"Scalping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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." ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... 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 against any troops but such as you had with you.' But it was not ...
— 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
... remember to have heard, from the lips of our parents, the narration of the fact, that in the early history of our country, the tomahawk and scalping-knife were put into the hands of our savage neighbors, by our enemies at war, and that a bounty was awarded for the depredations they committed on the lives of our defenceless fellow-citizens. Our feelings were shocked at the ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... making no impression. Those in advance came running back on the main body frightened, and many of them wounded. They reported there were five thousand Frenchmen and a legion of yelling Indian devils in front, who were scalping our people as they fell. We could hear their cries from the wood around as our men dropped under their rifles. There was no inducing the people to go forward now. One aide-de-camp after another was sent forward, and never returned. At last it came to be my turn, and I was sent ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Red Chief's wigwam stood, Before the white man's rifle rang, loud echoing through the wood; The tommy-hawk and scalping knife together lay at rest, And peace was in the forest shade and in the red ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... 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
... great chief-justice 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 Jackson defeated the British at New Orleans ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... often in that cruel week it had come to 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
... term of contempt. Their uniform consisted of tow linen or 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
... 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 ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... 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 current of success to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... "Miss Flink," in a state of sulky collapse, had been sent home in her taxi, Doris, Bentley, and Miss Wigram held a conference. But it came to little. Bentley, the hater of "rows," simply could not be moved to take the thing up. "I kept her from scalping him!—" he laughed—"and I'm not due for any more!" Doris said little. A whirl of arguments and projects were in her mind. But she kept her own counsel about them. As to the possibility of inducing the man to ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... 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 in foliage on a pretty point, with its great ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Indian trading house. It was divided into two rooms, the inner and larger one containing the stores—blankets, scalping knives, flints, twine, beads, needles, guns, powder and shot and other things too numerous to mention. To the outer room the Indians entered and through a square iron-barred hole they passed their furs and pelts, receiving in exchange little wooden castors, with ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... next day Fraser's company established itself in the Church of St. Joseph there. The Canadians were carrying on guerilla warfare, firing on the British from the woods and Fraser was shocked at the horrid practise of scalping. He writes ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... 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 wigs ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the presence 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
... doomsday, he could tell you no more than he has told already. You must know, thar's a creatur' of some sort or other that ranges the woods round about our station h'yar, keeping a sort of guard over us like, and killing all the brute Injuns that ar' onlucky enough to come in his way, besides scalping them and marking them with his mark. The Injuns call him Jibbenainosay, or a word of that natur', which them that know more about the Injun gabble than I do, say, means the Spirit-that-walks; and if we can believe any such lying devils as Injuns (which I am loath to do, for the truth ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... 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 over an enemy—but simply plunder, and had a market ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... them, and in return takes theirs. Her rank oppressions give them cause to rise, Her want of prudence, means and arms supplies, Whilst her brave rage, not satisfied with life, Rising in blood, adopts the scalping-knife. Knowledge she gives, enough to make them know How abject is their state, how deep their woe; 80 The worth of freedom strongly she explains, Whilst she bows down, and loads their necks with chains. Faith, too, she plants, for her ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... scenes of which are even now transpiring. 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 and children on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Awakening had not only ceased, but had been succeeded by intense agitations of another sort. Two successive "French and Indian" wars kept the long frontier, at a time when there was little besides frontier to the British colonies, in continual peril of fire and scalping-knife.[184:1] The astonishingly sudden and complete extinction of the French politico-religious empire in Canada and the West made possible, and at no remote time inevitable, the separation of the British colonies from the mother country and the contentions and debates ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... 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
... not interfere. They were glad enough of any comfort or solace they could afford Le, to occupy or amuse his mind, and keep his fingers and his scalping ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... agreement; but the end had come. The terror in Hamilton's soul was doubled by a wild scene enacted under the walls of his fort; a scene which, having no proper place in this story, strong as its historical interest unquestionably is, must be but outlined. A party of Indians returning from a scalping expedition in Kentucky and along the Ohio, was captured on the outskirts of the town by some of Clark's men, who proceeded to kill and scalp them within full view of the beleaguered garrison, after which their mangled bodies were flung into ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... the sooner I get my orders and you and I depart for Scalping Creek or Perdition Peak, or wherever I am to be shoveled off to, the better, my ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... 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 until ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... 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
... cards, and smiled upon the 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 read his ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... was Joe well out of this difficulty, than the dread of the tomahawk and scalping knife returned in ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... began to tell how he had tracked the Monachans to a hill above the river, and how he and his war party had fallen upon them, driving them down the steep banks, slaying and scalping, even swimming into the icy water to seize those who sought to escape. And The Powhatan nodded in approval, uttering now and again a word of praise. When Opechanchanough had finished his recital the shaman, or medicine-man, rose and sang a song of ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... 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 though ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... and tin. But they hated the "Pale-faces" 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
... Riggs had a very unpleasant experience. While her husband was away, twenty-six Sioux warriors paraded in front of mission house and fired their guns in the air. Mrs. Riggs was naturally somewhat frightened, until she found that they were not bent on murder and scalping. They had been searching for some Chippewas, but, having failed to find them, they fired ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... 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. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... states; 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 ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... boiled in their own bristles, and looked gaunt and grim, like pickled chins of half-famished, unwashed Cossacks—had something to do with creating the bristling bitterness at times prevailing in our mess. The men tore off the tough hide from their pork, as if they were Indians scalping Christians. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... burning Colorado desert are whitening with the bones of many who escaped Comanche and Apache scalping knives, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... baskets—the young girls vying with each other, under the eyes of the youths, as to who could strip boughs the fastest—plucked gayly while the men, rifles in hand, kept guard. For these happy summer days were also the red man's scalping days and, at any moment, the chatter of the picnickers might be interrupted by the chilling war whoop. When that sound was heard, the berry pickers raced for the fort. The wild fruits—strawberries, service berries, cherries, plums, ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... the chief, regretted the matter so much that he scalped General Thompson while the latter was at dinner, which shows that the Indian is not susceptible to cultivation or the acquisition of any knowledge of table etiquette whatever. What could be in poorer taste than scalping a man between the soup and the remove? The same day Major Dade with one hundred men was waylaid, and all but four of the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... 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 left only the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Susan last night for the first time since we had our game; and I wish he had never come back, for he got me into an awful scrape. This was the way it happened. I was playing Indian in the yard. I had a wooden tomahawk and a wooden scalping-knife and a bownarrow. I was dressed up in father's old coat turned inside out, and had six chicken feathers in my hair. I was playing I was Green Thunder, the Delaware chief, and was hunting for ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of winter; that which actually accomplishes, what music is said to achieve, the "soothing of the savage breast:" in short, here are stored up blankets, guns, powder, shot, kettles, axes, and knives; twine for nets, vermilion for war-paint, fishhooks and scalping- knives, capotes, cloth, beads, needles, and a host of miscellaneous articles, much too numerous to mention. Here, also occur periodical scenes of bustle and excitement, when bands of natives arrive from distant hunting-grounds, laden with rich furs, which are speedily transferred ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... to discard for a time many 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 ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... greeting went up to the twinkling stars, and every savage brandished a tomahawk, scalping knife, or some ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... Pere Lebuffle's 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
