The difference between an injury which a person inflicts deliberately, in cold blood, and one which he inflicts in the heat of the moment, under the disturbance of great excitement caused by a wrong done to himself, has been widely recognised. There are instances reported of savages who distinguish between murder and manslaughter. And the laws of all civilised nations agree in regarding, on certain conditions, passion aroused by provocation as a mitigating circumstance at the commission of a crime.
The Australian Narrinyeri, as we have seen, have a tribunal, called tendi, consisting of the elders of the clan, to which all offenders are brought for trial. “In case of the slaying by a person or persons of one clan of the member of another clan in time of peace, the fellow-clansmen of the murdered man will send to the friends of the murderer and invite them to bring him to trial before the united tendies. If, after full inquiry, he is found to have committed the crime, he will be punished according to the degree of guilt. If it were a case of murder, with malice aforethought, he would be handed over to his own clan to be put to death by spearing. If it should be what we call manslaughter, he would receive a good thrashing, or be banished from his clan, or compelled to go to his mother’s relations.”[80] In the Pelew Islands, if two natives are quarrelling, and the one says to the other, “Your wife is bad,” the insulted party is entitled to chastise the provoker with a stone, and is not held liable even if the latter should die in consequence.[81] The Eastern Central Africans “are aware of the difference between murder and homicide,” even though the punishment of the two crimes is often the same.[82] Among the Kandhs only slight compensation is awarded “for wounds, however serious, given under circumstances of extreme provocation.”[83] “Valdeyak, or manslaughter,” says Georgi, “is not capital among the Tungusians, when it has been occasioned by some antecedent quarrel. The slayer is however whipped, and obliged to maintain the family of the deceased: he undergoes no reproaches on account of the affair; but on the contrary is considered as a brave and courageous man for it.”[84]
[80] Taplin, ‘Narrinyeri,’ in Woods, Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 34 sq.
[81] Kubary, ‘Die Palau-Inseln,’ in Journal des Museum Godeffroy, iv. 43 sq.
[82] Macdonald, Africana, i. 172.
[83] Macpherson, op. cit. p. 82.
[84] Georgi, Russia, iii. 83. Cf. also Turner, ‘Ethnology of the Ungava District,’ in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 186.
Among the ancient Peruvians, “when one killed another in a quarrel, the first thing enquired into was, who had been the aggressor; if the dead man, then the punishment was slight, at the will of the Inga; but if the surviver had given the provocation, his penalty was death, or at least perpetual banishment to the Andes, there to work in the Inga’s fields of corn, which was like sending him to the galeys. A murderer was immediately publickly put to death, tho’ he were a man of quality.”[85] Among the Mayas of Yucatan and Nicaragua, in case of great provocation or absence of malice, homicide was atoned by the payment of a fine.[86]
[85] Herrera, op. cit. iv. 337 sq.
[86] Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 658.