in each
stockade having power in every respect, and being able not only to
elect, but to dismiss their delegates at any moment. Their own good
sense and a feeling of fair play could be depended upon to protect the
rights of the minority, especially as a minority of such men would
certainly not tolerate any thing even remotely resembling tyranny. They
had formed a representative government in which the legislative and
judicial functions were not separated, and were even to a large extent
combined with the executive. They had proceeded in an eminently
practical manner, having modelled their system on what was to them the
familiar governmental unit of the county with its county court and
county militia officers. They made the changes that their peculiar
position required, grafting the elective and representative systems on
the one they adopted, and of course enlarging the scope of the court's
action. Their compact was thus in some sort an unconscious reproduction
of the laws and customs of the old-time court-leet, profoundly modified
to suit the peculiar needs of backwoods life, the intensely democratic
temper of the pioneers and above all the military necessities of their
existence. They had certain theories of liberty and justice; but they
were too shrewd and hard-headed to try to build up a government on an
entirely new foundation, when they had ready to hand materials with
which they were familiar. They knew by experience the workings of the
county system; all they did was to alter the immediate channel from
which the court drew its powers, and to adapt the representation to the
needs of a community where constant warfare obliged the settlers to
gather in little groups, which served as natural units.

When the settlers first came to the country they found no Indians living
in it, no signs of cultivation or cleared land, and nothing to show that
for ages past it had been inhabited. It was a vast plain, covered with
woods and canebrakes, through which the wild herds had beaten out broad
trails. The only open places were the licks, sometimes as large as
corn-fields, where the hoofs of the game had trodden the ground bare of
vegetation, and channelled its surface with winding seams and gullies.
It is even doubtful if the spot of bare ground which Mansker called an
"old field" or sometimes a "Chickasaw old field" was not merely one of
these licks. Buffalo, deer, and bear abounded; elk, wolves, and panthers
were plentiful.