marriage-law, in punishing the weaker passive party, and exempting the
stronger, contrary to reason and justice; they told me, it had been so a
considerable time—because their land being a continual seat of war, and
the lurking enemy for ever pelting them without, and the women decoying
them within, if they put such old cross laws of marriage in force, all
their beloved brisk warriors would soon be spoiled, and their
habitations turned to a wild waste. It is remarkable, that the ancient
Egyptians cut off the ears and nose of the adulteress; and the prophet
alludes to this sort of punishment, Ezek. xxiii. 25. “They shall deal
furiously with thee: they shall take away thy nose and thine ears.” And
they gave them also a thousand stripes, with canes on the
buttocks[XXXII]. The Cheerake are an exception to all civilized or
savage nations, in having no laws against adultery; they {145} have been
a considerable while under petticoat-government, and allow their women
full liberty to plant their brows with horns as oft as they please,
without fear of punishment. On this account their marriages are ill
observed, and of a short continuance; like the Amazons, they divorce
their fighting bed-fellows at their pleasure, and fail not to execute
their authority, when their fancy directs them to a more agreeable
choice. However, once in my time a number of warriors, belonging to the
family of the husband of the adulteress, revenged the injury committed
by her, in her own way; for they said, as she loved a great many men,
instead of a husband, justice told them to gratify her longing
desire—wherefore, by the information of their spies, they followed her
into the woods a little way from the town, (as decency required) and
then stretched her on the ground, with her hands tied to a stake, and
her feet also extended, where upwards of fifty of them lay with her,
having a blanket for a covering. The Choktah observe the same savage
custom with adulteresses. They term their female delinquents, _Ahowwe
Ishto_; the first is a Cheerake word, signifying, “a deer.”—And through
contempts of the Chikkasah, they altered their penal law of adultery.
Footnote XXXII:
When human laws were first made, they commanded that if the husband
found the adulterer in the fact, he should kill them both. Thus the
laws of Solon and Draco ordained: but the law of the twelve tables
softened it.
The Muskohge Indians, either through the view of mitigating their law
against adultery, that it might be adapted to their patriarchal-like
government; or by misunderstanding the Mosaic precept, from length of
time, and uncertainty of oral tradition, oblige the adulteress under the
penalty of the severest law not to be free with any man, (unless she is
inclined to favour her fellow sufferer) during the space of four moons,
after the broken moon in which they suffered for each other, according
to the custom of the Maldivians. But her husband exposes himself to the
utmost severity of the marriage law, if he is known to hold a familiar
intercourse with her after the time of her punishment.
ARGUMENT XIV.
Many other of the INDIAN PUNISHMENTS, resemble those of the Jews.
Whosoever attentively views the features of the Indian, and his eye, and
{146} reflects on his fickle, obstinate, and cruel disposition, will
naturally think on the Jews. English America, feelingly knows the parity
of the temper of their neighbouring Indians, with that of the Hebrew
nation.
The Israelites cut off the hands and feet of murderers, 2 Sam. iv.
12.—strangled false prophets—and sometimes burned, stoned, or beheaded
those malefactors who were condemned by the two courts of judgment. The
Indians either by the defect of tradition, or through a greedy desire of
revenge, torture their prisoners and devoted captives, with a mixture of
all those Jewish capital punishments. They keep the original so close in
their eye, as to pour cold water on the sufferers when they are
fainting, or overcome by the fiery torture—to refresh, and enable them
to undergo longer tortures. The Hebrews gave wine mixt with the juice of
myrrh, to their tortured criminals, to revive their spirits; and
sometimes vinegar to prevent too great an effusion of blood, lest they
should be disappointed in glutting their greedy eyes, with their
favourite tragedy of blood: which was eminently exemplified in their
insulting treatment of Christ on the cross.
The Indians, beyond all the rest of mankind, seem in this respect to be
actuated with the Jewish spirit. They jeer, taunt, laugh, whoop, and
rejoice at the inexpressible agonies of those unfortunate persons, who
are under their butchering hands; which would excite pity and horror in
any heart, but that of a Jew. When they are far from home, they keep as
near to their distinguishing customs, as circumstances allow them: not
being able formerly to cut off the heads of those they killed in war,
for want of proper weapons; nor able to carry them three or four hundred
miles without putrefaction, they cut off the skin of their heads with
their flint-stone knives, as speaking trophies of honour, and which
register them among the brave by procuring them war titles. Though now
they have plenty of proper weapons, they vary not from this ancient
barbarous custom of the American aborigines: which has been too well
known by many of our northern colonists, and is yet shamefully so to
South-Carolina and Georgia barriers, by the hateful name of scalping.
The Indians strictly adhere more than the rest of mankind to that
positive, unrepealed law of Moses, “He who sheddeth man’s blood, by
{147} man shall his blood be shed:” like the Israelites, their hearts
burn violently day and night without intermission, till they shed blood
for blood. They transmit from father to son, the memory of the loss of
their relation, or one of their own tribe or family, though it were an
old woman—if she was either killed by the enemy, or by any of their own
people. If indeed the murder be committed by a kinsman, the eldest can
redeem: however, if the circumstances attending the fact be peculiar and
shocking to nature, the murderer is condemned to die the death of a
sinner, “without any one to mourn for him,” as in the case of suicide;
contrary to their usage toward the rest of their dead, and which may
properly be called the death or burial of a Jewish ass.
When they have had success in killing the enemy, they tie fire-brands in
the most-frequented places, with grape vines which hang pretty low, in
order that they may be readily seen by the enemy. As they reckon the
aggressors have loudly declared war, it would be madness or treachery in
their opinion to use such public formalities before they have revenged
crying blood; it would inform the enemy of their design of retaliating,
and destroy the honest intention of war. They likewise strip the bark
off several large trees in conspicuous places, and paint them with red
and black hieroglyphics, thereby threatening the enemy with more blood
and death. The last were strong and similar emblems with the Hebrews,
and the first is analogous to one of their martial customs; for when
they arrived at the enemies territories, they threw a fire-brand within
their land, as an emblem of the anger of _Ash_, “the holy fire” for
their ill deeds to his peculiarly beloved people. To which custom
Obadiah alludes, when he says (ver. 18.) “they shall kindle in them and
devour them, there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau, &c.”
which the Septuagint translates, “one who carries a fire-brand.” The
conduct of the Israelitish champion, Sampson, against the Philistines,
proceeded from the same war custom, when he took three-hundred
_Shugnalim_, (which is a bold strong metaphor) signifying _Vulpes_,
foxes or sheaves of corn; and tying them tail to tail, or one end to the
other in a continued train, he set fire to them, and by that means,
burned down their standing corn.
In the late Cheerake war, at the earnest persuasions of the trading
people, several of the Muskohge warriors came down to the
barrier-settlements of Georgia, {148} to go against the Cheerake, and
revenge English crying blood: but the main body of the nation sent a
running embassy to the merchants there, requesting them immediately to
forbear their unfriendly proceedings, otherwise, they should be forced
by disagreeable necessity to revenge their relations blood if it should
chance to be spilt contrary to their ancient laws: this alludes to the
levitical law, by which he who decoyed another to his end, was deemed
the occasion of his death, and consequently answerable for it. If an
unruly horse belonging to a white man, should chance to be tied at a
trading house and kill one of the Indians, either the owner of the
house, or the person who tied the beast there, is responsible for it, by
their lex talionis; which seems to be derived also from the Mosaic
precept,—if an ox known by its owner to push with its horn, should kill
a person, they were both to die the death. If the Indians have a dislike
to a person, who by any casualty was the death of one of their people,
he stands accountable, and will certainly suffer for it, unless he takes
sanctuary.
