Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 83 



violated captive women, they generally were more 

 merciful than the northern tribes. 25 



But their political and military systems could 

 not compare with those of the Algonquins, still less 

 with those of the Iroquois. Their confederacy was 

 of the loosest kind. There was no central authority. 

 Every town acted just as it pleased, making war or 

 peace with the other towns, or with whites, Choc- 

 taws or Cherokees. In each there was a nominal 

 head for peace and war, the high chief and the head 

 warrior; the former was supposed to be supreme, 

 and was elected for life from some one powerful 

 family as, for instance, the families having for 

 their totems the wind or the eagle. But these chiefs 

 had little control, and could not do much more 

 than influence or advise their subjects; they were 

 dependent on the will of the majority. Each town 

 was a little hotbed of party spirit; the inhabitants 

 divided on almost every question. If the head- 

 chief was for peace, but the war-chief nevertheless 

 went on the war-path, there was no way of re- 

 straining him. It was said that never, in the mem- 

 ory of the oldest inhabitant, had half the nation 

 "taken the war talk" at the same time. 26 As a 

 consequence, war parties of Creeks were generally 

 merely small bands of marauders, in search of 

 scalps and plunder. In proportion to its numbers, 

 the nation never, until 1813, undertook such formi- 

 dable military enterprises as were undertaken by the 



95 Do. Also vide Bartram. 



26 Hawkins, 29, 70. Adair, 428. 



