400 INDIANS. 



alive and in good health who had undergone the 

 process. 



In 1867 a party of Indians took up a rail on the 

 Union Pacific Eailroad, and laid obstructions on the track. 

 After dark a freight train ran into the trap, and in a 

 moment was a wreck. The engineer and stoker were 

 killed ; the conductor and breaksmen jumped off to find 

 themselves beset by the yelling savages. They ran into 

 the darkness, and all escaped except one breaksman, who 

 was pursued, shot, and fell. The Indian dismounted, and, 

 sitting astride of the body, scalped the head, then stripped 

 it of all clothing except shirt and shoes. Early in the 

 morning another train approaching was flagged by a 

 hideous-looking object, which turned out to be the breaks- 

 man, who, shot through the body and scalped, had yet 

 walked a distance on the track to warn the train he knew 

 would be along at that time. He was taken on board, 

 and the train moved up to the wreck, which, after plunder- 

 ing, the Indians had left. While examining the condition 

 of affairs, one of the men found a scalp, and, taking it into 

 the car, it was immediately recognised by the scalped man 

 as his own. It was put into water, and, when the man 

 arrived at Omaha, an effort was made by the surgeons to 

 make it grow on again, but without success. I saw the man 

 some months afterwards, perfectly recovered, but with a 

 horrible-looking head. He said that the bullet, although 

 knocking him down, did not render him unconscious, and 

 that his greatest trial in that terrible night was the 

 necessity of shamming dead, and not daring to cry out 

 when the Indian was slowly sawing at his head-covering 

 with a very dull knife. 



