"Scalping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one else was to enter. The rest halted at the door and others came straggling up, until the whole party, to the number of twenty-three, were gathered in front. They were armed with bows and arrows, tomahawks, scalping-knives, and a few had guns. All were painted and dressed for war, having a savage and fierce appearance. Mr. Miller recognized among them some of the very fellows who had robbed him the preceding year, and put his comrades on their guard. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Waraiyageh first," said Willet, quietly, "and we will. God knows there is great need of our doing it. If Johnson's army is swept away, then Albany will fall, the Hodenosaunee, under terrific pressure, might be induced to turn against us, and the Province of New York would be ravaged with fire and the scalping knife." ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a great natural meadow surrounded by forest. The rival sides assembled opposite each other and bet heavily. All the stakes, under the law of the game, were laid upon the ground in heaps here, and they consisted of the articles most precious to the Iroquois. In these heaps were rifles, tomahawks, scalping knives, wampum, strips of colored beads, blankets, swords, belts, moccasins, leggins, and a great many things taken as spoil in forays on the white settlements, such is small mirrors, brushes of various kinds, boots, shoes, and ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... between ourselves and the English in 1810, I saw this young man again; he was serving in our army, at the head of the warriors of his tribe, for the Indians were admitted amongst the ranks of the Americans, upon condition that they would abstain from their horrible custom of scalping their victims. On the evening of the battle of . . ., C. came and sat himself down by the fire of our bivouac. I asked him what had been his fortune that day: he related his exploits; and growing warm and animated by the recollection of them, he concluded by suddenly opening the breast ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... split it open along the crease of the berry, liberating the dirt which lies in the crease so that it can be removed by bolting. A very small percentage of low-grade flour is also made in this reduction. After passing through what is technically called a 'scalping reel' to remove the dirt and flour, the broken wheat is passed through a second set of corrugated rollers, by which it is further broken up, and then passes through a second separating reel, which removes the flour and middlings. This operation is repeated successively ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... cruel in war. When they killed a man, they cut the skin and hair off the top of his head. This was called scalping. ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... There were some hundreds of the Indians, and a scattering handful of us. A quiet farming community, monsieur, that worked hard, supped early, and slept the deep sleep of quiet living and sober minds. We waked to find the scalping knives at our throats, and the death scream of children in our ears. Look over the bags of scalps, and see the number of women and old men that your braves had to overcome. You will be ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... order his steps until the beard on his lip announced him qualified to follow his own nose, without too great danger of forgetting to allow that organ the help of his eyes and ears. But as it was, they would have done a wiser and more benevolent part by their boy had they given him a scalping knife, without sheath, for a plaything, or a young bear, without a muzzle and chain, for a pet. The knife might have cut off a few of his fingers, and the bear might have clawed off some of his flesh, but the mischief done would have been slight, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... with talk about English generosity and love of fair play, it is well to turn back and study the exploits of Tryon, and it is not amiss in the same connection to recall that English budgets contained a special appropriation for scalping-knives, a delicate attention to the Tories and Indians who were burning ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... conquered; and William Penn made up his mind to conquer them; but he determined to conquer them in his own way. 'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.' The Indians were accustomed to slaughter. They understood no language but the language of the tomahawk and the scalping-knife. Ever since the white man had landed on American shores, the forests had resounded with the war-whoops of the tribesmen. One night a colonial settlement had been raided by the red men: the next an Indian village had been burned, and its ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... in the language of the Natchez, is likewise another proof of their being descended from the Phenicians. [Footnote: The author might have mentioned a singular custom, in which both nations agree; for it appears from Polybius, 1 I. c. 6. that Carthaginians practised scalping.] ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... conscious mind is not capable of being occupied by more than one thing at a time. If attention is concentrated upon external matters, bodily sensations, even extreme pain, may pass altogether unnoticed. The Mohawk, Lord Macaulay tells us, hardly feels the scalping-knife as he shouts his death song. The soldier in the excitement of battle is often bereft of all sense of pain. On the other hand, the patient who is morbidly self-conscious becomes oblivious of his surroundings while he suffers intensely from ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... homespun hunting shirts, buckskin breeches, leggings and moccasins. They wore round felt hats, looped on one side and ornamented with a buck tail. They carried long rifles, shot pouches, tomahawks, and scalping knives. ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... round the kitchen fire were just as delightful as our hut experiences, and if possible, more novel. Here we had fierce Albanians, with their half-shaven heads and scalping lock, and a scholar, a student of philosophy, a man of wonderful ideals, in the form of the young ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... put into the hands of their children reports of our missionaries, so they could see what is being done for the Indians, instead of letting them get their opinions of the Indian race from newspaper articles and from books of Indian wars, in which the rifle and scalping knife were the only arguments used, much prejudice would be removed and the missions among Indians would be better sustained. Further, if parents themselves would take the above advice, it would be time and money well spent, ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 • Various
... painted china. Over the parlour fire-place was, as usual, the family coat-of-arms, painted and framed; above which was a long duck fowling-piece, flanked by an Indian pouch, and a powder horn. The room was decorated with many Indian articles, such as pipes of peace, tomahawks, scalping-knives, hunting pouches, and belts of wampum; and there were various kinds of fishing tackle, and two or three fowling-pieces in the corners. The household affairs seemed to be conducted, in some measure, after the master's humours; corrected, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... of an enemy, there is no cruelty which can be exercised, no species of torture, which their ingenuity can devise, too severe to be inflicted. To those who have excited a spirit of resentment in the bosom of an Indian, the tomahawk and scalping knife are instruments of mercy. Death by the faggot—by splinters of the most combustible wood, stuck in the flesh and fired—maiming and disemboweling, tortures on which the soul sickens but to reflect, are frequently practiced. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... said Jim Leonard. "But what I mean is, that if you get hurt you mustn't hollo, or cry, or anything; and even when they're scalping you, you mustn't even make a face, so as to let them ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... raised his head above the surrounding brushwood and stretched his neck in order to obtain a better view of the camp. Then slowly, inch by inch, almost with imperceptible motion, he crept forward until the whole of his gaunt form was revealed. A scalping-knife gleamed in his right hand. The camp was strewn with twigs, but these he removed one by one, carefully clearing each spot before he ventured to rest a knee upon it. While the savage was thus engaged, Larry O'Hale, who was nearest to him, sighed deeply ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mudie-Cooke (of course it would be their tent that had gone) were now hidden from sight under the heavy mass of wet canvas on top of them. The F.A.N.Y.s, their hair flying in the wind, looking more like Red Indians on a scalping expedition than a salvage party, soon extricated them, and they were taken, with what clothes could be rescued, to another tent. Their fate, "Squig" assured me, would have assuredly been ours had ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... acknowledge to have been faithful. He stated that the Indians were in open rebellion, and that blood was likely to be shed. It was reported and believed among us that he said we had armed ourselves, and were prepared to carry all before us with tomahawk and scalping knife; that death and destruction, and all the horrors of a savage war, were impending; that of the white inhabitants some were already dead, and the rest dreadfully alarmed! An awful ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... inferiority, and that a few forts on the frontier would easily overawe the hostile Indians. To the second proposition, they elaborated the arguments of William Burke. Franklin replied that the war-parties of braves would easily pass by the forts in the forests, and after burning, pillaging, murdering, and scalping, would equally easily and safely return. Nothing save a Chinese wall the whole length of the western frontier would suffice for protection against savages. Then, with one of those happy illustrations of which he was a master, he said: "In short, long experience has taught ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... yesterday afternoon, and in that interval he fastened the two doors of the house against me, and he has spent the night in drinking himself to death deliberately! We broke in this morning, for we heard him sporting like a horse; and there he was, laid over the settle: flaying and scalping would not have wakened him. I sent for Kenneth, and he came; but not till the beast had changed into carrion: he was both dead and cold, and stark; and so you'll allow it was useless making ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... they said disappeared as soon as known. At the evening prayer-meetings the laying on of hands would be followed by a sort of fit, in which the enthusiasts would fall apparently lifeless on the floor, or contort their faces, creep on their hands or knees, imitate the Indian process of killing and scalping, and chase balls of ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... are, delineate the predominant character of the savage nations. If they are peaceable and inoffensive, the drawings usually consist of local scenery and their favorite diversions. If the band are rude and ferocious, we observe tomahawks, scalping-knives, bows and arrows, and all the engines of destruction.—A Mandan bow, and quiver of arrows; also some Ricara tobacco-seed, and an ear of Mandan corn: to these were added a box of plants, another of insects, and three cases containing a ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... We were beginning to regard the poetry of the palisades as a thing of the past, when, suddenly, our ears were startled by the echo of the warwhoop, and the crack of the rifle, and our hearts appalled by the gleam of the tomahawk and the scalping knife, as they descended in indiscriminate and remorseless slaughter, on defenceless women ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the last three generations the Muir glacier filled the bay for miles below our anchorage; and while it recedes, it is creeping slowly down, scalping the mountains, grinding all the sharp edges into powder or leaving a polished surface behind it. It gathers rock dust and the wreck of every living thing, and mixes them up with snow and ice. These congeal again, or are compressed into soft, filthy monumental masses, ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Our hills and swamps to clear, The woods were full of catamounts, And Indians red as deer, With tomahawks and scalping-knives, That make folks' heads look queer; Oh the ship from England used to bring A hundred ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Nothing at all! Sampled scalping-knife on me; thought better of it, kept me out of ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... him for a ransom," said the redheaded boy. "Aunt Almira will give us enough to buy a melon, and make us a pail of lemonade, if we let this gray-haired old settler off without scalping him." ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... characteristics once alleged as segregating them from the rest of mankind have proved not to belong to the whole of the pre-Columbian population, but only to those portions of it first explored. The practice of scalping is not now universal, even among the tribes least influenced by civilization, if it ever was, and therefore the cultivation of the scalp-lock separated from the rest of the hair of the head, or with the removal of all other hair, is not a general feature of their ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... ashen bow, and flinten arrow-head To pierce their craven bodies; but their dead Must be avenged. Avenged? They dared not walk In day and meet his deadly tomahawk; They dared not face his fearless scalping knife; So—Niyoh![1]—then they ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... struck by the house of the missionaries (Montaret's first night). You make it seem real. Naissa scalping, and then wiping her hands on the grass, seemed to me especially well done. As well as the disgust that ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... deal like the heiress to a million dollars who's been on the market for eight or ten years, not because there's no demand for her, but because there's too much. Most girls whose capital of good looks is only moderate, marry, and marry young, because they're like a fellow on 'Change who's scalping the market—not inclined to take chances, and always ready to make a quick turn. Old maids are usually the girls who were so homely that they never had an offer, or so good-looking that they carried their matrimonial corner ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... rejoiced. This triumph meant much to them. Their borders would now be safe, but for occasional scalping parties. Amherst was delighted, and took to himself much of the credit of Bouquet's victory. He congratulated the noble Swiss officer on his victory over 'a band of savages that would have been very formidable ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... killing a red skunk. And this friendly Injun talk makes me sick! Never was a time but what half the Shawnees and other tribes was loafing 'round the settlements, pretending to be friends, while t'other half was using the tomahawk and scalping-knife. ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... had! They fought Indians from one end of the island to the other, killing and scalping twenty-nine. They bathed in the quieter current on the other side, and they dried themselves in the sun, and in the sun they slept till they were burned red; and then just as they were thinking that it was time to go back to the camp and gather together their belongings ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... joining the other young men in their sports of lacrosse or snow-snake, or bowl-and-beans; to him there was nothing in life but the warpath, no song but the war cry, no color but the war paint. Daily he sharpened his scalping knife, daily he polished his tomahawk, daily feathered and poisoned his arrows, daily he sought enemies, taunted them, insulted them, braved them and conquered them; while his young brother, Ok-wa-ho, rested in their lodge ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... the colony in small numbers, for Iroquois scalping parties haunted the trails, and a pestilence had played havoc in the Huron villages. Those who came to trade this year gathered at Three Rivers; and thither went Brebeuf, Daniel, and Davost to seek once more ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... be better than Mr. Ascott Hope's choice of The Wigwam and the War-path as the name of a collection of all the most scalping stories, so to speak, of the North American Indians we ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... reality was rather different. For the most part the Indians of North America were the reverse of heroic. They were bloodthirsty, drunken, lewd and treacherous. They spent their time in hunting buffaloes, smoking pipes, lolling in the sun, and scalping each other's heads. They wasted their nights in tipsy revels and dances by the light of the moon. They cowered in terror of evil spirits and vicious and angry gods. But Zeisberger never feared and never despaired. As long as he had such a grand Gospel to preach, he felt ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Origines Sacrae, Part II. Book i. c. i., where there are traced the gradations observed by travellers in the savagery of the several natives of America. Has it been recorded of any people in Europe, Asia, or Africa, that they were addicted to the practice of scalping? T.J. ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... inward exultation that Rod saw the project of attack dropped and Mukoki and Wabigoon proceed with their short task of scalping the seven wolves. During this operation Wolf was allowed to feast upon the ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... and avoided him. We had our little scalping-parties or war-paths and ambuscades, in imitation of the Indians, but in spite of that we hated them heartily, and thought it a great weakness on the part of our minister, Bishop Hancock, when he spoke a good word ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... of sheepskin and made of it a pair of very poor moccasins. He ground an old castaway putty knife into a scalping knife; the notch in it for breaking glass was an annoying defect until he remembered that some Indians decorate their weapons with a notch for each enemy it has killed, and this, therefore, might do duty as a kill-tally. He made a sheath for the knife out of scraps of leather left off the moccasins. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... his senses when the Indians shook him roughly. A scalping knife was brandished before his eyes, and he was given to understand that he must either walk with them or ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... admission of general worthlessness. And now the crowds still lingered under the glass roof of the big passenger shed, for word had gone out that another train coming across the bridge was loaded with more troops, and there was a fascination in watching these prospective victims of the stake and scalping-knife. It had been a fierce campaign thus far, and one in which the losses and vicissitudes both (there are no honors to speak of) had been borne principally by the cavalry, but now the "doughboys" with their "long ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... front of him, quite close to his chair, gazing down at him in her tight black jersey and short white skirt; she was wearing black stockings now. Her serious face was perfectly unruffled. And in her worn face was all her experience; all the nights and days on the Clyde were in her face; the scalping of the young Glasgow girl was in her face, and the failure to endure either in work or in love. There was complete silence within and without—not the echo of an echo of a gun. G.J. felt as ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... give us scalping enough," said Charlie Bolton; "I'm a little afraid you are too tender-hearted to give your story the proper dramatic effect. It's worth nothing unless there is a great deal of blood spilt, and ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... important to understand the underlying causes of Indian wars. There are people to-day who believe that the Indian likes nothing better than going on the warpath, killing and scalping from sheer native cruelty and lust for blood. His character as a man of peace has not been appreciated. Yet it is matter of history that the newcomers were welcomed in almost every case with unsuspecting kindness, and in his dealings with the white man the original ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... counts his gold. Then taking a pair of scissors from his pocket, he ran them over the girl's head with the quickness and skill of a barber, cutting close down, that he might not lose even the sixteenth part of an inch of her rich tresses. An Indian scalping his victim could not have shown more eagerness. An Indian's wild pleasure was in his face as he lifted the heavy mass of brown hair and held it above his head. It was not a trophy—not a sign of conquest and triumph ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... sat in the window looking down on the town and the river. At last Iberville spoke. "Tell me it all as you remember it, Perrot." Perrot, usually swift of speech when once started, was very slow now. He felt the weight of every word, and he had rather have told of the scalping of a hundred men than of his last meeting with Jessica. When he had finished, Iberville said: "She kept ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was dimly conscious of this himself. I know that he longed to be doing something—slaying a grizzly, scalping a savage, or sacrificing himself in some way for the sake of this sallow-faced, gray-eyed schoolmistress. As I should like to present him in a heroic attitude, I stay my hand with great difficulty at this moment, being only ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... positive freedom from all worldly care, and a consequent expansion of the sinews, as it were, of mind and body, which made me feel as elastic as a ball of India rubber, and in such a state of perfect ease that no more dread of scalping Indians entered my mind, than if I had been sitting in Broadway, in one of the windows of the Astor House. The very happiest moments of my life have been spent in the wilderness of the Far West, with no friend near me more faithful than my rifle, and no companion ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... his rifle under our present circumstances, when a glance showed me at once he had met with an adventure similar to mine near Santa Fe. In the canoe lay the skin of a large finely-spotted jaguar, and by it a young cub, playing unconsciously with the scalping-knife, yet ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... organized system of robbery, and has been for years a disgrace to the nation. It has left savage men without Governmental control; it has looked on unconcerned at every crime against the laws of God and man; it has fostered savage life by wasting thousands of dollars in the purchase of paint, beads, scalping knives, and tomahawks; it has fostered a system of trade which robbed the thrifty and virtuous to pay the debts of the indolent and vicious; it has squandered the funds for civilization and schools; it has connived ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... melancholy jet of gas, and pervaded by the smell of cooking. In the next moment Jane—who had made herself mistress of all minor details—opened a door, and they were out in the dull quiet street—the side-street, at the end of which workmen were scalping away ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... and if they are indifferent to the war romances of the place, as most of them are, they hurry on without a glance at the sites of the famous old forts St. George and William Henry. Yet the head of the lake might well detain them a few hours though they do not care for the scalping Indians and their sometime allies the French or the English. On the east side the lake is wooded to the shore, and the jutting points and charming bays make a pleasant outline to the eye. Crosbyside is the ideal of a summer retreat, nestled ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Great success of the ceremony. The significance of the flower rites. Ancient origin of rites. Explaining customs which followed the practice of scalping. Head hunters. The hair token. The flower before the fruit. The Druids. The ceremonia of the mistletoe. The antidote. The oak as a sacred tree. The great feast after the ceremony. Table implements. The Korinos. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... subject yet more worthy of his pen. A famous Mohawk Indian warrior, who took Dieskaw the French general prisoner, dressed in the same manner with the native Indians when they go to war, with his face and body painted, with his scalping-knife, tom-axe, and all other implements of war! a sight worthy the curiosity of every true Briton! This is a very powerful description; but a critick of great refinement would say, that it conveys rather horrour than terrour. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... enemy, the American frontiersman. Burnings at the stake, scalping, and other savageries, were not confined to the red man. But whilst his are depicted by the interested writers of the time in the most lurid colours, those of the frontiersman, equally barbarous, are too often ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... the inhabitants of eastern America being still importers from the "old country." Not thirty years ago, the whole right bank of the Ohio was termed the "Indian side." Spots in Tenessee, in Ohio and Kentucky, which, within the lifetime of even young men, witnessed only the arrow and the scalping knife, now present, to the traveller, articles of elegance, and modes of luxury, which might rival the displays of London and of Paris: within the last half century, the beasts of the forest, and men more savage than the beasts, were the only inhabitants of the whole of that immense ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... guests dispersed. Sillery escorted Amedee and the three Merovingians to the little, sparsely furnished first floor in the Rue Pigalle, where he lived; and half a dozen other lyric poets, who might have furnished some magnificent trophies for an Apache warrior's scalping-knife, soon came to reenforce the club which met ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... the place, and his every action was observed with the deepest interest. Wherever he moved the spectators followed. Urchins near at hand fought horrible mimic duels for his benefit; duels which invariably ended in the scalping of the vanquished—and with expressions of demoniacal exultation playing upon the face of the conqueror. From far in the rear a war whoop sounded; and when the effort was to all evidence ignored, was repeated intrepidly near at hand. ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... discover thy enemy, and the darkness of midnight shall not protect thy rest. Thou shalt plant in terror, and I will reap in blood; thou shalt sow the earth with corn, and I will strew it with ashes; thou shalt go forth with the sickle, and I will follow after with the scalping-knife; thou shalt build, and I will burn,—till the white man or the Indian perish from the land. Go thy way for this time in safety,—but remember, stranger, there is eternal ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... awful! It was Indians he wished for - Cyril - at breakfast, don't you remember? He said, "I wish there were Red Indians in England," - and now there are, and they're going about scalping people all over the country, like ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... to the close of the Revolutionary struggle, the war between the contending tribes was waged with relentless fury. Many a proud chief and valiant warrior fell beneath the tomahawk and became the victim of the merciless scalping-knife. ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... come to our camp an' raise Cain. Why not? What business we got monkeyin' with their scalping sociables? It ain't neighborly." ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... the evening of the 14th of June, a party of eleven Sacs, killed five white men at Spafford's farm. General Dodge with twenty-nine men, followed and overtook them in a swamp, where the whole were shot down and scalped, they having first killed three of Dodge's men. The barbarous practice of scalping the dead, was in this case adopted by our troops and sanctioned by ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... a waste!" he said. "Now the army hass retreated and the whole border iss uncovered. The tomahawk and scalping knife are at work. Tales of slaughter come in efery day, and it iss said that Montcalm ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... house of heavy logs and keep my wife and children always near me while at work. But it seemed to me that Melissa Daggett and her kin with their flashy papers, and the influence of the street for Merton and Bobsey, involved more danger to my little band than all the scalping Modocs that ever whooped. The children could not step outside the door without danger of meeting some one who would do them harm. It is the curse of crowded city life that there is so little of a natural and attractive sort for a child to do, and so much of ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... been repressed, here comes the Irrepressible Red! HIAWATHA is cutting up a great variety of capers as well as of unfortunate settlers. Should you ask us why this bloodshed, Why this scalping and this burning, Why this conduct most disgraceful, Why these crimes of the Piegans, Why this sending forth of soldiers, Why the perils of the railway, known as and called the way Pacific, (which it won't be if these actions ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... the partridge's thigh, you can make an enlightened commonwealth of Indians. A provisional race, Sir,—nothing more. Exhaled carbonic acid for the use of vegetation, kept down the bears and catamounts, enjoyed themselves in scalping and being scalped, and then passed away or are passing away, according to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... Marquesan was never guilty of torture of any kind. Though they slew and ate, they had none of the refinements of cruelty of the Romans, not even scalping enemies as did the Scythians, Visigoths, Franks, and Anglo-Saxons. In their most bloody wars they often paused in battle to give the enemy time to eat and to rest, and there is no record of their ever ringing a valley about with ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... such as now encircled him on every side. Every Indian was in war paint and feathers, some stripped to the waist, their copper-colored skins brilliant with paints, dyes and "patterns"; all carried tomahawks, scalping-knives, and bows and arrows. Every red throat gave a tremendous war-whoop as he alighted, which was repeated again and again, as for that half moment he stood silent, a slim boyish figure, clad in light grey tweeds—a singular contrast ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... a cheap lithograph in vivid colors, of an Indian—an Apache, judging from his trappings—scalping a white man. In the foreground, beside the man, was a woman, her hair disheveled, wild appeal in her eyes, gazing at the Indian, who was ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was his more frequent course—"So-and-so has dared to hint a fault in one of us; he has hesitated an offensive dislike. Let him be scarified," and forthwith the painted and feathered young braves drew forth their axes and scalping-knives, and the work of slaughter went merrily forward. Youth, modesty, honest effort, genuine merit, a manifest desire to range apart from the loud storms of literary controversy, these were no protection to the selected ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... off below the hips, with another cloth for the loins, and those that had no trousers had their legs painted. Embroidered blankets of blue or red cloth, moccasins, belts, tobacco-pouches, and cases for scalping-knives, all beaded, with glittering arms and tomahawks, hung about them everywhere, but the chief piece of finery was the war-bonnet; and a tremendous show it made. A turban of fur or scarlet cloth went round the head, adorned with tall eagles' feathers in a crown, such as we see ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... was sweetened, and in honeyed phrase McClellan was implored to save the capital. He displayed an unselfish patriotism by accepting the task without conditions for himself, but it may be doubted if he was right in leaving devoted friends under the scalping-knife, speedily applied, as might ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... and tinted up with delectable fiction. The eastern shore of the Tappan Sea was inhabited in those days by an unsophisticated race, existing in all the simplicity of nature; that is to say, they lived by hunting and fishing, and recreated themselves occasionally with a little tomahawking and scalping. Each stream that flows down from the hills into the Hudson, had its petty sachem, who ruled over a hand's-breadth of forest on either side, and had his seat of government at its mouth. The chieftain who ruled at ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... with bitter hatred, because their encroachments had at this time materially curtailed the extent of their hunting-grounds, and nothing but the numbers and known courage of the squatters prevented these savages from butchering and scalping them all. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... York Amusement Co.'s Stock. HARRY PALMER to reopen Tammany with a grand scalping scene in which the TWEED tribe of Indians will appear in aboriginal costume. NORTON, GENET, and confreres have kindly consented to perform their original roles ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... revisit the body it had abandoned? or, to suggest a far more worldly and revolting motive, were they merely holes through which to pick out the brains of the dead. A missionary, in a letter dated from Fort Pitt (Canada) in 1880, describes the mode of scalping practised by the Redskins, and says that they often take a round piece of skull as well as the scalp. May not this be a case of atavism, or the transmission of a custom from one generation to another, for the origin of ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... engage themselves for six months certain, sharing terms, travelling exes, and one clear benefit. I find front of the curtain and advertising, they provide entertainment, which is to include Ghost-Dance (with banners and red fire) religious rites, war-dance, and scalping expedition with incidentals (SMALL BITE says he knows "some useful knockabout niggers") and procession in and out of towns. Think I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... self-esteem which dwelt, like a perpetual spring, upon the mind of Mr. Stubbs. Mr. McCrab was himself an amateur actor; he had also written a tolerably successful comedy, as well as an unsuccessful tragedy; and he was, besides, a formidable critic, whose scalping strictures, in a weekly journal, were the terror of all authors and actors who were either unable or unwilling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... intended for the wail of mothers, wives, and daughters at the departure of the warriors for the fight; the response conveyed the resolution of the warriors not to be withheld, but to fight and conquer. And now were seen two hideous-looking old warriors, with tomahawks and scalping-knives, painted most ferociously. Each went half round the circle, exchanged exclamations, kept up a sort of growl all the while, and at length ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... circumstances left in our power. With some, these solicitations prevailed; but the greater part of them suffered themselves to be drawn into the war against us. They waged it in their usual cruel manner, murdering and scalping men, women, and children, indiscriminately, burning their houses, and desolating the country. They put us to vast expense, as well by the constant force we were obliged to keep up in that quarter, as by expeditions of considerable magnitude which we were ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to that Almighty Power which had given victory to the American arms went up from every fireside throughout the Northwest; and mothers pressed their children more closely to their breasts as they thought themselves to be henceforth secure from the scalping-knife of Indian barbarity, and that the savage war-whoop would no more break the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... comely plumpness of a peasant woman. He shivered at a snowstorm by Mieris; he seemed to take part in Salvator Rosa's battle-piece; he ran his fingers over a tomahawk form Illinois, and felt his own hair rise as he touched a Cherokee scalping-knife. He marveled over the rebec that he set in the hands of some lady of the land, drank in the musical notes of her ballad, and in the twilight by the gothic arch above the hearth he told his love in a gloom so deep that he could not ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... which was developed through the winter of 1915, belongs to the Canadian. His plan was as simple as that of the American Indian who rushed a white settlement and fled after he was through scalping; or the cowboys who shot up a town; or the Mexican insurgents who descend upon a village for a brief visit of killing and looting. The Canadian proposed to enter the German trenches by surprise, remain long enough ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... it, is therefore still at a loss what to be at. How is he to discover such a needle in such a bottle of hay? The trunk is spurring after him to recover it, and he seeks for some evidence of the hair in vain. At length he bethinks him of scalping the head. He does so; and the moment the operation arrives at the place of the hair, the face of the head becomes pale, the eyes turn in their sockets, and the lifeless ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Nott had been more than once shadowed by scalping-knives, and she was acquainted with Death. She went fearlessly to the couch, and found that the dressing-gown was only an enwrapping of the emaciated and lifeless body of De Ferrieres. She did not retreat or call for help, but examined him closely. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... screams of German soldiers, terror-shaken by the flash of light in their eyes, and black faces above them, and bayonets already red with blood. It was butcher's work, quick and skilful, like red-Indian scalping. Thirty Germans were killed before the Canadians went back, with only two casualties... The Germans were horrified by this sudden slaughter. They dared not come out on patrol work. Canadian scouts crawled down ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... were committed by the Indians, scalping the men alive and abusing the women. This caused the troops to stand and fight, preferring to die rather than to fall into their hands. Wherever a fight was successfully made, no matter whether commissioned ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... were armed with what was called the Deckhard rifle, remarkable for the precision and the distance of its shot. Every man carried a tomahawk and a scalping knife. There was not a bayonet in the whole force. Here and there an officer wore ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Its possession had given the French an absolute control over the Indians of the Ohio, who were accustomed to assemble at that place, for the purpose of making their destructive incursions into those colonies. Their route was marked by fire and the scalping knife; and neither age nor sex could afford exemption from their ferocity. The expulsion of the French gave the English entire possession of the country, and produced a complete revolution in the disposition of the Indians inhabiting it. Finding ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... circus, like others, we get abundance of free tickets for concerts, panoramas, and glass-blowers. Once, indeed, the great Chippewa chief, Haw-waw-many-squaw, having thrown the town into consternation by placards of himself scalping his enemies and smoking their tobacco, makes a triumphal entry into the main street at full gallop, and pitching his tent before the court-house, walks into the parsonage—war plumes, moccasins, and ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the energy of man's nature; and in the depths of this western wilderness, many hundreds of Alexanders and Caesars, who have never been heard of. At the time I emigrated to Ohio the deadly hatred of the red men toward the whites had reached its acme. The rifle, the tomahawk and the scalping knife were daily at work; and men, women and children daily fell victims to this sanguinary spirit. In this state I found things when I reached the small village opposite the mouth of Licking river, and now ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... were these: skinning alive, cutting off hands, taking out the bowels, cutting the flesh open, putting out the eyes, beheading, scalping, cutting off feet, boring the shin bones, pouring melted lead into the flesh, hanging, stabbing, and sending ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... of hair lay at her feet as brown and wavy as ever it was. Dotty looked at it with horror. The idea of scalping a man! ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... has counted a coup. He slays an enemy, then rushes up and touches him with the stick, takes his scalp; another coup is counted. The credit of victory was taken for three brave deeds: killing an enemy, scalping an enemy, or being the first to strike an enemy, alive or dead; any one of these entitles a man to rank as a warrior and to recount his exploit in public; but to be the first to touch an enemy is regarded as the bravest deed of all, as ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... warriors; in those we find pots made of earth or stone, and all the implements of war, for the warrior had an idea that after he arose from the dead he would need, in the "hunting-grounds beyond," his bow and arrow, war-hatchet, and scalping-knife. ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... inch deep—mocassins, or Indian boots, made of deer-skin, to fit the foot close, like a glove—a shirt or tunic of white calico—and a hunting shirt, or frock, made of strong blue-figured cotton or woollen cloth, with a small fringed cape, and long sleeves,—a tomahawk and scalping knife stuck in a broad leather belt. Accoutred in this manner, and mounted on a small hardy horse, called here an Indian pony, imagine a tall, athletic, brown man, with black hair and eyes—the hair generally ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... with. The wholesome sunlight burst into the room, and checked, as if by magic, the unseemly mumming of these deluded convulsionaries. Mrs. Colfodder sank down exhausted upon the sofa. Betty ceased to be Red-Jacket. Mr. Stellato gave up his scalping-knife, flopped feebly upon a chair, and again became a transparent jelly-fish of philosophy and water. It was harder to bring Miss Turligood to herself, by reason of the singular intractability of the squaw who had taken possession of the premises, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... hair cut straight around below the ears, where his mother had measured it with an inverted bowl, and freshly trimmed him for life in the fort, and perhaps for the discomfiture of savages, if he came under the scalping knife. Open-mouthed or stern-jawed, according to temperament, the young pioneers listened to stories about Tecumseh, and surmises on the enemy's march, and the likelihood of a ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... father's brothers, commanded a regiment of militia in the successful expedition of 1776, against the Cherokee Indians; who, seduced by the agents of the British government to take up the hatchet against us, had committed great havoc on our southern frontier, by murdering and scalping helpless women and children, according to their cruel and cowardly principles of warfare. The chastisement they then received closed the history of their wars, and prepared them for receiving the elements of civilization, which, zealously inculcated by the present government of the ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... strewn here and there, but there was no slovenliness or untidiness; and, ha! there were the first signs of work on the white sheets of manuscript paper. I wonder what is he writing about. It is not quite honorable, but as I am on the war path, perhaps I could get here a pretext for scalping him. Notes! ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... when they gave a real war-dance, it was dangerous for any parties, except their manager and interpreter to be on the stage, for the moment they had finished their war-dance, they began to leap and peer about behind the scenes in search of victims for their tomahawks and scalping knives! Indeed, lest in these frenzied moments they might make a dash at the orchestra or the audience, Barnum had a high rope barrier placed between them and the savages on ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... In olden times it was the custom of the vanquished to indicate submission by plucking out a handful of hair and offering it to the victim as a token of submission, but whether this grew out of the custom of scalping, or whether the latter was an outgrowth of the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... with Indian ways to think of pursuing, and, restraining the eagerness of Heyward, who would have followed Magua, and would have been undoubtedly led to the place where the scalping-knives of Magua's companions awaited him, the scout called a council ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Surely you don't think me brute enough to make fun of your not having any hair on your own head to give anybody? Surely you have a better opinion of me than that? I give you my word of honor, I never thought of you, or your head, or that infernal scalping business, when I said what I did. It was true—it ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... moment that the savages might the more readily remove her upper garments, and by a swift movement she loosened her hair so that it fell about her to her knees,—the splendid Neville hair, still famous in the Province. There was no bounty then on English scalps, and the horror of the scalping knife was not threatened them. When the savages had made their task complete, they laughed in their victims' faces and retreated up the steep and over the ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... crowed in victory. Before he had done the vanguard of the groom's friends were upon us, pell-mell, all in the finest of backwoods regalia,—new hunting shirts, trimmed with bits of color, and all armed to the teeth—scalping knife, tomahawk, and all. Nor had Chauncey Dike forgotten the scalp of the brave who leaped at him out of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a lion in the path. The Indian tribes, to whom peace was unknown, infested with their scalping parties the streams and pathways of the forest, and increased tenfold its inseparable risks. The after career of Champlain gives abundant proof that he was more than indifferent to all such chances; yet now an expedient for evading them offered itself, so consonant with his ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and one thousand scalping knives were issued not many years ago as civilizing agencies by this department. An instance given us last night by our friend from across the water, shows that the English circumlocution office is a greyhound compared with our Indian office. I remember ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... smoke exhale to the four quarters. He then told the Indians that the red pipe-stone was their flesh, and they must use the red pipe when they made peace; and that when they smoked it, the war-club and scalping-knife must not be touched. Having so spoken, the Great Spirit was received up into the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... with seventy men, intending to go the next day in search of the Indians. As he was but five miles from the scene of the massacre, he heard the firing, and immediately marched to the rescue of his friends. But he was too late. They were all, before his arrival, silent in death. As the Indians were scalping and stripping the dead, Captain Mosely, with great intrepidity, fell upon them, though he computed their numbers at not less than a thousand. Keeping his men in a body, he broke through the tumultuous mass, ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... this army continued at Fort Cumberland, and fortified themselves there, as they might easily have done, during the rest of the summer, they would have been such a check upon the French and their scalping Indians, as would have prevented many of those ravages that were committed in the ensuing winter upon the western borders of Virginia and Pennsylvania; but, instead of taking that prudent step, their commander ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... fathers, husbands, brothers, in this sunny Valley of ours, leaving homes they should never see again!—that nothing but our right arms could save these women, my own flesh and blood, from the hatchet and scalping-knife. ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... of four or five thousand journalists with drawn scalping-knives I should not like to say so. ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... at which they indulged in the most extravagant manoeuvres, gesticulations, and exulting vociferations, such as lying in ambush, and displaying their rude armored devices, and dancing, and whooping, and screaming, and brandishing their tomahawks and scalping knives. ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... introduced to public life. He had come to serve, and found that he must instruct. When he marched with the regiment of these mountaineers, who carried tomahawks and scalping-knives, the people of Williamsburg trembled for their lives. At that time, the country near Harper's Ferry was the Far West. In a very little while, these mountaineers, by mingled stratagem and system, defeated Lord Dunmore, very much as Andrew ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... of Birmingham and Sheffield manufactures into the Indian market, the weapons used in war and hunting were of an exceedingly primitive kind. Instead of rifles, scalping knives, tomahawks, and two-edged lances of polished steel, the North American brave possessed but a short bow made of bone with twisted sinews for strings, and a quiver of flint-tipped arrows, with a stone hatchet, comprised his whole stand-of-arms. As ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... mind of him of the darker skin. One of these is that he of the blanket has no rights that he of the dress coat is bound to respect. The Indian rises in practical debate to this question. His arguments are not words, but the rifle and the scalping-knife. The whiter man demurs when he receives his justice dished up to him ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... night. Well, we travelled till dark, stopped just long enough to build a big fire, and then lit out. When those Injuns came for us that night we were some other place, and they lost their grip on that little scalping-bee. They didn't