CRUELTY OF SIOUX INDIANS. 



89 



which the love of cruelty and revenge can 

 invent and inflict upon them, they continue 

 to chaunt their death song with a firm voice ; 

 considering that to die like a man, courting 

 pain rather than flinching from it, is the noblest 

 triumph of the warrior. In going to war, some 

 time ago, a Sioux chief cut a piece of flesh 

 from his thigh, and holding it up with a view 

 to animate and encourage the party who were 

 to accompany him to the ferocious conflict, 

 told them to see how little he regarded pain, 

 and that, despising torture and the scalping 

 knife and tomahawk of their enemies, they 

 should rush upon them, and pursue them till 

 they were exterminated ; and thereby console 

 the spirits of the dead whom they had slain. 



It does not appear that cannibalism is prac- 

 tised by any of the North American Indians ; 

 on the contrary, the eating of human flesh 

 is held in great abhorrence by them : and 

 when they are driven to eat it, through 

 dire necessity, they are generally shunned by 

 other Indians who know it, and who often take 

 their lives secretly. It is not an uncommon 

 practice, however, for them to cut flesh from 

 their captives, and, when cooked, to eat small 

 bits of it, as well as to give some to their 

 children, with a little of their blood, no doubt 



