The adulterer’s ears are slashed off close to his head, for the first act of adultery, because he is the chief in fault. If the criminals repeat the crime with any other married persons, their noses and upper lips are cut off. But the third crime of the like nature, is attended with more danger; for their law says, that for public heinous crimes, satisfaction should be made visible to the people, and adequate to the injuries of the virtuous,—to set their aggrieved hearts at ease, and prevent others from following such a dangerous crooked copy. As they will not comply with their mitigated law of adultery, nor be terrified, nor shamed from their ill course of life; that the one may not frighten and abuse their wives, nor the other seduce their husbands and be a lasting plague and shame to the whole society, they are ordered by their ruling magi and war-chieftains, to be shot to death, which is accordingly executed: but this seldom happens. When I asked the Chikkasah the reason of the inequality of their marriage-law, in punishing the weaker passive party, and exempting the stronger, contrary to reason and justice; they told me, it had been so a considerable time—because their land being a continual seat of war, and the lurking enemy for ever pelting them without, and the women decoying them within, if they put such old cross laws of marriage in force, all their beloved brisk warriors would soon be spoiled, and their habitations turned to a wild waste. It is remarkable, that the ancient Egyptians cut off the ears and nose of the adulteress; and the prophet alludes to this sort of punishment, Ezek. xxiii. 25. “They shall deal furiously with thee: they shall take away thy nose and thine ears.” And they gave them also a thousand stripes, with canes on the buttocks[XXXII]. The Cheerake are an exception to all civilized or savage nations, in having no laws against adultery; they {145} have been a considerable while under petticoat-government, and allow their women full liberty to plant their brows with horns as oft as they please, without fear of punishment. On this account their marriages are ill observed, and of a short continuance; like the Amazons, they divorce their fighting bed-fellows at their pleasure, and fail not to execute their authority, when their fancy directs them to a more agreeable choice. However, once in my time a number of warriors, belonging to the family of the husband of the adulteress, revenged the injury committed by her, in her own way; for they said, as she loved a great many men, instead of a husband, justice told them to gratify her longing desire—wherefore, by the information of their spies, they followed her into the woods a little way from the town, (as decency required) and then stretched her on the ground, with her hands tied to a stake, and her feet also extended, where upwards of fifty of them lay with her, having a blanket for a covering. The Choktah observe the same savage custom with adulteresses.