SWANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 647 



for, as they meet there to treat, they discharge their duty with all the integrity 

 imaginable, never looking towards their own interest, before the public good. 

 After every man has given his opinion, that which has most voices, or, in 

 summing up, is found the most reasonable, that they make use of without any 

 jars and wrangling, and put it in execution, the first opportunity that offers. 

 The succession falls not to the king's son, but to his sister's son, which is a sure 

 way to prevent imposters in the succession. Sometimes they poison the heir 

 to make way for another, which is not seldom done, when they do not ap- 

 prove of the youth that is to succeed them. The king himself is commonly 

 Chief Dr. in that cure. (Lawson, 1860, pp. 317-318.) " 



The power he attributes to the Santee chief was greater : 



The Santee King ... is the most absolute Indian ruler in these parts, 

 although he is head but of a small people, in respect to some other nations of 

 Indians, that I have seen. He can put any of his people to death that hath 

 committed any fault which he judges worthy of so great a punishment. This 

 authority is rarely found among these savages, for they act not (commonly) 

 by a determinative voice in their laws towards any one that hath committed 

 murder, or such other great crime. (Lawson, 1860, pp. 40-41.) 



Lederer, writing a little earlier, tells us that the Wateree Indians 

 "differ in government from all the other Indians of these parts : for 

 they are slaves, rather than subjects to their king." The chief ruling 

 in his time hired three youths and sent them forth "to kill as many 

 young women of their enemies as they could light on, to serve his 

 son, then newly dead, in the other world" (Alvord, 1912, pp. 157- 

 158). 



The prerogatives of the Wateree chief seem to have been of long 

 standing since Juan Pardo, who visited them in 1566, reports that 

 they were governed by two chieftainesses who were waited upon by 

 pages and female servants (Ruidiaz, 1894, vol. 2, pp. 482-484). 



In spite of a natural tendency to exaggerate the power and state 

 of Indian chiefs in agreement with ideas of the kingship prevailing 

 in contemporary Europe, there must be some basis for the lofty 

 position assigned them in the information Peter Martyr gives, derived 

 from Francisco of Chicora. He not only describes the chiefs and 

 chief women of Duhare (some region in South Carolina), as per- 

 sons of gigantic size, which he affirms to have been produced arti- 

 ficially — treason in that biologically regulated land consisting in 

 any attempt to imitate the process — but says that the reigning chief, 

 Datha, lived in a palace built of stone while all the other houses were 

 of wood covered with thatch or grass (Anghierra, 1912, pp. 259-265; 

 Swanton, 1922, p. 43). 



The tribe was possessed of twin idols which, on a certain occasion, 

 the chief brought forth and exhibited to the people. Then "he and 

 they are saluted with respect and fear by the people, who fall upon 

 their knees or throw themselves on the ground with loud shouts" 



*^ For descent, consult also Lawson, 1860, p. 89. 