I knew an under trader, who being intrusted by his employer with a cargo
of goods for the country of the Muskohge, was forced by the common law
of good faith, to oppose some of those savages in the remote woods, to
prevent their robbing the camp: the chieftain being much intoxicated
with spirituous liquors, and becoming outrageous in proportion to the
resistance he met with, the trader like a brave man, opposed lawless
force by force: some time after, the lawless bacchanal was attacked with
a pleurisy, of which he died. Then the heads of the family of the
deceased convened the lesser judicatory, and condemned the trader to be
shot to death for the supposed murder of their kinsman; which they
easily effected, as he was off his guard, and knew nothing of their
murdering design. His employer however had such a friendly intercourse
with them, as to gain timely notice of any thing that might affect his
person or interest; but he was so far from assisting the unfortunate
brave man, as the laws of humanity and common honour obliged him, that
as a confederate, he not only concealed their bloody intentions, but
went basely to the next town, while the savages painted themselves red
and black, and give them an opportunity of perpetrating the horrid
murder. The poor victim could have easily escaped to the English
settlements if forewarned, and got the affair accommodated by the
mediation of the government. In acts of blood, if the supposed murderer
{149} escapes, his nearest kinsman either real or adopted, or if he has
none there, his friend stands according to their rigorous law,
answerable for the fact. But though the then governor of South Carolina
was sufficiently informed of this tragedy, and that it was done contrary
to the treaty of amity, and that there is no possibility of managing
them, but by their own notions of virtue, he was passive, and allowed
them with impunity to shed this innocent blood; which they ever since
have improved to our shame and sorrow. They have gradually become worse
every year; and corrupted other nations by their contagious copy, so as
to draw them into the like bloody scenes, with the same contempt, as if
they had killed so many helpless timorous dunghill fowls, as they
despitefully term us.
There never was any set of people, who pursued the Mosaic law of
_retaliation_ with such a fixt eagerness as these Americans.[57] They
are so determined in this point, that formerly a little boy shooting
birds in the high and thick corn-fields, unfortunately chanced slightly
to wound another with his childish arrow; the young vindictive fox, was
excited by custom to watch his ways with the utmost earnestness, till
the wound was returned in as equal manner as could be expected. Then,
“all was straight,” according to their phrase. Their hearts were at
rest, by having executed that strong law of nature, and they sported
together as before. This observation though small in itself, is great in
its combined circumstances, as it is contrary to the usage of the old
heathen world. They forgive all crimes at the annual atonement of sins,
except murder, which is always punished with death. The Indians
constantly upbraid us in their bacchanals, for inattention to this maxim
of theirs; they say, that all nations of people who are not utterly sunk
in cowardice, take revenge of blood before they can have rest, cost what
it will. The Indian Americans are more eager to revenge blood, than any
other people on the whole face of the earth. And when the heart of the
revenger of blood in Israel was hot within him, it was a terrible thing
for the casual _manslayer_ to meet him, Deut. xix. 6. “Lest the avenger
of blood pursue the slayer while his heart is hot, and overtake him,
because the way is long, and slay him; whereas he was not worthy of
death, inasmuch as he hated him not in time past.”
I have known the Indians to go a thousand miles, for the purpose of
revenge, in pathless woods; over hills and mountains; through large cane
{150} swamps, full of grape-vines and briars; over broad lakes, rapid
rivers, and deep creeks; and all the way endangered by poisonous snakes,
if not with the rambling and lurking enemy, while at the same time they
were exposed to the extremities of heat and cold, the vicissitude of the
seasons; to hunger and thirst, both by chance, and their religious
scanty method of living when at war, to fatigues, and other
difficulties. Such is their over-boiling, revengeful temper, that they
utterly contemn all those things as imaginary trifles, if they are so
happy as to get the scalp of the murderer, or enemy, to satisfy the
supposed craving ghosts of their deceased relations. Though they imagine
the report of guns will send off the ghosts of their kindred that died
at home, to their quiet place, yet they firmly believe, that the spirits
of those who are killed by the enemy, without equal revenge of blood,
find no rest, and at night haunt the houses of the tribe to which they
belonged[XXXIII]: but, when that kindred duty of retaliation is justly
executed, they immediately get ease and power to fly away: This opinion,
and their method of burying and mourning for the dead, of which we shall
speak presently, occasion them to retaliate in so earnest and fierce a
manner. It is natural for friends to study each others mutual happiness,
and we should pity the weakness of those who are destitute of our
advantages; whose intellectual powers are unimproved, and who are
utterly unacquainted with the sciences, as well as every kind of
mechanical business, to engage their attention at home. Such persons
cannot well live without war; and being destitute of public faith to
secure the lives of embassadors in time of war, they have no sure method
to reconcile their differences; consequently, when any casual thing
draws them into a war, it grows every year more spiteful till it
advances to a bitter enmity, so as to excite them to an implacable
hatred to one another’s very national names. Then they must go abroad to
spill the enemy’s blood, and to revenge crying blood. We must also
consider, it is by scalps they get all their war-titles, which
distinguish them among the brave: and these they hold in as high esteem,
as the most ambitious Roman general ever did a great triumph. By how
much the deeper any society of people are sunk in ignorance, so much the
more they value themselves on their bloody merit. This was {151} long
the characteristic of the Hebrew nation, and has been conveyed down to
these their supposed red descendants.
