siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

SWANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL LIFE 111
to be present, young and old ; thus the poor wretch after defending herself and
struggling hard with the first three or four, at last suffers motionless the
brutality of perhaps an hundred or a hundred and fifty of these barbarians
the same treatment is undergone by a girl or woman who belonging to an-
other town or quarter of the nation comes to a place where she is a stranger
and can not give a very good account of herself and her business, or the
reason of her coming there ; this they call running through the meadow, and
if a white man happens to be in the town, they send him an offer of invitation
to take the first heat ; they plead in excuse for so barbarous a custom, that the
only way to disgust lewd women is to give them at once what they so con-
stantly and eagerly pursue.'"
This method of punishing unfaithful wives is also described in the
Anonymous Relation de La Louisiane (see pp. 248-249 and Mem.
Amer. Anthrop. Assn., v, pp. 60-61), by Bossu (p. 264 and Nouv.
Voy., vol. 2, p. 106, Paris, 1768), and by Milfort (pp. 269-270, and
Miifort's Memoire, pp. 304-308).
Milfort adds in a footnote that this is the only case in which
children, if the woman happened to have any, are assigned to the
father's family in preference to that of the mother. If this means
an absolute transfer from one moiety to the other, it is the only
suggestion of such a thing in all of our material and must be viewed
with suspicion. The custom naturally fell into disuse very soon
after the coming of the whites, and is mentioned by no writer later
than those quoted. Flagellation and a summary divorce marked
the limits of the later usage.
Incest, in the Indian sense of the word, including marriage within
certain degrees of consanguinity and within the same moiety or similar
social division, was anciently a major crime, but we have no
record of the punishments inflicted on account of it. One of my
informants had heard that a brother and sister among the Bok Chito
Indians once married. They were separated but the woman was
pregnant and so they were driven away. Some of her people followed
her, however, and together they became the nucleus of the
Natchez tribe. This last statement shows, of course, that the event
was purely imaginary.
Bossu says that "the majority" of the Choctaw "are addicted
to sodomy. These corrupt men (the male concubines) wear their
hair long and a short skirt like the women, by whom they are in
return held in supreme contempt." ^^ The statement is echoed by
Romans, but he maintains that this nation was less addicted to the
crime than either the Chickasaw or Creeks.^*
Turning to offenses against property we find considerable differ-
ence of opinion. Romans, always favorable to the Choctaw, says:
^ Romans, Nat. Hist, of E. and W. Fla., pp. 86-87.
==3 Appendix, pp. 261-262; Bossu, Nouv. Voy., vol. 2. p. 100.
2< Romans, Nat. Hist. E. and W. Fla., pp. 82-83.