"Tomahawk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... half his face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands. Put the scalp-knife carefully in his belt—then lying down, resting moment, Rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence his extended hand to each and all, Sank faintly low to the floor (tightly grasping the tomahawk handle,) Fix'd his look on ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... a knife or a tomahawk of the entire equipment which he himself did not examine—not a rifle which he himself did not personally test. He went over the boxes and bales which had been gathered here, and saw to their arrangement in the transport-wagons. He did all ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... between the eighteenth and the twentieth century. It is as easy for us to pass a happy evening with him as it was for Thomas Campbell, figuring to himself a realisation of Cowley's dreams and of Rousseau's poetic seclusion; "till at last," in Southey's words, "comes an ill-looking Indian with a tomahawk, and scalps me—a most melancholy proof that society is very bad." It is the freshness, the youthfulness, of these Letters, after their century and more of dust-gathering, that is least likely to escape us. And this "Farmer in ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... Kentucky. He settled in the "dark and bloody ground," and for years encountered all the trials then incident to border life. The earliest impressions of young Zachary were the sudden foray of the savage foe, the piercing warwhoop, the answering cry of defiance, the gleam of the tomahawk, the crack of the rifle, the homestead saved by his father's daring, the neighboring cottage wrapped in flames, or its hearth-stone red with blood. Such scenes bound his young nerves with iron, and fired his fresh soul with martial ardor; working upon his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the calm of a June morning, watching the result; while the savage gave the yell that has become historical for its appalling influence, leaped through the bushes, and came bounding across the open ground, flourishing a tomahawk. Still Deerslayer moved not, but stood with his unloaded rifle fallen against his shoulders, while, with a hunter's habits, his hands were mechanically feeling for the powder-horn and charger. When about forty feet ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... 'Look at me, admire me, see what a fine big buffaler I am!' An' I've a lot uv respeck fur the Injun, too. He's an Injun an' he don't say he ain't. He don't come sneakin' along claimin' that he's an old friend uv the family, he jest up an' lets drive his tomahawk at your head, ef he gits the chance, an' makes no bones 'bout it. I'd a heap ruther be killed by a good honest Injun who wuz pantin' fur my blood an' didn't pretend that he wuzn't pantin', than be done to death down here, in some cur'us, unbeknown, ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lower mental level than the Arab who respects the salt, or the Brahmin who preserves the caste. And in this quarrel we have a right to come with scimitars as well as sabres, with bows as well as rifles, with assegai and tomahawk and boomerang, because there is in all these at least a seed of civilization that these intellectual anarchists would kill. And if they should find us in our last stand girt with such strange swords and following unfamiliar ensigns and ask us for what we fight in ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Ferguson ought to have been more careful. Why, the very chief of that village at Numa Numa—the man who cut him down with a tomahawk—had killed two other white men. Ferguson knew that, and yet would allow him to come aboard time after time with hundreds of his people, and gave him and them the run of his ship. I knew the fellow well. He told me to my face, ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... for the first time they were forced to alter their course; but the subordinate spurs on either side ending in rocky precipices, they had to return and again confront the scrub. In these circumstances, they made up their minds to rely upon axe and tomahawk to win a way, and so next morning fell to work cutting a passage for the horses. The ascent was also now becoming steep and rough, and on this day some of the horses fell while struggling up ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... the first time and sees its sights alone or in company with others as little experienced as himself. I shall visit Paris again someday, and then let the guides beware! I shall go in my war paint—I shall carry my tomahawk along. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the sacrifice of their wings. The Dinewan mother showed the example by persuading her mate to cut off hers with a combo or stone tomahawk, and then she did the same to his. As soon as the operations were over, the Dinewan mother lost no time in letting Goomblegubbon know what they had done. She ran swiftly down to the plain on which she had left Goomblegubbon, and, finding her still squatting there, she said: "See, ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... shells and marine productions, and having a somewhat saline taste: parts of it exactly resembled the formation that I had found up to the north, among the fragments of table-land; the chalk was soft and friable at the surface, and easily cut out with a tomahawk, it was traversed horizontally by strata of flint, ranging in depth from six to eighteen inches, and having varying thicknesses of chalk between the several strata. The chalk had worn away from beneath the harder rock above, leaving the latter most frightfully overhanging and threatening ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... country. "A treaty of peace and friendship was then made with the Nahdoways residing on the south side of Lake Ontario, and both nations solemnly covenanted, by going through the usual forms of burying the tomahawk, smoking the pipe of peace, and locking their hands and arms together, agreeing in future to call each other Brothers. Thus ended ...
— The Country of the Neutrals - (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot • James H. Coyne
