occasion of the dislike, in a small billet, that her virtue might not be suspected: and when they gave any of them the ticket, they ate together in a very civil manner, and thus dissolved the contract. I have premised this, to trace the resemblance to the marriage divorces and punishments of the savage Americans. The middle aged people of a place, which lies about half-way to Mobille, and the Illinois, assure us, that they remember when adultery was punished among them with death, by shooting the offender with barbed arrows, as there are no stones there.[55] But what with the losses of their people at war with the French and their savage confederates, and the constitutional wantonness 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 evidence 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. This is a corruption of the Mosaic law, which required two evidences, and exempted both women {142} and slaves from public faith; because of the reputed fickleness of the one, and the base, groveling temper of the other. 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 country-women, 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. With the Muskohge Indians, it was formerly reckoned adultery, if a man took a pitcher of water off a married woman’s head, and drank of it.[56] But their law said, if he was a few steps apart, and she at his request set it down, and retired a little way off, he might then drink without exposing her to any danger. If we seriously reflect on the rest of their native customs, this old law, so singular to themselves from the rest of the world, gives us room to think they drew it from the Jewish bitter waters that were given to real, or suspected adulteresses, either to prove their guilt, or attest their innocence.