... and one by Mrs. W. Wallace Brown. As the totem of the Tortoise was of the highest rank among the Algonquins, this account of its origin is of corresponding interest. Having employed an old Indian to carve the handle of a war or scalping knife for me, such as was used by his Passamaquoddy ancestors, he carved on it a tortoise. It was especially the totem of the Lenni-Lenape, called by the Passamaquoddies Lel-le-mabe, "the people."] Of Turtles' Eggs, and how Glooskap vanquished a Sorcerer ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Rose 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 ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... the most attractive and promising of all the Pacific countries for farmers. While yet the whole region as well as the way to it was wild, ere a single road or bridge was built, undaunted by the trackless thousand-mile distances and scalping, cattle-stealing Indians, long trains of covered wagons began to crawl wearily westward, crossing how many plains, rivers, ridges, and mountains, fighting the painted savages and weariness and famine. Setting out from the frontier of the old West in the spring as soon as the ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... be plentiful in this part of Nevada, Late as it is when I reach Carlin, the "boys" must see how a bicycle is ridden, and, as there is no other place suitable, I manage to circle around the pool-table in the hotel bar-room a few times, nearly scalping myself against the bronze chandelier in the operation. I hasten, however, to explain that these proceedings took place immediately after my arrival, lest some worldly wise, over-sagacious person should be led to suspect them to be the riotous undertakings of one who had "smiled ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... mighty, then, We, the Iroquois men, Smoke the peace pipe with them With these marauders! No! we, the feared in strife, Hunted the precious life, With the red scalping knife, Through all ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... and another, who appeared to be his lieutenant, into the cabin, but made signs that no 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 ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... humbly," she said, and went back to be ambushed again. This time the boy had an inspiration. To murder and robbery he would add scalping. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... how 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, as ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... during the years of Lincoln's boyhood the red man was retiring sullenly before the fatal advance of the white man's frontier. Shooting, scalping, and plundering forays still occurred, and in the self-complaisant reminiscences of the old settlers of that day the merciless and mysterious savage is apt to lend to the narrative the lively coloring of mortal danger.[34] In the spring of 1832 a noted chief ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... inhumanly massacred. This is the secret of his deadly hostility to that tribe, and, I am told, that among the scores and scores of scalps which grace his lodge, there is not one which has not been torn from the head of a Shawnee. But for a year or two, he has refrained from scalping his foes, and he has killed none ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... Hence, 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 the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... this tomahawking and scalping, this shooting and stabbing, this shedding of blood and of tears, this heartbreak of captivity, this torture, this peril by day and by night, the flower of home was springing up wherever the ax let the sun into the woods. It would be a great pity if the stories of cruelty and ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... 1758 the long expected Indian allies arrived in Virginia, as many as four hundred by May—Cherokees, Catawbas, Tuscaroras, and Nottaways. But Dinwiddie was wholly unable to use them effectively; and in order to provide amusement for them, he directed that they should go "a scalping" with the whites—"a barbarous method of war," frankly acknowledged the governor, "introduced by the French, which we are oblidged to follow in our own defense." Most of the Indian allies discontentedly returned home before ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... the Indians, as in every city and town in Christendom, there were those who did not wish to be holy. They hated a Gospel which demanded the abandonment of sin. These men, with bloody tomahawks and gory scalping knives, and who, from infancy, had been practising the hideous war-whoop; who consider the glory of their manhood to depend upon the number of enemies they had slain, and whose greatest delight consisted in listening to the shrieks, and witnessing the ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... of individuals—in civilization over the immediate creation or development of races. I know of no single fact that better illustrates the wide difference between these two stages of culture. But let us look for other terms of comparison. The scalping scene is no more the true picture of savagery than the bayonet charge of civilization. Savagery is sylvan life. Contrast Ka-ni-ga with New York. Ka-ni-ga is an Indian village in the Rocky Mountains. New York is, ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... severe cicatricial stenosis from an injudicious laryngofissure; and even in these cases cure of the stenosis as well as the papillomata can usually be obtained by endoscopic methods alone, using superficial scalping off of the papillomata with subsequent laryngoscopic bouginage for the stenosis. Thyrotomy for papillomata is mentioned only to be condemned. Fulguration has been satisfactory in the hands of some, ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... before the feast. 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. Where they were imprisoned. Prepared for the sacrifice. Their ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... much to his chagrin, that he was utterly unable to restrain the savage propensities of his allies. For seven days the Spaniards sojourned in this frontier village of Cofachiqui. Warlike bands were continually stealing out, penetrating the region around, killing and scalping men, women and children, and committing every ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... they 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 ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... Nearly all the 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 ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... 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
... Johnny Appleseed, and gave him their frank attention. Each boy had his 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 ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... 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
... half-won village, and leaving behind them such a number of their warriors, that the tribe hath never recovered its loss. Never shall I forget the figure of our venerable leader, when our men, and not they only, but the women and children of the village, rescued from the tomahawk and scalping-knife, stood crowded around him, yet scarce venturing to approach his person, and more minded, perhaps, to worship him as a descended angel, than to thank him as a fellow-mortal. 'Not unto me be ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Clair near Fort Jefferson, in what is now Mercer County, Ohio, he could not have restrained his hatred as he did. He knew in after years what that battle was, and knew that the Indians boasted that their arms ached from their work with the scalping knife. ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... became greatly excited. "Indians! they're coming with the tommyhawk and scalping knife, and we'll need to be thankful if they ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... 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
... implements, but most of those 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 or Baltimore. In 1820, three thousand wagons carried to ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... threatened to scalp everything, even to the local tickets. They dashed in on Tom Porter, sitting in the despatcher's office upstairs, while the despatcher was hiding below, under a loose plank in the baggage-room floor. Tom, being bald as a sand-hill, considered himself exempt from scalping parties anyway. He was working a game of solitaire when they bore down on him, and got them interested in it. That led to a parley, which ended by Porter's hiring the whole band to brake on freight trains. Old man ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... 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 an heroic attitude, I stay my hand with great difficulty at this moment, being only withheld from introducing such ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... characters. for it seems that 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 ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... me. You cannot belittle this struggle or its consequences. Our enemies are at our very doors, and they are not soldiers. I would rather face scalping Indians than the wretches that I saw an hour since. If Merwyn will do a man's part to quell this mob I shall feel honored by his friendship. But he never will ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Meigs—Tecumseh 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 ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... 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
... believe is that they are really doing these things. There's a little village called Vise near the Dutch frontier; some old chap got fooling there with a fowling-piece; and they've wiped it out. Shot the people by the dozen, put them out in rows three deep and shot them, and burnt the place. Short of scalping, Red Indians couldn't have ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... the 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 armed warriors ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... corner I watched them while my sisters waited on them. I can still see the tableau they made in the firelit room and hear the unfamiliar accents of their speech as they talked together. Occasionally one of them would pull a hair from his head, seize his scalping-knife; and cut the hair with it—a most unpleasant sight! When either of my sisters approached them some of the Indians would make gestures, as if capturing and scalping her. Through it all, however, the ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... do I venture, like a missionary among savages—but if I can only save you from their scalping knives—from the miseries which that lady is preparing for you, ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... bolder outlined, I discovered a figure so singularly lean and sharp of visage that you would have sworn him peculiarly adapted by Providence for cutting his way into a better world. Upon the walls of the rooms, which were very dingy, hung suspended, tomahawks, bowie-knives, scalping-knives, bows and steel-pointed arrows, an innumerable variety of dressed scalps, much worn Indian uniforms, and various other things—all adapted to Western warfare. Here and there stood sundry reed chairs and cronic tables, of Florida pine, while the floor was very liberally set off with what are ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... the man, that, in addition to these disgraces and mischiefs of our army, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage? to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman savage of the woods; to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... into the 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
... head 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
... Kaiser claims to 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, thumbscrew and instruments ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the wild wilderness that lies to the north of Canada with the drumstick of a goose in one hand and a scalping-knife in the other; with a log-fire in front of him, and his son, a stripling of sixteen, by his side, he delivered himself of the ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... the blood of my enemies, still holding my conquering weapon, still hot with the joy of battle, victory, and vengeance, I was surrounded by the Apache braves and made war chief of all the Apaches. Then I gave orders for scalping the slain.[15] ...
