“On that night we started, and went as far as we could; and the next day, toward evening, when we stopped, we dug out a fire-place, like the one in a lodge, and we two leaders sat by it, facing the east, while before us were the sacred things. The leader has to be a good orator, he has to speak to his young men, and advise them well, encouraging them to be strong-hearted. He would speak to them and say, ‘We have but a short time to live, so while we are on this trip let us determine to be single-minded. Let us all look to Ti-ra´-wa, who is the ruler over all things, and ask him to take pity on us, and bless our warpath. We must respect the animals that the ruler has made and not kill any of them; no birds, nor wolves, nor any creeping things.’ Not a night passed but that, after we were seated in a circle, I would talk to the party, and pray, and hope that Ti-ra´-wa would bless us and take pity on us, and that we might be the party that would have good success. On my war parties I had to watch at all times, even when I was resting, to see that my young men should, before they slept, pray to Ti-ra´-wa that they might dream something good, and that it might come to pass.
“The old priest who had performed the ceremonies, and had let me take the sacred things, had told me to kill a particular kind of animal, a deer, and sacrifice it. I sent some spies ahead to look over the country, and a messenger came back from them, saying that they had seen some animals. He did not describe them, and I ordered the messenger to have the hunter kill them. I heard the report of a gun. The hunter with two shots killed three. They were antelope. When the hunter came to me he told me what he had done, and described the animals which he had killed. They were not the animals I had been directed to kill for the sacrifice. I hesitated, for I did not know what to do. I did not wish to eat these animals before the sacrifice had been made. To do this is bad. It troubled me. I was troubled, because if we ate them it would look as if we cared nothing for Ti-ra´-wa. Finally we ate what had been killed, and made no sacrifice. Afterward we killed two more and ate them, and still made no sacrifice.
“One night I dreamed that the hunter had shot a buffalo. It fell, but as we went up to it, it got up and ran off. We went on for eight days, and had made no sacrifice to Ti-ra´-wa. One day my scouts saw a man sitting on a hill. Some of them wanted to shoot at him, but the others said ‘no.’ They came back to tell me about it, and when they had returned to the place where they had seen him, the man was gone. The man had seen my spies. Not far off was a village, and the warriors in it came to look for us, but we ran away. They hunted for us, but we had got out of their sight. After this we came back home.”
Curly Chief, second chief of the Kit-ke-hahk´-i band, is the last, and he tells how he sacrificed a scalp:
“It was in the fall, before the winter buffalo hunt was made, that I thought I would go on the warpath. Every little while I would call a few men to sit down with me, and would tell them that I had it in mind to go on the warpath.
“The people went out on the winter hunt and killed buffalo, and while they were on their way back to the village, I started on the warpath with a number of young men. From the camp we went south to the Arkansas River. When we reached that river, it began to snow, and the snow fell six feet deep. We stopped in one place eleven days, till the snow got less deep. From there we went on to the sandhills by the North Canadian. One day as we were going along, we saw far off three Indians on foot. They were Kiowas. Probably they had been on the warpath and had lost their horses. We attacked and killed them. They did not fight. We killed them like women. Then, indeed, we divided the scalps, and made many of them. From there we started home, and found the tribe camped on the Solomon River. When we reached home there was great joy, and we danced the scalp dance.
CURLY CHIEF—KIT-KE-HAHK´-I.
“I sacrificed a scalp to Ti-ra´-wa. I felt that he had given me the victory over my enemies, and for this reason I wanted to give him something, I wanted to make an acknowledgment of his goodness to me. He had taken pity on me and helped me. It was a sacrifice greater than the sacrifice of the buffalo meat. Not many men have made it, but once in a while you see some one who has been noticed by the Ruler. It is our aim, after we have been helped, to give thanks.”
