A black feather denotes that an Ojibwa woman was killed. Enemies are considered as Ojibwas, that being the tribe with which the Mdewakantanwan Dakotas have been most in collision.
When a warrior has been wounded a red spot is painted upon the broad side of a feather. If the wearer has been shot in the body, arms, or legs, a red spot is painted upon his clothing or blanket, immediately over the locality of the wound. These red spots are sometimes worked in porcupine quills, or in cotton fiber as now obtained from the traders.
Belden (a) says:
Among the Sioux an eagle’s feather with a red spot painted on it, worn by a warrior in the village, denotes that on the last war-path he killed an enemy, and for every additional enemy he has slain he carries another feather painted with an additional red spot about the size of a silver quarter.
A red hand painted on a warrior’s blanket denotes that he has been wounded by the enemy, and a black one that he has been unfortunate in some way.
Boller (a) in Among the Indians, p. 284, describes a Sioux as wearing a number of small wood shavings stained with vermilion in his hair, each the symbol of a wound received.
Lynd (c) gives a device differing from all the foregoing, with an explanation:
To the human body the Dakotas give four spirits. The first is supposed to be a spirit of the body, and dies with the body. The second is a spirit which always remains with or near the body. Another is the soul which accounts for the deeds of the body, and is supposed by some to go to the south, by others to the west, after the death of the body. The fourth always lingers with the small bundle of the hair of the deceased kept by the relatives until they have a chance to throw it into the enemy’s country, when it becomes a roving, restless spirit, bringing death and disease to the enemy whose country it is in.
From this belief arose the practice of wearing four scalp-feathers for each enemy slain in battle, one for each soul.
It should be noted that all the foregoing signs of individual achievements are given by the several authorities as used by the same body of Indians, the Dakota or Sioux. This, however, is a large body, divided into tribes, and it is possible that a different scheme was used in the several tribes. But the accounts are so conflicting that error in either observation or description or both is to be suspected.