Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/154

 j 42 On the defcent of the American Indians from the Jews.

neither fat nor flood, and their whip had a large knot to it, which com manded the thongs, fo as to expand, or contrail them j the punifhment was always to be fuited to the nature of the crime, and the conftitution of the criminal. While the offenders were under the lafh, three judges flood by to fee that they received their full and juft due. The firll repeated the words of Deut. xxviii. 58. the feeond counted the ftripes, and the third faid, " Hack, or lay on." The offender received three lafhes on the breaft, three on the belly, three on each moulder, &c. But adultery was attended with capital punifhment, as Deut. xxii. 22. The parties when legally detected, were tried by the leffer judicatory, which was to confift, at kaft of twenty-three : the Sanhedrim gave the bitter waters to thofe women who were fufpected of adultery. The former were ftoned to death -, and the latter burft open, according to their imprecation, if they were guilty : the omnipotent divine wifdom imprefTed thofe waters with that wonderful quality, contrary to the common courfe of nature. The men married, and were divorced as often as their caprice directed them, for if they imagined their wives did not value them, according to their own partial opinion of themfelves, they notified the occafion of the diflike, in a fmall billet, that her virtue might not be fufpected : and when they gave any of them the ticket, they ate together in a very civil manner, and thus difTolved the contract.

I have premifed this, to trace the refemblance to the marriage divorces and punifhments of the favage Americans. The middle aged people of a place, which lies about half-way to Mobille, and the Illinois, affure us, that they remember when adultery was punifhed among them with death, by mooting the offender with barbed arrows, as there are no ftones there. But what with the lofles of their people at war with the French and their favage confede rates, and the constitutional wantonnefs of their young men and women, they have through a political dere of continuing, or increafing their numbers, moderated the feverity of that law, and reduced it to the prefent ftandard of punifhment -, which is in the following manner. If a married woman is detected in adultery by one perfon, the evidence is deemed good in judg ment againft her, the evidence of a well grown boy or girl, they even reckon fufficient, becaufe of the heinoufnefs of the crime, and the difficulty of difcovering it in their thick forefts. This is a corruption of the Mofaic law, which required two evidences, and exempted both women

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