United States or Armenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Through the whole of the next morning we were moving forward, among the hills. On the following day the heights gathered around us, and the passage of the mountains began in earnest. Before the village left its camping ground, I set forward in company with the Eagle-Feather, a man of powerful frame, but of bad and sinister face.
On his head he wore an eagle-feather war-bonnet; his mane was plaited with red flannel strips and fluttering plumes; his tail was even gaudier; around each eye was a great circle of white and another of black; his nose was crossbarred with black and red; his legs were painted in zebra stripes of yellow and black; the patches of white that were native to his coat were outlined with black and profusely decorated with red hands and horseshoes painted in vermilion; on his neck was a band of beadwork, carrying a little bundle of sacred medicine; and, last, he had on each ankle a string of sleigh-bells that jingled at each prancing step.
The Comanches were noted as the most skillful horsemen of the plains. They all were having fun. A medicine-man appeared to be their leader. He wore a head-dress of buffalo-horns and an eagle-feather trail streaming to his pony's tail. Time after time he charged to within twenty-five yards, at the head of his warriors, firing with a pistol and urging the braves to ride over the white men.
"Well," said Reynal, "there's old Red-Water, and the Eagle-Feather, and the Big Crow, and the Mad Wolf and the Panther, and the White Shield, and what's his name? the half-breed Cheyenne." By this time we were close to the village, and I observed that while the greater part of the lodges were very large and neat in their appearance, there was at one side a cluster of squalid, miserable huts.
The Eagle-Feather, who was a son of Mene-Seela, and brother of my host the Big Crow, was seated there already, and I asked him if the village would move in the morning. He shook his head, and said that nobody could tell, for since old Mahto-Tatonka had died, the people had been like children that did not know their own minds. They were no better than a body without a head.
"The white doeskin gown of the War Maiden," he continued, "was trimmed with elk's teeth and tails of ermine. Her long black hair hung loose, bound only with a strip of otter-skin, and with her eagle-feather war-bonnet floated far behind. In her hand she held a long coup-staff decorated with eagle-feathers. Thus she went forth in advance of them all!
The white man's new rifle lay across his left arm, his painted robe dragged on the ground, his eagle-feather waved perpendicularly above the dried Bat's skin, the sacred red paint of war bloodied his whole face, and a rope and a whip symbols of his success with horses dangled in his right hand, while behind him followed the smart war-pony, covered with vermilion hand-prints as thickly as the spots on a brook-trout.
"Do you mean to say these people have been fooling me? I don't believe it," said I. "There's one that can't talk English, and I'll make a bet on it." I indicated a passing brave with an eagle-feather head-dress which reached far down his naked legs. He was a magnificent animal; he was young and lithe, and as tall and straight as a sapling. "I've tried him twice, and he simply doesn't understand."
"I crossed a moor, with a name of its own And a certain use in the world, no doubt; Yet a hand's breadth of it shines alone 'Mid the blank miles round about: "For there I picked up on the heather, And there I put inside my breast, A moulted feather, an eagle-feather! Well, I forget the rest."
As they rode on, White Otter spoke: "I shall wear the eagle-feather standing up in my scalp-lock, for I struck him with a hand-weapon standing up. It shall wave above the bat and make him strong. The little brown bat will be very brave in the time to come. We took the clipped and painted war-ponies from under the chiefs nose, Red Arrow."