Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 215 



to be sworn into his office of clerk, "but the court 

 swore in James Sevier, well knowing that said 

 Sevier had been elected," and being evidently un- 

 willing to waste their time hearing a contested 

 election case when their minds were already made 

 up as to the equity of the matter. They exercised 

 the right of making suspicious individuals leave the 

 county. 28 They also at times became censors of 

 morals, and interfered with straightforward effec- 

 tiveness to right wrongs for which a more refined 

 and elaborate system of jurisprudence would have 

 provided only cumbersome and inadequate remedies. 

 Thus one of their entries is to the effect that a cer- 

 tain man is ordered "to return to his family and 

 demean himself as a good citizen, he having ad- 

 mitted in open court that he had left his wife and 

 took up with another woman." From the char- 

 acter of the judges who made the decision, it is 

 safe to presume that the delinquent either obeyed 

 it or else promptly fled to the Indians for safety. 29 

 This fleeing to the Indians, by the way, was a feat 

 often performed by the worst criminals for the 

 renegade, the man who had "painted his face" and 

 deserted those of his own color, was a being as well 

 known as he was abhorred and despised on the bor- 



28 A right the exercise of which is of course susceptible to 

 great abuse, but, nevertheless, is often absolutely necessary 

 to the well-being of a frontier community. In almost every 

 case where I have personally known it exercised, the char- 

 acter of the individual ordered off justified the act. 



29 Allison's Address. 



