"Tomahawk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and smoking ruins: around, the ground was trodden down by many feet of moccasined men. Partly consumed by the fire, lay the bodies of two farm-servants who had been in Mr. Buckingham's employ; a tomahawk, smeared with fresh blood, lay among the smoking embers; and a golden curl singed by fire, was near it—all they could ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... I could speak his dialect," continued the Doctor. "I shall have to operate severely if his arm is to be saved, and I don't want him or his men to pay me my fee with a crack from a tomahawk." ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... allowed Colonel Drew's men to fight in a way that was "their own fashion,"[63] with bow and arrow and with tomahawk.[64] This, as was only meet it should, called down upon him and them the opprobrium of friends and foes alike.[65] The Indian war-whoop was indulged in, of itself enough to terrify. It ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... which weighed upon heart and mind, that yellow gleam startled the mind into a direction remote from philosophy, quickened the heart to a beat that chimed with no household affections. Involuntarily I stooped; impulsively I struck the block with the hatchet, or tomahawk, I carried habitually about me, for the purpose of marking the trees that I wished to clear from the waste of my broad domain. The quartz was shattered by the stroke, and left disburied its glittering treasure. My first glance had not deceived me. I, vain seeker after knowledge, had, at least, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bread. She was ironing at the time, and threatened him with a hot flat iron till he hurried out. Another came in one warm summer afternoon, shut the door behind him, and leaned against it, glowering at her. For once she was thoroughly frightened. He had with him a tomahawk, having a hollow handle and head, that could be used as a pipe. However, her wits did not desert her. Seeing the cat sleeping peacefully in the corner, she cried, "How did that cat get in here!" and catching up the broom she chased pussy around ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... indoctrinated Mr. Fitz-Urse, Sir George takes another of his guests, and proceeds to work upon him. "My dear Mr. Bludyer, how do you do? Mr. Fitz-Boodle, Mr. Bludyer, the brilliant and accomplished wit, whose sallies in the Tomahawk delight us every Saturday. Nay, no blushes, my dear sir; you are very wicked, but oh! SO pleasant. Well, Mr. Bludyer, I am glad to see you, sir, and hope you will have a favourable opinion of our genius, sir. As I was saying to Mr. Fitz-Boodle, she has the graces of a Venus with the mind of a Muse. ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I was shot. Once, before I would be taken, all hands, young and old on the plantation were on the chase after me. I was strongly armed with an axe, tomahawk, and butcher knife. I expected to be killed on the spot, but I got to the woods and stayed two days. At night I went back to the plantation and got something to eat. While going back to the woods I was shot in the thigh, legs, back and head, was badly wounded, my mind was to die rather ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Zekel, stepping forward, pale, but courageous, "I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little tomahawk." ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... join a party of fishers or hunters, his presence would bring misfortune on them; the ghost of his dead wife would frighten away the fish or the game. He goes about everywhere and at all times armed with a tomahawk to defend himself, not only against wild boars in the jungle, but against the dreaded spirit of his departed spouse, who would do him an ill turn if she could; for all the souls of the dead are malignant and their only delight ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... unsuspectedly along the path. When opposite, the Sioux boys fired and the Chippewa in the lead fell dead. The one in the rear fled with his gun over his shoulder and was pursued instantly by young Little Crow with tomahawk in hand. The Chippewa discharged his gun backward as he ran and killed the young man as he was about to bury his tomahawk in the Chippewa's brain. Little Crow's comrade took the scalp of the dead Chippewa, ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... divers always took a tomahawk with them on their expeditions, in order to lop off the tentacles of any octopus that might try to attack them in the boats. And, by the way, we saw many extraordinary creatures during our cruise. I myself had a serious fright ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... an' tomahawk, yo' understan'," continued the old man, enjoying the boy's astonishment, "but uncivilized an' wild. Thar an't any finer stock in the world, he said, than the mount'neers o' the Ridge, clar down to Tennessee, an' he said, too, that they were o' the good old English ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... difference there is in the scenery. The new tracks were 'blazed'—that is, slices of bark cut off from both sides of trees, within sight of each other, in a line, to mark the track until the horses and wheel-marks made it plain. A smart Bushman, with a sharp tomahawk, can blaze a track as he rides. But a Bushman a little used to the country soon picks out differences amongst the trees, half unconsciously as it were, and so finds his ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... toil in the harvest field and was sitting by the fireside, where the kettle sang contentedly. The mother sat spinning or knitting, and perhaps singing a lullaby, as she rocked the cradle, little recking that ere the morning dawned the hamlet would lie in ashes, and the tomahawk of the Indian be buried in her babies' hearts; but such was the case, for after forty-eight hours of fiendish cruelty, death and desolation reigned for miles along the shores. Where the blue smoke had curled up among the trees were only the smoking ruins of hearths and homes, surrounded with sights ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... expected every moment they would strike me with their tomahawks—I thought it would not do to be killed running like a coward and saw no other way to make my escape than to face about and to catch the tomahawk from the first that attempted to strike me, and jerk it from him, which I made no doubt but I was able to do; then I would have a weapon to fight with as well as them, and by that means I would be able to make my escape; they had thrown down their guns before they gave me chase, ...
— Narrative of the Captivity of William Biggs among the Kickapoo Indians in Illinois in 1788 • William Biggs
... which must have been at a considerable distance from the house. The old man I did not now see; I was dragged along between Kish-kau-ko and a very short thick man. I had probably made some resistance, or done something to irritate this last, for he took me a little to one side, and drawing his tomahawk, motioned to me to look up. This I plainly understood, from the expression of his face, and his manner, to be a direction for me to look up for the last time, as he was about to kill me. I did as ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... country, in company, in advance of me, as fast as they could. I travelled more slowly by myself. One night, when near what is called the Horse-shoe bend of the Finke, I had turned out my horses, and as it seemed inclined to rain, was erecting a small tent, and on looking round for the tomahawk to drive a stake into the ground, was surprised to notice a very handsome little black boy, about nine or ten years old, quite close to me. I patted him on the head, whereupon he smiled very sweetly, and began to talk most fluently ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Panama hat on his head. Lucien's dress was somewhat more civilised in its appearance than that of his elder brother. Like him though he had a leather belt, with a sheath and knife on one side; and, instead of a pistol, a small tomahawk on the other. Not that Lucien had set out with the intention of tomahawking anybody. No; he carried his little hatchet for cracking rocks, not skulls. Lucien's ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... they were forced to alter their course; but the subordinate spurs on either side ending in rocky precipices, they had to return and again confront the scrub. In these circumstances, they made up their minds to rely upon axe and tomahawk to win a way, and so next morning fell to work cutting a passage for the horses. The ascent was also now becoming steep and rough, and on this day some of the horses fell while ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... the Indians fired and missed, to receive in return the bullet from Henry's reloaded rifle, but the other two came on, shouting. He hurled his hatchet and struck down the second, but the third paused twenty feet away and whirled his tomahawk about his head in glittering circles. Henry instinctively raised his rifle to ward off the blade in its flight, but he knew that the guard would not do. The tomahawk would leave the warrior's hand like a thunderbolt, and it would ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... paper and pencil, and he tried to write; and he then fell back and died, and I caught him as he fell back and held him, and I then turned round myself and cried; I was crying a good while until I got well; that was about an hour, and then I buried him; I dug up the ground with a tomahawk, and covered him over with logs, then grass, and my shirt and trousers; that night I left ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... behind with Mr. Scott, leading our horses, and trying to induce some of the natives to come up to us; for a long time, however, our efforts were in vain, but at last I succeeded in persuading a fine athletic looking man to approach within a moderate distance; I then shewed him a tomahawk, which I laid on the ground, making signs that I intended it for him. When I had retired a little, he went and took it up, evidently comprehending its use, and appearing much pleased with the gift; the others soon congregated around him, and Mr. Scott and I mounting our horses, followed the party, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... is growing distinctly out of breath. In another moment Tommy will have her. By this time he has fully worked himself into the belief that he is a Red Indian, and she his lawful prey, and is prepared to make a tomahawk of his fork, and having felled her, to scalp her somehow, when Providence shows her a corner round a rhododendron bush that may save her for the moment. She makes for it, gains it, turns it, dashes round it, and all but precipitates ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... grasped it with a tight grip, and jerked me violently forward; another pulled my mule by the bridle, and in a moment I was completely surrounded. Before I could do anything at all, they had seized my revolvers from the holsters, and I received a blow on the head from a tomahawk which nearly rendered me senseless. My gun, which was lying across the saddle, was snatched from its place, and finally the Indian, who had hold of the bridle, started off towards the Arkansas River, leading ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... day the same artifice was resorted to at Michilimackinac, and with the most complete success. There was no guardian angel there to warn them of danger, and all fell beneath the rifle, the tomahawk, the war-club, and the knife, one or two of the traders—a Mr. Henry among the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the calm of a June morning, watching the result; while the savage gave the yell that has become historical for its appalling influence, leaped through the bushes, and came bounding across the open ground, flourishing a tomahawk. Still Deerslayer moved not, but stood with his unloaded rifle fallen against his shoulders, while, with a hunter's habits, his hands were mechanically feeling for the powder-horn and charger. When about forty feet from his enemy, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... British supposed that the savages would prove very useful as scouts and guides, and that by offers of reward and threats of punishment they might be restrained from deeds of violence. They were very unruly, however, and apt to use the tomahawk when ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... A gash from a tomahawk disfigured his head; the woolly hair was matted with blood. But there remained still something of ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... consisted of, in front, a sort of purse made of rat-skin; behind, a bran new tomahawk ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... blaze of the chapel, and now were on the track of the rangers, summoned to vengeance by the bell's dismal murmurs. In the midst of a deep swamp, they made a sudden onset on the retreating foe. Good Deacon Lawson battled stoutly, but had his skull cloven by a tomahawk, and sank into the depths of the morass, with the ponderous bell above him. And, for many a year thereafter, our hero's voice was heard no more on earth, neither at the hour of worship, nor at festivals ...
— A Bell's Biography - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... husband would stand this severe test, and many were astonished when they heard it was her intention to accompany him to the land of the Everglades, where so many had lost their lives, and where the prevailing fever or the deadly tomahawk might leave her alone among strangers. A few days before they left we visited them in the old Newport barracks, and I said to her: "Lizzie; remember you are a soldier's wife, and must not give way to fear." Never can I forget ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... near the river on whose banks he had been struck down, and the shifting clouds let the moonlight fall upon him. He put his hand to his head where it ached, and when he took it away, there was blood on his fingers. He inferred that a heavy blow had been dealt to him with the flat of a tomahawk, but with the stained fingers he made a scornful gesture. One of the warriors, apparently a chief, noticed the movement, and he muttered a word or two which seemed to have the note of approval. Henry rose to his feet and the chief still regarded him, ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... thrilling interest; and, given as they are, either in the handwriting or directly from the lips of those who, miraculously escaping the perils of the tomahawk, the rifle, and starvation, both saw and suffered, from the incidents they relate, bear throughout the unmistakable impress of truth, and must carry conviction to ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... next moment he fell beneath the tomahawk of the Boy Chief, and within the next quarter of an hour the United States army was dispersed. Thus ended the battle of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... hunting ferret his own eyes swept quickly about the room. At the four windows there were long curtain cords. On the walls, hung there as trophies, were a number of weapons. On one end of Kedsty's desk, used as a paperweight, was a stone tomahawk. Still nearer to the dead man's hands, unhidden by papers, was a boot-lace. Under his limp right hand was the automatic. With these possible instruments of death close at hand, ready to be snatched up without ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... piece of flesh from his thigh, and holding it up with a view to animate and encourage the party who were to accompany him to the ferocious conflict, told them to see how little he regarded pain, and that, despising torture and the scalping knife and tomahawk of their enemies, they should rush upon them, and pursue them till they were exterminated; and thereby console the spirits of the ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... trespassers as far as in his power, with the aid of the following implements, placed in his hands for that purpose, if necessary, viz:—Law, when the party is worthy of that attention and proper testimony can be had, a good cudgel, tomahawk, cutlass, gun and blunderbuss, with powder, shot and bullets, ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... he had killed with his tomahawk one of two bushrangers who were trying to pick up Yarrahappini in the absence of his master, and he had carried little trembling Mrs. Hassal and tiny Esther to place of safety, and gone back and dealt the other one a blow on the head that ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... rest were keeping their ground with difficulty. I had a long and severe hand-to-hand fight with one of them. We had each received desperate wounds, when his foot slipped on the bloody deck. I gave him a severe stroke on the head with a tomahawk, and, after a deadly struggle on the gangway, tumbled him backwards overboard. The moon shone bright out at the moment, and fell full upon his face. Merciful heaven!—my brain reeled, I staggered against a gun, and became insensible—that face, Mr. Stewart, haunts my dreams to this ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... master's business, lost his way in the gullies, and did not find it again for two days. While sitting down, in his dilemma, on a quartz-rock, he observed something glittering beside him, and breaking off with his tomahawk a piece of the stone, he carried it home with him as a curiosity. At home it lay for years, till the reported discoveries of gold induced him to offer it for sale to a goldsmith in Sydney. The result was, that he connected ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... country, that land of milk and honey, won for us by the pluck and endurance of the indomitable pioneers, to where in sunshine roll the smiling Sierras of golden California, given to our heritage by the unconquerable energy of those brave men and women who braved the tomahawk on the Great Plains, the tempest, of Cape Horn, and the fevers of Panama, to make American soil of El Dorado! America! Oh, my America, how glorious you stand! Country of Washington and Valley Forge, out of what martyrdoms hast thou arisen! Country of Lincoln in his box at Ford's theatre, ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... temper of the sectarian. He breathed too broad an atmosphere to live and move within such narrow bounds. In the heat of the conflict there may have been too much occasionally of the partisan; and in the pleasure that the sweep and stroke of his intellectual tomahawk gave to him who wielded it, he may have forgotten at times the pain inflicted where it fell; but let his writings before and after the Disruption be now consulted, and it will be found that it was mainly because of his firm belief, whether right or wrong, that the interests of vital godliness ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... tempted to play with the guns, his mother had them removed. The guards rushed for their guns, but they were gone. The family fled up stairs, but Margaret, remembering the baby in the cradle below, ran back, seized the baby, and when she was half way up the flight, an Indian flung his tomahawk at her head, which, missing her, buried itself in the wood, and left its historic ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... fight, and only seven or eight of his whole party were left to tell the story of the fatal scene. The locality of this disastrous and sanguinary tragedy has ever since been known as "Bloody Brook." In the list of those who perished by bullet, tomahawk, or arrow, on that fearful morning, we read the names of many village neighbors of the brave and lamented commander,—Thomas Bayley, Edward Trask, Josiah Dodge, Peter Woodbury, Joseph Balch, Thomas Buckley, Joseph King, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... built. She was dressed in a single garment, made of the skin of some yellow, short-haired animal. It may have been a lion cub. Around her waist was a strip of hide, which served as a belt, and held a small, stone-headed tomahawk. One shoulder and both legs were left quite bare, revealing a complexion so deeply tanned that the doctor ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... his personality an air and assumption of moral infallibility, as a reformer. His was not a tolerant mind. Differences with him he was prone to treat as gross departures from principle, as evidences of faithlessness to freedom. He fell upon the men who did not see eye to eye with him with tomahawk and scalping knife. He was strangely deficient in a sense of proportion in such matters. His terrible severities of speech, he visited upon the slave-power and the Liberty party alike. And although a non-resistent, in that he eschewed the use of physical force, yet there never ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... of them and a Virginia to the south. From the one they get in the autumn salted fish, from the other store of swine and cattle. Famine and pestilence are far from them. They build a "fort" and perhaps a stockade, but there are none of the stealthy deaths given by arrow and tomahawk in the north, nor are there any of the Spanish alarms that terrified the south. From the first they have with them women and children. They know that their settlement is "home." Soon other ships and colonists follow the Ark and the Dove to St. ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... from Aunt Allison's couch to pin around his shoulders, and emptied several tubes of her most expensive paints to streak his face with hideous stripes and daubs. A row of feathers from the dust-brush was fastened around his forehead by a broad band, and a hatchet from the woodshed provided him with a tomahawk. ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Buckney could say to express his surprise at the wonderful stone buildings was "Blow me!" He had expected to find that the great Canadian city of Montreal would be just a few slab shacks, with forests on all sides, and painted Indians prowling, tomahawk in hand, in search of scalps. When he left the big Atlantic liner with twenty other raw English lads of his own street-bred sort, he thought he was saying good-bye to civilization forever. And here, all around him, arose the ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... Captain grabs up a broom, ties a light cord belonging to the leadline to it, and holding the broom by the end of its handle, swings it round his head and hurls it at the canoe. The arm of a merciful Providence being interposed, the broom-tomahawk does not hit the canoe, wherein, if it had, it must infallibly have killed some one, but falls short, and goes tearing off with the current, well out of reach of the canoe. The Captain seeing this gross dereliction of duty by a Chargeur Reunis broom, hauls it in hand over hand and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... historical incident that seems to have escaped your attention. You see, the Forefathers landed in the morning of December the 21st, but about noon that day a pack of hungry wolves swept down the bleak American beach looking for a New England dinner, and a band of savages out for a tomahawk picnic hove in sight, and the Pilgrim Fathers thought it best for safety and warmth to go on board the Mayflower and pass the night. And during the night there came up a strong wind blowing off shore that swept the Mayflower ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... young man, it suddenly bounded with a cry into the air, almost crushing the breath out of the body of its antagonist, and giving him an opportunity to rise. When Arundel stood upon his feet, he beheld the panther in the agonies of death—an arrow sticking in one eye and an Indian striking it with a tomahawk upon the head, for which great agility and quickness were necessary in order to avoid the paw and teeth of the creature in its dying struggles. These soon became less violent, until, with a shudder, the limbs relaxed, and it lay ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... the Indians—acts with intrepidity—rescues the American prisoners from the tomahawk and scalping knife, after Dudley's defeat—reported agreement between Proctor and Tecumseh, that general Harrison, if taken prisoner, should be delivered to the latter ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... between two fires. "Human imagination," well says Colonel Humphreys, "can hardly figure to itself a more deplorable situation." Putnam remained more than an hour deprived of all power save that of hearing and vision, as the musket-balls whizzed by his ears and a ruthless savage aimed his tomahawk repeatedly, with the infernal dexterity of a Chinese juggler, within a hair's breadth of his person. This amusement was succeeded by the attempt of a French petty-officer to put an end to his life by discharging his musket ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... Chief Opodeldoc, of the Bushwhack Tribe. My tomahawk is in my belt, and whoever offends me will add his ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... wild barbarians they were, while old men and young braves and squaws and children looked on in savage rapture. Before either boy could speak Big Buffalo espied them and leaped forward brandishing a tomahawk. ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... his name: They dared no war-path since my Mohawk came With ashen bow, and flinten arrow-head To pierce their craven bodies; but their dead Must be avenged. Avenged? They dared not walk In day and meet his deadly tomahawk; They dared not face his fearless scalping knife; So—Niyoh![1]—then they ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... tomahawk, which is a small iron hatchet used by most of the Indians of North America as a battle-axe. There is an iron pipe bowl on the top of the weapon, and the handle, which is hollow, answers the purpose ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... under a low bank, with a patch of swamp between it and the forest: and across this swamp towards the forest Muskingon was running. John saw him halt and lift his piece as Barboux came bursting through the trees with an Indian in pursuit. The two ran in line, the Indian lifting a tomahawk and gaining at every stride; and Muskingon had to step aside and let them come abreast of him before he fired at close quarters. The Indian fell in a heap; Barboux struggled through the swamp and leapt ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... if the severe tests which he applied to others are used on his own conduct. A cynical critic cannot expect his victims to be profoundly attached to him, or ready to be lenient to his failings. If he chooses to fight with a tomahawk, he will be scalped some day, and the bystanders will not lament profusely. But a more righteous tribunal than that of his victims condemns him. For in God's eyes the man who covers not his neighbour's faults with the mantle of charity ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... knew," broke in Joyce, "Robby Moore gave an outlandish war-whoop right in my ear, that nearly deafened me, and grabbed me by my hair, yelling he was going to tomahawk me. And I saw Eugenia go sailing up the road as fast as her horse could carry her, with Keith after her, swinging on to those two long black braids of hers. You see Lloyd had the advantage of us with her short hair. They couldn't ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and did not regard his future wife in the light of prey, valuable chiefly for the excitements of the chase. Neither was he so well acquainted with the habits of primitive races as to feel that an ideal combat for her, tomahawk in hand, so to speak, was necessary to the historical continuity of the marriage-tie. On the contrary, having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman had ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... at other times one of the two will gain the two games that they need to win. In this game you would say to see them run that they looked like two parties who wanted to fight. This exercise contributes much to render the savages alert and prepared to avoid blows from the tomahawk of an enemy, when they find themselves in a combat. Without being told in advance that it was a game, one might truly believe that they fought in open country. Whatever accident the game may cause, they attribute it to the chance of the game and have no ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... and these transplanted Indian tribes, and for the establishment among the latter, and with their own consent, of some principles of intercommunication which their juxtaposition will call for; that moral may be substituted for physical force, the authority of a few and simple laws for the tomahawk, and that an end may be put to those bloody wars whose prosecution seems to have made part of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... in that direction. At about a mile they became invisible; for that distance I observed that a line of trees was marked down each side of the track by cutting a small piece of bark from off the gum-trees with a tomahawk. This I had never seen natives do before; the marks are very old. At eighteen miles and a half struck another track (the trees cut in the same way) crossing our course; followed it, bearing 10 degrees east of north, and at about two miles came on a native well with moisture ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... reviewers, or Byron and Southey as poets, you will be followed more from the fear of your pen than from the splendour of your talents, the consistency of your conduct, or the morality of your principles. Sir, if you can but use the tomahawk skilfully, your fortune is certain. 'Sic itur ad astra.' Read Blackwood's Noctea Ambrosiance. Take the town by surprise, folly by the ears; 'the glory, jest, and riddle of the world' is man; use your knowledge of this ancient volume rightly, and you may soon mount the car of fortune, and ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... rise; His savage hordes the murderous Johnson leads, Files thro the woods and treads the tangled weeds, Shuns open combat, teaches where to run, Skulk, couch the ambush, aim the hunter's gun, Whirl the sly tomahawk, the war whoop sing, Divide the spoils and ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... English soldier, who, escaping from Braddock's massacre, deserted and settled in the highlands of Western Maryland,—as a place, we suppose, equally safe from the provost-martial of the redcoat and the tomahawk of the red man. It is curious to think of the great contrast between father and son: the one a British soldier of the day of strictest powder and pigtail; the other, a man who never wore a hat, except in fine weather,—and in the house, of course, like the rest of his countrymen. In this case, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... now when Sir Ulick and King Corny were left alone together, a dialogue—a sort of single combat, without any object but to try each other's powers and temper—ensued between them; in which the one on the offensive came on with a tomahawk, and the other stood on the defensive parrying with a polished blade of Damascus; and sometimes, when the adversary was off his guard, making a sly ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... motionless; and the animal, giving him a blow on the chest with his terrible paw, threw him down outside the door. Boone could have escaped, but, maddened with the pain of his fall, he only thought of vengeance,—and, seizing his knife and tomahawk, which were fortunately within his reach, he darted furiously at the beast, dealing blows at random. Great as was his strength, his tomahawk could not penetrate through the thick coat of the animal, which, having encircled the body of his assailant with his paws, was pressing ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... a cloud of spears sailed out of the mangrove swamp at me. At least a dozen were sticking into me. I started to run, but tripped over one that was fast in my calf, and went down. The woolly-heads made a run for me, each with a long-handled, fantail tomahawk with which to hack off my head. They were so eager for the prize that they got in one another's way. In the confusion, I avoided several hacks by throwing myself right ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... she giggled outright, and in a moment the wardrobe was opened and she was also taken prisoner. Then the four little captives were laid on their backs, and Polly scalped them with a clothes-brush for a tomahawk. ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... Rutherford detected one of the natives in the act of stealing the dipson lead,—"which, when I took it from him," says he, "he grinded his teeth and shook his tomahawk at me." ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... Lapland night, leagues and leagues across a darkling plain, dark itself and little and lonely in the gloomy splendour of a Northern sky. A ship put to sea, and Gourlay heard in his ears the skirl of the man who went overboard—struck dead by the icy water on his brow, which smote the brain like a tomahawk. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... It had such a fresh, aboriginal look as I had never before seen in any kind of handiwork. Its clear yellow-red color would have become the cheek of an Indian maiden. Then its supple curves and swells, its sinewy stays and thwarts, its bow-like contour, its tomahawk stem and stern rising quickly and sharply from its frame, were all vividly suggestive of the race from which it came. An old Indian had taught Uncle Nathan the art, and the soul of the ideal red man looked out of the boat before us. Uncle Nathan had spent two days ranging ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... settlement rights operated on the frontier, particularly among the Scotch-Irish.