How was someone found guilty of a crime? Like, what systems existed that had the same fundamental function as our courthouses, attorneys, juries, etc. do today in order to prove guilt?
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Hey, guys. This is a question I can’t find much relevant information on after some quick searching around, so I thought to turn here. I hope it’s not a super naïve question or anything like that.
In order to narrow it down, we can go specifically to the regions the English would first begin to colonize on the continent (around eastern New England and the Chesapeake Bay area). Honestly, though, I’m far less curious about specific regions and more so looking to learn about whatever the most detailed systems we know of.
Not asking about what common punishments were or what was considered a crime (I have found info on that), just what we know about any procedures that were used for determining guilt and how punishment was went about being decided.
Thanks so much for your time!
You may want to check out an answer from a few years ago on this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1eo6r0/how_were_murder_and_rape_perceived_by_native/ca2digq
However I did kinda want to add to this, mainly on the topic of "ritualized" violence and revenge. I put ritualized in quotes simply because it was full fledged violence, however the system of raiding and counter-raiding conducted by pre-columbian cultures had a specific purpose in the conflict resolution process. A family/community that had been wronged by another may end up raiding the neighboring community as a form of retaliation, often times a young man's first raid may have been an event organized by his maternal uncle(s) as an act of revenge that the men of the community would take part in. The other community may then counter raid you in response, especially men from the lineages most impacted by the violence, and so on. Take this account as anecdotal as I cannot recall where I read it, but at one point a community of European colonists were raided by a neighboring tribe, and actually ended up fleeing the area after the raid. However the native community did not know they had fled, and spent the days following the raid on edge awaiting a counter raid.
This wasn't a codified system, but I think it really highlights the justice system in place for much of the pre-columbian world. Villages acting in a hostile manner knew the consequences of their actions, and in a way there was a sort of acceptance of that fact that raiding another community gave them full authority to return the favor in the future. As reedstilt mentions in his earlier comment that I linked, a lot of the more personal crimes would be handled on a similar level. There were no courts or lawyers, but at the same time there was this idea of retribution and a sort of "just" revenge. The matter would be settled once all parties felt it had come to conclusion, similar to the culture of raiding.