[51]. Lord Kingsborough at this point takes issue with Adair so far as concerns the Indians of South America, referring to Las Casas, op. cit. Chapter 178; but saying, also, that Adair was led to the belief he expresses by the customs prevailing in North America, as to which Las Casas confirms Adair’s denial of the practice there, in his Chapter 224; this, on the authority of Cabeza de Vaca who states that the Indians of Florida and the Southern Mississippi Valley held cannibalism in extreme abhorence. But that a few tribes of North America, in Texas, were cannibals, see Swanton, Lower Tribes, 360.
[52]. Lord Kingsborough quotes Mackenzie as saying that the Dog-ribbed Indians appeared to him to be all circumcised. See also, Boudinot, Star of the West, 113.
[53]. “The Indians never used to eat a certain sinew in the thigh. The name of this sinew in Cherokee is u-wa-sta-to. Some say that if they eat the sinew they will cramp in it [the same sinew] on attempting to run.” Buttrick, Antiquities of the Cherokees, 12. Further corroborated by Hodgson, Letters from North America, I, 224, and as to the Canadian Indians by Frazer, Golden Bough, VIII, 265. Also, see Mooney, Sacred Formulas, 323, Myths, 447.
[54]. On marriage consult: Jones, Antiquities of Southern Indians, 65; Swanton, Lower Tribes, 94; Bartram’s Observations, 65.
[55]. Punishment for adultery seems to have varied with almost every tribe. Du Pratz, History of Louisiana, II, 197. Bossu says of the Choctaws: “If a woman commits an infidelity, she must pass through the meadow, i.e., all the young men, and sometimes, the old ones, satisfy their brutality on her by turns.” Travels, I, 308. Among the Alabama Indians he describes a different punishment. Ib., 233. Bartram’s Travels, 512. Adair’s is by far the best and fullest account.
[56]. Lord Kingsborough refers here to Isaac and Rebecca, Genesis, 24: 14.
[57]. “In case of murder, the next of blood is obliged to kill the murderer or else he is looked upon as infamous in the nation where he lives.” Gen. Oglethorpe in Gentlemen’s Magazine, 1733, p. 413. See also Cushman, History of the Indians, 495.
[58]. See as to these Shawnees, note on p. 2 ante.; and Swanton, Early History of Creeks, 318-19.
[59]. Kingsborough refers for corroboration to the statement of Las Casas, Historia Apologetica, Chapter 141, respecting cities of refuge among the ancients in Mexico. As to North America: Mooney, Myths, 207.
[60]. Variously spelled: Chota, Chote, Echota, Chotah, Choto, Chotee, Chateauke, Chotte, and as above. Probably the earliest English account is that of James Needham in Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 27, see also pp. 152, 263, 472, and, for the reverence for “the old beloved town,” 497. Timberlake, (1762) refers to it as the metropolis of the country, Memoirs, 58, 99, 117; Ramsey’s Annals of Tennessee, passim. The beloved town was spared in the destruction of the Cherokee towns by Col. Wm. Christian, in 1776.