THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 539 



them to battle, or to listen to him when he speaks and advises in council. In fact, he 

 is no more than a leader, whom every young warrior may follow or turn about and go 

 back from as he pleases, if he is willing to meet the disgrace that awaits him who de- 

 serts his chief in the hour of danger. 



It may be a difficult question to decide whether their government savors most of a 

 democracy or an aristocracy ; it is in some respects purely democratic, and in others 

 aristocratic. The influence of names and families is strictly kept up, and their qual- 

 ities and relative distinctions preserved in heraldric family arms, yet entirely severed 

 and free from influences of wealth, which is seldom amassed by any persons in Indian 

 communities, and most sure to slip from the hands of chiefs or others high in office, 

 who are looked upon to be liberal and' charitable, and oftentimes, for the sake of pop- 

 ularity, render themselves the poorest and most meanly dressed and equipped of any 

 in the tribe. 



LAWS. 



These people have no written laws, nor others, save the penalties affixed to certain 

 crimes by long-standing custom, or by the decisions of the chiefs in council, who form 

 a sort of court, and congress too, for the investigation of crimes and transaction of the 

 public business. For the sessions of these dignitaries each tribe has, in the middle of 

 their village, a government or council house, where the chiefs often try and convict, 

 for capital offenses, leaving the punishment to be inflicted by the nearest of kin, to 

 whom all eyes of the nation are turned, and who has no means of evading it with- 

 out suffering disgrace in his tribe. For this purpose the custom, which is the com- 

 mon law of the land, allows him to use any means whatever that he may deem neces- 

 sary to bring the thing effectually about ; and he is allowed to waylay and shoot down 

 the criminal, so that punishment is certain and cruel and as effective from the hands 

 of a feeble as from those of a stout man, and entirely beyond the hope that often 

 arises from the " glorious uncertainty of the law." 



As I have in a former place said, cruelty is one of the leading traits of the Indian's 

 character ; and a little familiarity with their modes of life and government will soon 

 convince the reader that certainty and cruelty in punishments are requisite (where in- 

 dividuals undertake to inflict the penalties of the laws), in order to secure the lives 

 and property of individuals in society. 



TREATMENT OF PRISONERS. 



In the treatment of their prisoners also, in many tribes, they are in the habit of in- 

 flicting the most appalling tortures, for which the enlightened world are apt to con- 

 demn them as cruel and unfeeling in the extreme, without stopping to learn that in 

 every one of these instances these cruelties are practiced by way of retaliation by in- 

 dividuals or families of the tribe whose relatives have been previously dealt with in 

 a similar way by their enemies, and whose manes they deem it their duty to appease 

 by this horrid and cruel mode of retaliation. 



And, in justice to the savage, the reader should yet know that amongst these tribes 

 that torture their prisoners these cruelties are practiced but upon the few whose live 

 are required to atone for those who have been similarly dealt with by their enemies, 

 and that the remainder are adopted into the tribe by marrying the widows whose 

 husbands have fallen in battle, in which capacity they are received and respected 

 like others of the tribe, and enjoy equal rights and immunities. And, before we con- 

 demn them too far, we should yet pause and inquire whether in the enlightened 

 world we are not guilty of equal cruelties ; whether in the ravages and carnage of war 

 and treatment of prisoners we practice any virtue superior to thisj and whether the 

 annals of history which are familiar to all do not furnish abundant proof of equal 

 cruelty to prisoners of war, as well as in many instances to the members of our own 

 respective communities. It is a remarkable fact, and one well recorded in history, as 

 it deserves to be, to the honor of the savage, that no instance has been known of vio- 

 lence to their captive females ; a virtue yet to be learned in civilized warfare. 



