Their fierce courage and their fighting qualities were well shown on one famous occasion. The tribe had gone off south on the buffalo hunt, and there were left in the village only some of the sick, the old men, and a few boys, women and children. Among the sick who remained was Ska-di´ks (Crooked Hand), a Skidi brave, recognized as a leader in battle, and one of the bravest warriors in the tribe. The Sioux had learned of the departure of the Pawnees with all the fighting men, and had planned to come down, kill all the people left at home, and destroy the village.
One morning, to the dismay of those who had been left behind, six hundred of the very best of the Sioux warriors rode slowly into view over the hills, and down on to the plain above the village. They made no charge, for it was unnecessary to hurry about killing the few women, the old men and the sick who were to be their unresisting victims. They wished to prolong the agony of these wretched Pawnees, whose scalps were already theirs, and whose village would soon be only a few heaps of smoking ruins. As they rode slowly down the hill there was no clink of steel nor rattle of harness, only the soft rustling of the prairie grass under the unshod hoofs of their spirited war ponies, but this sound was drowned by the ominous music of their triumphant war song, which, now loud, now low, was faintly borne on the breeze to the fated village. Very deliberately they came on, singing as they marched, proudly, like conquerors, while the sun glittered on polished lance-head and gleaming hair plate, and the wind blew out the fringes of their white war shirts, or gaily tossed the streaming plumes of their superb war bonnets.
The news of their appearance was brought to Crooked Hand, where he lay sick in his lodge. At once he threw aside the robe in which he was wrapped, and as he rose to his feet, he cast away from him by the same motion his sickness. His orders were quickly issued, and as promptly obeyed. The village must fight. Tottering old men, whose sinews were now too feeble to bend the bow, seized their long disused arms and clambered on their horses. Boys too young to hunt, whose bodies had never been toughened by the long journeys of the warpath, whose hearts had not been made strong by the first fast, grasped the weapons that they had as yet used only on rabbits and ground squirrels, flung themselves on their ponies, and rode with the old men. Even squaws, taking what weapons they could—axes, hoes, mauls, pestles—mounted horses, and marshaled themselves for battle.
The force for the defense numbered two hundred; superannuated old men, boys and women. Among them all were not, perhaps, ten active warriors, and these had just risen from sick beds to take their place in the line of battle. But then this little force had a leader. Crooked Hand, mounted on a superb war pony, was as cool and unconcerned as if he were about to ride out to a band of buffalo, instead of leading a force of old men and children against six hundred of the best warriors that the Sioux could muster.
At that time the Pawnee village was encompassed by a high sod wall, and some of Crooked Hand’s people wished to await the charge of the Sioux behind this shelter, but their leader would not permit this. He said to them, “We can conquer the Sioux anywhere.” So Ska-di´ks led his forces out to meet the attack in fair open combat on the plain, on the same ground where so many times the Pawnees had routed their enemies. As the Pawnees passed out of the village on to the plain, the Sioux saw for the first time the force they had to meet. They laughed in derision, calling out bitter jibes, and telling what they would do when they had made the charge; and, as Crooked Hand heard their laughter, he smiled, too, but not mirthfully. He knew what perhaps the Sioux had forgotten, that his people were single-minded, and that they would fight until they died. Their strokes would be for their homes and lives.
The battle began. It seemed like an unequal fight. Surely one charge would be enough to overthrow this motley Pawnee throng, who had ventured out to try to oppose the triumphal march of the Sioux. But it was not ended so quickly. The fight began about the middle of the morning, and, to the amazement of the Sioux, these old men with shrunken shanks and piping voices, these children with their small white teeth and soft round limbs, these women clad in skirts, and armed with hoes, held the invaders where they were; they could make no advance. A little latter it became evident that the Pawnees were driving the Sioux back. Presently this backward movement became a retreat, the retreat a rout, the rout a wild panic. Then, indeed, the Pawnees made a great killing of their enemies. Many an old man, whose feeble legs had long refused to bear him on the warpath, again quavered his war cry, again counted coup upon his enemy. Many a boy, who had never shed the blood of any creature larger than a prairie chicken, that day struck his enemy, and with shrill childish voice shouted his whoop of triumph, as he tore away the reeking scalp. More than one woman, used only to pounding corn and dressing robes, that day counted her coup, and when the tribe returned, told what she had done, and changed her name like a warrior.
To the Pawnees that day was like the day of Thermopylæ to the Greeks.
Crooked Hand, preëminent among the heroes of that fight, with his own hand killed six of the Sioux, and had three horses shot under him. His wounds were many, but he laughed at them. He was content; he had saved the village.
The same indomitable spirit here shown has characterized the Pawnees always. For generations they fought as their fathers had fought, in their own way, with their native enemies, but when they were enlisted in the Government service, and trained in the white man’s ways of war, they adapted themselves readily to their new conditions.
A body of men braver than the Pawnee Scouts, under Major Frank North and his brother Luther, never rode on horses. They were far better than any white soldiers that ever fought on the plains; for, besides their natural courage, they had at their finger ends all the wonderful wisdom of the savage. They could tell, as it seemed by instinct, where a trail would lead, where the enemy that they were pursuing would camp, what were his plans. They had the endurance of their prototype, the wolf. No labor was too severe, no journey too long, if its end was a battle with their foes. Their courage, their discipline, their knowledge of the plains, their acquaintance with the habits of their enemies, their endurance, made them superb soldiers; but, perhaps, more than all this, and yet a part of all this, was the absorbing devotion and trust which they felt for Pa´-ni Le-shar, their white leader. Through all the years that they followed him, he never led them but to victory; through all these years he never lost a man in battle, and the belief of the Pawnees in his ability and his success was like the devotion felt by the Grande Armée for Napoleon.