... professional remarks, informed her that the Bannisters were to go with him to Barport. When Miss Panney heard this she sprang from her chair with the air of an Indian of the Wild West bounding with uplifted tomahawk upon a defenceless foe. The doctor involuntarily pushed back his chair, but before he could make up his mind whether he ought to be frightened or amused, Miss Panney sat down as promptly as she had risen, and a grim smile appeared ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... dancing lights that flickered before him, together with the hum that filled his ears, told him that for a moment he had succeeded. But he was soon recalled to a sense of his situation by the zip of a tomahawk within a few inches of his head. Opening his eyes, he soon comprehended the state of things. The savages were amusing themselves by ascertaining who could send his tomahawk nearest the body of their captive without ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... vain. The next moment he fell beneath the tomahawk of the Boy Chief, and within the next quarter of an hour the United States army was dispersed. Thus ended ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... would have fallen of itself and have done injury to the people; it now hung over the side, and promised to serve as a raft in case of necessity. The foremast was then cut away, and the mizenmast was doomed to follow—but the axe and tomahawk, which had been carried forward, were lost, or washed away. The ship by this time had fallen upon her beam ends, and the sea was making breaches over her, so that every individual had enough to do to keep himself from being ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... to the Micmacs, and after 1753 vicar-general of Acadia. He was a fiery and enterprising zealot, inclined by temperament to methods of violence, detesting the English, and restrained neither by pity nor scruple from using threats of damnation and the Micmac tomahawk to frighten the Acadians into doing his bidding. The worst charge against him, that of exciting the Indians of his mission to murder Captain Howe, an English officer, has not been proved; but it would not have ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... belts and other tokens brought by the envoys from the lakes, who represented nine distinct tribes or bands from the region of Michillimackinac. By these tokens, the nine tribes declared that they came to learn wisdom of the Iroquois and the English; to wash off the war-paint, throw down the tomahawk, smoke the pipe of peace, and unite with them as one body. "Onontio is drunk," such was the interpretation of the fourth wampum belt; "but we, the tribes of Michillimackinac, wash our hands of ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... cause set the interior aflame. It was the members of the western vanguard, like Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and George Rogers Clark, who first understood the value of the far-away country under the guns of the English forts, where the Red Men still wielded the tomahawk and the scalping knife. It was they who gave the East no rest until their vision was seen by the leaders on the seaboard who directed the course of national policy. It was one of their number, a seasoned Indian fighter, George Rogers Clark, who with aid from Virginia seized Kaskaskia and Vincennes ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... Runner done for him he sure did a good job," Cousin muttered. "He sure did make tomahawk ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... "Tomahawk, who spoke but little, formulated a beginning of reassurance by these words: 'Well, so much the worse, by Jove: Union is Strength, however.' At that moment a scullion brought in the fried gudgeons, but they did not fall to on them like ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of work to be done, the clearing away of the wreck being our first task. Simpson and I accordingly armed ourselves with a tomahawk each, and went forward to make a commencement. Simpson began at the jibboom-end, cutting away the stays attached thereto, and working his way in, while I made an attack upon the shrouds and backstays. Our intention was to cut away everything in the first instance, in ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... hostile tribes, and could tell exciting stories of scalping parties, and the fierce conflict for their lives when beleaguered by some relentless foes. Some of them bore on face or scalp the marks of the wounds received in close tomahawk encounter, and, for the gift of a pocketknife or gaudy handkerchief from our eager boys, rehearsed with all due enlargement the story of the fierce encounter with superior numbers of their bitterest enemies, how they had so gloriously triumphed, ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... have won the victory of "a superman." In that he has carried murder, arson, lying, rapine, lust up to the nth power, let us concede his claim. Not otherwise two hundred years ago the Indian, with his scalping knife, his war-whoop and his tomahawk, was "a superman" in terms of savagery. Not otherwise the Spaniards under Bloody Alva were "supermen" in terms of rack, ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... is growing distinctly out of breath. In another moment Tommy will have her. By this time he has fully worked himself into the belief that he is a Red Indian, and she his lawful prey, and is prepared to make a tomahawk of his fork, and having felled her, to scalp her somehow, when Providence shows her a corner round a rhododendron bush that may save her for the moment. She makes for it, gains it, turns it, dashes round it, and all but precipitates herself into the arms of a young man who ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... swamp at me. At least a dozen were sticking into me. I started to run, but tripped over one that was fast in my calf, and went down. The woolly-heads made a run for me, each with a long-handled, fantail tomahawk with which to hack off my head. They were so eager for the prize that they got in one another's way. In the confusion, I avoided several hacks by throwing myself right and left ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... speak of the state of poor Whitewing's feelings? No sound escaped his compressed lips, but a terrible light seemed to gleam from his dark eyes, as, clasping his mother convulsively to his breast with his left arm, he grasped his tomahawk, and urged his horse to its utmost speed. Little Tim was at his side in a moment, with the long dagger flashing in his right hand, while Bald Eagle and his dusky ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... ages long since passed away, the war-whoop resounded through the forest. The shriek of mothers and maidens pierced the skies as they fell cleft by the tomahawk; and all the horrid clangor of war, with "its terror, conflagration, tears, and blood," imbittered ten thousand fold the ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... blankets were good. I know that the blankets of the Americans are thin and cold. (I did not think it worth while to say that they were all made in England.) We have buried the hatchet now; but should the tomahawk be raised again between the Americans and the English, you must not ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... furrow. At Canoe Meadow, in the Berkshire Mountains, I have found Indian arrowheads. So everywhere Indian arrowheads. Whether a hundred or a thousand years old, who knows? who cares? There is no history to the red race,—there is hardly an individual in it;—a few instincts on legs and holding a tomahawk,—there is the Indian of all time. The story of one red ant is the story of all red ants. So, the poet, in trying to wing his way back through the life that has kindled, flitted, and faded along our watercourses and on our southern hillsides for unknown ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... over in different colours. I was about to cry out for help, hoping that my father might have returned to the camp and would hear me, when the third Indian, who had possession of my gun, raising his tomahawk, threatened to cut me down if I made any noise. Without more ado they dragged me along, but finding that I no longer resisted, did not offer me any ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... accounts of the Indians, particularly the accounts of our brave Tecumseh, as it is claimed that he was killed by a soldier named Johnson, upon whom they conferred the honor of having disposed of the dreaded Tecumseh. Even pictured out as being coming up with his tomahawk to strike a man who was on horseback, but being instantly shot dead with the pistol. Now I have repeatedly heard our oldest Indians, both male and female, who were present at the defeat of the British and Indians, all tell a unanimous story, saying that they came to a clearing ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... been driven in the direction we were travelling. We fortunately escaped molestation, but saw in several places human bones, probably the relics of a former combat between the United States troops, or travellers like ourselves, and Indians or negroes. One skull I picked up had been split with a tomahawk, besides having a bullet-hole in it about the region of the left ear. Our situation was one of great peril, but I had made up my mind to proceed at all hazards, despite the opposition shown by two or three of the settlers composing my escort, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... silently in their ambush until two Chippewas came unsuspectedly along the path. When opposite, the Sioux boys fired and the Chippewa in the lead fell dead. The one in the rear fled with his gun over his shoulder and was pursued instantly by young Little Crow with tomahawk in hand. The Chippewa discharged his gun backward as he ran and killed the young man as he was about to bury his tomahawk in the Chippewa's brain. Little Crow's comrade took the scalp of the dead Chippewa, returned to Kaposia, reported to Little Crow the death ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... sallied forth to the harvest, men as they went to mill, the shepherd's boy among the sheep, were shot down by skulking foes, whose approach was invisible. Who can tell the heavy hours of woman? The mother, if left alone in the house, feared the tomahawk for herself and children; on the sudden attack, the husband would fly with one child, the wife with another, and, perhaps, one only escape; the village cavalcade, making its way to meeting on Sunday in files on horseback, the farmer holding the bridle in one hand and a child in the other, his wife ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... at the first volley and scalped. An Indian hit me on the head with his tomahawk; but I have a good thick skull, and the blow ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... was on foot. In his left hand he carried a cocked revolver, in his right an old-time tomahawk, from which he had refused to be parted when placed on the ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... sank upon the ground, still uttering curses, and they left his bones to whiten in the sun, but his curse rested upon that settlement. The tomahawk and scalping knife were busy among them; the winds tore up the trees, and hurled them at their dwellings; their crops were blasted; their cattle died, and sickness came upon their strongest men. At last the remnant of them departed from the fatal ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... the percession o' harnts. 'Twar my niece, Mill'cent—brother's darter—by name, Mill'cent Roxby. Waal, Mill'cent an' a lot o' young fools o' her age—little over fryin' size—they 'tended camp-meetin' down hyar on Tomahawk Creek—'tain't so long ago—along with the old folks. An' 'bout twenty went huddled up tergether in a road-wagin. An', lo! the wagin it bruk down on the way home, an' what with proppin' it up on a crotch, they made out ter reach the cross-roads over yander at the Notch, an' thar the sober old folks ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... were cunning rather than brave. It was seldom that an Indian could be induced to meet a foe in an open hand-to-hand fight. But he would track him for years, hoping to take him unawares and to brain him with the tomahawk, or pierce his ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... aghast at the consequences, Mooty—doctor alike of laws, of science, and of medicine, and a man of imperative mood—sharpened his tomahawk at the Chinaman's grindstone, theatrically testing its edge with distorted thumb. Tom Goat disappeared as silently as last night's dew, for Mooty does not hesitate to summarily administer his own judgment when his professions are scorned, his ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... come to America, where he would arrive in October. A few days after the letter came, she went out in a low carriage to visit her work-people, and was blessing the food for their luncheon, when she fell dead, struck by an Indian tomahawk, as did all the rest save one. They were buried where the massacre took place, and a stone was erected, which (possibly) still remains. The lady's family had a grant from Sir Ferdinando Gorges of the territory thereabout, and her brother had likewise come over and settled in the vicinity. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... depended on a word from her, and her lips seemed to quiver on the verge of pronouncing it. Like an American Indian, she watched every muscle of the face of her enemy, tied, as it were, to the stake, while she brandished her tomahawk gracefully, enjoying a revenge that was still innocent, and torturing like a mistress who ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... Corny were left alone together, a dialogue—a sort of single combat, without any object but to try each other's powers and temper—ensued between them; in which the one on the offensive came on with a tomahawk, and the other stood on the defensive parrying with a polished blade of Damascus; and sometimes, when the adversary was off his guard, making a sly cut at an ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... increased during the year 1650, by their fugitive brethren of the West, until they counted above 600 souls. Even under the guns of the picket Fort of Orleans, which had changed its name to Ile St. Marie, in remembrance of their former residency, the tomahawk and scalping-knife reached them; on the 20th May, 1656, eighty-six of their number were carried away captives, and six killed, by the ferocious Iroquois; and on the 4th June, 1656, again they had to fly before their merciless tormentors. The big guns of Fort St. Louis, which ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Indians, painted and horned for war, skulked along as allies in the dim morning twilight. He thought of sleeping children roused by tomahawk and scalping-knife in case the surprised fort did not immediately surrender. Even then, how were a few hundred white men to restrain nearly a ...
— Marianson - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... a war-eagle's feather, fixed by a fillet, on his head, and a profusion of copper and brass medals and trinkets round his neck. His face was not painted, with the exception of two black circles round his eyes. His head was shaved, and one long scalp-lock hung behind. He had a tomahawk and a knife in his belt, and a rifle upon his arm. Martin advanced to the Indian and looked earnestly ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... customary "law" concerning settlement rights operated on the frontier, particularly among the Scotch-Irish.[26] This "law" recognized three settlement rights: "corn right," which established claims to 100 acres for each acre of grain planted; "tomahawk right," which marked off the area claimed by deadening trees at the boundaries of the claim; and, "cabin right," which confirmed the claim by the construction of a cabin upon the premises. If the decisions of the regular courts are at all indicative, ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... Indian and other—'cacique' ('cassique', in Ralegh's Guiana), 'canoo', 'chocolate', 'cocoa'{11}, 'condor', 'hamoc' ('hamaca' in Ralegh), 'jalap', 'lama', 'maize' (Haytian), 'pampas', 'pemmican', 'potato' ('batata' in our earlier voyagers), 'raccoon', 'sachem', 'squaw', 'tobacco', 'tomahawk', 'tomata' (Mexican), 'wigwam'. If 'hurricane' is a word which Europe originally obtained from the Caribbean islanders{12}, it should of course be included in this list{13}. A certain number of words also we have received, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... kept a small tavern in the lower part of the town; a dirty frame tenement almost entirely hidden by an immense sign hanging outside, having the figure, heroic size of an Iroquois in full evening dress, feathers, bare legs and tomahawk. ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... oilskins many sizes too big for him, with ferocious mustaches curling up to his eyes. His belt contained a perfect armory of weapons; item, a pistol that had lost its barrel; item, three wooden daggers, assorted sizes; item, one tomahawk, home-made. The mate was scarcely less terrifying, for though a blue petticoat showed beneath his oilskin jacket, and curls flowed from under his sou'wester, he made up for it by a mass of oakum beard and whisker that was truly awe-inspiring. Also, he had ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... attired in savage finery of paint and feathers; no sculptor's ideal form, or novelist's heroic countenance; but a mild-looking person, in an old shooting jacket and red flannel shirt, with a straw hat shading his pale coppery complexion. He wield a tomahawk or march on a war trail! Never. And where was the grim taciturnity of his forefathers? He answered when spoken to, not in Mohawk, or Cherokee, or Delaware, but in nasal Yankeefied English; ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... the tree, ready to dart upon the hunter; but the hunter's eyes were not closed, and the carcajou quivered on the point of my spear. I heard the wolf howl as he looked at the moon, and the beams that feel upon his upturned face shewed my tomahawk the spot it was to enter. I marked where the panther had crouched, and, before he could spring, my arrow went into his heart. Behold the spoil ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... heard of on Malaita was that of an old man. A bush chief had died a natural death. Now the bushmen don't believe in natural deaths. No one was ever known to die a natural death. The only way to die is by bullet, tomahawk, or spear thrust. When a man dies in any other way, it is a clear case of having been charmed to death. When the bush chief died naturally, his tribe placed the guilt on a certain family. Since it did not matter which one of the family was killed, they selected this old ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... prevailed over passion, and the enemies came to a resolution which, if taken from the very beginning, would have saved them both a great deal of treasure and many crimes. Instead of continuing to swing the tomahawk, they now smoked the calumet, and amalgamated in 1821, under