A Legal Episode in the Cherokee Nation. ney from Georgia to the land which they now occupy. The first of the compiled laws was one dated 1808, concerning horse-steal ing, — the convicted thief to be punished with one hundred lashes on the bare back. "The Cherokee tradition concerning the reception of their first law is not unlike that of your own people," said the lawyer. "Some time after the red man entered the wilderness, they came to a very high moun tain, and their God came down upon the mountain, and their leader went up and conversed with God, — or, rather, as their fathers said, with the son of God. They supposed, therefore, that God had a son, as it was said to be the son of God that came down on the mountain; and the top of the mountain was bright like the sun. There God gave the leader a law, written on a smooth stone. The reason of this being written on stone was as follows : — "God gave our first parents a law to be handed down verbally to posterity; but when the language was destroyed, and men began to quarrel and kill each other, they forgot this law; and therefore God wrote his law on stone, that it might not be lost. Their leader also received other instructions from God, which he wrote in a book made of skins." And so it happened that a long time before the Cherokees reached the country which they now occupy, they had a full code of laws. They had striven to imitate the whites in the management of their affairs, and their Councils were well conducted. In 1810 the Council abolished clans, and unanimously passed an act of oblivion for all lives for which they had been indebted one to an other. In 1820 the nation was reorganized, and. by a resolve of its National Council, divided into eight districts, each of which had the privilege of sending four members to their legislature. Some of their principal laws and regulations were : A prohibition of spirituous liquor to be brought into the na tion by white men. If a white man took a
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Cherokee wife, he must marry her according to their laws; but her property was not affected by such union. No man was al lowed but one wife. A judge, sheriff, and two deputies were allowed each district. Embezzlement, intercepting and opening sealed letters, were punished by a fine of a hundred dollars, and one hundred lashes on the bare back. They had a statute of limi tations, which, however, did not affect notes. A will was valid if found, on the decease of its maker, to have been written by him, and witnessed by two creditable persons. A man leaving no will, all his children shared equal, and his wife as one of them; if he left no children, then the widow had a fourth part of all the property, the other three fourths going to his nearest relatives. Even before the division of the nation into districts, and the appointment of a judge, marshal, sher iffs, and deputies, there was an organized company of light horse, which executed the orders of the chief, searched out offenders, and brought them to justice. It was a fun damental law of the Cherokees that no land should be sold to the white people without the authority of a majority of the nation. Transgressors of this law were punished with death. The Cherokee lawyer now replaced the old law-book — which, by the way, was printed wholly in English — carefully in his haver sack, and took out two more volumes. They were handsomely printed, bound in leather, and one was printed in English, the other in the Cherokee language, and in the alpha bet that Se-quo-yah, one of the learned members of their tribe, had given them over half a century ago. "These are our latest compilations," said the Indian lawyer, with a proud manner, opening the covers of the book and turning over the pages. "In spite of what the whites say about us, you can see that we are far from being a lawless people, and possibly we can give the white men a point or two on the enforce ment of law ourselves." By Cherokee law,