— Geronimo's Story of His Life • Geronimo
... returning to 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 ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... 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 ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... sketches, rude and imperfect as they 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 burrowing squirrel, ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... to her feet, drew a small tomahawk from her belt of wampum, and imitated the act of scalping the enemy; then again waving her hand as forbidding him to advance, she darted into the bushes, leaving him ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... here represented, was 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
... war-dance, while they proclaim with a loud voice the glory of their former deeds, and their determination to destroy their enemies. Each Indian now seizes his arms: the bow and quiver hang over the left shoulder, the tomahawk from the left hand, and the scalping-knife[275] is stuck in the girdle. A distinguished chief is appointed to take charge of the Manitous or guardian powers of each warrior; they are collected, carefully placed in a box, and accompany the expedition as the ark of safety. Meanwhile the women incite the warriors ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... 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 other things, the ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... saw two dark figures which I knew were those of Indians, who had been endeavouring to get up to the horses before I could set them at liberty. The moment they found that they were discovered they stopped short. I pointed my gun, they hesitated, and then once more began to move towards me, their scalping knives gleaming in the moonlight. Anxious not to shed blood, I again shouted to them to stop; but perhaps seeing, by my voice and slight figure, that I was but a youth, they fancied that they could intimidate me, and uttering terrific shrieks they continued to approach. My life depended, ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... before us. To Jericho with the Grand Transasiatic and its monotonous security! The Great Trunk from New York to San Francisco has more life in it! At least, the redskins do sometimes attack the trains, and the chance of a scalping on the road cannot but add to the ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... Commander-in-Chief in America, had vowed that the British would make the French "sick of such inhuman villainy" and teach them to respect "the laws of nature and humanity." Washington speaks of his "deadly sorrow" at the dreadful outrages which he saw, the ravishing of women, the scalping alive even of children. Philadelphians had seen the grim spectacle of a wagon-load of corpses brought by mourning friends and relatives of the dead and laid down at the door of the Assembly to show to pacifist legislators what was really happening. ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... could build a 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 ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... Ward, but characterized him as one might an offending child. He spoke as a man who has been deeply wronged and humiliated and betrayed, but without a venomous expression or one with revengeful nature. Clemens confessed in his notes that all the time he himself was "inwardly boiling—scalping Ward—flaying him alive—breaking him on the wheel—pounding him to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... predominant features of the conduct of England to the United States. That government had grossly violated the treaty of peace, had declined a commercial treaty, had instigated the Indians to raise the tomahawk and scalping knife against American citizens, had let loose the Algerines upon their unprotected commerce, and had insulted their flag, and pillaged their trade in every quarter of the world. These facts being notorious, it ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... out from Hidden Water, the earth lay dead beneath their horses' feet—stark and naked, stripped to the rocks by the sheep. Even on Bronco Mesa the ground was shorn of its covering; the cloven hoofs of the sheep had passed over it like a scalping knife, tearing off the last sun-blasted fringe of grass. In open spaces where they had not found their way the gaunt cattle still curled their hungry tongues beneath the bushes and fetched out spears of grass, or ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... his mouth serious but his eyes smiling, "still, that bald crown may be a great temptation to the hatchet. The scalping-knife or the hatchet, one or the other, it is ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... secrecy. Supplied with ammunition, the Cherokees, led by this Captain Stuart or some other, were first to fall upon the over-mountain settlements. These laid waste, the Indians were to form a junction with the army of invasion, and so to add the torch and tomahawk and scalping knife to British ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... turned to me, and in a lower voice said,—"It's as well to keep this sort of gentleman in front, or maybe he'll be afther shootin' one of us, an' stickin' his scalping-knife into ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... a great roll of elm bark upon the ground, extending it by means of four large stones, one of which he laid upon each corner. Then with his scalping knife he drew upon it a complete map of the white settlements in Kain-tuck-ee and of the rivers, creeks, hills, and trails. He did this with great knowledge and skill, and when he held it up it was so complete that Henry, who could see it as well as the others, was compelled to admire. He recognized ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 plains attenuated ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... rancor 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 have ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... 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
... taken it upon yourself, the most unfit of all men to tamper with the works of departed genius, and that, God willing, I was determined to prevent—but the justice of Heaven has taken the matter into its own hands. Peter Pattison's last labours shall now go down to posterity unscathed by the scalping-knife of alteration, in the hands of a false friend—shame on the thought that the unnatural weapon could ever be wielded by the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... view as he 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 ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... question, my son. The scalping-knife will be at work in six months, if it be not busy already, should one-half of your reports and rumours turn out to be ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... France was left no foothold in North America. While the powers of England, France, and Spain were in the French capital arranging this result, as Parkman remarks, "countless Indian warriors in the American forests were singing the war-song and whetting their scalping-knives." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... pick and choose your spot for 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
... noble battle. I regret you could not have seen it. 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
... rear-guard of 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... 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 ...
— Achenwall's Observations on North America • Gottfried Achenwall
... 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 ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... 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
... 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 to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... Minneapolis. By day they were horrified by the marks of bloody cruelties along their pathway—dead and mangled bodies, wrecked and abandoned homes. At night, they were terrified by the flames of burning homes and fears of the tomahawks and the scalping knives of their cruel foes. The nights were full of fear and dread. Every voice was hushed except to give necessary orders; every eye swept the hills and valleys around; every ear was intensely strained to catch the faintest noise, ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... there seems more liberality among good men, and that they have made up their minds to let each one work in his own way. The scalping-knives are being dulled. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Even the Pennacooks of southern New Hampshire were roused to action, though their share in the war was small. Here a hundred warriors sacked a village; there Indians skulking along trails and on the outskirts of towns cut off individuals and groups of individuals, shooting, scalping, and burning them. No one was safe. Again the commissioners of the United Colonies met in council and ordered a more vigorous prosecution of the campaign. More troops were levied and garrison posts fortified, but the first results were disastrous. Captain Pierce of Scituate was ambushed ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... noted that in 1882 the selling of railway tickets by private persons, a practice known as 'ticket scalping,' was prohibited in Canada, though the railways were forced to buy the exclusive privilege of selling their own tickets by agreeing to redeem ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... 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 ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... what is she doing that for? Don't, Miss Hildegarde, please! I was just thinking how jolly it looked, let alone the chances for scalping." ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... was his 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 palliated, or entirely passed by. It is manifestly unjust ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... nearest the door pushed her out. The Indians out doors shot her through the arm and breast and she fell forward. I seized my baby from the cradle and looking out the door, saw that five or six of the Indians had their feet on little Susan's breast, scalping her. I screamed for the men who were hidden from view by the trees between the house and clearing. When they reached the house the Indians—Chippewas, were gone. For months afterwards arrow heads and other things which ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... excited any alarm, but as the French of Mackinaw as well as the Indians were alike hostile to the English trader, it was no difficult matter to apprehend danger. At length the Indians, about sixty in number, arrived, each with a tomahawk in one hand and a scalping knife in the other. The garrison at this time contained about ninety soldiers, a commander and two officers. Beside the small arms, on the bastions were mounted two small pieces of brass cannon. Beside Henry, there were four English merchants at the fort. After the Indians ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... 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
... 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
... his prisoner, and he 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 Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... and then the cabin was a scene of ruffian brawl and fighting, in the course of which the old Frenchman was apt to get soundly belabored by his mongrel offspring. In a furious scuffle of the kind, one of the sons got the old man upon the ground, and was upon the point of scalping him. "Hold! my son," cried the old fellow, in imploring accents, "you are too brave, too honorable to scalp your father!" This last appeal touched the French side of the half-breed's heart, so he suffered the old man to ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... 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, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... 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, ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... crowd of loafers was about 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
... Am I a common fool, to chance anything now? Do they think me in my dotage? Indeed, sir, if I drew blade, if I as much as raised a finger, both sides would come swarming all over us—rebels a-looting and a-shooting, Indians whooping off my cattle, firing my barns, scalping my tenants—rebels at heart every one, and I'd not care tuppence who scalped 'em but ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... ready, we must be ready," he said. "There are but three of the scalping devils, and we are five, four of whom may be set down as manful warriors for such a skrimmage. Eau-douce, do you take the fellow that is painted like death; Chingachgook, I give you the chief; and Arrowhead must keep his eye on the young one. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 all—gives us ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... commemorated in a kind of mimic warfare, in which the chiefs and warriors displayed their prowess, and illustrated their former adroitness, by laying the ambuscade, surprizing their enemies, and performing many accurate manoeuvres with the tomahawk and scalping knife; thereby preserving and handing to their children, the theory of Indian warfare. During that period they also pertinaciously observed the religious rites of their progenitors, by attending with the most scrupulous exactness and ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... 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
... crimson,—a river of blood. A week before, a great meteor had shot through the night, blood-red and bearded, drawing a slow-fading fiery trail across the heavens; and the moon had risen that same night blood-red, and upon its disk there was drawn in shadow a thing most marvelously like a scalping knife. Wherefore, the following day being Sunday, good Mr. Stockham, our minister at Weyanoke, exhorted us to be on our guard, and in his prayer besought that no sedition or rebellion might raise its head amongst the Indian subjects of the Lord's anointed. Afterward, in the churchyard, between the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... and alike incapable of betraying groans, fear, or even marks of regret in their countenance. They knew enough of savage modes to beware that the least indications of weariness, and inability to proceed, would have brought the tomahawk and scalping-knife upon their skulls—weapons with which they were thus early supplied from Detroit. They therefore pushed resolutely on, with cheerful countenances, watching the while with intense earnestness, to catch from the signs and gestures of ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... downward with lifted axe and eager scalping knife, an arrow from the bow of Tahn-te pierced the temple of the savage, and with a grunt he whirled and fell ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... day before, 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 their button-holes, as a souvenir ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... the pleasure of tearing a scalp from the head of a British redskin," and related at length the brutal details of his methods. They were those of a wild beast. "The first stroke of the tomahawk," Hull had stated in his proclamation, "the first attempt with the scalping-knife, will be the signal of a scene of desolation." Yet the first scalp taken in the Detroit campaign was by ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... an Indian, about to do a stage scalping act, and fairly dived over the handlebars of his bicycle, sprawling in a heap ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... didn't want the 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, for I knew Kate would only ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... exile would be of little good— Though I couldn't half-way tell it, and I wouldn't if I could! I could tell of California—of a wild and vicious life; Of trackless plains, and mountains, and the Indian's scalping-knife. ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Populations, who had been thinking of Triumphal Arches for Braddock's return, are struck to the nadir by this news. French and Indians break over the Mountains, harrying, burning, scalping; the Black Settlers fly inward, with horror and despair: "And the Home Government, too, can prove a broken reed? What is to become of us; whose is America to be?"—And in fact, under such guidance from Home Governments and Colonial, there is no saying how the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... trench raid, 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
... his field; his children are playing at ball; on a hill to the left is a log cabin; to the right, a church; beyond them, some ships and a steamboat on a river; in the background, mountains; above is an Indian scalping his enemy; below, the head of an Indian squaw weeping; on one side, a quiver of arrows; on the other, a calumet and a bow—opposition of ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... the result of their confab, and they came forward, to a man, and laid down their rifles, tomahawks and scalping ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... some who were present, the number that sallied out was five hundred, and of those who escaped the scalping-knife two hundred. Others assert that the sortie consisted of but three hundred, and those who escaped were less than one hundred. The probability is that, between the confusion, carnage, and panic ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... allowed to leave on giving up the stock. The shot did not kill the Navajo, and they followed to see what became of him. He was carried along by his friends to where another raiding party was encamped. The Pai Utes then killed two of this party, scalping one, but refraining from taking the scalp of the other because he had sandy hair and looked too much like a white man. Later three more Navajos were killed in a fight, but the rest escaped with ten horses. Jacob grew heartily ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... 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 ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... 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 from one option to another till the new crop came along and ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... remedies," was the reply; "there is little glory in destroying a helpless enemy, but the necessity is urgent, and we must leave nothing to chance." As he spoke, he knelt upon the huge form of the senseless warrior, whose scalping knife he drew from its sheath, and striking a firm and steady blow, quitted not the weapon until he felt his hand reposing on the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the massacre and scalping of the whites by Indians, in order to inflame the American mind against England; his ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... 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
... that there is now arrived another 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. An Indian, dressed as he goes to war, may bring company ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... railway bond issues, franchises and stock-quotations were beyond that cheap stiff's depth. Probably Cranston was holding forth in regard to some petty theft which his crew of spotters had discovered, some ticket-scalping conductor—— ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse |
