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Updated: June 10, 2025
The hand-to-hand fight was hardly five seconds in duration, and Buffalo Bill had driven his knife into the broad red breast, and then tore from his head the scalp and feather war-bonnet, and waving it over his head, shouted in ringing tones: "Bravo! the first scalp to avenge Custer!"
If there ain't Shingiss; he was friendly once." "None of them's friendly." "Look! Lew, look! Right behind Pipe. See that long war-bonnet. As I'm a born sinner, that's your old friend, Wingenund. 'Pears to me we've rounded up all our acquaintances." The two bordermen lay close under the tall ferns and watched the proceedings with sharp eyes.
Had it been given one minute later two hundred Indians would have been upon me, and this present narration would have had to be made by some one else. As the soldiers came up I swung the war-bonnet high in the air and shouted: "The first scalp for Custer!" It was by this time clear to General Merritt that he could not ambush the Indians. So he ordered a general charge.
He was accordingly summoned before the aboriginal parliament, and from the wise men of the tribe he received his degree of war-bonnet. It was a public ceremony. The great pipe was held up for him to take the smoke of high honor. The happiest person present was the father of Antelope; but he himself remained calm and unmoved throughout the ceremony.
"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!
Lieutenant Mason, who had been very conspicuous in the fight and had killed two or three Indians himself, came galloping up the ravine, and, jumping from his horse, secured the elaborate war-bonnet from the head of the dead chief, together with all his other accoutrements. We both rejoined the soldiers.
Close at hand, loosely huddled along the bank, the grimy, smoke-stained lodges of Kills Asleep's sullen band, and in their midst, surrounded at respectful distance by a squatted semicircle of old men and braves, all muffled in their blankets, and by an outer rim of hags and crones and young squaws and children and snarling dogs and shaggy ponies, there with trailing war-bonnet and decked with paint and barbaric finery, his robe cast aside, there like an orator of old stood the Indian chief in the heat of his impassioned appeal.
Singing, shouting, brandishing lance and rifle, their barbaric ornaments gleaming in the frosty moonlight, some of the younger men darting to and fro on their swift ponies, mad with excitement, on came the surging crowd, led by the majestic figure of the big chief, jogging straight on at the slow, characteristic amble of the Indian pony, his war-bonnet trailing to the ground.
The Council Pipe To the student of Indian affairs it might at first seem that the gathering of the great chiefs from all the Indian tribes, wearing war-shirt and war-bonnet, carrying their coup sticks, tomahawks, spears, bows and arrows, guns and tom-toms, would necessarily reemphasize to the Indian the glory of his former prestige, and this impression would gather such momentum that deleterious results would follow; but an alert and studious effort was always manifest to inculcate in the Indian mind that this last great council of the chiefs had for its dominant idea the welfare of the Indian, that he should live at peace with his fellows and all men, and the making of a lasting historic record of the fast-fading manners and customs of the North American Indian.
"All eyes were turned upon Makatah, who rode her fine buckskin steed with a single lariat. He held his head proudly, and his saddle was heavy with fringes and gay with colored embroidery. The maiden was attired in her best and wore her own father's war-bonnet, while she carried in her hands two which had belonged to two of her dead brothers.
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