“By the afternoon all were ready, and the grand pipe of peace, they intended to hand to the great father, was properly adorned with red feathers, blue drawings, strings of wampum, etc.
“It occurred to me that although it was after all but a ceremony, the Indians regarded the matter very solemnly and earnestly. According to traditional custom the pipe of peace passed from tent to tent and from mouth to mouth among the warriors. When each had smoked, the procession started and marched with drums beating, fluttering feather-flags and flying-otter, fox, and skunk tails through the village, to the open space before the old fort of the North West Company. Here they put up a wooden post, and close to it their war flag, after which the dances, speeches, and songs began.
“A circle of brown skinned dancers was formed, with the musicians and singers in the centre. The musicians, a few young fellows, cowered down on the ground, beat a drum, and shook a calabash, and some other instruments, which were very primitive. One had only a board, which he hammered with a big knife, while holding his hollow hand beneath it as a species of sounding board. The principal singers were half a dozen women wrapped up in dark cloaks, who uttered a monotonous and melancholy chant, while keeping their eyes stedfastly fixed on the ground. The singing resembled the sound of a storm growling in the distance. To the music the warriors hopped round in a circle, shaking the otter, fox, and beaver tails attached to their arms, feet, and heads.
“At times, the singing and dancing were interrupted; adorned with flying hair and skins, a warrior walked into the circle, raised his tomahawk, and struck the post a smart blow, as a signal that he was going to describe his hero deeds. Then he began to narrate in a loud voice, and very fluently, some horrible story in which he had played the chief part. He swung the tomahawk, and pointed to the scars and wounds on his naked body in confirmation of his story, giving the post a heavy blow now and then. Many had painted their scars a blood-red colour, and their gesticulations were most striking when they described the glorious moment of scalping. Although surrounded by many kind interpreters, who translated all that was said at once into English or French, I fear it would lead me too far were I to write down all that was said. Here is a specimen, however:—
“Many speeches were begun in a humorous fashion. One little fellow bounded into the circle, and after striking the post, went on, ‘My friends, that I am little you can all see, and I require no witnesses to that. But to believe that I, little as I am, once killed a giant of a Sioux, you will need witnesses.’ And then he plucked two witnesses out of the circle. ‘You and you were present;’ and then he told the story just as it had occurred. Another with a long rattlesnake’s skin round his head, and leaning on his lance, told his story objectively, just as a picture would be described:
“‘Once we Ojibbeways set out against the Sioux. We were one hundred. One of ours, a courageous man, a man of the right stamp, impatient for distinction, separated from the others, and crept onward into the enemy’s country. The man discovered a party of the foe, two men, two women, and three children. He crept round them like a wolf, he crawled up to them like a snake, he fell upon them like lightning, cut down the two men and scalped them. The screaming women and children he seized by the arm and threw them as prisoners to his friends who had hastened up at his war yell; and this lightning, this snake, this wolf, this man, my friends, that was I. I have spoken.’
North American Weapons.
“In most of the stories told us, however, I could trace very little that was heroic. Many of them, in fact, appeared a description of the way in which a cunning wolf attacked and murdered a lamb.
“One of the fellows, with one eye painted white, the other coal-black, was not ashamed to tell loudly, and with a beaming face, how he once fell upon a poor solitary Sioux girl and scalped her. He gave us the minutest details of this atrocity, and yet at the end of his harangue, he was applauded, or at least behowled, like the other orators. All the Indians stamped and uttered their war yell as a sign of applause, by holding their hands to their mouths trumpet fashion. At the moment the man appeared to me little less ferocious than a tiger, and yet when I formed his acquaintance at a latter date, he talked most reasonably and calmly like an honest farmer’s lad. Such are what are called the contradictions in human nature.