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Show 120 THE CITY OF THE SAINTS. CHAP. II. by the fietcher from the Mississippi to the Pacific. The piles are triangles of iron, agate, flint, chalcedony, opal, or other hard stone: for war purposes they are barbed,'and bird-bolts tipped with hard wood are used for killing small game. Some tribes poison their shafts: the material is the juice of a buffalo's or au antelope's liver when it has become green and decomposed after the bite of a rattlesnake; at least this is the account which all the hunters and mountaineers give of it. They have also, I believe, vegetable poisons. The feathers are three in number; those preferred • are the hawk's and the raven's; and some tribes glue, while others whip them on with tendon-thread. The stele is invariably indented from the feathers to the tip with a shallow spiral furrow : this vermiculation is intended, according to the traders, to hasten death by letting air into or letting blood out of the wound. It is probably the remnant of some superstition now obsolete, for every man does it, while no man explains why or wherefore. If the Indian works well, he does-not work quickly; he will expend upon half a dozen arrows as many months. Each tribe has its own mark; the Pawnees, for instance, make a bulge below the notch. Individuals also have private signs which enable them to claim a disputed scalp or buffalo robe.. In battle or chase the arrows are held in the left hand, and are served out to the right with such rapidity that one long string of them seems to be cleaving the air. A good Sioux archer will, it is said, discharge nine arrows upward before the first has fallen to the ground. He will transfix a bison and find his shaft upon the earth on the other side; and he shows his dexterity by discharging the arrow up to its middle in the quarry and by withdrawing it before the animal falls. Tales are told of a single warrior killing several soldiers; and as a rule, at short distances, the bow is considered by the whites a more effectual weapon than the gun. It is related that when the Sioux first felt the effects of Colt's revolver, the weapon, after two shots, happened to slip from the owner's grasp; when he recovered it and fired a third time all fled, declaring that a white was shooting them with buffalo chips. Wonderful tales are told of the Indians' accuracy with the bow: they hold it no great feat to put the arrow into a keyhole at the distance of forty paces. It is true that I never saw any thing surprising in their performances, but the savage will not take the trouble to waste his skill without an object. The Sioux tongue, like the Pawnee, is easily learned; government officials and settlers acquire it as the Anglo-Indian does Hindostanee. They are assisted by the excellent grammar and dictionary of the Dakotah language, collated by the members of the Dakotah Mission, edited by the Rev. S. R. Riggs, M.A., and accepted for publication by the Smithsonian Institution, December, 1851. The Dakotah-English part contains about 16,000 words, and the bibliography (spelling-books, tracts, and transla- |
