubles.” William
B. Stevens, who prepared the first history of Georgia of
scholarly quality (History of Georgia from Its First
Discovery by Europeans to the Adoption of the Present
Constitution in 1798, 11 vols., 184759), wrote in his
chapter “Settlement of Indian Affairs”:
To give a history of these Indian difficulties the various
turns in their treaties and negotiations, the skirmishing-
like warfare so long kept up on the frontier, and the
many harrowing details of massacre, cruelty and
destruction, which were perpetrated in the white man’s
settlements, would require more space than can be given
to such detail; and therefore much must be left untold,
and much more must be left to the imagination, while
the historian sketches a brief and confessedly incomplete
outline of events connected with the Indian affairs of
Georgia.
Page x
Lamentably this has been the pattern, and only a reader
who recognizes the major obstacles a scholar
encounters in his investigation of any aspect of
American Indian culture will recognize clearly the
monumental task that Strickland has so successfully
accomplished in his study of the laws of the Cherokees.
Combining his vast knowledge of the culture of this
Indian nation, based not only upon his years of research
but also upon his fieldwork among the Cherokees of
Oklahoma, with his clear perception and firm grasp of
the processes by which legal systems develop,
Strickland presents a description and analysis of
Cherokee law that will serve as a landmark for scholars
in the future. In very careful detail he describes the
impact of a European legal culture upon a society in
which all legal institutions have strong overtones of
religion and magic. The processes that he articulates
have parallels today when European institutions and
tribal traditions clash.
Much has been written in recent years concerning
American Indians, and scholars have been particularly
active in their study since the American Indian was
identified as a member of an abused minority whose
legal claims deserve redress. But among these writings
Strickland’s book will be recognized as a distinguished
and concise treatment of the building of legal
institutions by an able and intelligent group of true
native Americans.