the name of "Hudson's Bay Company," and under the wing ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving with his walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death blow had been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foothold of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... at, some five or seven miles off. On their arrival on the water they were met by a number of natives who kindly got them water and fish to supply their wants, and after spelling a time got some of them as guides to the camp on Pando, where they were rewarded by presents of a tomahawk and blanket, etc. Started Bell out to the cart with the bullocks and blackfellows, Sambo and Jack, leading a packhorse with supplies of ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... of a hunting ferret his own eyes swept quickly about the room. At the four windows there were long curtain cords. On the walls, hung there as trophies, were a number of weapons. On one end of Kedsty's desk, used as a paperweight, was a stone tomahawk. Still nearer to the dead man's hands, unhidden by papers, was a boot-lace. Under his limp right hand was the automatic. With these possible instruments of death close at hand, ready to be snatched up without trouble or waste of time, why ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... silver. He then "called" me. We showed down; the money was mine; and then you should have seen the fun. The buck that had been giving my hand away started to run. The old chief jumped up, grabbed his tomahawk, and lit out after him. I jerked off my coat, dumped all the silver into it, jumped into my buggy, and lost no time in getting out of that neck of the woods. As I was going at a 2:40 gait, I looked back and saw the ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... diabolical fury. In the Indian village of Sillery, while a missionary was celebrating mass in the Catholic Church, and none but old men, women, and children were present, a terrible and foul massacre occurred. The Iroquois rushed into the chapel with tomahawk and scalping knife, murdering all the congregation, nor stayed their hands until upwards of four hundred families, being every soul in the village, were slain. About this time our friends south of the line 45 deg., first began to dream ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... that defied laughter. As for the Anarchist herself, she might easily have posed as a statue of vengeance. Her eyebrows were drawn into a ferocious scowl. She walked down the stairs with the air of an Indian chief about to tomahawk a victim. Her white silk gown, which was well cut and in keeping with the occasion, contrasted oddly with her threatening demeanor, which was enhanced by a feather hair ornament that stood up belligerently at ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... hearts grew weak as women at his name: They dared no war-path since my Mohawk came With 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 thought ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... gaily- coloured articles, such as the blue tail-feathers of parrakeets, bleached bones and shells, which it sticks between the twigs or arranges at the entrance. Mr. Gould found in one bower a neatly-worked stone tomahawk and a slip of blue cotton, evidently procured from a native encampment. These objects are continually re-arranged, and carried about by the birds whilst at play. The bower of the Spotted bower-bird "is beautifully lined with tall grasses, so disposed that the heads nearly meet, and the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... preventing his savage followers from massacring the prisoners. From that time to the close of the war in 1782, Joseph Brant never ceased his exertions in the royal cause. From east to west, wherever bullets were thickest, his glittering tomahawk might be seen in the van, while his terrific war-whoop resounded above the din of strife. In those stirring times it is not easy to follow his individual career very closely; but one episode in it has been so often and so grossly misrepresented ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the confined space, a fall, and then, in the half darkness, he saw two powerful figures writhing to and fro. One was Henry and the other a mighty Shawnee warrior, naked to the waist, and striving to use a tomahawk that he held in a hand whose wrist was clenched in the iron grasp of his foe. Lying almost at their feet was the body of ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Indian the Onondagas buried a kettle of provisions, a pair of moccasins, a piece of deer skin and sinews of the deer to sew patches on the moccasins, which it was supposed the deceased would wear out on his journey. They also furnished him with a bow and arrows, a tomahawk and knife, to procure game with to live on while pursuing his way to the land of spirits, the blissful regions of Ha wah ne u.20 Several Indian nations, instead of burying the food, suspended it above the grave, and renewed it from time to time. Some writers have explained this ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... his burdens. Then Bassett's own trouble had come upon him. He looked at the cruelly healed stumps of the first and second fingers of his left hand, then rubbed them softly into the indentation in the back of his skull. Quick as had been the flash of the long handled tomahawk, he had been quick enough to duck away his head and partially to deflect the stroke with his up-flung hand. Two fingers and a hasty scalp-wound had been the price he paid for his life. With one barrel of his ten- gauge shot-gun he had blown the life ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... a meerschaum myself, for I DO NOT, though I have owned a calumet since my childhood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mohawk species) my grandsire won, together with a tomahawk and beaded knife-sheath; paying for the lot with a bullet-mark on his right check. On the maternal side I inherit the loveliest silver-mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw. It is a little box-wood Triton, carved with charming liveliness and truth; I have often compared it to a figure in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... races of men. It is exactly the reverse of that of the American Indian. The Indian will murder any man who strikes him with a switch, a cowhide, or a whip, twenty years afterward, if he gets an opportunity; but readily forgets blows, however severe, inflicted on him with the fist, a cudgel, or a tomahawk. A remarkable ethnological peculiarity of the prognathous race is, that any deserved punishment, inflicted on them with a switch, cowhide, or whip, puts them into good humor with themselves and the executioner of the punishment, provided he manifest satisfaction by regarding ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... returned Miss Montgomerie, "were I certain that the columns to which you allude would not be repulsed whenever they may venture upon that assault, and were I as certain of perishing beneath the tomahawk and scalping knife of these savages"—and she looked fearlessly towards them—"still would my determination remain ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... 