trouble us any more, that's sure. And when we got to the next post there were nigh a hundred teams, six stages and two companies of soldiers, all shivering for fear of the Injuns. It rather took ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... although others might smoke cigars and cigarettes, he clung to the pipe—and in spite of the fact that, at the Philadelphia Exposition, as he had heard, a great German pipe was hung among tomahawks, scalping-knives, and other relics of barbarism. From time to time a servant refilled his pipe, while he discoursed upon various subjects—first upon the condition of America and of Germany; then upon South ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... advice but we hugely welcomed the ham. Presently our guide appeared—quite a spruce old Indian, as Indians go. I had never been able to shake off my childhood conviction that an Indian was a fearsome creature, hopelessly addicted to scalping knives and tomahawks, and I secretly felt quite horrified at the idea of two defenceless females starting out on a lonely prairie trail with an Indian for guide. Even old Peter Crow's meek appearance did not quite reassure me; but I kept my qualms to myself, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... display-case, a bust elaborately coiffured with pounds of yellow hair in which glittered rhinestone buckles. Hair of every sort and shade and length was clustered about her, as if she were the presiding genius of some barbarian scalping-cult. Seen at that hour, in the pale luster of the flashlight, this sorry plunder of lost teeth and dead hair made upon one a melancholy impression, disparaging to humanity. I had scant time to moralize on hair and teeth, however, for Flint was stopping before a door the neat brass plate ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... thing!" exclaimed Malcolm. "I thought that Indians were always scalping people instead of ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... retreat began in good order. After an advance of about a hundred yards, a firing was heard in the rear, and the troops, seized with a panic, broke and fled in confusion, each man trying to save himself. The Indians came on rapidly in pursuit and plied the tomahawk and scalping-knife without mercy. Colonel Crawford and Dr. Knight were captured, at a distance from the main body—which was soon dispersed ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... to face the unknown again. This seemed to convince the Apache that the man was dead, and without any further hesitation he slid down from the back of his horse, and advanced to the figure for the purpose of scalping him. ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... that in an age where so much weak sentiment, scarcely discernible in its wealth of verbose ornamentation, is so easily imposed upon the public under the name of poetry, that so much really good poetry should be forgotten and unread. One is often provoked to regret that the scalping knife has become blunted in the hands of the "buff and blue," and that the race of useful parodists should seem to have expired with the wits of "Fraser." As a poet Griffin is comparatively little known; and yet, to make a ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... another army. An Indian party of two was encamped on the bank. The fusty sagamore of this pair was lying wounded; his fusty squaw tended him tenderly, minding, meanwhile, a very witch-like caldron of savory fume. No skirmish, with actual war-whoop and sheen of real scalping-knife, had put this prostrate chieftain here hors du combat. He had shot himself cruelly by accident. So he informed us feebly, in a muddy, guttural patois of Canadian French. This aboriginal meeting was of great value; it helped to eliminate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... put a stop to some of the younger men scalping the eight or ten dead Indians who had been dragged into the town from where they had been killed, regarding it as barbarous. The boys would take off a small piece of scalp, and with its long black hair, tie it into ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... incantations were slipped under the barrels where they joined the stocks to keep away the witches. The writer has seen Robert Covenhoven's rifle with thirteen notches on the under side of the stock. His scalping-knife has seven notches, where this merciless scalp-hunter enumerated his red victims prior to collecting the scalp bounty at Harris' Ferry. The Covenhoven rifle was latterly owned by the old deer-hunter Miller Day, of English Centre, Lycoming County, but is now in Philadelphia, ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... Michili-makinak[3] he wrote: "At two o'clock in the afternoon, the Chipeways came to my house, about sixty in number, and headed by Minavavana, their chief. They walked in single file, each with his tomahawk in one hand and scalping knife in the other. Their bodies were naked from the waist upward, except in a few examples, where blankets were thrown loosely over the shoulders. Their faces were painted with charcoal, worked up with grease; their bodies, with white ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... discomfiture he had not earned her thanks. Through pride and faults of temper he had impaired his usefulness and marred his record. Even so there was that which rescued his work from the stigma of failure. He had guarded his people from the tomahawk and the scalping-knife. With prescient eye he had foreseen the imperial greatness of the West. Whatever his shortcomings, they had not been those of meanness ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... the scalping-knife had traced its mark around the head of Gabriel the missionary, and when only the dexterous turn and tug would have removed the trophy, a sudden apparition had terrified the superstitious savages. It was a woman of thirty, whose brown tresses formed a rich frame around a royal ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... wild animals. They recognize some of the principles of natural law and observe them even with their enemies. They scalp usually only the dead,—then they cut it off with a sharp weapon and keep it as a sign of victory. Sometimes the victim comes to life,—some such are in Pennsylvania, for scalping is not necessarily mortal. They fight on foot, for they have no horses. The savages living in western Pennsylvania were called by the French Iroquois. The English call them the Five Nations or the Confederate Indians,—they are united and were so long before the English settled. The Mohawks ...
— Achenwall's Observations on North America • Gottfried Achenwall
... seemed to know the cause or consequence, but everybody moved; so I moved, and bobbing, fumbling, groping through Egyptian darkness, stumbling over the beams, crawling under the boilers, creeping through the steam-pipes, scalping ourselves against the funnels, we finally came out gasping into the blessed daylight. "Here you are!" exclaimed cheerily the voice of Halicarnassus, as I went winking and blinking in the unaccustomed light. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... the Germans in the settlement. I shook my head. Then she pulled out a big steel hunting knife, such as the whites traded to the Indians so they would have no trouble in scalping us neatly, and walked to the cradle. She took that knife loosely between her thumb and second finger and holding it directly above my baby's face, she swung it lightly back and forth ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... implements and weapons were of stone, wood, bone, horn, and antler. According to Carver, the "Nadowessie" were skillful bowmen, using also the "casse-tete"(31) or warclub, and a flint scalping-knife. Catlin was impressed with the shortness of the bows used by the prairie tribes, though among the southwestern tribes they were longer. Many of the Siouan Indians used the lance, javelin, or spear. The domestic utensils were scant ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... ensued; when, amidst the intermingling shouts and cries of murder and vengeance, that now burst from both scouts and Indians, the fiend-like perpetrator of the foul deed, who had been seen to leap forward towards his fallen victim with his scalping-knife, bounded back into the road, and, there holding up and shaking the gory trophy at his rival, immediately plunged into the forest and disappeared. The next moment a detachment of British cavalry, who had been sent out to intercept the scouts, came thundering down the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... articles, useful or ornamental, which were thought indispensable to a higher civilization. "Spots in Tennessee, in Ohio, and