s. Braxton Wyatt, Blackstaffe, and other white
men were admitted. After their deliberations a great fire was built in
the center of the camp, the squaws who had followed the army feeding
it with brushwood until it leaped and roared and formed a great red
pyramid. Then the chiefs sat down in a solemn circle at some distance,
and waited.

Presently the sound of a loud chant was heard, and from the farthest
point of the camp emerged a long line of warriors, hundreds and hundreds
of them, all painted in red and black with horrible designs. They were
naked except the breechcloth and moccasins, and everyone waved aloft a
tomahawk as he sang.

Still singing and brandishing the tomahawks, which gleamed in the
red light, the long procession entered the open space, and danced and
wheeled about the great fire, the flames casting a lurid light upon
faces hideous with paint or the intoxication of triumph. The glare of
their black eyes was like those of Eastern eaters of hasheesh or opium,
and they bounded to and fro as if their muscles were springs of steel.
They sang:

We have met the Bostonians [*] in battle,
We slew them with our rifles and tomahawks.
Few there are who escaped our warriors.
Ever-victorious is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee.

[* Note: All the Americans were often called Bostonians by
the Indians as late as the Revolutionary War.]

Mighty has been our taking of scalps,
They will fill all the lodges of the Iroquois.
We have burned the houses of the Bostonians.
Ever-victorious is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee.

The wolf will prowl in their corn-fields,
The grass will grow where their blood has soaked;
Their bones will lie for the buzzard to pick.
Ever-victorious is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee.

We came upon them by river and forest;
As we smote Wyoming we will smite the others,
We will drive the Bostonians back to the sea.
Ever-victorious is the League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee.

The monotonous chant with the refrain, "Ever-victorious is the League of
the Ho-de-no-sau-nee," went on for many verses. Meanwhile the old squaws
never ceased to feed the bonfire, and the flames roared, casting a
deeper and more vivid light over the distorted faces of the dancers and
those of the chiefs, who sat gravely beyond.

Higher and higher leaped the warriors. They seemed unconscious of
fatigue, and the glare in their eyes became that of maniacs. Their whole
soul