WAR-DANCE—BATTLES. 129 
material, and sprinkled on white eagle-down from tip to toe. On their 
heads they put bushy plumes and coronals of larger feathers. Then, seizing 
their bows and arrows, and slinging their quivers over their shoulders they 
rushed over the brow of the hill and down upon the plain in a wild and 
disorderly throng, uttering unearthly yells and whoops, leaping, and brand- 
ishing their weapons above their heads, and chanting their war-songs. 
Before a battle takes place the heralds of the two contending parties 
meet on neutral ground and arrange the time and place of the conflict. 
The night before going out they dance all night to inflame their courage. If 
the warrior possesses a wide elk-skin belt he ties it around him to protect his 
vitals, but otherwise he is quite naked. About three hundred arrows to the 
warrior is the complement of ammunition for a raid. The Wailakki, on the 
other hand, wear shields of tanned elk-skin, which are very thick and tough, 
and proof against most arrows. The body of the skin is stiff, and is left 
wide enough to shield two or three men. It is worn on the back, so as not 
to incommode the warrior in battle, and when he sees an arrow coming he 
turns his back to it, and two or three of his friends, if they choose, screen 
themselves behind his shield, at the same time shooting over it or around 
the sides of it. If the shield-bearer sees an arrow coming so low that it 
may strike him in the legs he ducks. They time their march so as to be at 
the battle-field at daybreak. If a Yuki stumbles and falls on the march, or 
is stung by a yellow-jacket, it is a bad omen; he must go home, or he will 
be killed. 
During the battle they simply stand up in masses in the open ground or 
amid the chaparral, and shoot at each other until they “get enough,” as one 
of them expressed it; then they ery quits and go home. If any dead are left 
on the field both parties return afterward and carry them away and bury 
them (they burn only those whom they do not honor, though this rule is 
not invariable); but a pioneer states that he has seen Yuki dead left on the 
field, a prey to beasts and birds. 
The Yuki say that they never scalped white men, but they take scalps 
from Indians. 
When the men are absent on a war expedition the women do not 
sleep; they dance without ceasing, in a circle, and chant and wave wands 
97TC 