[26] This "law" recognized three settlement rights: "corn right," which established claims to 100 acres for each acre of grain planted; "tomahawk right," which marked off the area claimed by deadening trees at the boundaries of the claim; and, "cabin right," which confirmed the claim by the construction of a cabin upon the premises. If the decisions of the regular courts are at all ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... growing quite dark. He had risen to his feet, but he sank down despite every effort of the will, and he saw a dim world whirling about him. A dozen dusky figures shot out of the obscurity. One raised a tomahawk aloft, but another stopped the arm in ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that he called himself six years old, at the time of his capture; but his name had been gradually forgotten, both by himself and them. He wandered about with that tribe eight summers and winters. Sometimes, when they had but little food, he suffered with hunger; and once he was wounded by a tomahawk, when they had a fight with some hostile tribe; but they treated him as well as they did their own children. He became an expert hunter, thought it excellent sport, and forgot that he was not an Indian. His squaw-mother ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... liable to be shot, like any one else; but the Indian that does it has got to be mighty smart to get ahead of him. Plenty of them have tried it with knife and tomahawk, but they never lived to try it on any one else. But that ain't the most wonderful part of it," added Jack, shaking his head and gesticulating in his excitement with both arms; "Deerfoot knows a good deal more ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... business was over, one of the monsters came to me, a tomahawk in his hand, threatening me with a cruel death if I would not consent to go with them. I was forced to agree, promising to do all that was in my power for them, and trusting to Providence to deliver me out of their hands. On this ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... family or tribe is found trespassing, all his goods are taken from him; a handful of powder and shot, as much as he would need to shoot game for his sustenance in returning straight home, and his gun, knife, and tomahawk only are left, but all his game and furs are taken from him: a message is sent to his chief, and if he transgresses a third time, he is banished and outlawed.—Life of G. Copway, Missionary, written by himself.] I have ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... Review has neither this, that, nor the other qualification. Indeed his words read like subtle and lurking irony by the light of those phenomenal and portentous vagaries which ever and anon illuminate his opaque pages. What correctness can we expect from a journal whose tomahawk-man, when scalping the corpse of Matthew Arnold, deliberately applies the term "sonnet" to some thirty lines in heroic couplets? His confusion of Dr. Jenner, Vaccinator, with Sir William Jenner, the President of the R. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... studies with the good fathers; the other portion of my education was wholly Indian. I was put under the charge of a celebrated old warrior of the tribe, and from him I learned the use of the bow, the tomahawk, and the rifle; to throw the lasso, to manage the wildest horse, to break in the untamed colt; and occasionally I was permitted to accompany them in their hunting ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... tweaked Edward's ear, told Joseph, the second boy, he would bring him an Indian tomahawk, and went back ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... so impressed Colonel Zane that he concluded to found a settlement there. Taking "tomahawk possession" of the locality (which consisted of blazing a few trees with his tomahawk), he built himself a rude shack and remained ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... which confronted the pioneers in the first American "West." There every jewel of promise was ringed round with hostility. The cheap land the pioneer had purchased at a nominal price, or the free land he had taken by "tomahawk claim"—that is by cutting his name into the bark of a deadened tree, usually beside a spring—supported a forest of tall trunks and interlacing leafage. The long grass and weeds which covered the ground in a wealth of natural pasturage harbored the poisonous ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... had ceased to fire the moment that their enemies fled; and there was a deep silence, while every eye was fixed on the striking figure of the enraged Chief, whose every feature was distorted by excited passions. He stood with his tomahawk uplifted, and his tall and muscular figure in an attitude of command and defiance; while, in a loud and distinct voice, he uttered a vow of vengeance, the words of which were unintelligible to the settlers, though the meaning could ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... life-line before the sound of my ready revolver could break the stillness of the camp. Three pairs of snaky black eyes looked steadily at me, and I stared back as directly into them. Two arrow-points gently touched my ears. Behind me, a tomahawk softly marked a ring around my scalp outside of my hat. I was standing in a circle of death. At last the brave directly before me slowly drew up his bow and pointed it at me; then dropping it, he snapped the arrow shaft and threw away the pieces. Pointing to my cocked revolver, he motioned to ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... eighteenth and the twentieth century. It is as easy for us to pass a happy evening with him as it was for Thomas Campbell, figuring to himself a realisation of Cowley's dreams and of Rousseau's poetic seclusion; "till at last," in Southey's words, "comes an ill-looking Indian with a tomahawk, and scalps me—a most melancholy proof that society is very bad." It is the freshness, the youthfulness, of these Letters, after their century and more of dust-gathering, that is least likely to escape us. And this ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... ferocity of the Indians. But de Maisonneuve was always equal to the occasion, and derived advantage from their fury, that is, spiritual advantage. Many and many a time, he had the consolation to see those barbarous warriors throw down the bloody tomahawk and embrace Christianity. He was truly an apostle in their midst, attracting them as much by affability, as by the benefits he conferred, and it was his greatest pleasure to act as sponsor for them in baptism. Almighty God blessed the new settlement ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... fell at once. He became deadly pale, and his limbs trembled. He was about to speak when the chief, who had hitherto stood in silence at his side, suddenly whirled his tomahawk in the air, and, bringing it down on the murderer's skull, cleft him to ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... guile or of evil craft to be read in either eyes or visage, just then; but the brothers could not feel entirely at ease, even yet. How many times had warriors of his colour played a cunning part, only to end all by blow of tomahawk, thrust of knife, or ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... were armed only with tomahawk and knife, and they had expected a surprise which they might have effected if it had not been for Robert's keenness, but more of them came continually and they made a formidable attack. Sending forth yell after ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... played, fought, and gamboled in mimic warfare as brothers along the sparkling streamlets that rise in the mountain ridges, their sparkling waters leaping and jumping through the gorges and glens and flowing away to the "great river." All was peace and happiness; the tomahawk of war had long since been buried, and the pipe of peace smoked around their camp fires after every successful hunting expedition. But dissentions arose—distrust and embittered feelings took the place of brotherly love. The men of the mountains became arrayed ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... from side to side, so as to distract the aim of his enemies, and, instead of hitting him, Carson only cut the string which held a tomahawk to the warrior's arm. The mountaineer had no other shot at command, and Maxwell tried his hand, but in the uncertain light, inflicted only a slight wound. The Indian at that moment wheeled to run, when one of the whites shot him dead. By this time ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... pleased more than one critic to treat his Lordship's first work in no very courtier-like manner; and especially the Lion of the north had let him feel the lashing of his angry tail. Not of a temperament to bear calmly even a "look that threatened him with insult," his Lordship seized the tomahawk of satire, mounted the fiery wings of his muse, and, like Bonaparte, spared neither rank, nor sex, nor age, but converted the republic of letters into one universal field of carnage. The volume called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... darkness was almost impenetrable, a large war-party of Shawnees suddenly attacked the place. The negroes had no time for defense, and only sought their own safety in flight. But one, however, escaped, the rest falling beneath the merciless tomahawk. Mary Prescott was carried ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... "draw a bead" and hit "plumb centre" with any of their mountain associates. In addition to the firelock and knife, I noticed that they still carried the ancient weapon of their race, the fearful tomahawk. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... on them, cut the traces of the sleds, and carried off two of the horses, the third being given up by intercession of an Indian who seemed to possess some authority over them; they also took away two of the men's knifes, and a tomahawk, which last however they returned. We sent up to the Mandans to inform them of it, and to know whether any of them would join a party which intended to pursue the robbers in the morning. About twelve o'clock two of their chiefs came down and said that all their ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... was an Indian maiden of the far past, fleeing and seeking with her dusky lover some wild and solitary retreat on the borders of this lake, which offered them no seeming foot-hold save such as they would hew themselves with axe or tomahawk. Here and there, a grim cypress lifted its head above the water, and spread wide its moss covered arms inviting refuge to the great black-winged buzzards that circled over and about it in mid-air. Nameless voices—weird sounds that awake ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... had finished his professional remarks, informed her that the Bannisters were to go with him to Barport. When Miss Panney heard this she sprang from her chair with the air of an Indian of the Wild West bounding with uplifted tomahawk upon a defenceless foe. The doctor involuntarily pushed back his chair, but before he could make up his mind whether he ought to be frightened or amused, Miss Panney sat down as promptly as she had risen, and a grim smile ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... Indian was the natural one of a sleeper. His back being against the trunk of a tree, his knees were drawn up, with his arms resting upon them. His long rifle reclined against the same support as his body, his knife and tomahawk were in place in the girdle around the waist of his half-naked person, his head was sunk, with the chin resting on his chest, and his coarse, black hair dangling in front ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... heard, from the lips of our parents, the narration of the fact, that in the early history of our country, the tomahawk and scalping-knife were put into the hands of our savage neighbors, by our enemies at war, and that a bounty was awarded for the depredations they committed on the lives of our defenceless fellow-citizens. Our feelings were shocked at the recital, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... and I know now that he had a slight Scotch accent. At the time of which I write, my early childhood, he was a frontiersman and hunter. I can see him now, with his hunting shirt and leggings and moccasins; his powder horn, engraved with wondrous scenes; his bullet pouch and tomahawk and hunting knife. He was a tall, lean man with a strange, sad face. And he talked little save when he drank too many "horns," as they were called in that country. These lapses of my father's were a perpetual source of wonder to me,—and, I must say, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... property at all without looking twice. A little heap of ashes in the center sending up a half-smothered smoke, two or three loose California lion-skins, thrown here and there over the rocks, a pair of moccasins or two, a tomahawk—and that was almost all. No cooking utensils had they—for what had they to cook? No eating utensils—for ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... civil war. V. arm; raise troops, mobilize troops; raise up in arms; take up the cudgels &c 720; take up arms, fly to arms, appeal to arms, fly to the sword; draw the sword, unsheathe the sword; dig up the hatchet, dig up the tomahawk; go to war, wage war, let slip the dogs of war [Julius Caesar]; cry havoc; kindle the torch of war, light the torch of war; raise one's banner, raise the fire cross; hoist the black flag; throw away, fling away the scabbard; enroll, enlist; take the field; take the law into one's own hands; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... out alone playing Indians and had sunk his scout's axe into a fallen log and then scalped the log, he felt that once before in those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his own tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a secret spring in the forest, the autumn leaves would crackle and he would raise his eyes fearing to see a panther ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... and Mr. Stevenson's books, and "Tom Sawyer," and "Huckleberry Finn," several times. So have I, and am quite ready to begin again. But, to my mind, books about "Red Indians" have always seemed much the most interesting. At your age, I remember, I bought a tomahawk, and, as we had also lots of spears and boomerangs from Australia, the poultry used to have rather a ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... tokens brought by the envoys from the lakes, who represented nine distinct tribes or bands from the region of Michillimackinac. By these tokens, the nine tribes declared that they came to learn wisdom of the Iroquois and the English; to wash off the war-paint, throw down the tomahawk, smoke the pipe of peace, and unite with them as one body. "Onontio is drunk," such was the interpretation of the fourth wampum belt; "but we, the tribes of Michillimackinac, wash our hands of all his actions. Neither we nor you must defile ourselves by listening ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... the fire so that the teepee might be brightly lit and show him the way. He then took the scalp of the enemy and proceeded on his track, until he came to the upturned root of a great tree. There he spread out his arrows and laid out his tomahawk. ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... hoped by his taunts and his jeers to reach a swifter end, he was mistaken in that hope. No fire was kindled at their stakes, no sudden stroke of death maul or tomahawk followed his words. The Nakonkirhirinons had keener tortures, torments of a finer fibre than mere physical suffering, and the Bois-Brules' liquor had stirred the ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... nevertheless, vote for it." "It is one of a class of legislative enactments with which we are already becoming familiar, and which, I greatly fear, will ere long grow voluminous. I shall take the liberty to denominate them the scalping-knife and tomahawk laws. They are all urged through by the terror of those instruments of death, under the most affecting and pathetic appeals, from the constituents of the sufferers, to all the tender and benevolent sympathies of our ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... I 'll come..." said the apothecary vehemently, a providential idea darting through his mind. He went in, put on his frock-coat, felt in its pocket to assure himself that his latchkey was there, and also the American tomahawk, without which no Tarasconese whatsoever would risk himself in the streets after "taps." Then he called: "Pascalon!.. Pascalon!.." but not too loudly, for fear of waking ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... avoid anything approaching to the risk of contagion. For longer distances, such as a journey to the North for instance, there is nothing like travelling with an Indian Chief, and if possible, with a hyaena. The appearance of the former in gleaming paint and feathers brandishing a tomahawk and uttering wild war-whoops at every station, will be sure to prevent the intrusion of women with babies, while even a country farmer, on seeing the hyaena emerge from under the seat, and on your remarking ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... that you know enough never to run your head into that window again, and you will want to set fire to the house and tomahawk us." ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... stone tomahawk of the aborigines. Gweh-un, in Mukthang language, Gippsland. Apparently a remnant of a term occurring along the east side of Australia; Burgoin, New South Wales; bulgoon and balgon, Burdekin River, Queensland; related to ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... opening, settle them on the rest, and blaze away into the gloom. We brought our bed up to the window, so that we could shoot without getting out of it, while snugly wrapped up in our blankets. After this our luck improved, and after each discharge we would rush out, armed with a tomahawk, dispatch the wounded wolves, and collect the dead ones, until we had slaughtered forty-two of them. We skinned them, and sold the pelts to the traders for seventy-five cents a piece, which money was the first ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... when it looked as though there was going to be a frost, to take her ivies down and carry them in the house. We don't care how handsome a woman is naturally, you put a towel around her head and put her up on a step ladder about seven feet high, with a tomahawk in her left hand, trying to draw a big nail out of a post on a veranda, and she looks like thunder. This woman did. Her husband tried to get her to let him do the work, but she said a man never knew how to do anything, anyway. So he sat down ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... astonished some persons when he sold his birthright for a pot of sack; but not even his Sosia has a grain of respect for him, though, doubtless, he thinks his name very terrible to the enemy, when he flourishes his criticopoeticopolitical tomahawk, and sets up his Indian yell for the blood of his old friends: but, at best, he is a mere political scarecrow, a man of straw, ridiculous to all who know of what materials he is made; and to none more so, than to those who have stuffed him, and set him up, as the Priapus of the ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... was once more alight in my father when I got back to our camp that morning; and one might have supposed it nourished him, if one had judged from the cursory manner in which his share of our simple breakfast was dispatched. Then, carrying with him a tomahawk, I remember, he led us down across the sand to where the ship lay, so deeply bedded that one stepped over her rail as it might have been the coaming of a hatch. Her deck, and indeed every uncovered part of the Livorno, was encrusted in the droppings of multitudinous ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... other choice," said Tayoga. "We have waited as long as we could to see if Areskoui would turn a favoring face upon us, but his anger holds. It will not avail, if in our endeavor to escape the tomahawk of ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... day the best stone-wall builders, as the best wood-choppers, come from those solitary mountain towns; a tall, athletic, and hardy race, unerring with the axe as the Indian with the tomahawk; at stone-rolling, patient as Sisyphus, powerful ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... him the same man. For the past three months he had been crying, "Long live the Republic!" and he had even voted in favour of the banishment of Orleans. But there should be an end of concessions. He exhibited his rage so far as to carry a tomahawk in his pocket. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... fort by a strong body of savages. There was nothing to do but to cut their way back through them, and in the charge, Boone received a ball through the leg, breaking the bone. As he fell, the Indian leader raised his tomahawk to kill him, but Kenton, seeing his comrade's peril, shot the Indian through the heart, and succeeded in ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... rifle shot within the confined space, a fall, and then, in the half darkness, he saw two powerful figures writhing to and fro. One was Henry and the other a mighty Shawnee warrior, naked to the waist, and striving to use a tomahawk that he held in a hand whose wrist was clenched in the iron grasp of his foe. Lying almost at their feet was the body of another warrior, stark ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was wounded he remained by him loading and firing, until it was evident he could do no more. Then he painted his face black as his enemies had done, and thus escaped. Another of the Christian Indians pretended to be chasing the white man who thus escaped with upraised tomahawk. The ruse saved both. ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... doing it, and that was by stealing the body under cover of night, as the Indians are very superstitious and careful about the graves of their dead. You know they place all the trappings of the dead—his bow and arrows, tomahawk and wampum—in the grave, as they think he will need them to hunt and supply his wants with on his journey to the happy hunting-grounds. They place food and tobacco, with other things, in ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... several places human bones, probably the relics of a former combat between the United States troops, or travellers like ourselves, and Indians or negroes. One skull I picked up had been split with a tomahawk, besides having a bullet-hole in it about the region of the left ear. Our situation was one of great peril, but I had made up my mind to proceed at all hazards, despite the opposition shown by two ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... their faces. They come from all parts of Dakota and the Santee Reservation. In the ninth cut is represented an Indian who, with a white man's shirt, retains his native leggings, blanket, necklace and tomahawk. ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... he stepped forward and raised that heavy tomahawk. With one blow each he brained the two bound and defenceless victims on the altar-stone of his fathers. The rest, a European hand shrinks from revealing. The orgy was too horrible even ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... will let it alone for the present. It will keep. The other young man will be back to-morrow, and he will shout for it, split or no split, rest assured of that. He will prance into this political ring with his tomahawk and his war-whoop, and then you will hear a crash and see the scalps fly. He has none of my diffidence. He knows all about these nominees, and if he don't he will let on to in such a natural way as to deceive the most critical. He ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... tomahawk in the air over the youthful warrior's head, but the brave sprang aside as quick as lightning, and in the same instant speared his enemy to the heart. As the Ojibway chief gave a gasping yell and fell in death, his people lost courage; while the success of the brave Jingling ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... so because the hero of the sketch will naturally want your scalp, and will probably apply for it. Be advised. Take your tomahawk along." ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 1783, and the consequent cessation of Indian hostilities and barbarities, returned to their friends those prisoners, who had escaped the tomahawk, the gauntlet, and the savage fire, after their having spent many years in captivity, and restored harmony ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... fled through the woods, leaving eleven men killed and six wounded. M'Donald was taken to Fort Dayton the next day, where his leg was amputated; but the blood flowed so freely that he died in a few hours. On his person was found a silver-mounted tomahawk, which had thirty-two scalp notches on the handle, to show how he had imitated ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... winged fiend, he bounded to where Leemah stood, and accused her of having aided in his escape. She acknowledged she had, and pointed to the far-off forest as his hiding place. In an instant his glittering tomahawk cleft the hand she raised off at the wrist. Silas knew no more. Leemah's hot blood fell upon his brow, and he fainted through excess of agony, but like Mazeppa, he lived to repay the Red Eagle in after-years ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... ball strike me under the shoulder; but that didn't seem to put any embargo upon my locomotion, for as soon as I got up I took off again, quite freshened by my fall! I heard the red skin close behind me coming booming on, and every minute I expected to have his tomahawk dashed into my head ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... upper posts, may yet give time to Dearborn to strike a blow below. Effectual possession of the river from Montreal to the Chaudiere, which is practicable, would give us the upper country at our leisure, and close for ever the scenes of the tomahawk ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... feed around the camp that they strayed away in search of better during the night. On such an occasion Botheri and his fraternity would have been of real service; but he had decamped at an early hour, and had carried off an axe, a tomahawk, and some bacon, although I had made him several presents. I was not at all surprised at this piece of roguery, since cunning is the natural attribute of a savage; but I was provoked at their running away at a moment when I ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... deck in all conscience. I found the foretopmast gone over the side, in a tangle of torn rope at which all hands were furiously hacking. The mate was on the fo'c'sle hacking at some gear with a tomahawk. I did not see ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... them, and resolved to burn the buildings and destroy their inhabitants. He called his people together, and the war-cry was sounded throughout the mountains. Taking advantage of the night, they surrounded the settlement, and applying torches to the dwellings, rushed into the midst with tomahawk in hand, and murdered all save two young men, who fought so bravely that they spared their lives in order to torture them with more prolonged sufferings. The names of these young men it is said were HARRIS ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... tomahawk, he started to find some dry wood with which to kindle a fire. None being close to the beach, he walked a few yards into the forest, and had just commenced on a tree when he noticed by the white scar that a branch had been broken quite recently from ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... rather PHYLLODIA) of the ACACIA HOLOCARPA as with miniature boomerangs. The piccaninny of the remote past chuckled gleefully as the jerked leaf returned to it. As a boy he fashioned a larger and permanent toy, surreptitiously using his father's stone tomahawk and shell knife, while the old man was after wallaby with a waddy. As a young man, hunting or fighting, he found his boyish toy a very effective missile. Even for a straight shot it had a longer range and far higher velocity, with less strength expenditure, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... speak the language, and does not lose his nerve by being surrounded by hundreds of ferocious and armed savages, and knowing that at any instant he may be cut down from behind by a tomahawk, or speared, or clubbed, he will get along all right, and soon find men willing to recruit Especially is this so if he is a man personally known to the natives, and has a good reputation for treating his "blackbirds" well on board the ship. The ship and her captain, too, enter largely ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... that land, zeal for the patriot cause set the interior aflame. It was the members of the western vanguard, like Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and George Rogers Clark, who first understood the value of the far-away country under the guns of the English forts, where the Red Men still wielded the tomahawk and the scalping knife. It was they who gave the East no rest until their vision was seen by the leaders on the seaboard who directed the course of national policy. It was one of their number, a seasoned Indian fighter, George Rogers ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... crimson evening in July, when the red-hot sun was going down in a blaze, and I was leaning against a corner in my huntsman's frock, lo! there came stalking out of the crimson West a gigantic red-man, erect as a pine, with his glittering tomahawk, big as a broad-ax, folded in martial repose across his chest, Moodily wrapped in his blanket, and striding like a king on the stage, he promenaded up and down the rustic streets, exhibiting on the back of his blanket a crowd of human hands, rudely ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... put aside my bow and quiver, and with them all desire of meat and all thought of killing. With my tomahawk I cut a mark in that chestnut yonder and buried my weapon at the foot of it. I had my knife, my pipe, and my fire-stick. Also I felt happy and important because my mother had made me believe that the Holder ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... Indians, and the hope of making more than could be gained by the habitant from his farm. Large profits meant large risks, and the coureur de bois took his life in his hand. Even if he escaped the rapid and the tomahawk, there was an even chance that ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... the ringleaders went aft, each man armed with a musket, a tomahawk or cutlass by his side, looking as brazen-faced and impudent as could be, trusting to the ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... an Indian tomahawk, osquesont, was buried deep in the trunk of a tree, and Robert knew that the same deadly weapon had whistled where his head had been but a second before. He shuddered. Had it not been for his glimpse of the flitting shadow his head would have been cloven to the chin. ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... didn't, for he restrained himself; how they drank tea with as much gusto and intemperance as if it had been a modern "afternoon"; and how, after all was over, the Red-man filled the pipe-head on the back of his iron tomahawk and began to smoke with the air of a man who meant business and regarded all that had gone ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... settled in the "dark and bloody ground," and for years encountered all the trials then incident to border life. The earliest impressions of young Zachary were the sudden foray of the savage foe, the piercing warwhoop, the answering cry of defiance, the gleam of the tomahawk, the crack of the rifle, the homestead saved by his father's daring, the neighboring cottage wrapped in flames, or its hearth-stone red with blood. Such scenes bound his young nerves with iron, and fired his fresh soul ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... murderers who had played their part, twelve years before, in the massacre on the Mahony River. As soon as Zeisberger rose to speak, every eye was fixed upon him; and while he delivered his Gospel message, he knew that at any moment a tomahawk might cleave his skull, and his scalp hang bleeding at the murderer's girdle. "Never yet," he wrote, "did I see so clearly painted on the faces of the Indians both the darkness of hell and the world-subduing power ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Runner done for him he sure did a good job," Cousin muttered. "He sure did make tomahawk improvements ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... indicated the precise spot, at a considerable distance from the camp, where he wished it to be. As soon as they clearly understood what his desires were, they went off into the bush and, armed with a small tomahawk lent them by Leslie, proceeded to cut down some forty or fifty young and pliant saplings, the butt-ends of which they sharpened to a point, and then thrust vertically, into the ground in a circle some twelve feet in diameter. They then brought the tops of the saplings all together and ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... too, Mr. Sneed,—ye that war 'quainted with me in the old times on Tomahawk Creek?" Peters reiterated his demand in a plaintive, melodramatic tone, which titillated his fancy, somehow, and, like virtue, was its own exceeding great reward; for both he and Persimmon Sneed knew right well that their acquaintance ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... and there. You know what London is, even now in the midst of this war, with its inability to be surprised, and its indifference to strange things. You might walk down Regent Street dressed up as a Cherokee Indian, feathers and tomahawk and all, and how many Cockneys would take the trouble to turn round and look at you twice? It was pretty easy for Escobar to slip ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... son of a woman married thrice, and thrice widowed by a tomahawk. The three successive husbands of this woman had been pioneers, and with them she had wandered from wilderness to wilderness, always on the frontier. With nine children, she at last found herself at a little clearing, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... power cast Spell upon her heart, that thrilled to swift response. Dark eyes softened, flashed again with sudden fire, Pocahontas stood entranced, as in a dream, Watched the heavy stones laid on the hardened earth, Saw the Brave led forth, the tomahawk upraised— Awful moment's hush was pierced by anguished cry, As around the captive's neck her arms were flung, Precious life to save, the maiden's ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... of ammunition from the Dutch and English of New York. The long thin line of French settlements lay naked before them. They were gathered in the woods, like hounds in leash, waiting for the orders of their chiefs, which should precipitate them with torch and with tomahawk upon the ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... everywhere, scattered the blanketed, jabbering groups, leaving on the scene of action only the agent, the quickly rallying guard, and upward of fivescore of jeering, taunting screeching warriors, at least a dozen of them now dismounted, dancing and brandishing knife and tomahawk, rifle or revolver, about the still writhing group rolling upon the wooden floor,—McPhail and his assailants. Into the midst of this mad mellay sprang the cavalryman, turning loose his horse, which animal, urged by shrill yells and slyly administered lashings, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King |