1783, and the consequent cessation of Indian hostilities and barbarities, returned to their friends those prisoners, who had escaped the tomahawk, the gauntlet, and the savage fire, after their having spent many years in captivity, and ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... one the other afternoon when it looked as though there was going to be a frost, to take her ivies down and carry them in the house. We don't care how handsome a woman is naturally, you put a towel around her head and put her up on a step ladder about seven feet high, with a tomahawk in her left hand, trying to draw a big nail out of a post on a veranda, and she looks like thunder. This woman did. Her husband tried to get her to let him do the work, but she said a man never knew how to do anything, anyway. So he sat down on the ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... tomahawk, ax, is as follows: Cross the arms and slide the edge of the right hand, held vertically, down over the left arm. (Wied.) This is still employed, at least for a small hatchet, or "dress tomahawk," and would be unintelligible without special knowledge. The essential point is laying the extended right hand in the bend of the left elbow. The sliding down over the left arm is an almost unavoidable but quite unnecessary accompaniment to the sign, which indicates the way in which the hatchet ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... he indicated the precise spot, at a considerable distance from the camp, where he wished it to be. As soon as they clearly understood what his desires were, they went off into the bush and, armed with a small tomahawk lent them by Leslie, proceeded to cut down some forty or fifty young and pliant saplings, the butt-ends of which they sharpened to a point, and then thrust vertically, into the ground in a circle some twelve feet in diameter. They then brought ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... warfare. Scattered in graceful disorder about the room were relics procured by an ancestor who had been to Japan; there was a Spanish bowl gathered by Lord Dudley Durwent; there was an Italian tapestry, an Indian tomahawk, a Chinese sword that had beheaded real Chinamen, all procured by Lord Dingwall Durwent in the eighteenth century. There was a massive Louis Seize table and a frail Louis Quinze chair; a slice of Chippendale here, and a bit of Sheraton there; portraits of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... feelings towards its possessor, and he cannot complain if the severe tests which he applied to others are used on his own conduct. A cynical critic cannot expect his victims to be profoundly attached to him, or ready to be lenient to his failings. If he chooses to fight with a tomahawk, he will be scalped some day, and the bystanders will not lament profusely. But a more righteous tribunal than that of his victims condemns him. For in God's eyes the man who covers not his neighbour's faults with the mantle ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... loveliness, and bowed in summer's rosy bloom, the father of Mayall's intended wife saw Mayall coming with hurried steps towards his house, dressed in a green hunting-frock and cap with a green plume shading his forehead, a double-barreled carbine in his hand, with a tomahawk and hunting-knife sheathed in his belt, which was the favorite dress of a hunter when rambling through the green, overgrown forests of the Valley of the Mohawk, to prevent being noticed by wild game ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... were to be a Red Indian Lord Chief Justice and a Red Indian Commander-in-Chief, if the Red Indian Party in Congress, containing first-rate orators and fashionable novelists, could have turned Presidents in and out; if half the best troops of the country were trained with the tomahawk and half the best journalism of the capital written in picture-writing, if later, by general consent, the Chief known as Pine in the Twilight, was the best living poet, or the Chief Thin Red Fox, the ablest living dramatist. If that were ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... my men!" the captain cries, "'tis just the time to board," Upon her decks we jump'd amain, with tomahawk and sword; The conflict now was sharp and fierce, for clemency had fled, And streams of gore mark'd every blow—the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... been wrecked on the sand bar off the coast during a terrible storm long ago; he would show us where the bathing was pleasant and safe; he would tell us of the best place for fishing, and probably show us the high bluff a little back from the beach from which the Indian maiden leaped to escape the tomahawk of her enraged lover, and then he would be almost sure to tell us of the secluded spot where it was said Captain Kidd and his pirates once buried a lot ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... broke in Joyce, "Robby Moore gave an outlandish war-whoop right in my ear, that nearly deafened me, and grabbed me by my hair, yelling he was going to tomahawk me. And I saw Eugenia go sailing up the road as fast as her horse could carry her, with Keith after her, swinging on to those two long black braids of hers. You see Lloyd had the advantage of us with her short hair. They couldn't scalp her so easily; ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hospitably stood by the party as it passed with a bucket of milk, of which he gave a drink to each of the men. Bultje put us on the right road to the next nearest