The chief has no controul over the life or limbs, or liberty of his subjects, nor other power whatever, excepting that of influence which he gains by his virtues, and his exploits in war, and which induces his warriors and braves to follow him, as he leads them to battle—or to listen to him when he speaks and advises in council. In fact, he is no more than a leader, whom every young warrior may follow, or turn about and go back from, as he pleases, if he is willing to meet the disgrace that awaits him, who deserts his chief in the hour of danger.
It may be a difficult question to decide, whether their Government savours most of a democracy or an aristocracy; it is in some respects purely democratic—and in others aristocratic. The influence of names and families is strictly kept up, and their qualities and relative distinctions preserved in heraldric family Arms; yet entirely severed, and free from influences of wealth, which is seldom amassed by any persons in Indian communities; and most sure to slip from the hands of chiefs, or others high in office, who are looked upon to be liberal and charitable; and oftentimes, for the sake of popularity, render themselves the poorest, and most meanly dressed and equipped of any in the tribe.
These people have no written laws, nor others, save the penalties affixed to certain crimes, by long-standing custom, or by the decisions of the chiefs in council, who form a sort of Court and Congress too, for the investigation of crimes, and transaction of the public business. For the sessions of these dignitaries, each tribe has, in the middle of their village, a Government or council-house, where the chiefs often try and convict, for capital offences—leaving the punishment to be inflicted by the nearest of kin, to whom all eyes of the nation are turned, and who has no means of evading it without suffering disgrace in his tribe. For this purpose, the custom, which is the common law of the land, allows him to use any means whatever, that he may deem necessary to bring the thing effectually about; and he is allowed to waylay and shoot down the criminal—so that punishment is certain and cruel, and as effective from the hands of a feeble, as from those of a stout man, and entirely beyond the hope that often arises from the “glorious uncertainty of the law.”
As I have in a former place said, cruelty is one of the leading traits of the Indian’s character; and a little familiarity with their modes of life and government will soon convince the reader, that certainty and cruelty in punishments are requisite (where individuals undertake to inflict the penalties of the laws), in order to secure the lives and property of individuals in society.
In the treatment of their prisoners also, in many tribes, they are in the habit of inflicting the most appalling tortures, for which the enlightened world are apt to condemn them as cruel and unfeeling in the extreme; without stopping to learn that in every one of these instances, these cruelties are practiced by way of retaliation, by individuals or families of the tribe, whose relatives have been previously dealt with in a similar way by their enemies, and whose manes they deem it their duty to appease by this horrid and cruel mode of retaliation.
And in justice to the savage, the reader should yet know, that amongst these tribes that torture their prisoners, these cruelties are practiced but upon the few whose lives are required to atone for those who have been similarly dealt with by their enemies, and that the remainder are adopted into the tribe, by marrying the widows whose husbands have fallen in battle, in which capacity they are received and respected like others of the tribe, and enjoy equal rights and immunities. And before we condemn them too far, we should yet pause and enquire whether in the enlightened world we are not guilty of equal cruelties—whether in the ravages and carnage of war, and treatment of prisoners, we practice any virtue superior to this; and whether the annals of history which are familiar to all, do not furnish abundant proof of equal cruelty to prisoners of war, as well as in many instances, to the members of our own respective communities. It is a remarkable fact and one well recorded in history, as it deserves to be, to the honour of the savage, that no instance has been known of violence to their captive females, a virtue yet to be learned in civilized warfare.
If their punishments are certain and cruel, they have the merit of being few, and those confined chiefly to their enemies. It is natural to be cruel to enemies; and in this, I do not see that the improvements of the enlightened and Christian world have yet elevated them so very much above the savage. To their friends, there are no people on earth that are more kind; and cruelties and punishments (except for capital offences) are amongst themselves, entirely dispensed with. No man in their communities is subject to any restraints upon his liberty, or to any corporal or degrading punishment; each one valuing his limbs, and his liberty to use them as his inviolable right, which no power in the tribe can deprive him of; whilst each one holds the chief as amenable to him as the most humble individual in the tribe.
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