218 BELIEFS AND USAGES OF CHICKASAW [ETH, ANN. 44 
Cushman, who seems to depend on the same source of information, 
states that a man was killed for a man and a woman for a woman. 
His account is much longer and runs as follows: 
The law of murder .. . placed the slayer wholly and exclusively in the hands 
of the oldest brother of the slain, who never failed to execute the law whose 
claims were thus entrusted to his care and keeping, the standard verdict of 
which was “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’”—death. In case the 
deceased had no brother or brothers, then one of the next nearest and oldest 
male relatives became the self-appointed executioner of the violated law 
Nor did anyone, not even the nearest relations of the slayer, interfere 
in the matter in any way whatever—either to assist or oppose. If the slayer 
fled, which was very seldom if ever the case, his oldest brother, and if he had 
no brother, then the next nearest and oldest relative in the male line was 
slain in his place; after which he could return in safety and without fear 
of molestation, but to be ostracized and forever stigmatized as a coward 
wherever he went, a punishment more to be dreaded by all North American 
Indians than a hundred deaths. In all such cases a woman was never slain 
in the place of a man. On account of this rigid and inexorable custom of 
dealing with him who had slain his fellowman, murders were very few and 
far between, as the slayer well knew the inevitable consequence that would 
follow unless he fled to parts unknown, which would be attended with eternal 
disgrace to himself, family, and kindred, at the sacrifice also of his brother's 
life or next nearest male relative.” 
A suspected witch or wizard was usually killed with the greatest 
promptitude. 
Adair thus describes the Chickasaw punishment for adultery: 
The middle aged people of a place, which lies about halfway to Mobille and 
the Illinois [from Carolina], assure us that they remember when adultery was 
punished among them with death, by shooting the offender with barbed ar- 
rows, as there are no stones there. But that with the losses of their people at 
war with the French and their savage confederates, and the constitutional wan- 
tonness of their young men and women, they have through a political desire of 
continuing, or increasing their numbers, moderated the severity of that law, and 
reduced it to the present standard of punishment, which is in the following 
manner: If a married woman is detected in adultery by one person, the evi- 
dence is deemed good in judgment against her; the evidence of a well-grown 
boy or girl they even reckon sufficient, because of the heinousness of the crime 
and the difficulty of discovering it in their thick forests.... When the 
crime is proved against the woman, the enraged husband, accompanied by some 
of his relations, surprises and beats her most barbarously, and then cuts off her 
hair and nose, or one of her lips. There are many of that sort of disfigured 
females among the Chikkasah, and they are commonly the best featured, and 
the most tempting of any of their countrywomen, which exposed them to the 
snares of young men. But their fellow criminals, who probably first tempted 
them, are partially exempted from any kind of corporal punishment.” .. . 
They observe, however, a graduation of punishment, according to the crimi- 
nality of the adulteress. For the first breach of the marriage faith they crop 
73 Cushman, Hist. Choc., Chick., and Natchez Inds., p. 495. 
™ At this point Adair introduces an account of the custom among the Creeks and 
returns to discuss Chickasaw usages so abruptly that it is only by the context that it is 
evident that he has that tribe principally in mind. 
