One record shows that a horse-thief was arrested on Monday, tried on Wednesday, and hung on Friday of the same week.

Another deals with a claimant who, by his attorney, moved to be sworn into his office of clerk, "but the court swore in James Sevier, well knowing that said Sevier had been elected," and being evidently unwilling to waste their time hearing a contested election case when their minds were already made up as to the equity of the matter.

They exercised the right of making suspicious individuals leave the county.[28] They also at times became censors of morals, and interfered with straightforward effectiveness to right wrongs for which a more refined and elaborate system of jurisprudence would have provided only cumbersome and inadequate remedies.

Thus one of their entries is to the effect that a certain man is ordered "to return to his family and demean himself as a good citizen, he having admitted in open court that he had left his wife and took up with another woman." From the character of the judges who made the decision, it is safe to presume that the delinquent either obeyed it or else promptly fled to the Indians for safety.[29] This fleeing to the Indians, by the way, was a feat often performed by the worst criminals--for the renegade, the man who had "painted his face" and deserted those of his own color, was a being as well known as he was abhorred and despised on the border, where such a deed was held to be the one unpardonable crime.
So much for the way in which the whites kept order among themselves.

The second part of their task, the adjustment of their relations with their red neighbors, was scarcely less important.