CoP AS hata, Wel: 
ARMOR AND EAGLE’S FEATHERS. 
For more than two hundred years we know that the Dakota have been 
noted as the most warlike nation of the northwest. Hennep‘n and his 
comrades were captured by a flotilla of canoes coming down to make war 
on the Hlini and Miami of Illinois. And the reputation of good fighters 
has come down to recent times, as we know from the Custer massacre. 
The making and keeping them a nation of warriors has, in my judgment, 
been accomplished mainly by three customs, viz: The scalp dance, the 
wearing of eagle’s feathers, and consecrated armor. In their natural order 
the last comes first. 
In the ancient times the exhortation to a young man was, ‘‘Guard well 
your sacred armor;” and that consisted of the spear, an arrow, and a bundle 
of paint, with some swan’s down painted red, to which were sometimes 
added some roots for the healing of wounds. These were wrapped together 
in strips of red or blue cloth, and could be seen in pleasant days carefully 
set up outside of the lodge. These were given by an older man, who was 
believed to have power over spirits, and who had, in the act of consecra- 
tion, made to inhere in them the spirit of some animal or bird, as the wolf, 
the beaver, the loon, or the eagle. Henceforth these, or rather the one 
which became each one’s tutelar divinity and his armor god, were sacred 
and not to be killed or eaten until certain conditions were fulfilled. Cer- 
tain customs of this kind are finely illustrated in the following personal 
narrative of 
SIMON ANAWANG-MANI. 
Simon was all that a Dakota brave could be. In his early years he 
must have been daring even to recklessness. There was in him a strong 
will, which sometimes showed itself in the form of stubbornness. His eye, 
even in a later day, showed that there had been evil, hatred, and malicious- 
ness there He was a thorough Indian, and for the first dozen years of his 
manhood, or from his eighteenth to his thirtieth year, no one of his com- 
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