300 APPENDIX 



A serious breach of tribal custom among the Wyandot is 

 inmished by outlawry- declared after formal trial before the 

 tribal council. Should the offender continue in the commission 

 of the wrong act, it is lawful for any person to kill him on sight, 

 and sometimes it becomes the duty of all men to kill him.-° The 

 Kamilaroi drive out of the company of his friends a man who 

 persists in keeping as his wife a woman of a subclass with which 

 his subclass must not marry. AVhen this does not induce him to 

 leave the woman, his male kindred follow him and kill him, and 

 the female kindred kill her.^^ 



One who makes light of the authority of the chiefs or of the 

 sacred packs of the Omaha is considered a disturber of the peace, 

 and by order of the tribe is killed by being wounded with the 

 poisoned end of a staff.-- Among the Tlingit, when a murderer is 

 not high caste enough to make up for the dead man, a council of 

 the people of the victim gather before the house of a man of equal 

 caste and call him out to be killed.-^ A murderer or his nearest 

 kin is killed by the lowa.-^ The natives of Southeast Australia 

 ordinarily kill 3^oung men who transgress the marriage class 

 rules. The Karamundi and Barkinji kill men w^ho break the 

 totem marriage rules. The Yaitma-thang and Wolgal tribes 

 usually punish infringements of this sort by death. Among the 

 Tongarankas the whole tribe take a hand in the killing of an 

 offender against marriage laws or class rules.^'^ 



Adulter}' is a particularly heinous offense against marriage 

 customs, and among many primitive peoples is punished by 

 death. It is regarded as a grave transgression because the wife 

 is ordinarily considered to be the property of her husband.^" In 

 Melanesia adultery is regarded as an offense against society. 

 The man who commits it is led before the chief, judged by the 



20 First Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnolog;/, ])p. G7-0S. 



21 Howitt, op. cit., p. 208. 



22 Twenty-seventh Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnolog)/, p. 213. 



23 Twenty-sixth Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnologi/, p. 449. 

 ■2i Fifteenth Annual Report. Biirrau of American Ethnolog)!, p- 2.3fl. 



25 Howitt, op. cit., p. 332. 



2'! Letourneau, The Evolution of Marriage and the Family (London, 

 \m\), pp. 208-27. 



