158 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



with what he knows of Indian fighting. Besides, though a four-man 

 club, for all its clumsiness, might cause alarm and do damage, it could 

 hardly strike on the ground beyond the enemy, making such an uproar 

 as to suggest an attack from the rear by another &quot; troop &quot; descending 

 on them &quot; from the land &quot; to cut off their retreat. 



Here was the situation : Karlsefni s men drawn up before the first 

 houses near the bay shore, with the river on their right, the ground 

 sloping up behind them to the woods, and assailed in front by a multi 

 tude of enemies who sprang from their canoes as these touched the 

 land. Almost certainly some of them would turn the position by 

 ascending the river, awakening disquiet. Amid* a shower of sling- 

 stones, arrows, and tomahawks, which the Icelanders were too few to 

 adequately answer, there is a rush of a group of Indians carrying 

 great poles, with something huge, black, and uncanny poised above 

 them, and this is cast, amid such a pandemonium of sound as wild 

 Indians best can raise, over the heads of the defenders, beyond them 

 on the ground, where there is a tremendous additional uproar, rein 

 forced by the echoes from the wood border. At once the Norsemen 

 feel, hear (and so see) enemies, on every side; panic takes them and 

 they rush for a more defensible position, the women streaming out of 

 the string of cabins to join the race, and Thorbrand, son of Snorri, 

 Karlsefni s friend, being stricken down just ahead of Freydis 

 within the wood-border by one of the missiles that come showering 

 after them. She snatches his sword and turns, wild with fear and 

 defiant anger, just as the Norsemen, rallying, turn also on the wooded 

 Fall River Bluffs behind her, and come back ashamed of their fear. 

 Then the Indians, not always good at pressing home a victory won, 

 (or they might have annihilated Braddock s force notwithstanding 

 the rear-guard stand of the colonial rangers), yield in their turn and 

 paddle away. 



This is all consistent and most probable, granting the original 

 panic, but something more than &quot; a giant club &quot; is required to explain 

 it. Thus far a satisfactory explanation is not forthcoming. Possibly 

 the solid &quot; demon s head &quot; suggested a hollow one, capable of being 

 detachable from its support and cast by several poles together a good 

 way up the hillside. If not some such clever invention of the moment, 

 it must be a Norse reminiscence incorporated by the saga-man, as 

 Dr. Nansen 1 has acutely suggested. 



1 Fr. Nansen : In Northern Mists, vol. 2 , p. 8. 