Footnote XXXIII:
As the Hebrews supposed there was a holiness in Canaan, more than in
any other land, so they believed that their bodies buried out of it,
would be carried through caverns, or subterraneous passages of the
earth to the holy land, where they shall rise again and dart up to
their holy attracting centre.
However, notwithstanding their bloody temper and conduct towards
enemies, when their law of blood does not interfere, they observe that
Mosaic precept, “He shall be dealt with according as he intended to do
to his neighbour, but the innocent and righteous man thou shalt not
slay.” I must observe also that as the Jewish priests were by no means
to shed human blood, and as king David was forbidden by the prophet to
build a temple because he was a man of war and had shed blood—so, the
Indian _Ishtohoollo_ “holy men” are by their function absolutely
forbidden to slay; notwithstanding their propensity thereto, even for
small injuries. They will not allow the greatest warrior to officiate,
when the yearly grand sacrifice of expiation is offered up, or on any
other religious occasion, except the leader. All must be performed by
their beloved men, who are clean of every stain of blood, and have their
foreheads circled with streaks of white clay.
As this branch of the general subject cannot be illustrated, but by
well-known facts, I shall exemplify it with the late and long-continued
conduct of the northern Indians, and those of Cape Florida, whom our
navigators have reported to be cannibals. The Muskohge, who have been
bitter enemies to the Cape Florida Indians, time immemorial, affirm
their manners, tempers and appetites, to be the very same as those of
the neighboring Indian nations. And the Florida captives who were sold
in Carolina, have told me, that the Spaniards of St. Augustine and St.
Mark’s garrisons, not only hired and paid them for murdering our seamen,
who were so unfortunate as to be shipwrecked on their dangerous coast,
but that they delivered up to the savages those of our people they did
not like, to be put to the fiery torture. From their bigotted
persecuting spirit, we may conclude the victims to have been those who
would not worship their images and crucifixes. The Spaniards no doubt
could easily influence this decayed small tribe to such a practice, as
they depended upon them for the necessaries of life: and though they
could never settle out of their garrisons in West-Florida, on account of
the jealous temper of the neighboring unconquered Indians, yet the
Cape-Floridans were only Spanish mercenaries, shedding blood for their
maintenance. A seduced Indian {152} is certainly less faulty than the
apostate Christian who instigated him; when an Indian sheds human blood,
it does not proceed from wantonness, or the view of doing evil, but
solely to put the law of retaliation in force, to return one injury for
another; but, if he has received no ill, and has no suspicion of the
kind, he usually offers no damage to those who fall in his power, but is
moved with compassion, in proportion to what they seem to have
undergone. Such as they devote to the fire, they flatter with the hope
of being redeemed, as long as they can, to prevent the giving them any
previous anxiety or grief, which their law of blood does not require.
The French Canadians are highly censurable, and their bloody popish
clergy, for debauching our peaceable northern Indians, with their
_infernal catechism_,—the first introduction into their religious
mysteries. Formerly, when they initiated the Indian sucklings into their
mixt idolatrous worship, they fastened round their necks, a bunch of
their favourite red and black beads, with a silver cross hanging down on
their breasts, thus engaging them, as they taught, to fight the battles
of God. Then they infected the credulous Indians with a firm belief,
that God once sent his own beloved son to fix the red people in high
places of power, over the rest of mankind; that he passed through
various countries, to the universal joy of the inhabitants, in order to
come to the beloved red people, and place them in a superior station of
life to the rest of the American world; but when he was on the point of
sailing to America, to execute his divine embassy, he was murdered by
the bloody monopolizing English, at the city of London, only to make the
red people weigh light. Having thus instructed, and given them the
catechism by way of question and answer, and furnished them with 2000
gross of scalping knives and other murdering articles, the catechumens
soon sallied forth, and painted themselves all over with the innocent
blood of our fellow-subjects, of different stations, and ages, and
without any distinction of sex,—contrary to the standing Indian laws of
blood.
The British lion at last however triumphed, and forced the French
themselves to sue for that friendly intercourse and protection, which
their former catechism taught the Indians to hate, and fly from, as
dangerous to their universal happiness. {153}
When I have reasoned with some of the old headmen, against their
barbarous custom of killing defenceless innocent persons, who neither
could nor would oppose them in battle, but begged that they might only
live to be their slaves, they told me that formerly they never waged
war, but in revenge of blood; and that in such cases, they always
devoted the guilty to be burnt alive when they were purifying themselves
at home, to obtain victory over their enemies. But otherwise they
treated the vanquished with the greatest clemency, and adopted them in
the room of their relations, who had either died a natural death, or had
before been sufficiently revenged, though killed by the enemy.
The Israelites thus often devoted their captives to death, without any
distinction of age or sex,—as when they took Jericho, they saved only
merciful Rahab and her family;—after they had plundered the Midianites
of their riches, they put men women and children to death, dividing
among themselves a few virgins and the plunder;—with other instances
that might be quoted. The Indian Americans, beyond all the present race
of Adam, are actuated by this bloody war-custom of the Israelites; they
put their captives to various lingering torments, with the same
unconcern as the Levite, when he cut up his beloved concubine into
eleven portions, and sent them to the eleven tribes, to excite them to
revenge the affront, the Benjamites had given him. When equal blood has
not been shed to quench the crying blood of their relations, and give
rest to their ghosts, according to their credenda, while they are
sanctifying themselves for war, they always allot their captives either
to be killed or put to the fiery torture: and they who are thus devoted,
cannot by any means be saved, though they resembled an angel in beauty
and virtue.
Formerly, the Indians defeated a great body of the French, who at two
different times came to invade their country. They put to the fiery
torture a considerable number of them; and two in particular, whom they
imagined to have carried the French ark against them. The English
traders solicited with the most earnest entreaties, in favour of the
unfortunate captives; but they averred, that as it was not our business
to intercede in behalf of a deceitful enemy who came to shed blood,
unless we were resolved to share their deserved fate, so was it entirely
out of the reach of goods, though piled as high as the skies, to redeem
them,— {154} because they were not only the chief support of the French
army, in spoiling so many of their warriors by the power of their ugly
ark, before they conquered them; but were delivered over to the fire,
before they entered into battle.
When I was on my way to the Chikkasah, at the Okchai, in the year 1745,
the conduct of the Muskohge Indians was exactly the same with regard to
a Cheerake stripling, whose father was a white man, and mother an
half-breed,—regardless of the pressing entreaties and very high offers
of the English traders, they burned him in their usual manner. This
seems to be copied from that law which expressly forbad the redeeming
any devoted persons, and ordered that they should be surely put to
death, Lev. xxvii. 29. This precept had evidently a reference to the law
of retaliation.—Saul in superstitious and angry mood, wanted to have
murdered or sacrificed to God his favourite son Jonathan, because when
he was fainting he tasted some honey which casually fell in his way,
just after he had performed a prodigy of martial feats in behalf of
Israel: but the gratitude, and reason of the people, prevented him from
perpetrating that horrid murder. If devoting to death was a divine
extraction, or if God delighted in human sacrifices, the people would
have been criminal for daring to oppose the divine law,—which was not
the case. Such a law if taken in an extensive and literal sense, is
contrary to all natural reason and religion, and consequently in a
strict sense, could not be enjoined by a benevolent and merciful God;
who commands us to do justice and shew mercy to the very beasts; not to
muzzle the ox while he is treading out the grain; nor to insnare the
bird when performing her parental offices. “Are ye not of more value
than many sparrows?”