IN THE OLD WEST 75 



ous measure. Thus they advanced to the center 

 and retreated to their former positions ; when six 

 squaws, with their faces painted a dead black, 

 made their appearance from the crowd, chanting, 

 in soft and sweet measure, a lament for the braves 

 the nation had lost in the late battle: but soon as 

 they drew near the scalp-pole, their melancholy 

 note changed to the music (to them) of gratified 

 revenge. In a succession of jumps, raising the 

 feet alternately but a little distance from the 

 ground, they made their way, through an interval 

 left in the circle of warriors, to the grim pole, and 

 encircling it, danced in perfect silence round it 

 for a few moments. Then they burst forth with 

 an extempore song, laudatory of the achievements 

 of their victorious braves. They addressed the 

 scalps as " sisters " (to be called a squaw is the 

 greatest insult that can be offered to an Indian), 

 and, spitting at them, upbraided them with their 

 rashness in leaving their lodges to seek for Yuta 

 husbands ; *' that the Yuta warriors and young 

 men despised them, and chastised them for their 

 forwardness and presumption, bringing back their 

 scalps to their own women." 



After sufficiently proving that they had any- 

 thing but lost the use of their tongues, but pos- 

 sessed, on the contrary, as fair a length of that 

 formidable weapon as any of their sex, they with- 

 drew, and left the field in undisputed possession 

 of the men ; who, accompanied by tap of drum, 



