“All these nations hunt and make war in the same manner, on horseback; with spear, bow and arrows, in default of revolvers and muskets, and using a buckler as a defence against the enemy’s blows. They scalp their dead foe and deck themselves with his locks; pillage and destroy his property, carry away his women and children captives, and frequently subject the vanquished, above all any white man falling into their hands, to horrible tortures before putting him to death.
“The squaws to whom the prisoner is abandoned exhibit the most revolting cruelty towards him, tearing out the eyes, tongue, and nails of their victim; burning him, chopping off a hand to-day, and a foot to-morrow. When the captive is well tortured, a coal fire is lighted on his stomach and a yelling dance performed round him. Almost all Red Skins commit these atrocities phlegmatically towards the Whites when engaged in a struggle with them.
“Tribes often make war among themselves on the smallest pretext, for a herd of bisons they are pursuing, or a prairie where they wish to encamp alone. They have not indeed any place reserved, but they sometimes wish to keep one so, to the exclusion of every other occupant. Nor is it uncommon for the same tribe to split itself into two hostile clans. A few years ago the Ogallallas when maddened by whisky fought among themselves with guns, and have been broken up ever since into two bands, one of which, the ‘Ugly-Faces,’ is commanded by Red Cloud, and the other, by Big-Mouth and Pawnee-Killer.
215.—PAWNEE INDIANS.
“The languages of all the tribes are distinct; but perhaps a linguist would recognize among them some common roots, in the same way as in our own day they have been found to exist between European tongues and those of India. These languages all obey the same grammatical mechanism; they are ‘agglutinative,’ or ‘polysynthetic,’ and not ‘analytic’ or ‘inflected,’ that is to say, the words can be combined with each other to form a single word expressing a complete idea; but relation, gender, number, etc., are not indicated by modifications of the substantive. I pass over the other characteristics which distinguish agglutinative from inflected languages. The dialects of the Red Skins have not, or seem not to have, any affinity in the different terms of their vocabulary, which is, besides, often very limited.
“In order to comprehend each other the tribes have adopted by common accord a language of signs and gestures which approximates to that of the deaf and dumb. In this way all the Indians are capable of a mutual understanding, and a Yute, for instance, can converse without difficulty for several hours with an Arrapahoe, or the latter with a Sioux.
“The Whites are not acquainted with the languages of the Prairie Indians, or know them very badly. Frequently, there is but one interpreter for the same tongue, often a very poor one, merely understanding the idiom he has translated, not speaking it. Many, à fortiori, are not able to write the language which they interpret. Neither Dr. Mathews, John Richard, nor Pierre Chêne could spell for me in English characters the names of the Crow chiefs. How would it be in the case of the Arrapahoes or Apaches, whose strongly guttural speech is only accentuated by the tips of the lips?
“In all this it must be understood that I speak only of the tribes of the Prairies, and not of those who lived in olden times on the declivities of the mountains overlooking the Atlantic or skirting the Mississippi. The majority of the latter are, as is known, extinct, the Algonquins, Hurons, Iroquois, Natchez and Mohicans, and it is also well to avow that France has contributed in a large measure to their disappearance.