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170 peoples. The Iroquois also had formal trials, but the procedure was different; witches, for example, were tried before the council, a regularly constituted body, but murderers were subject to immediate revenge by the injured family, unless a peace token was offered. Yet, the council would intercede and try to mediate. This failing, the aggrieved were left free to exercise their right, which in turn might call for retaliation.

As to the tribes of the Gulf States who had progressed so far as to form strong confederacies, and where we have reason to expect some judicial system, no very exact statement can be made. We infer from the available sources that murders and lesser crimes were left to adjustment by the interested parties, blood vengeance being the rule. It is true that the village government seems to have had a few police officers, but these were to preserve order at ceremonies and to regulate labor in the communal fields, not to punish offenses against the individual. However, as to trials and formal methods of adjusting crimes, we are left with the impression that in this particular the tribes of the South were far behind their northern neighbors. We should not forget, however, that this may be an unjust estimate arising from inadequate data. One judicial principle strongly developed in the South is that the murderer shall be killed in precisely the same way as his victim, and this, again, holds for the Iroquois, but not for the surrounding Algonkin tribes.

There remains but one more area in North America, viz., southwestern United States. Among the less sedentary peoples, as the Apache and Navajo, the idea of compensation for murder and minor injuries prevailed. Adjustments were usually made in public, but the decision seems to have rested with the injured party. They could, if they chose, exercise the right of vengeance, but the other side was then free to retaliate. For the Pueblo peoples proper we lack adequate data, but the inference is that the paying of an indemnity was universal. In general, the governing machinery of these villages seems to have been directed toward religious ends rather than otherwise and so to a large extent rests with the