MILLING WITH THE NIGHT HERD 



ious warriors and their dead. If then, the program 

 of Happy Canyon could be arranged for this, they 

 would like to give this dance there and as scalps were 

 a ceremonial symbol used in this dance, they agreed 

 for the first time to bring out their scalps. 



The dance was a never-to-be-forgotten one. The 

 Amerinds were marvelously attired and painted in 

 special war victory symbols — unusual trappings of 

 which no white man understood the significance or 

 nature. Very old warriors and old gray-haired women 

 came, and half blind, took part — who had never par- 

 ticipated in the other Amerindian ceremonials at the 

 Round-Up before. There, too, w r ere the scalps, symbols 

 of conquest over an enemy, carried on the staffs called 

 cou sticks. In the course of the ceremony, when an 

 Indian representing the dead enemy was brought 

 down the mountain side to the camp ceremony, the 

 old squaws gave vent to the pent-up fierceness. It was 

 like one last, wild, exulting cry of the imprisoned heart- 

 burnings from the remnant left of a stoical, courage- 

 ous, repressed generation, the last flickering of the 

 spirit of the old-time Indian before the flame goes out. 

 And in those weird cries of victor over vanquished, 

 to those who witnessed and listened, was brought home 

 the full significance of why 



"When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons 



and Choctaws, 

 They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of 



the squaws; 

 'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those 



stark enthusiasts pale, 

 For the female of the species is more deadly than the 



male." 



109 

 I 



