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Tomahawk   /tˈɑməhˌɔk/   Listen
Tomahawk

noun
1.
Weapon consisting of a fighting ax; used by North American Indians.  Synonym: hatchet.






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"Tomahawk" Quotes from Famous Books



... child from forests wild Has learned to read and pray; The tomahawk and scalping knife From him have ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper

... whispers. Were he to join a party of fishers or hunters, his presence would bring misfortune on them; the ghost of his dead wife would frighten away the fish or the game. He goes about everywhere and at all times armed with a tomahawk to defend himself, not only against wild boars in the jungle, but against the dreaded spirit of his departed spouse, who would do him an ill turn if she could; for all the souls of the dead are malignant and their only delight is to ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... took his hand off his tomahawk at this pacific rejoinder, made a bow not ungraciously, said he could not, of course, ask more than an apology from a gentleman of my age (Merci, Monsieur!) and, hearing the name of Mr. Selwyn, made another bow to George, and said he had a letter ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... very first on board, cheering his men as he darted into the closed ranks of his opponents. Whether it was that he did not think that his head was worth defending, or that he was too busy in breaking the heads of others to look after his own; this is certain, that a tomahawk descended upon it with such force as to bury itself in his skull (and his was a thick skull, too). The privateer's men were overpowered by numbers, and then our hero was discovered, under a pile of bodies, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... 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 ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... 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 ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... Rutherford detected one of the natives in the act of stealing the dipson lead,—"which, when I took it from him," says he, "he grinded his teeth and shook his tomahawk ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... some persons when he sold his birthright for a pot of sack; but not even his Sosia has a grain of respect for him, though, doubtless, he thinks his name very terrible to the enemy, when he flourishes his criticopoeticopolitical tomahawk, and sets up his Indian yell for the blood of his old friends: but, at best, he is a mere political scarecrow, a man of straw, ridiculous to all who know of what materials he is made; and to none more so, than to those who have stuffed him, and set him up, as the Priapus ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock

... His pride was highest, and his fame most fair. Their 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 of me, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... He became deadly pale, and his limbs trembled. He was about to speak when the chief, who had hitherto stood in silence at his side, suddenly whirled his tomahawk in the air, and, bringing it down on the murderer's skull, cleft ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne

... 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 of ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... mimicking the call of the wild turkey, or because his enemy was somewhat quicker in his movements than he, is not known. At any rate, before young Boone could raise his gun to his shoulder the Indian turned and with all his strength hurled his tomahawk. ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson

... fort 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 to ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... fresh, aboriginal look as I had never before seen in any kind of handiwork. Its clear yellow-red color would have become the cheek of an Indian maiden. Then its supple curves and swells, its sinewy stays and thwarts, its bow-like contour, its tomahawk stem and stern rising quickly and sharply from its frame, were all vividly suggestive of the race from which it came. An old Indian had taught Uncle Nathan the art, and the soul of the ideal red man looked out of the boat before us. Uncle Nathan ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... which must have been at a considerable distance from the house. The old man I did not now see; I was dragged along between Kish-kau-ko and a very short thick man. I had probably made some resistance, or done something to irritate this last, for he took me a little to one side, and drawing his tomahawk, motioned to me to look up. This I plainly understood, from the expression of his face, and his manner, to be a direction for me to look up for the last time, as he was about to kill me. I did as he directed, but Kish-kau-ko ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... seams. About his middle was a broad sash, once red, and upon his head a scanty cap of similar color was pushed back. At his belt hung the great hunting knife of the voyageur, balanced by a keen steel tomahawk such as was in common use among the Indians. In his hand he supported a long-barreled musket, which he now examined carefully in the presence of the captain ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... on 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

... and of a great western river on which they dwelt. Two years later the aged Jesuit Mesnard attempted to plant a mission on the southern shore of the lake, but perished in the forest by famine or the tomahawk. Allouez succeeded him, explored a part of Lake Superior, and heard in his turn of the Sioux and their great river, the "Messipi."—Introduction to Parkman's Discovery of the Great West. There can be no doubt ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... 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 Conservatives ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... council was deeply impressed by his courage and evident sincerity, and for the time being the lives of the missionaries were in no danger. But they knew that at any moment the blow might fall, and none ever went abroad without the feeling that a tomahawk might descend on his ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis

... the blanketed, jabbering groups, leaving on the scene of action only the agent, the quickly rallying guard, and upward of fivescore of jeering, taunting screeching warriors, at least a dozen of them now dismounted, dancing and brandishing knife and tomahawk, rifle or revolver, about the still writhing group rolling upon the wooden floor,—McPhail and his assailants. Into the midst of this mad mellay sprang the cavalryman, turning loose his horse, which animal, urged by shrill ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... on its course and telling her to hasten, Kayuta sprang ashore, sounded the warwhoop, and as Weutha rose into sight he clove his skull with a tomahawk. Two other braves now leaped forward, but, after a struggle, Kayuta left them dead or senseless, too. He would have stayed to tear their scalps off had he not heard his name uttered in a shriek of agony from the end of ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... A SURPRISE. I repeat it, BEWARE OF A SURPRISE—you know how the Indians fight us. He went off with that as my last solemn warning thrown into his ears. And yet!! to suffer that army to be cut to pieces, hack'd, butchered, tomahawk'd, by a surprise—the very thing I guarded him against!! O God, O God, he's worse than a murderer! how can he answer it to his country;—the blood of the slain is upon him—the curse of widows and orphans—the curse ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush

... which their own fathers trod If men of worth will stoop among the vain, We turn from them with sorrow and with pain Man may repent, reform, his steps retrace, But is there renovation for a place? Will a community forego their strife, Bury the tomahawk and scalping knife? Will pride, and will self interest prevail, Where reason and where revelation fail Like cause makes like effect, abroad, at home— In this small township as in Greece or Rome. One motto is my moral, true and sad, Whom the gods ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for breakfast. This one's arms are put on wrong. I did not notice it at first, but I see it now. Somehow he has got his right arm on his left ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... knew," 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

... Holliston, Milford, and elsewhere. At one time we stopped to slay an immense black snake; at another to shoot wild pigeons, and "so on about" to Providence and many places. From cousins who lived in old farmhouses in wild and remote places I received Indian arrow-heads and a stone tomahawk, and other rustic curiosities dear to my heart. At the Fremont House in Boston my father showed me one day at dinner several foreign gentlemen of different nations belonging to different Legations. In Rhode Island I found by a stream several large pot-holes in rocks of which ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... the children of their White Fathers were battling, namely, the native Indians and proprietors of the soil. But the logicians of St. James's and Versailles wisely chose to consider the matter in dispute as a European and not a Red-man's question, eliminating him from the argument, but employing his tomahawk as it might serve the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... encamped 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

... Opodeldoc, of the Bushwhack Tribe. My tomahawk is in my belt, and whoever offends me will add his scalp to ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells

... the spirit and temper of the sectarian. He breathed too broad an atmosphere to live and move within such narrow bounds. In the heat of the conflict there may have been too much occasionally of the partisan; and in the pleasure that the sweep and stroke of his intellectual tomahawk gave to him who wielded it, he may have forgotten at times the pain inflicted where it fell; but let his writings before and after the Disruption be now consulted, and it will be found that it was mainly because ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... 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

... 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 in the stigma whose sins were ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... you are a droll fellow!" Bouchard exclaimed. "This Indian is accompanied by Fathers Chaumonot and Jacques. It is not impossible that they have relieved La Chaudiere Noire of his tomahawk and scalping-knife. And besides, this is France; even a Turk is harmless here. Monsieur the Black Kettle speaks French and is ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... was never my trade or my sport, I never loaded myself with fowling-piece or rifle. Assiduous exercise had made me master of a weapon of much easier carriage, and, within a moderate distance, more destructive and unerring. This was the tomahawk. With this I have often severed an oak-branch, and cut the sinews of a catamount, at the distance ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... but the result was an argument in favour of Staff-work over outside contribution. Among other experiments, colour was tried with a view to rendering further homage to Sir John Tenniel's cartoon, by printing it on a tinted background, in the manner of Matt Morgan's famous designs in the "Tomahawk." But the idea, which originated with the late Mr. Bradbury, did not answer expectations, and ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... bed of the creek. A large number of natives were seen to-day—one mob was disturbed at a waterhole, where they were cooking fish, which they left in their alarm, together with their arms. The spears were the first that had been observed made of reed, and a stone tomahawk was seen, as large as the largest-sized American axe. These blacks were puny wretched-looking creatures, and very thin. They had a great number of wild dogs with them—over thirty being counted by the party. 10 miles, N.W. by ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine

... young blood in our veins. Although we prided ourselves on our quality as "braves," and secretly pined to be led on the war-path, we were shy of walking in that vicinity in daylight, and no power on earth, not even the offer of the tomahawk or snow-shoes for which our souls longed, would have taken ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... 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, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver

... well assume. He would fight them until they should humbly crave peace; he would make with them no treaty except in concert with his Indian allies, whom he would never fail in fatherly care. To impress the council by the reality of his oneness with the Indians, Frontenac now seized a tomahawk and brandished it in the air shouting at the same time the Indian war-song. The whole assembly, French and Indians, joined in a wild orgy of war passion, and the old man of seventy, fresh from the court of Louis XIV, led in the war-dance, yelled with the Indians their savage war-whoops, ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... 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 from his enemy, the savage hurled his keen weapon; ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... Indians came straight for me and dealt me a desperate blow with his tomahawk, but I threw up my left hand and received a severe cut in my wrist—the mark of which I carry to this day—at the same time I struck him with my knife and almost cut him in two As he was falling he threw his tomahawk at ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan

... requirements, so 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 fitted ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... 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 generations, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... my ready revolver could break the stillness of the camp. Three pairs of snaky black eyes looked steadily at me, and I stared back as directly into them. Two arrow-points gently touched my ears. Behind me, a tomahawk softly marked a ring around my scalp outside of my hat. I was standing in a circle of death. At last the brave directly before me slowly drew up his bow and pointed it at me; then dropping it, he snapped the arrow ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... corn-bearing midland country, that land of milk and honey, won for us by the pluck and endurance of the indomitable pioneers, to where in sunshine roll the smiling Sierras of golden California, given to our heritage by the unconquerable energy of those brave men and women who braved the tomahawk on the Great Plains, the tempest, of Cape Horn, and the fevers of Panama, to make American soil of El Dorado! America! Oh, my America, how glorious you stand! Country of Washington and Valley Forge, out of what martyrdoms hast thou arisen! Country of Lincoln in his box at Ford's ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington

... is well known to most of my readers from its romantic association with the struggles of the vast army of emigrants, who not only braved the dangers of its uncertain fords and deceitful quicksands, but the tomahawk and scalp knife, ofttimes leaving a nameless grave beside its waters; and, were it not for a laughable incident in this connection, I ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... covered dime novel. "Issy" was a lover of certain kinds of literature and reveled in lurid fiction. As a youngster he had, at the age of thirteen, after a course of reading in the "Deadwood Dick Library," started on a pedestrian journey to the Far West, where, being armed with home-made tomahawk and scalping knife, he contemplated extermination of the noble red man. A wrathful pursuing parent had collared the exterminator at the Bayport station, to the huge delight of East Harniss, young and old. Since this adventure Issy had been famous, ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... 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 of charity ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... when they're right in your face. You don't suppose you're anything like Evie May Poore, do you? or Roberta Wicks, or Mrs. Clay Burt? Every time I see Evie May Poore I wish I was an Indian so I could tomahawk her hair. Most of her money goes in hair and chewing-gum. Mr. Crimm says he thinks girls who dress like Roberta Wicks ought to be run in, but there ain't any law which lets him do it. Mr. Crimm's going to a big wedding to-night. Did ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... of January, the British and Indians, having crossed the frozen Detroit River the day before, formed within musket shot of the American lines and opened the attack with a battery of three-pounders. They might have rushed the camp with bayonet and tomahawk and killed most of the defenders asleep, but the cannonade alarmed the Kentuckians and they took cover behind a picket fence, using their long rifles so expertly that they killed or wounded a hundred and eighty-five of the ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... convention, not only as patriots, but as men, to permit their entire exemption from the general consternation and dismay which were every where spreading around them; and many a staid heart among them secretly trembled for the fate of the near and dear ones left at homes in which the red tomahawk might, even at that very moment, be busy at its work of death; while the bosoms of all were burning to be freed from their present duties, that they might seize the sword or musket and fly to the relief of their endangered families, or mingle in the common ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... one coming up the back path," and rising as she spoke, she hurried out to the side porch, closely followed by Moppet, who said to herself, with all a child's vivid and dramatic imagination, "Perhaps it's an Indian coming to tomahawk us in our beds!" which thought caused her to seize a fold of Miss Bidwell's ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln

... chief turned to them and said, "My children, you must remain here at the foot of this mountain, while I climb up to the top. There is no use in trying to shoot this great monster, for he will but blow my arrows away, so I must climb up and strike him with my tomahawk." ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister

... a tomahawk disfigured his head; the woolly hair was matted with blood. But there remained still something of the PREUX CHEVALIER ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... imitate the flying and fluttering of birds, keeping exact time with their music." This music was the measured thumping of an Indian drum. From time to time, a warrior would leap up, and the drum and the dancers would cease as he struck a post with his tomahawk, and in a loud voice recounted his exploits. Then the music and the dance began anew, till another warrior caught the martial fire, and bounded into the circle to brandish his tomahawk and vaunt ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... sailed out of the mangrove 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 ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... a crouching Ojibway shone, Or the scalp-knife gleamed in a swarthy fist. Undaunted the braves of Wakawa's band Jumped into the thicket with lance and knife, And grappled the Chippewas hand to hand; And foe with foe, in the deadly strife, Lay clutching the scalp of his foe and dead, With a tomahawk sunk in his ghastly head, Or his still heart sheathing a bloody blade. Like a bear in the battle Wakawa raves, And cheers the hearts of his falling braves. But a panther crouches along his track,— He springs with a yell ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... fella house. White Mary sleep along pickaninny house. One fella Adamu he stop along outside pickaninny house. You fella boy finish 'm dog, finish 'm Adamu, finish 'm big fella marster, finish 'm White Mary, finish 'em altogether. Plenty musket he stop, plenty powder, plenty tomahawk, plenty knife-fee, plenty porpoise teeth, plenty tobacco, plenty calico—my word, too much plenty everything we take 'm along whale-boat, washee {5} like hell, sun he come up we long ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... regarded with a sneer the reception of Miss Crummles as the Maiden, and, falling back a step or two to advance with the better effect, uttered a preliminary howl, and 'went on' chattering his teeth and brandishing his tin tomahawk as the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... 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 ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... charge of his uncle's property in the Mohawk valley. He settled about twenty miles west of Schenectady, and engaged in the Indian trade. He dealt honestly with the Indians, learned their language, attended their feasts, and, tomahawk in hand, danced their dances in Indian dress. He even took as his wife a sister of Brant, a Mohawk chief. So great was his influence with the Indians that in 1746 he was made Commissary of New York for Indian Affairs. In ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... burning rafters and smoking ruins: around, the ground was trodden down by many feet of moccasined men. Partly consumed by the fire, lay the bodies of two farm-servants who had been in Mr. Buckingham's employ; a tomahawk, smeared with fresh blood, lay among the smoking embers; and a golden curl singed by fire, was near it—all they could discover of ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... overseer most 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 ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... Great Spirit. But every woman who aspired to this honor, was required upon a certain day in the year, to run the gauntlet of braves. This was sometimes a terrible scene. All the warriors of the tribe, arrayed in their fiercest war costume and armed at every point with lance, bow and arrow, knife, tomahawk, etc., were drawn up under command of the principal chief, in single line. At the head of this line was placed a kind of chaplet, or crown, the possession of which by any woman was supposed to confer the power of necromancy or magic, rendering her able ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... warfare as brothers along the 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 ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... the din Tuskahoma lifted now his ferocious battle cry; advancing upon the blazed sapling he sank his tomahawk deep into the soft white wood, then moved swiftly out of the circle to his own fire. This was the act by which he announced his ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... he rose, and delving a grave in the sod with his knife and tomahawk, deposited therein the form of the maiden, and refilling it with his hands, stretched himself upon the mound. Os-ko-ne-an-tah had in the mean while often approached him, but the moment he appeared, up sprang ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... said Tayoga. "We have waited as long as we could to see if Areskoui would turn a favoring face upon us, but his anger holds. It will not avail, if in our endeavor to escape the tomahawk of Tandakora, ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... arrow at a genuine archery target; then he stood in the opening of a tent made of skins; then he lay in the tall grass, rifle in hand, awaiting some deer that were slowly moving toward him. He even saw Paul tomahawk and scalp a white boy of his own size, and although the face of the victim was that of Joe Appleby, the hair somehow was long enough to tie around the belt which Paul, like all Indians in picture-books, ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... by his taunts and his jeers to reach a swifter end, he was mistaken in that hope. No fire was kindled at their stakes, no sudden stroke of death maul or tomahawk followed his words. The Nakonkirhirinons had keener tortures, torments of a finer fibre than mere physical suffering, and the Bois-Brules' liquor had stirred ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... 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, ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird

... 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 we ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... used pretty 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

... that seems to have escaped your attention. You see, the Forefathers landed in the morning of December the 21st, but about noon that day a pack of hungry wolves swept down the bleak American beach looking for a New England dinner and a band of savages out for a tomahawk picnic hove in sight, and the Pilgrim Fathers thought it best for safety and warmth to go on board the Mayflower and pass the night. And during the night there came up a strong wind blowing off shore that swept the Mayflower ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... 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

... The men die fighting, as men in such straits should. The Indians are close upon the women and children in the wagon. Into one of them, that which contains the hunter's child, leaps a savage, in whose beady eyes are all cruelty and ferocity. His tomahawk sinks into the brain of the nearest helpless one, and at the same instant, swift as an otter gliding into water, the boy is out and darting away among the bushes. Oddly enough he is unnoticed—a remnant of the soldiers are dying hardly—and he escapes to where ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... and King 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 ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... being able to see that, the Berlin philosopher is really on a 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 civilisation 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 ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton

... at the vines, tweaked Edward's ear, told Joseph, the second boy, he would bring him an Indian tomahawk, and went back ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... shadows of dusk. Buddy trudged on, keeping to the deep-worn buffalo trails which the herd had followed and scored afresh with their hoofs. He could not miss his way-not Buddy, son of Bob Birnie, owner of the Tomahawk outfit-but his legs were growing pretty tired, and he was so hungry that he could have sat down on the ground and cried with the gnawing food-call of ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... Stinson's Bar The Tom Bell Stronghold The Hanging of Charlie Price Rattlesnake Dick Indian Vengeance Grizzly Bob of Snake Gulch Curley Coppers the Jack The Race of the Shoestring Gamblers The Dragon and the Tomahawk The ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... those men were murderers who had played their part, twelve years before, in the massacre on the Mahony River. As soon as Zeisberger rose to speak, every eye was fixed upon him; and while he delivered his Gospel message, he knew that at any moment a tomahawk might cleave his skull, and his scalp hang bleeding at the murderer's girdle. "Never yet," he wrote, "did I see so clearly painted on the faces of the Indians both the darkness of hell and the world-subduing power ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... evening in July, when the red-hot sun was going down in a blaze, and I was leaning against a corner in my huntsman's frock, lo! there came stalking out of the crimson West a gigantic red-man, erect as a pine, with his glittering tomahawk, big as a broad-ax, folded in martial repose across his chest, Moodily wrapped in his blanket, and striding like a king on the stage, he promenaded up and down the rustic streets, exhibiting on the back of his blanket a crowd of human hands, rudely ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... English country homes. Furniture of various periods indulged in mute and elegant 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 ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... did not end there, however, for along in the darkest hours of the night I started from sleep and saw those two Indians, one standing at the head and one at the foot of the bed, and each of them armed with a tomahawk. That they had come to kill me I was certain, and that they would succeed in doing so seemed to me equally sure. I tried to scream but I could not. I was as powerless as a baby. I finally managed to move and as I did so I saw them vanish through the open doorway ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... of November, Mr. Hunt was lucky enough to purchase another horse for his own use, giving in exchange a tomahawk, a knife, a fire steel, and some beads and gartering. In an evil hour, however, he took the advice of the Indians to abandon the river, and follow a road or trail leading into the prairies. He soon had cause to regret the change. The road led across ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... he was out alone playing Indians and had sunk his scout's axe into a fallen log and then scalped the log, he felt that once before in those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his own tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a secret spring in the forest, the autumn leaves would crackle and he would raise his eyes fearing to ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... with a belt of brushwood so dense that 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 ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... went aft, each man armed with a musket, a tomahawk or cutlass by his side, looking as brazen-faced and impudent as could be, trusting to the ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... dreams, and the spice of adventure could be had for the seeking. Here was the forest primeval in its original grandeur. Here the Indian roamed undisputed master; not the tutored Huron of Voltaire's tale, but the savage of torch and tomahawk. The continent was as yet unexplored. In uncertainty as to motives for man's action the French magistrate always searches for the woman,—"cherchez la femme!" One single allusion in a letter written to Badollet, in 1783, shows that there was a woman in Gallatin's horoscope. Who she was, what ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... was Uncle Jeff Crockett, a man of about forty-five, with a tall, stalwart figure, and a handsome countenance (though scarred by a slash from a tomahawk, and the claws of a bear with which he had had a desperate encounter). A bright blue eye betokened a keen sight, as also that his rifle was never likely to miss its aim; while his well-knit frame gave assurance ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston

... that before the days of bronze man knew no weapon or implement of any sort save the stone axe, or tomahawk, and the flint-tipped arrow. Consider, that the highest stage of human culture he had then reached was hardly higher than that of the scalp-hunting Red Indian or the seal-spearing Esquimaux. Consider, that in his Stone Age agriculture ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... and exhausting performances, which are necessary on his part to enlist favorable notice of the gods. These performances consist chiefly of vapor baths, fastings, chants, prayers, and nightly vigils. The spear and the tomahawk being prepared and consecrated, the person who is to receive them approaches the wakan man (priest), and presents a pipe to him. He asks a favor, in substance as follows: 'Pity thou me, poor and helpless, a woman, and confer on me the ability to perform manly deeds.'"[54] According to Miss ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... called forth all the energy of man's nature; and in the depths of this western wilderness, many hundreds of Alexanders and Caesars, who have never been heard of. At the time I emigrated to Ohio the deadly hatred of the red men toward the whites had reached its acme. The rifle, the tomahawk and the scalping knife were daily at work; and men, women and children daily fell victims to this sanguinary spirit. In this state I found things when I reached the small village opposite the month of Licking river, and ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell

... that direction. At about a mile they became invisible; for that distance I observed that a line of trees was marked down each side of the track by cutting a small piece of bark from off the gum-trees with a tomahawk. This I had never seen natives do before; the marks are very old. At eighteen miles and a half struck another track (the trees cut in the same way) crossing our course; followed it, bearing 10 degrees east of north, and at about two miles came on a native well with moisture in it. Followed ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... 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 ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... into the very heart of the forest. We had left the sun shining brightly overhead; here it was all a "great green gloom." I must describe to you the order in which we marched. First came two of the most experienced "bush-hands," who carried a tomahawk or light axe with which to clear the most cruel of the brambles away, and to notch the trees as a guide to us on our return; and also a compass, for we had to steer for a certain point, the bearings of which we ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... 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 of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... up mighty great wallet, all full of feathers, more than was on all the eagles of all the hunting grounds of the red men, and tearing it open, easy as we tear a leaf, poured them on the fire. Big black smoke puff up quick as powder flash, and down come Indian like he shot. White squaw take up big tomahawk, and strike both on the head. Me nearly in the door by this time; big squaw jump at me with he great tomahawk, so big the great chief no lift it, and lifted it to strike. Me no like to be killed by old squaw, ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison

... 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, Fair Play settlement ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf

... and dancing and yelling like the wild barbarians they were, while old men and young braves and squaws and children looked on in savage rapture. Before either boy could speak Big Buffalo espied them and leaped forward brandishing a tomahawk. ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... who would have married her for her estates; you are the cousin who played the poltroon and outraged her pride of family; you are the lover who abandoned her,—abandoned her to torture and the tomahawk. Is it strange that it is her wish never to see you? You will spare your pride some hurts if you avoid her in ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... Sir George takes another of his guests, and proceeds to work upon him. "My dear Mr. Bludyer, how do you do? Mr. Fitz-Boodle, Mr. Bludyer, the brilliant and accomplished wit, whose sallies in the Tomahawk delight us every Saturday. Nay, no blushes, my dear sir; you are very wicked, but oh! SO pleasant. Well, Mr. Bludyer, I am glad to see you, sir, and hope you will have a favourable opinion of our genius, sir. As I was saying to Mr. Fitz-Boodle, she has the graces ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Gallagher—I mean, of course, old Dr. Gallagher, not the young doctor (who was always out in the country in the afternoon)—would come over and bring his latest Indian relics to show to the Dean, the latter always read to him a passage or two. As soon as the doctor laid his tomahawk on the table, the Dean would reach for his Theocritus. I remember that on the day when Dr. Gallagher brought over the Indian skull that they had dug out of the railway embankment, and placed it on the rustic table, the Dean read to him so long from Theocritus ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... up the ground with a tomahawk, and covered him over with logs and grass and my shirt and trousers. That night I left him near dark. I would go through the scrub, and the blacks threw spears at me, a good many, and I went back again into the scrub. Then I went down the creek which runs into Escape River, and I walked along the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... stated in the Declaration of '76, he might come again, burn our houses, and drive us all into the street. Sir William Johnson's mansion of solid masonry, gloomy and threatening, still stood in our neighborhood. I had seen the marks of the Indian's tomahawk on the balustrades and heard of the bloody deeds there enacted. For all the calamities of the nation I believed King George responsible. At home and at school we were educated to hate the English. When we remember ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... out of the body of its antagonist, and giving him an opportunity to rise. When Arundel stood upon his feet, he beheld the panther in the agonies of death—an arrow sticking in one eye and an Indian striking it with a tomahawk upon the head, for which great agility and quickness were necessary in order to avoid the paw and teeth of the creature in its dying struggles. These soon became less violent, until, with a shudder, the limbs relaxed, and it ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... and falls, and instantly the Indian war-whoop resounds close at hand, and numbers of braves seem to spring from the ground, one of whom approaches her as she rises with his tomahawk raised.) ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon

... stepped forward and raised that heavy tomahawk. With one blow each he brained the two bound and defenceless victims on the altar-stone of his fathers. The rest, a European hand shrinks from revealing. The orgy was too ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... bareheaded, standing, facing the left, has just given the calumet of peace to an Indian chief, who is smoking it. The Indian, standing, facing the right, has a large medal suspended from around his neck; on the left, a pine tree; at its foot, a tomahawk; in the background, a farmer ploughing. Exergue: ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... kissed them, feeling they were now dearer than ever to him. They asked him where their mother was. He came on deck and shut them in the cabin without replying. As Captain Godfrey crawled to his position at the helm, he said to himself, my dear children have escaped the arrow and tomahawk, the flames at Grimross, the thunder, lightning and tempest, and even yet they are safe. If it were not for my children I would prefer to sleep here in death rather than live elsewhere. I would be near my wife to share a part with ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith

... 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 had the murderer used ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood

... himself to the completion of the group which he has engaged to execute for the capitol at Washington. It represents an American settler, an athletic man, in a hunting shirt and cap, a graceful garb, by the way, rescuing a female and her infant from a savage who has just raised his tomahawk to murder them. Part of the group, the hunter and the Indian, is already in marble, and certainly the effect is wonderfully fine and noble. The hunter has approached his enemy unexpectedly from behind, and grasped both his arms, holding them back, in such a manner that he has ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... 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 first time I met him, ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... father, who was a travelling geologist and mining prospector. She could ride almost before she could walk, and soon became an expert shot. Once, when only ten years of age, she shot down an Indian who was in the act of killing a white woman with his tomahawk; and on another occasion, when her father's camp was surrounded by hostile Indians, she galloped out upon her pony and brought relief. "She was so much at home with the shy, wild creatures of the woods that she learned ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... them to build a hut for themselves; and 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 the tops of the saplings ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... time to examine the contents of the canoe, and had much reason to be gratified with our acquisition. It had three bear-skins at the bottom, several pounds of yams, cooked and uncooked, two calabashes full of water, bows and arrows, three spears, a tomahawk, three fishing-lines and hooks, and some little gourds full of black, white, and red paint; and what we prized more than all, some flints and a large rusty nail, with rotten ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... to let him escape unobserved, and when he came within his reach he would turn his spear and throw it like a dart, seldom missing his aim. The poor fish would struggle desperately, but soon came to the surface, when he would be drawn in and knocked in the head with a tomahawk to quiet him, when the spear was cut out and the process repeated. We watched them about an hour, and during that time some one of the boats was continually hauling in a fish. They were sturgeon and very ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... growl was heard, and turning they saw under a bush a mastiff, standing over the body of a child. The animal could with difficulty keep its legs; it had been pierced by a lance, and had received a blow with a tomahawk on the head which had nearly cut off one of its ears. It had doubtless been left for dead, but had recovered itself, and crawled to the side of one of the children of the family to which it belonged. Its head was covered with matted blood, and its tongue hung out, black and parched ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... creative power. The moon was a mischievous being, who walked about the earth doing all the evil he could. One day he swallowed the eagle. The eagle's wives coming up, the moon asked where he could find a well. They pointed out one, and while he was drinking, they struck him with a stone tomahawk, which made him disgorge the eagle. This legend is otherwise suggestive from the circumstances that among the Greeks the eagle was the special bird of Zeus, and it was the eagle ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... powder-horn and bullet-pouch, in which he carried balls, flint, and steel His long knife, in a sheath of buffalo, hung from a belt round his waist—made fast to it by a steel chain. Also, he carried a tomahawk; and slung over his shoulder was his long heavy rifle; while from his neck hung his pipe-holder, garnished with ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston

... horrors and calamities of war will Stalk before you. If the barbarous and Savage policy of Great Britain be pursued, and the savages let loose to murder our Citizens and butcher our women and children, this war will be a war of extermination. The first stroke with the Tomahawk, the first attempt with the Scalping Knife, will be the Signal for one indiscriminate scene of desolation. No white man found fighting by the Side of an Indian will be taken prisoner. Instant destruction ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... into the sea, where he was drowned. Gallop then boarded the pinnace. Two Indians were left, who retreated into a small compartment of the hold, and were left unmolested. In the cabin was found the mangled body of Mr. Oldham. A tomahawk had been sunk deep into his skull, and his body was covered with wounds. The floor of the cabin was littered with portions of the cargo, which the murderous savages had plundered. Taking all that ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... "WHIZ"—and his sharp tomahawk struck the stair rail within a few inches of the baby's head. But the frightened girl hurried on, and in a few seconds was ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... 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 him. He had a tomahawk and a knife in his belt and a rifle upon his arm. Martin advanced to the Indian and looked ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... Before all else, man created weapons: the most circumscribed primitive races have invented engines for attack and defense—of wood, bone, stone, as they were able. Then the weapon became a tool by special adaptation:—the battle-club serves as a lever, the tomahawk as a hammer, the flint ax as a hatchet, etc. In this manner there is gradually formed an arsenal of instruments. "Inferior to most animals as regards certain work that would have to be done with the aid of our organic resources alone, we are ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... Indian mounds and relics around here," put in Chicken Little. "Father got those arrow heads, and that stone to pound corn, and his tomahawk heads out of a mound over on ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... stealing over him. His young heart recoiled at the thought of what he had done. This relenting, however, was repelled by the recollection of Long Hair's heroism, and his father and mother's beleaguered condition, if, indeed, the tomahawk ere this had not drank their life. How many days had passed since Long Hair had seen them he knew not; but it was easy to see from his friend's anxiety that his parents were in an extremity of danger, and whether he could succeed ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... enclosure. Coming to the ground, he stepped, with Rodier, out of the car, each carrying his revolver. Now he saw, in addition to the articles before mentioned, a good number of arrows at various points, a few broken spears, a tomahawk of a rude kind. Here and there, on the barricade and below it, there were dark stains. These signs only increased his anxiety, but at the same time awakened wonder. Why had the party left their ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... was the natural one of a sleeper. His back being against the trunk of a tree, his knees were drawn up, with his arms resting upon them. His long rifle reclined against the same support as his body, his knife and tomahawk were in place in the girdle around the waist of his half-naked person, his head was sunk, with the chin resting on his chest, and his coarse, black hair dangling in ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis

... found such poor feed around the camp that they strayed away in search of better during the night. On such an occasion Botheri and his fraternity would have been of real service; but he had decamped at an early hour, and had carried off an axe, a tomahawk, and some bacon, although I had made him several presents. I was not at all surprised at this piece of roguery, since cunning is the natural attribute of a savage; but I was provoked at their running away at a moment when I so much required ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... forest, and they would have in him a brave and robust leader worthy of their tradition. Joseph, on the other hand, was dissatisfied. He had lived and communed with white men and had come to know a greatness that was not to be won by following the war-path. He had wielded the tomahawk; he had bivouacked among armed men on the field of battle: now he was eager for the schoolroom. He wished to widen his knowledge and to see the great world that lay beyond the rude haunts ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood

... triumph, warriors and squaws, young men and children, gloated fiercely over the brutal torture and lingering death of eight English prisoners. It was a grim and grisly spectacle, for no form of torment—from the nerve-wracking test of knife and tomahawk, arrow or bullet, aimed with intent to graze the flesh and not immediately to kill, to the ghastly ordeal of red-hot ramrods and blazing pine-root splinters thrust into the flesh or under the nails —was omitted by those bloodthirsty red devils. Many ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... on, I remained behind with Mr. Scott, leading our horses, and trying to induce some of the natives to come up to us; for a long time, however, our efforts were in vain, but at last I succeeded in persuading a fine athletic looking man to approach within a moderate distance; I then shewed him a tomahawk, which I laid on the ground, making signs that I intended it for him. When I had retired a little, he went and took it up, evidently comprehending its use, and appearing much pleased with the gift; the others soon congregated around ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... real moccasins that Uncle Ernest sent you for bedroom slippers. I'll cut some strips of cloth into fringe for leggings, and you can wear Athelstane's leather belt, and carry an axe for a tomahawk," said Quenrede, surveying her work with critical satisfaction. "Don't forget to ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... Colonel Zane that he concluded to found a settlement there. Taking "tomahawk possession" of the locality (which consisted of blazing a few trees with his tomahawk), he built himself a rude shack and remained ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... my cherished beliefs gone," confessed Walter, afterward, to Nan. "I bet that redskin doesn't know how to throw the tomahawk, and that he couldn't give the warhoop the proper pronunciation if he tried. Dear me! this Southwest is getting ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr



Words linked to "Tomahawk" :   arm, hatchet, weapon system, cut, kill, weapon



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