Indian Justice: A Cherokee Murder Trial at Tahlequah in 1840 / Edition 1

by John Howard Payne, Grant Foreman, Rennard Strickland

Overview

In Indian Justice, Grant Foreman presents John Howard Payne’s first-hand account of the trial of Archilla Smith, a Cherokee charged with the murder of John MacIntosh in the fall of 1839. The Cherokee Supreme Court at Tahlequah (in present-day Oklahoma) found Smith guilty and sentenced him to die.

Occurring immediately after the Cherokee Removal to lands west of the Mississippi River, the trial involved people on both sides of the bitter factional controversies then raging in the Cherokee Nation. Payne’s account of this important Indian case first appeared in two installments in the New York Journal of Commerce in 1841.

In his foreword to this new edition, Rennard Strickland places the case in historical and contemporary context, exploring the evolution of tribal court systems and Indian justice over the past century and a half.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806134208
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	05/15/2002
Edition description:	RED RIVER
Pages:	136
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.36(d)

About the Author

John Howard Payne (1971-1852) was the author, translator, or adapter of more than sixty plays.

Grant Foreman (1869-1953), known as the dean of American Indian historians, was the author of Indian Removal, The Five Civilized Tribes, and Sequoyah and editor of Ethan Allen Hitchcock's Traveler in Indian Territory, all published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

A legal historian of Osage and Cherokee heritage, Rennard Strickland is considered a pioneer in introducing Indian law into university curriculum. He has written and edited more than 35 books and is frequently cited by courts and scholars for his work as revision editor in chief of the Handbook of Federal Indian Law. Strickland has been involved in the resolution of a number of significant Indian cases. He was the founding director of the Center for the Study of American Indian Law and Policy at the University of Oklahoma. He is the first person to have served both as president of the Association of American Law Schools and as chair of the Law School Admissions Council. He is also the only person to have received both the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) Award and the American Bar Association's Spirit of Excellence Award. Strickland was the dean of the law school from 1997 to 2002.