siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

SWANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL LIFE 95
Wright in a communication to the Missionary Herald. This has
ah-eady been quoted but deserves repetition at this place.
In ancient times if a person had been guilty of a crime which required the
interference of public authority, the people were assembled in council, and
seated according to their respective clans. The subdivision to which the criminal
belonged appeared as his counsel and advocates, and the opposite subdivision
as his accusers. The case was then taken up. If the principal men of these
divisions succeeded in adjusting the case, satisfactorily to all concerned, the
business was terminated there ; but if not, the principal men of the next larger
division took it up, and if they also failed, the case then came before the
itimolclushas and the shakcJiuJclas, whose decision was final. But this practice,
like some other of their ancient customs, has gone into disuse.'^
In 1751 a Choctaw chief in a speech asking pardon for some
French deserters who had been condemned to death exclaims to the
officer whom he is addressing: "I beg you to write to Mr. de Vau-
dreuil [the governor], my father, that when the two first (or original)
races, Inoulactas and Imougoulachas, venture to ask for the life of a
man, they are never refused, even though the man were already bound
to the frame [at which they were to be burned]." ^^
My list of towns contains 115 entries, but the places designated
were probably not all occupied at the same time and there is reason
to suspect that, on moving to a new site, a Choctaw community sometimes
changed its name. Moreover, certain of these names no doubt
belonged to villages never permanently detached from some larger
town. Making all due allowances, however, there were probably
at one time from 40 to 50 communities constituting small Sta,tes,
each with its chief, war chief, two lieutenants of the war chief, or
Taskaminkochi, and an assistant to or speaker for the town chief,
the Tishu minko. These offices were probably held by the local
groups which happened to contain such and such towns, but the
relation between the town and the local group remains obscure and
probably always will.
Cushman says that " in the domestic government the oldest brother
or uncle was the head; the parents being required merely to assist
in the exercise of this duty by their advice and example." ^^
In other words the domestic government was identical with that
existing among the Creeks.
In the nineteenth century the head chieftainship appears to have
been abolished, the head chief's power being shared by the three
regional chiefs. Thus Wright says :
^ The Missionary Herald, June, 1828, vol. xxiy. No. 6, p. 215.
*' Je te prie d'acrire k M. de V'audreuil, mon pere que quand les deux premieres Races
Inoulactas, et Imougoulachas font tant que de demander la vie d'un homme quelle ne leur
est jamais rofus^e, quand m6me Thorame seroit desja amarS au cadre.—Miss. State
Archives. French Dominion. Correspondence g6n6rale.
w Cushman, Hist. Inds., p. 362.