water-holes (Mr. Gilmore's station), and having rendered me the service he promised, I gave him the tomahawk, pipe, and two figs of tobacco promised him, and also took a sketch of his singularly Socratic face. This native got a bad name from various stockmen, as having been implicated in the murder of Mr. Cunningham. Nothing could be more unfounded; and it must indeed require ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... most miscellaneous creature imaginable,—neither man, woman, nor child. Bob was a little afraid to have these human ruins stored under the house, lest he might some night see a ghost with war-paint and tomahawk; but Jack, as became a boy of scientific tastes, pooh-poohed all superstitions or sentimental considerations in the matter. He told Bob that, if he should ever see the ghost which that framework belonged to, it would be the ghost of the whole Shawnee tribe, for there were nearly as many ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... or positive—there is not one of those characteristics wherein the Western American differs from the Eastern, in which he does not, at the same time, approach the Eskimo. In the absence of the scalping-knife, the tomahawk, the council fire, the wampum-belt, the hero chief, and the metaphorical orator, the Eskimo differs from the Ojibway, the Huron, and the Mohawk. True. But the Haidah and the Chimsheyan ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... according to the stipulations of the treaty, they held them, and not only occupied them for thirteen years, but used them as storehouses and magazines from which the Indians were fed and clothed and armed and encouraged to tomahawk and scalp Americans without regard to age or sex. And then followed a series of orders in council, by which the commerce of the United States was almost swept from the seas, and their sailors forcibly taken from American ships to serve ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... crippled by the tomahawk of an Indian; his whole family and that of his brother had been swept out of existence by the same cruel hands, and all that was left was his home ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... sparkling streamlets that rise in the mountain ridges, their sparkling waters leaping and jumping through the gorges and glens and flowing away to the "great river." All was peace and happiness; the tomahawk of war had long since been buried, and the pipe of peace smoked around their camp fires after every successful hunting expedition. But dissentions arose—distrust and embittered feelings took the place of brotherly love. The men of the mountains became arrayed against their ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... possible care and precaution taken to prevent them is undenyable. Captain Butler, who had command of the expedition, was indefatigable in his endeavours and exertions to restrain and mitigate the fury and ferocity of the savages often at the risk of the Tomahawk being made use of against himself as well as the Indian officers.... Out of a hundred and seventy scalps three-fourths were those of Women and Children." Butler's name is still looked upon in the United States ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... strange, mysterious power cast Spell upon her heart, that thrilled to swift response. Dark eyes softened, flashed again with sudden fire, Pocahontas stood entranced, as in a dream, Watched the heavy stones laid on the hardened earth, Saw the Brave led forth, the tomahawk upraised— Awful moment's hush was pierced by anguished cry, As around the captive's neck her arms were flung, Precious life to save, the ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... before his eyes a wholesome fear of the Jupiter. But the Head of Affairs, much belaboured as he was, knew that he might pay too high even for Mr. Supplehouse and the Jupiter; and the saviour of the nation was told that he might swing his tomahawk. Since that time he had been swinging his tomahawk, but not with so much effect as had been anticipated. He also was very intimate with Mr. Sowerby, and was decidedly one of the Chaldicotes set. And there were many others included ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... 'em, Thad?" whispered Giraffe, who was close at the heels of the scout-master; so close indeed, that Thad had more than once wondered whether the tall and nervous scout were still waving that up- to-date tomahawk, and if he the leader, might be so unlucky as to get in the way ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... in our school histories, Pocahontas is merely a figure in one dramatic scene—her rescue of John Smith. We see her in one mental picture only, kneeling beside the prostrate Englishman, her uplifted hands warding off the descending tomahawk. ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... and Jem looked on they saw Tomati's spear darted through the great fence at some savage who had climbed up, and was hacking the lashings; and so sure as that thrust was made, the stone tomahawk ceased to hack, and its user fell back with a yell of ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... the very symbol and quintessence of clerical intrigue, were thus compensated by the state, but that the sanction of the Pope had been invoked to give effect to an act of a British legislature. The Protestant war-chiefs, D'Alton M'Carthy, Colonel O'Brien, and John Charlton, took up the tomahawk, and called on the Dominion Government to disallow the act. But Sir John Macdonald declined to intervene. A resolution in the House of Commons calling for disallowance was defeated by 188 to 13, the minority being chiefly ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... moonlight night, and the British squadron was not more than a quarter of a mile distant—so, you see, there was a little risk. We didn't halt long. Pitts led the way on board the Dartmouth, and we followed, musket and tomahawk in hand. Nobody offered any show of fighting for the tea. We cut open the hatches, and some of the men went down and passed up the chests, while others cut 'em open and emptied the green stuff into the water. The crew of the vessel were afeard to stir in stopping ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... de chimbly, like Marse Santion Claws," said Agnes; and Diddie thought that was so funny that she giggled outright, and in a moment the wardrobe was opened and she was also taken prisoner. Then the four little captives were laid on their backs, and Polly scalped them with a clothes-brush for a tomahawk. ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... was far advanced in years, a feeble, emaciated old man of very diminutive stature. In the days of his prime he had been a renowned warrior. Hearing of the arrival of the Spaniards he was disposed to regard them as enemies, and, seizing his tomahawk, he was eager to descend from his castle and lead his warriors ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... renewed, and Brady overtook the Indians while they were at their morning meal. Unfortunately, another party of savages was in his rear, and when he fired upon those in front, he was in turn fired upon from behind. He was now between two fires, and greatly outnumbered. Two of his men fell, his tomahawk was shot from his side, and the enemy shouted for the expected triumph. There was no chance of successful defence in the position of the rangers, and they were compelled ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... harsh language. He apostrophised the English thus: "Haughty nation! with one hand thou art deluding and dividing thy victims in New England, and with the other, thou bearest the weapon of vengeance; and while employing the ruthful savage, with his tomahawk and scalping knife, thou art boasting of thy humanity, thy magnanimity, and thy religion! Bloody villains! detestable associates! linked together by fear, and leagued with savages by necessity, to murder a Christian people, for the alledged crime of fighting over again the battle of independence. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... when the first general court of Connecticut convened at Hartford, upward of thirty persons had fallen beneath the tomahawk. The promptest measures were necessary; and without waiting for the assistance of Massachusetts, whose indiscretion had brought on the war, ninety men (nearly half the effective force of the colony) were raised,[8] ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... the language, and does not lose his nerve by being surrounded by hundreds of ferocious and armed savages, and knowing that at any instant he may be cut down from behind by a tomahawk, or speared, or clubbed, he will get along all right, and soon find men willing to recruit Especially is this so if he is a man personally known to the natives, and has a good reputation for treating his "blackbirds" ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... it must be cut out bodily from the stem of an iron-bark tree, and the nearer the heart he can manage to get, the better will be his weapon. His sole tool with which to attack a giant iron-bark is a miserable tomahawk, or hatchet, made of stone, but little superior to the rude Celtic flint axe-heads, that may be seen in any antiquarian's collection. These are of a very hard stone, frequently of a greenish hue, and resembling jade; and, having been rubbed smooth, are ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... commands the Indians—acts with intrepidity—rescues the American prisoners from the tomahawk and scalping knife, after Dudley's defeat—reported agreement between Proctor and Tecumseh, that general Harrison, if taken prisoner, should be delivered to the latter to ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... of Onondaga, but your hopes are with our friends the English and you in person fight for them. We Mohawks know whom to hate. We know that the French have robbed us more than any others. We know, that their Quebec is our Stadacona. So we have dug up the tomahawk and last night we showed to Sharp Sword and his men and Tandakora the Ojibway how ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Isidore de Beaujardin, and at one moment his life was in the greatest peril. An English soldier who had been thrown down in the rush was just about to rise, when a gigantic Indian, yelling out the dreaded war-whoop, darted towards him. Isidore sprang between them. With a sweep of his tomahawk the maddened savage sent de Beaujardin's small sword flying into the air. The weapon of the Indian was already uplifted for the deadly stroke when a strange fantastically-dressed figure passed, noiselessly but swiftly, between the two combatants, and then the red skin fell back, ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... have been several discussions as to the prudence of keeping the large quantity of gold we have already procured in camp, when we are liable to be surprised by the Indians, who for the sake of it would tomahawk and scalp us all round. It seems to have spread from tribe to tribe that the yellow earth which the pale faces are in search of will buy not only beads and buttons and red paint, but rifles, and charges of powder and ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... shoulders, and emptied several tubes of her most expensive paints to streak his face with hideous stripes and daubs. A row of feathers from the dust-brush was fastened around his forehead by a broad band, and a hatchet from the woodshed provided him with a tomahawk. ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... easy task in pushing me over. Fortunately, my head fell toward the camp and my fast-approaching comrades. The two Indians held my legs to prevent my rising, while the third one, who was standing over me, drew from his belt a tomahawk, and shrugging his head in his blanket, at the same time looking over his shoulder at my friends, with a tremendous effort and that peculiar grunt of all savages, plunged his hatchet, as he supposed, into my head, but instead of scuffling to free myself and ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... impress upon the character of the men whose lives I have attempted to portray. The picture is full of meaning, dignity, and simplicity. In this time "Canetuckee" was still a part of Virginia. The grounds on which, as boys, they played were held by their fathers under what is known as a "tomahawk claim." "Beyond lay endless leagues of shadowy forest." "The Illinois" had not been admitted into the sisterhood of the States. The vast domain west of the Mississippi River was unexplored. The city of St. Louis was but an outpost for traders. The name "Chicago" had not been coined. ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell |
