After the first shot, the two parties whooped, and began to fire indiscriminately, and every shot was answered by a whoop. One shot his arrow into the square, but falling short of the enemy, he covered himself with corn and crept thither to regain the arrow, and bore it back in safety, honored with a triumphant yell as he returned. After much of this bush skirmishing, both parties burst into the square. There was unremitted firing and war-whooping, the music of chanting and of the pebbled gourd going all the while. At length the fighters joined in procession, dancing a triumphal dance around the mound, plunging thence headlong into the sacred square and all around it, and then scampering around the outside, and pouring back to the battle square; and the closing whoop being given, the entire multitude from the battle square rushed, helter-skelter, yelping, some firing as they went, and others pelting down the spectators from their high places, with the corn-stalks that had served for guns, and which gave blows so powerful that those who laughed at them as weapons before, rubbed their shoulders and walked away ashamed.
We resumed our conveyances homeward, and heard the splashing and shouting, as we departed, of the warriors in the water.
Leave was now given to taste the corn, and all ate their fill, and, I suppose, did not much refrain from drinking; for I heard that every pathway and field around was in the morning strewed with sleeping Indians.
We passed the day following in visits to the picturesque scenery of the neighborhood. We saw the fine falls of the Talapoosa, where the broken river tumbles over wild and fantastic precipices, varying from forty to eighty or a hundred feet in hight; and when wandering among the slippery rocks, we passed an old Indian with his wife and child and bow and arrows. They had been shooting fishes in the stream, from a point against which the fishes were brought to them by the current. The scenery and the natives would have formed a fine picture. An artist of the neighborhood made me a present of a view of these falls, which I will show you when we meet.
The next part of the festival among the red folks—and which I did not see, being that day on my 'tour in search of the picturesque'—consisted, I was told, in the display of wives urging out their husbands to hunt deer. When, from our travels among fine scenery, we went down to the sacred square, towards night, we met Indians with deer slung over their horses. The skin of the first that is shot is presented to a priest, who flings it back to the slayer to be retained by him as a trophy, and at the same time asks from the Great Spirit that this may prove only the harbinger of deer in abundance whenever wanted. There was some slight dancing that evening in the sacred square, but not of significance enough to make it an object with me to remain for it, and as so many were reserving themselves for the winding-up assembly of the ladies, on Sunday morning, I thought I would do the same. Some of our party stayed, however, for the night. They found a miscellaneous dance at a house in the vicinity,—negroes, borderers, and reprobate Indians, all collected in one incongruous mass. A vagabond frontier man there asked a girl to dance. She refused, and was going to dance with another. The first drew his pistol, and swore if she would not dance with him she should not dance at all. Twenty pistols were clicked in an instant; but the borderer, with a horse-laugh, asked if they thought he didn't know there was not a soul in that section of country who dared to draw a trigger against him? He was right, for the pistols were dropped and the room cleared on the instant; whereupon the bully borderer clapped his wings and crowed and disappeared.
The assemblage of the females I was rather solicitous to see, and so I was at my post betimes. I had long to wait. I heard the gathering cry from the men on all sides, in the corn-fields and bushes; it was like the neighing to each other of wild horses. After a while the ladies began to arrive. The spectators crowded in.
The Indian men went to their places, and among them a party to sing while the women danced, two of the men rattling the gourds. The cauldrons had disappeared from the centre of the sacred square.
And now entered a long train of females, all dressed in long gowns, like our ladies, but all with gay colors, and bright shawls of various hues, and beads innumerable upon their necks, and tortoise-shell combs in their hair, and ears bored all around the rim, from top to bottom, and from every bore a massive ear-drop, very long, and generally of silver. A selected number of the dancers wore under their robes, and girded upon their calves, large squares of thick leather, covered all over with terrapin-shells closed together and perforated and filled with pebbles, which rattled like so many sleigh-bells. These they have the knack of keeping silent until their accompaniment is required for the music of the dance. The dresses of all the women were so long as nearly to conceal the feet, but I saw that some had neither shoes nor stockings on, while others were sandalled. The shawls were principally worn like mantles. Broad ribbons, in great profusion and of every variety of hue, hung from the back of each head to the ground, and, as they moved, these, and the innumerable sparkling beads of glass and coral and gold, gave the wearers an air of graceful and gorgeous, and, at the same time, unique wildness.
The procession entered slowly, and wound around the central fire, which still blazed gently there, although the cauldrons had been removed; and the train continued to stretch itself out, till it extended to three circles and a half. The shorter side then became stationary, and stood facing the men, who were seated in that building which contained the chanters. This last rank of dancers seemed to include the principal wearers of the terrapin leg-bands, which they continued to rattle, keeping time with the chant, without shifting their position. At each end of their line was a leader, one an old woman and the other not young, both bearing a little notched stick, with two feathers floating from it. At a particular turn of the general figure of the dance, these two broke off from their fixed rank, and made a circuit outside of all the rest, and more briskly, while the main body of the dancers, the three circles before mentioned, which had never ceased to move, still proceeded slowly round and round, only turning at a given signal to face the men, as the men had turned to face the emblem of the Deity, the central fire. Every eye among the women was planted on the ground. I never beheld such an air of universal modesty. It seemed a part of the old men's privilege to make comments aloud, in order to surprise the women into a laugh. These must often have been very droll, and always personal, I understand, and not always the most delicate. I saw a few instances among the young girls where they were obliged to smother a smile by putting up their handkerchiefs. But it was conquered on the instant. The young men said nothing; but the Indian men, whether old or young, seemed all to take as much interest in the show as we. The chief, Apotheola, had two daughters there. Both are very elegant girls, but the eldest delighted me exceedingly. She seemed about seventeen or eighteen. She is tall, a fine figure; her carriage graceful and distingué, and quite European. She had a white muslin gown; a black scarf, wrought all over with flowers in brilliant colors; an embroidered white collarette, I believe you call it; gold chains, coral beads, gold and jewelled ear-rings,—single ones, not in the usual Indian superabundance,—her hair beautifully dressed in the Parisian style; a splendid tortoise-shell comb, gemmed; and from one large tuft of hair upon one temple to that upon the other there passed a beautiful gold ornament. Her sister's head-dress was nearly the same. The aforesaid elder Princess Apotheola, I am happy to say, looked only at me. Some one must have told her that I meant to run away with her, for I had said so before I saw her to many of her friends. There was a very frolicksome, quizzical expression in her eye; and now and then it seemed to say, 'No doubt you think all these things wonderfully droll. It diverts me to see you so puzzled by them.' But, excepting the look at me, which only proved her excellent taste, her eye dwelt on the ground, and nothing could have been more interestingly reserved than her whole deportment.
The dance over, all the ladies went from the square in the same order that they entered it.