nd skill tears off the bleeding scalp.[276] This trophy is
ever preserved with jealous care by the Indian warriors.

After any great success the war party always return to their villages,
more eager to celebrate the victory than to improve its advantages.
Their women and old men await their return in longing expectation. The
fate of the war is announced from afar off by well-known signs; the bad
tidings are first told. A herald advances to the front of the returning
party, and sounds a death-whoop for each of their warriors who has
fallen in the fray. Then, after a little time, the tale of victory is
told, and the number of prisoners and of the slain declared. All
lamentations are soon hushed, and congratulations and rejoicing succeed.
During the retreat, if the war party be not hard pressed by the enemy,
prisoners are treated with some degree of humanity, but are very closely
guarded. When the expedition has returned to the village, the old men,
women, and children form themselves into two lines; the prisoners are
compelled to pass between them, and are cruelly bruised with sticks and
stones, but not vitally injured by their tormentors.

A council is usually held to decide the fate of the prisoners: the
alternatives are, to be adopted into the conquering nation, and received
as brothers, or to be put to death in the most horrible torments, thus
either to supply the place of warriors fallen in battle, or to appease
the spirits of the departed by their miserable end. The older warriors
among the captives usually meet the hardest fate; the younger are most
frequently adopted by the women, their wounds are cured, and they are
thenceforth received in every respect as if they belonged to the tribe.
The adopted prisoners go out to war against their former countrymen,
and the new tie is held even more binding than the old.

The veteran warrior, whose tattooed skin bears record of slaughtered
enemies, meets with no mercy: his face is painted, his head crowned with
flowers as if for a festival, black moccasins are put upon his feet, and
a flaming torch is placed above him as the signal of condemnation. The
women take the lead in the diabolical tortures to which he is subjected,
and rage around their victim with horrible cries. He is, however,
allowed a brief interval to sing his death-song, and he often continues
it even through the whole of the terrible ordeal. He boasts of his great
deeds, insults his tormentors, laughing at