Kentucky," comments an English traveler, "that within the lifetime of even young men, witnessed only the arrow and the scalping knife, now present the traveler with articles of elegance and modes of luxury which might rival the displays of London and Paris." Most of this stock was transported over the mountains from Philadelphia ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... shot, and raised his tomahawk to strike her. She instantly sprang aside, and the blow intended for her head, fell upon her shoulders. She thereupon seized him around his neck, and, while exerting all her efforts to get possession of his scalping knife, was seized by another Indian and dragged forcibly from his grasp. The latter bore her, struggling and resisting, toward the lake. Notwithstanding, however, the rapidity with which she was hurried along, she recognized, as she passed, the form of the unfortunate ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... in England as well as the colonies of this decisive victory over a famous French general and his troops, as the year otherwise was disastrous to the English, and "the French, with the assistance of their Indian allies, continued their murders, scalping, capturing, and laying waste the western frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania during ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... 220.).—W.B.D. confounds beheading with scalping. In the American war many British soldiers, it was said, walked about without their scalps, but not without ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... contemplation of prehistoric ruins soften regret for one baby's smile. Man's dogma has proved vain as his philosophy. Age after age has composed some vision of continued life, and sought to allay its fear or sorrow with suitable imaginations. Mummies of death outlive their granite; vermilion and the scalping-knife lie ready for the happy hunting grounds; beside the royal carcass two score of concubines and warriors are buried quick; Walhalla rings with clashing swords whose wounds close up again at sunset; heroes tread the fields of shadowy asphodel, and on Elysian ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... in less than an hour, in setting Joe once more at liberty, at the price of his queue, which was totally lost, and of the exposure of his raw and bleeding occiput. The operation was, indeed, of a mongrel description—somewhat between a complete tonsure and an imperfect scalping, to both of which denominations it certainly presented claims. However, it is an ill wind that blows nobody good! Bob Casey got the making of a skull-piece for Joe, and my brother French had the pleasure of paying for it, as gentlemen in those days honored any order given by ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... years later another outbreak occurred, and for months burning and scalping went on along the border, till the Indians were beaten by the men under ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... senatorial group. His punishment was indeed merciless. Impartial history must, however, under all the circumstances of the case, I think, adjudge it just. In that memorable struggle the Massachusetts chieftain used upon his foes not only his tomakawk, but also his scalping knife. No quarter he had received from the slave power, and none now he gave ...
— Charles Sumner Centenary - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 14 • Archibald H. Grimke
... she shrank. She, however, made preparation for the proposed flight by settling in her mind which of her two dolls she would take. A wooden creature with easy going knees and moveable hair seemed to be more fit for hard service and any indiscriminate scalping that might turn up hereafter. At supper, she timidly asked a question of Bridget. "Did ye ever hear the loikes uv that, Ma'am," said the Irish handmaid with affectionate pride, "Shure the darlint's head is filled noight and day with ancient ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... much like the other's, already described, but of coarser materials—the frock being of linsey-woolsey; the breeches and leggings of deerskin; and the moccasins, in place of boots of the same material. Around his waist passed a belt; wherein, instead of pistols, were confined a tomahawk and scalping knife—two weapons which were considered as indispensable to the regular white hunter of that day as to the ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... a pass through the mountains, called Hell-Gate by the Flatheads, because through it rode the scalping parties of the Eastern tribes. Beyond is the sunny valley of the Bitter Root. It has long been settled by hardy trappers and hunters, and by comfortable farmers with well-stored barns and granaries and fenced fields. There is a charm about ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... up the fire, nor sweep the room, nor make the beds,—but to sleep on fresh boughs in a wigwam, with the leaves still on the branches that made the roof! And then to see the deer brought in by the red hunter, and the blood streaming from the arrow-dart! Ah! and the fight too! and the scalping! and, perhaps, a woman might creep into the battle, and steal the wounded enemy away of her tribe and scalp him, and be praised for it! O Seppy, how I hate the thought of the dull life women lead! A white woman's life is so dull! Thank Heaven, I'm done with it! If I'm ever to live again, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... every important event by which they happen to distinguish themselves intitles them to claim another name which is generally scelected by themselves and confirmed by the nation. those distinguishing acts are the killing and scalping an enemy, the killing a white bear, leading a party to war who happen to be successfull either in destroying their enemies or robing them of their horses, or individually stealing the horses of an enemy. these are considered acts of equal heroism ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... final agreement with respect to the limits of the two provinces had been concluded, the Indians in alliance with Spain continued to harass the British settlements. Scalping parties of the Yamasees frequently penetrated into Carolina; killed white men, and carried off every negro they could find. Though the owners of slaves had been allowed from the Spanish government a compensation in money for their losses, yet few of them ever received it. At length ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... men come in from a scouting expedition against the Indians, 300 miles off. They told me they were usually in the habit of scalping an Indian when they caught him, and that they never spared one, as they were such an untamable and ferocious race. Another habit which they have learned from the Indians is, to squat on their heels in a most peculiar manner. It has an absurd and extraordinary effect to see a quantity ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... morning, when the first thing gave us warning Was the booming of the cannon from the river and the shore: "Child," says grandma, "what's the matter, what is all this noise and clatter? Have those scalping Indian devils come to murder us once more?" Poor old soul! my sides were shaking in the midst of all my quaking To hear her talk of Indians when the guns began to roar: She had seen the burning village, and the slaughter ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... the burning Colorado desert are whitening with the bones of many who escaped Comanche and Apache scalping knives, only ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... villainously cheated by one of yours in the sale of some rum, I never cared to have anything to do with them afterwards. Yet I took up the hatchet for them with the rest of my tribe in the late war against France, and was killed while I was out upon a scalping party. But I died very well satisfied, for my brethren were victorious, and before I was shot I had gloriously scalped seven men and five women and children. In a former war I had performed still greater exploits. My name is the Bloody Bear; it was given me ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... essentials of civilization, both material and moral. Despite a minimum of race intermixture, the men of the Cumberland and Kentucky settlements became assimilated to the life of the red man; they borrowed his scalping knife and tomahawk, adopted his method of ambush and extermination in war; like him they lived in great part by the chase, dressed in furs and buckskin, and wore the noiseless moccasin. Here the mere fact of geographical location on a remote frontier, and of almost complete ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple |
