The Pawnees and the Omahas were neighboring but hostile
nations. Their wars were perpetual, and this was due to their
propinquity. It was the necessity of their nature and modes of
life. They hunted in the same forest ranges. They were contending
claimants for the same land and game. The successes
of the one in the chase, were so many wrongs done to the rights
of the other; and every buck or bear that fell into the hands of
either party, was a positive loss of property to the other. That
they should hate, and fight, whenever they met, was just as
certain as that they should eat of the venison when the game
was taken. Every conflict increased the mutual hostility of the
parties. Successes emboldened the repetition of assault; defeat
stimulated the desire for revenge. Every scalp which provoked
triumph in the conqueror, demanded a bloody revenge at the
hands of the vanquished; and thus they brooded over bloody fancies
when they did not meet, and met only to realize their bloody
dreams. It was soon evident to themselves, if it was not known
to other nations, that the war was one of annihilation — that
there could be no cessation of strife between them, until one of
the parties should tear the last scalp from the brows of his hateful
enemy.

Such a conviction, pressing equally upon the minds of both
people, forced upon them the exercise of all their arts, their subtlety,
their skill in circumventing their opponents, their savage
and unsparing ferocity when they obtained any advantages. It
prompted their devotions, also, to an intensity, which rendered
both races complete subjects of the most terrible superstitions.
Their priests naturally fed these superstitions, until war, which
is the usual passion of the red man, became their fanaticism.
Wild, mystical, horrid, were their midnight orgies and sacrifices;
and, when they were not in battle — when a breathing spell from
conflict had given them a temporary respite, in which to rebuild
and repair their burned and broken lodges, and store away the
provisions which were to serve them in new trials of strength,—

[figure description] Page 407.[end figure description]

then religion claimed all their hearts, and fed their souls upon
the one frenzied appetite which it thus made the decree of providence.
The red man's Moloch has always been supreme among
his gods, and he now absorbed wholly the devotions equally of
Pawnee and Omaha. And thus, from generation to generation,
had the fierce madness been transmitted. Their oldest traditions
failed to say when the hatred did not exist between the two nations;
and the boy of the Pawnee, and him of the Omaha, for
hundreds of moons had still been taught the same passion at the
altar; and his nightly dream, until he could take the field as a
man, was one in which he found himself bestriding an enemy,
and tearing his reeking scalp from his forehead. And this, by
the way, is the common history of all these Indian tribes. They
were thus perpetually in conflict with their neighbors, destined
to slaughter or be slain. What wonder the sad solemnity on
their faces, the national gloom over their villages, their passions
which hide darkly, as wolves in the mountain caverns, concealing,
in the cold aspect, their silent wretchedness; their horrid rages,
under the stolid, though only seeming, indifference in every
visage. Their savage god was dealing with them everywhere,
after his usual fashion. They were themselves the sacrifices upon
his bloody altars, and he nursed their frenzies only for self-destruction.

Gloomy, stern, intensely savage, was the spirit thus prevailing
over the minds of both people, at the time of which we speak.
The season was approaching, when, their summer crops laid by,
they were again to take the field, in the twofold character of
warriors and hunters. The union of the two, in the case of
people living mostly by the chase, is natural and apparent
enough. The forests where they sought their prey equally
harbored their enemies, and for both they made the same preparations.
The period of these events is within modern times.
The coasts of the great Atlantic have been populously settled
by the white race. The red men have gradually yielded before
their pioneers. The restless Anglo-Norman is pushing his way
rapidly into the forests — into the pathless solitudes — into sullen
mountain-gorges, and dense and gloomy thickets. He has
possessed himself everywhere of some foothold, and converted
every foothold into a fastness. The borderers were already

[figure description] Page 408.[end figure description]

known to both Pawnee and Omaha. But, while these raged
against each other, they took little heed of that approaching
power under which both were to succumb. Its coming inspired
no fear, while the hate for each other remained undiminished.

The autumn campaign was about to open, and the Pawnees
and the Omahas were soon busy in their preparations for it.
Before setting out upon the war-path, many things had to be
done — mystic, wild, solemn — by which to propitiate their gods,
and consecrate their sacrifices. The youth of each nation, who
had never yet taken the field, were each conveyed to the
“Silent Lodges,” where, for a certain time, under trials of hunger,
thirst, and exposure, they were to go through a sort of
sacred probation, during which their visions were to become
auguries, and to shadow forth the duties and the events of their
future career. This probation over, they took their part in
solemn feast and council, in order to decide upon the most
plausible plans of action, and to obtain the sanction and direction
of the Great Spirit, as ascertained by their priests. You
already possess some general idea of the horrid and unseemly
rites which were held proper to these occasions. We are all,
more or less familiar with that barbarous mummery, in which,
on such occasions, most savages indulge; blindly, and to us
insanely, but having their own motives, and the greatest confidence
in the efficacy of their rites. These proceedings lasted
days and nights, and nothing was omitted, of their usual performances,
which could excite the enthusiasm of the people,
while strengthening their faith in their gods, their priesthood,
and their destiny. In the deepest recesses of wood the incantations
were carried on. Half naked, with bodies blackened and
painted, the priests officiated before flaming altars of wood and
brush. On these they piled native offerings. The fat of the
bear and buffalo sent up reeking steams to the nostrils of their
savage gods, mingled with gentler essences, aromatic scents,
extracted from bruised or burning shrubs of strong odorous properties.
The atmosphere became impregnated with their fumes,
and the audience — the worshippers, rather — grew intoxicated
as they inhaled. The priests were already intoxicated, drinking
decoctions of acrid, bitter, fiery roots of the forests, the
qualities of which they thoroughly knew. Filled with their

[figure description] Page 409.[end figure description]

exciting fires, they danced, they sang, they ran, and sent up,
meanwhile, the most horrid howls to their demon. Filled with
a sacred fury, they rushed hither and thither, smiting themselves
unsparingly with sharp flints, which covered their breasts
and arms with blood. Thus maddened, they divined, and the
nation hung trembling, as with a single heart, upon the awful
revelations from their lips. The scene is one for the most vivid
and intense of the melodramas. Talk of your Druid sacrifices,
as seen in your operas. They are not, for the picturesque and
terrible, to be spoken of in the same hour with those of our
aboriginal tribes.

In the case of both nations, as might be expected, the priests
divined and predicted general success. They took care, however,
as is usually the case with the prophets of the superstitious,
to speak in language sufficiently vague to allow of its application
to any sort of events; or they rested solely upon safe predictions
which commonly bring about their own verification. They
did not, however, content themselves with prophesying the
events of the war. They consulted as well the course of the
action to be pursued — the plans to be adopted — the leaders
chosen; and this, too, in such manner as to leave no loopholes
for evasion. Thus they encouraged their favorites, rebuked
and kept down leaders whom they feared, and kept the nation
subject wholly to their own exclusive despotism.

The response especially made by the Pawnee priesthood,
when consulting their gods with reference to the approaching
campaign, announced the victory to rest with that nation which
should first succeed in making a captive. This captive was
doomed to the torture by fire. Such a response as this, however
cruel and barbarous it may seem, was yet of a highly merciful
tendency, calculated really to ameliorate the horrors of
war, and to promote the safety of human life. The effect upon
the Pawnees — a people eager and impetuous — was to restrain
their appetite for battle. Their great policy was to escape
unnecessary risks of any sort, while employing all their subtlety
for the possession of a native Omaha. To this the warriors
addressed themselves with wonderful unanimity, but to
the grievous sacrifice of their chief appetites, all of which indicated
the fiercer conflict as their true delight.

Previous section

Next section