Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/216

196 of praise and promise. The “war-whoop” is a phrase which has had terrific meaning for those who have quailed before its pandemonium fury. True to their proud kinship with the animals, the braves borrow from bears, wolves, owls, and the rest those howls and yelps, those shriekings and barkings, by which to strike a panic through their victims and to paralyze their energies.

In such of the Indian towns as were strongly fortified by palisades there was often occasion for much strategy in attack and defence. We need not follow this war-party, nor rehearse its doings, but take it up again at its return to the village. Those who are there on the watch for them are informed first by scouts sent in advance of the party. The first announcements, made in gloom and wailings if the occasion calls for it, are of the disasters of the expedition, of the number and names of the slaughtered, or of those left as captives, of their own side. The women who are bereaved by these losses are allowed full indulgence in their screams and lamentings, finding in the sharpening of their grief a keenness for the savage passions which they are soon to wreak on victims, if any such come in as captives.

When the full war-party comes in, if it has been even but moderately successful, all these laments must yield to boastful shouts of elated triumph. The warriors rehearse their exploits, with mimicry of their own actions and those of the enemy. The scalp-locks are swung in the air, the bloody weapons are brandished, and the scenes connected with those of the night preceding the start on the war-path are re-enacted. If there are prisoners, their fate is direful. Occasionally the privilege is granted to any one of the tribe, man or woman, who has been bereaved of a relative, to claim that one or more may be spared for adoption in place of the deceased; and, according to circumstances, the rescued captive may become a hard-tasked slave, or be received in full friendship as a member of the