“Very remarkable in all these harangues, was the unconcealed and vain self-laudation each employed about himself. Every speaker considered his deed the best and most useful for the whole nation. Each began by saying that what his predecessors had told them was very fine, but a trifle when compared with what he had to say about himself. It was his intention to astonish them once for all. His totem was the first in the whole land, and the greatest deeds had always been achieved by the spotted weasels (or as the case may be) and so he, the younger weasel, not wishing to be the inferior to his forefathers, had gone forth and performed deeds the description of which would make their hair stand on end,” etc.
Among other tribes of North-American warriors, the braves were armed with small tomahawks, or iron hatchets, which they carried with the powder-horn in the belt on the right side, while the long tobacco pouch of antelope skin hung by the left side. Over their shoulders were leather targets, bows and arrows, and some few had rifles—both weapons were defended from damp in deer-skin cases—and quivers with the inevitable bead-work, and the fringes which every savage seems to love.
Speaking of an army of Indian warriors “shifting camp,” Burton says, in his curious book “The City of the Saints”:—“Their nags were lean and ungroomed; they treat them as cruelly as do the Somal; yet nothing short of whiskey can persuade the Indian warrior to part with a favourite steed. It is his all in all,—his means of livelihood, his profession, his pride. He is an excellent judge of horse-flesh, though ignoring the mule and ass; and if he offers an animal for which he has once refused to trade, it is for the reason that an Oriental takes to market an adult slave—it has become useless. Like the Arab, he considers it dishonourable to sell a horse: he gives it to you, expecting a large present, and if disappointed he goes away grumbling that you have swallowed his property.
“Behind the warriors and braves followed the baggage of the village. The lodge-poles in bundles of four or five had been lashed to pads or packsaddles girthed tight to the ponies’ backs, the other ends being allowed to trail along the ground like the shafts of a truck. The sign easily denotes the course of travel. The wolf-like dogs were also harnessed in the same way; more lupine than canine, they are ready when hungry to attack man or mule; and sharp-nosed and prick-eared, they not a little resemble the Indian pariah dog. Their equipments, however, were of course on a diminutive scale. A little pad girthed round the barrel with a breastplate to keep it in place, enabled them to drag two short light lodge-poles tied together at the smaller extremity. One carried only a hawk on its back; yet falconry has never, I believe, been practised by the Indian. Behind the ponies the poles were connected by cross sticks upon which were lashed the lodge-covers, the buffalo robes, and other bulkier articles. Some had strong frames of withes or willow basket-work, two branches being bent into an oval, garnished below with a network of hide-thongs for a seat, covered with a light wicker canopy, and opening like a cage only on one side; a blanket or a buffalo robe defends the inmate from sun and rain. These are the litters for the squaws when weary, the children and the puppies, which are part of the family till used for beasts. It might be supposed to be a rough conveyance; the elasticity of the poles, however, alleviates much of that inconvenience. A very ancient man, wrinkled as a last year’s walnut, and apparently crippled by old wounds, was carried probably by his great-grandsons in a rude sedan. The vehicle was composed of two pliable poles, about ten feet long, separated by three cross-bars twenty inches or so apart. In this way the Indians often bear the wounded back to their villages. Apparently they have never thought of a horse litter, which might be made with equal facility, and would certainly save work.
“Whilst the rich squaws rode, the poor followed their pack-horses on foot, eyeing the more fortunate as the mercer’s wife regards what she terms the carriage lady. The women’s dress not a little resembles their lords’—the unaccustomed eye often hesitates between the sexes. In the fair, however, the waistcoat is absent, the wide-sleeved skirt extends below the knees, and the leggings are of somewhat different cut; all wore coarse shawls, or white, blue, or scarlet cloth-blankets around their bodies. Upon the upper platte, we afterwards saw them dressed in cotton gowns after a semi-civilized fashion, and with bowie knives by their sides. The grandmothers were fearful to look upon; horrid excrescences of nature, teaching proud man a lesson of humility. The middle aged matrons were homely bodies, broad and squat like the African dame after she has become mère de famille; their hands and feet are notably larger from work than those of the men, and the burdens upon their back caused them to stoop painfully. The young squaws—pity it is that all our household Indian words, papoose for instance, tomahawk, wigwam, and powwow, should have been naturalised out of the Abenaki and other harsh dialects of New England—deserved a more euphonious appellation. The belle savage of the party had large and languishing eyes and teeth that glittered, with sleek long black hair like the ears of a Blenheim spaniel, justifying a natural instinct to stroke or pat it, drawn straight over a low broad quadroon-like brow. Her figure had none of the fragility which distinguishes the higher race, who are apparently too delicate for human nature’s daily food. Her ears and neck were laden with tinsel ornaments, brass wire rings adorned her wrists and fine arms, a bead-work sack encircled her waist, and scarlet leggings fringed and tasselled, ended in equally costly mocassins. When addressed by the driver in some terms to me unintelligible, she replied with a soft clear laugh—the principal charm of the Indian, as of the smooth-throated African woman—at the same time showing him the palm of her right hand as though it had been a looking-glass. The gesture I afterwards learned simply conveys a refusal. The maidens of the tribe, or those under six, were charming little creatures with the wildest and most piquant expression, and the prettiest doll-like features imaginable; the young coquettes already conferred their smiles as if they had been of any earthly value. The boys had black beady eyes like snakes, and the wide mouths of young caymans. Their only dress when they were not in birthday suit was the Indian laguti. None of the braves carried scalps, finger-bones, or notches on the lance, which serve like certain marks on saw-handled pistols further east, nor had any man lost a limb. They followed us for many a mile, peering into the hinder part of our travelling wigwam, and ejaculating “How, How,” the normal salutation.”
Here is an instance at once of Indian warrior heroism on the one side and fiendish ferocity on the other that occurred at the late engagement between a small war party of the Chippewas and a greatly superior party of Sioux, near Cedar Island Lake. The Chippewas, who were en route for a scalping foray upon the Sioux villages on the Minnesota, here fell into an ambuscade, and the first notice of danger which saluted their ears was a discharge of fire-arms from a thicket. Four of their number fell dead in their tracks. Another, named the War Cloud, a leading brave, had a leg broken by a bullet. His comrades were loth to leave him, and, whilst their assailants were reloading their guns, attempted to carry him along with them to where they could gain the shelter of a thicket a short distance to the rear. But he commanded them to leave him, telling them that he would show his enemies how a Chippewa could die.
Chippewa.
At his request they seated him on a log, with his back leaning against a tree. He then commenced painting his face and singing his death-song. As his enemies approached he only sang a louder and a livelier strain; and when several had gathered around him, flourishing their scalping-knives, and screeching forth their demoniac yells of exultation, not a look or gesture manifested that he was even aware of their presence. At lengthy they seized him and tore his scalp from his head. Still seated with his back against a large tree, they commenced shooting their arrows into the trunk around his head, grazing his ears, neck, etc., until they literally pinned him fast, without having once touched a vital part. Yet our hero remained the same imperturable stoic, continuing to chant his defiant strain, and although one of the number flourished his reeking scalp before his eyes, still not a single expression of his countenance could be observed to change. At last one of the number approached him with a tomahawk, which, after a few unheeded flourishes, he buried in the captive’s skull, who sank in death, with the war song still upon his lips. He had, indeed, succeeded well in teaching his enemies “how a Chippewa could die.”
The reader has already made the acquaintance of that renowned Mandan chief Mahtotopa; here is another episode in that hero’s history: