第83章

Others of Kongra-Tonga's scars were the result of accidents; but he had many which he received in war.He was one of the most noted warriors in the village.In the course of his life he had slain as he boasted to me, fourteen men, and though, like other Indians, he was a great braggart and utterly regardless of truth, yet in this statement common report bore him out.Being much flattered by my inquiries he told me tale after tale, true or false, of his warlike exploits; and there was one among the rest illustrating the worst features of the Indian character too well for me to omit.Pointing out of the opening of the lodge toward the Medicine-Bow Mountain, not manv miles distant he said that he was there a few summers ago with a war party of his young men.Here they found two Snake Indians, hunting.They shot one of them with arrows and chased the other up the side of the mountain till they surrounded him on a level place, and Kongra-Tonga himself, jumping forward among the trees, seized him by the arm.Two of his young men then ran up and held him fast while he scalped him alive.Then they built a great fire, and cutting the tendons of their captive's wrists and feet, threw him in, and held him down with long poles until he was burnt to death.He garnished his story with a great many descriptive particulars much too revolting to mention.His features were remarkably mild and open, without the fierceness of expression common among these Indians; and as he detailed these devilish cruelties, he looked up into my face with the same air of earnest simplicity which a little child would wear in relating to its mother some anecdote of its youthful experience.

Old Mene-Seela's lodge could offer another illustration of the ferocity of Indian warfare.A bright-eyed, active little boy was living there.He had belonged to a village of the Gros-Ventre Blackfeet, a small but bloody and treacherous band, in close alliance with the Arapahoes.About a year before, Kongra-Tonga and a party of warriors had found about twenty lodges of these Indians upon the plains a little to the eastward of our present camp; and surrounding them in the night, they butchered men, women, and children without mercy, preserving only this little boy alive.He was adopted into the old man's family, and was now fast becoming identified with the Ogallalla children, among whom he mingled on equal terms.There was also a Crow warrior in the village, a man of gigantic stature and most symmetrical proportions.Having been taken prisoner many years before and adopted by a squaw in place of a son whom she had lost, he had forgotten his old national antipathies, and was now both in act and inclination an Ogallalla.

It will be remembered that the scheme of the grand warlike combination against the Snake and Crow Indians originated in this village; and though this plan had fallen to the ground, the embers of the martial ardor continued to glow brightly.Eleven young men had prepared themselves to go out against the enemy.The fourth day of our stay in this camp was fixed upon for their departure.At the head of this party was a well-built active little Indian, called the White Shield, whom I had always noticed for the great neatness of his dress and appearance.His lodge too, though not a large one, was the best in the village, his squaw was one of the prettiest girls, and altogether his dwelling presented a complete model of an Ogallalla domestic establishment.I was often a visitor there, for the White Shield being rather partial to white men, used to invite me to continual feasts at all hours of the day.Once when the substantial part of the entertainment was concluded, and he and I were seated cross-legged on a buffalo robe smoking together very amicably, he took down his warlike equipments, which were hanging around the lodge, and displayed them with great pride and self-importance.