Illustrations of the manners, customs, & condition of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 2): With letters and notes, written during eight years of travel and adventure among the wildest and most remarkable tribes now existingCatlin, George
History
Illustrations of the manners, customs, & condition of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 2): With letters and notes, written during eight years of travel and adventure among the wildest and most remarkable tribes now existing
Catlin, George
Indians of North America
[8] Several years after I painted the portrait of this
extraordinary man, and whilst I was delivering my Lectures in the
City of New York, I first received intelligence of his death,
in the following singular manner:—I was on the platform in my
Lecture-room, in the Stuyvesant Institute, with an audience of
twelve or fourteen hundred persons, in the midst of whom were
seated a delegation of thirty or forty Sioux Indians under the
charge of Major Pilcher, their agent; and I was successfully
passing before their eyes the portraits of a number of Sioux
chiefs, and making my remarks upon them. The Sioux instantly
recognized each one as it was exhibited, which they instantly
hailed by a sharp and startling yelp. But when the portrait of this
chief was placed before them, instead of the usual recognition,
each one placed his hand over his mouth, and gave a “hush—sh—” and
hung down their heads, their usual expressions of grief in case of
a death. From this sudden emotion, I knew instantly, that the chief
must be dead, and so expressed my belief to the audience. I stopped
my Lecture a few moments to converse with Major Pilcher who was by
my side, and who gave me the following extraordinary account of his
death, which I immediately related to the audience; and which being
translated to the Sioux Indians, their chief arose and addressed
himself to the audience, saying that the account was true, and that
Ha-wan-je-tah was killed but a few days before they left home.
The account which Major Pilcher gave was nearly as follows:—
“But a few weeks before I left the Sioux country with the
delegation, Ha-wan-je-tah (the one horn) had in some way been the
accidental cause of the death of his only son, a very fine youth;
and so great was the anguish of his mind at times, that he became
frantic and insane. In one of these moods he mounted his favourite
war-horse with his bow and his arrows in his hand, and dashed off
at full speed upon the prairies, repeating the most solemn oath,
‘that he would slay the first living thing that fell in his way, be
it man or beast, or friend or foe.’
“No one dared to follow him, and after he had been absent an hour
or two, his horse came back to the village with two arrows in its
body, and covered with blood! Fears of the most serious kind were
now entertained for the fate of the chief, and a party of warriors
immediately mounted their horses, and retraced the animal’s tracks
to the place of the tragedy, where they found the body of their
chief horribly mangled and gored by a buffalo bull, whose carcass
was stretched by the side of him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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