"Tomahawk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that matter, I tell him no; it was the Lord who led me to the only spot where execution could be done, or his necessity be made known, on account of the smoke. Sartain, when I got the right position, I finished the affair of my own accord. For a friend under the tomahawk is apt to make a man think quick and act at once, as was my case, or the Sarpent's spirit would be hunting in the happy land of his people at ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... exulting Redskins as with yells of gratified triumph, warriors and squaws, young men and children, gloated fiercely over the brutal torture and lingering death of eight English prisoners. It was a grim and grisly spectacle, for no form of torment—from the nerve-wracking test of knife and tomahawk, arrow or bullet, aimed with intent to graze the flesh and not immediately to kill, to the ghastly ordeal of red-hot ramrods and blazing pine-root splinters thrust into the flesh or under the nails —was omitted ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... and never forgave an insult. They were cunning rather than brave. It was seldom that an Indian could be induced to meet a foe in an open hand-to-hand fight. But he would track him for years, hoping to take him unawares and to brain him with the tomahawk, or pierce his heart with ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... a pair of real moccasins that Uncle Ernest sent you for bedroom slippers. I'll cut some strips of cloth into fringe for leggings, and you can wear Athelstane's leather belt, and carry an axe for a tomahawk," said Quenrede, surveying her work with critical satisfaction. "Don't ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... their ambush until two Chippewas came 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, returned to Kaposia, reported ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... 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. ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... his tomahawk and a strong line. Rolf reached for the gun, but Quonab shook his head. They went to the lake. Yes! There was the great, goggle-eyed monster, like a mud-coloured log. The bank behind him was without cover. It would be impossible to approach the watchful creature ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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 Clark, who with aid ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... such poor 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 so much required ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... had had some quarrel with an Indian, which had to be settled in one of the petty courts. The case was decided in favour of Mr. —-, which so aggrieved the savage, who considered himself the injured party, that he sprang upon him with a furious yell, tomahawk in hand, with the intention of depriving him of his scalp. He twisted his hand in the looks which adorned the cranium of his adversary, when—horror of horrors!—the treacherous wig came off in his hand, "Owgh! owgh!" exclaimed the affrighted savage, flinging it from him, and rushing ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... "WHIZ"—and his sharp tomahawk struck the stair rail within a few inches of the baby's head. But the frightened girl hurried on, and in a few seconds was safe ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... from the general consternation and dismay which were every where spreading around them; and many a staid heart among them secretly trembled for the fate of the near and dear ones left at homes in which the red tomahawk might, even at that very moment, be busy at its work of death; while the bosoms of all were burning to be freed from their present duties, that they might seize the sword or musket and fly to the relief of their endangered families, or mingle in the common defence ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... Kentucky and Ohio, by recalling the British force to its 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 and scalping-knife. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... sat Peter, with only a nickel and a couple of pennies in his pocket, and the rent for his room two weeks over-due, and his landlady lying in wait in the hallway like an Indian with a tomahawk. Peter objected, what about all those bad things in his early record, Pericles Priam and the Temple of Jimjambo, which had ruined him as a witness in the Goober case. McGivney answered dryly that he couldn't let himself out with that excuse; he was invited to pose as a reformed ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... German guise, And Specht and Breyman, prompt for action, 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 pack the ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... and me they exchanged a few words, and one of them continued toward Juag while the other turned upon us. As he came nearer I saw that he carried in his hand one of my six-shooters, but he was holding it by the barrel, evidently mistaking it for some sort of warclub or tomahawk. ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... number from Western Pennsylvania and Virginia, in the same period, met with a similar fate. The settlers on the frontiers were almost constantly, for a period of forty years, harassed either by actual attacks of the savages, or the daily expectation of them. The tomahawk and the scalping knife, were the objects of their fears by ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... Next I went and inspected the Armoured Car Section of the Royal Naval Division under Lieutenant-Commander Wedgwood. He is a mighty queer chap. Took active part in the South African War. Afterwards became a pacifist M.P.; here he is again with war paint and tomahawk. Give me a Pacifist in peace and a Jingo in war. Too often it is the other ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... of a 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 trouble or waste of time, why ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... combine was the cut-throat competition which prevailed. Herbert Croly in his stimulating book The Promise of American Life vividly describes the bitter, warlike character of industrial competition after 1865. Competition was battle to the knife and tomahawk. The leaders were constantly seeking bigger operations, to which the bigger risks only added zest. A company might be making unbelievable profits one year and "skirting" bankruptcy the next. Exciting as all this was, however, the desire for adventure was ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... and fluttering of birds, keeping exact time with their music." This music was the measured thumping of an Indian drum. From time to time, a warrior would leap up, and the drum and the dancers would cease as he struck a post with his tomahawk, and in a loud voice recounted his exploits. Then the music and the dance began anew, till another warrior caught the martial fire, and bounded into the circle to brandish his ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... the women on the other; and among those men were 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 ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... 'aside' to Nicholas, Mr Folair followed the ascent of the curtain with his eyes, regarded with a sneer the reception of Miss Crummles as the Maiden, and, falling back a step or two to advance with the better effect, uttered a preliminary howl, and 'went on' chattering his teeth and brandishing his tin tomahawk ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... inquiries; and 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 cut at ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... news of the encroachments of the pale-faces upon their people and their hunting-grounds. "Soon," said the bearded chief, who was the leading spirit of the mission, "these white faces will meet along the Great River. They will forget the arrow of truth and the tomahawk of justice. They will only know power and oppression. Then they will be mighty as the hurricane when the Great Sun hides his face in wrath and the tempest tears the forest. Who can resist him then? The holy fire has been sent again from heaven, from the Great ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... enemies, and the horrors and calamities of war will stalk before you. If the barbarous and savage policy of Great Britain be pursued, and the savages be let loose to murder our citizens, and butcher our women and children, this war will be a war of extermination. The first stroke of the tomahawk, the first attempt with the scalping knife, will be the signal of one indiscriminate scene of desolation. No white man, found fighting by the side of an Indian, will be taken prisoner—instant destruction will be his lot. If ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... of this house, where the daughter of a famous "Indian fighter," i.e. fighter against the Indians, was learning French and the piano, came wild, tawny figures, offering for sale their baskets of berries. The boys now, instead of brandishing the tomahawk, tame their hands ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... first time 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
... 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, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 1698, ten years after this house was built, that the Indians in a foray upon Haverhill burned many houses and killed or captured forty persons, including the heroic Hannah Dustin, in whom they caught a veritable tartar. Her statue with uplifted tomahawk stands in front of the City Hall. It is possible that on her return to Haverhill she brought her ten Indian scalps ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... 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 ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... required upon a certain day in the year, to run the gauntlet of braves. This was sometimes a terrible scene. All the warriors of the tribe, arrayed in their fiercest war costume and armed at every point with lance, bow and arrow, knife, tomahawk, etc., were drawn up under command of the principal chief, in single line. At the head of this line was placed a kind of chaplet, or crown, the possession of which by any woman was supposed to confer the power of necromancy ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... into the closed ranks of his opponents. Whether it was that he did not think that his head was worth defending, or that he was too busy in breaking the heads of others to look after his own; this is certain, that a tomahawk descended upon it with such force as to bury itself in his skull (and his was a thick skull, too). The privateer's men were overpowered by numbers, and then our hero was discovered, under a pile of bodies, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... savages. Pardon me, madam, but I am not a sheep, nor yet quite a savage with a tomahawk. Thank you, but I don't care for ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... sort of men they were," Nat said scornfully. "They wouldn't surprise men that knew their business; but those chaps would just jump out of their boats, as if they was landed on a quay at New York, and would scatter about among the bushes. Why, Lord bless you, the Indians might ambush and tomahawk the lot, before they had time to think of opening their ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... the cruelly healed stumps of the first and second fingers of his left hand, then rubbed them softly into the indentation in the back of his skull. Quick as had been the flash of the long handled tomahawk, he had been quick enough to duck away his head and partially to deflect the stroke with his up-flung hand. Two fingers and a hasty scalp-wound had been the price he paid for his life. With one barrel of his ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... 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 ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... upstairs and a large one in the middle downstairs, with a slit on one side of it called a door—looking remarkably skully in ghastly dawns, afterglows, and rainy afternoons and evenings. The slits look as if the owners of the skulls got it there from an upward blow of a sharp tomahawk, from a shorter man—who was no friend of theirs—just about the time they died. The slits open occasionally, and mothers of the nation, mostly holding their garments together at neck or bosom, lean out—at right angles almost—and peer up and down the road, as if they are ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... named Jemmy, whom I met with here, agreed to conduct me by the best way for carts to Wallamoul on the Peel, for which service I undertook to reward him with a tomahawk.* It was necessary, that we should ford the Cuerindie, which flows to the north-west, and notwithstanding the steepness of its banks, we effected a passage without difficulty, guided by Jemmy. One mile beyond this, another creek lay in our way. It ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... of November, Mr. Hunt was lucky enough to purchase another horse for his own use, giving in exchange a tomahawk, a knife, a fire steel, and some beads and gartering. In an evil hour, however, he took the advice of the Indians to abandon the river, and follow a road or trail leading into the prairies. He soon had cause to regret the change. The road led across ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Bar The Tom Bell Stronghold The Hanging of Charlie Price Rattlesnake Dick Indian Vengeance Grizzly Bob of Snake Gulch Curley Coppers the Jack The Race of the Shoestring Gamblers The Dragon and the Tomahawk The ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... conquered. His son, Flying Deer, who is with us to-day, will address you in his own language, which I shall interpret for you. The last twenty years have made a great change in their condition. These men are not savages, but educated gentlemen. They are all graduates of Tomahawk College, at Bloody Mountain, near the Gray Wolf country. They are chiefs of their tribes, each one holding a position equal to the Governor of our own State. Their influence at the West is great. Last year they sent a small party of missionaries to the highlands of the ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... terrible 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 ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... overseer most hospitably stood by the party as it passed with a bucket of milk, of which he gave a drink to each of the men. Bultje put us on the right road to the next nearest water-holes (Mr. Gilmore's station), and having rendered me the service he promised, I gave him the tomahawk, pipe, and two figs of tobacco promised him, and also took a sketch of his singularly Socratic face. This native got a bad name from various stockmen, as having been implicated in the murder of Mr. Cunningham. Nothing could be more unfounded; and it must indeed require in a man ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... Iroquois hunters, an Algonquin captive entered. While the Iroquois {96} slept with guns stacked against the trees, the sleepless Algonquin captive rose noiselessly where he lay by the fire, seized the Mohawk warriors' guns, threw one tomahawk across to Radisson, and with the other brained two of the sleepers. The French boy aimed a blow at the third sleeper, and the two captives escaped. But they might have saved themselves the trouble. They were pursued and overtaken on Lake St. Peter, within sight of Three ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... wild free life, sylvan life, it promised! 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 the mountains ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... mirth. Elfreda's face was set in a solemn expression that defied laughter. As for the Anarchist herself, she might easily have posed as a statue of vengeance. Her eyebrows were drawn into a ferocious scowl. She walked down the stairs with the air of an Indian chief about to tomahawk a victim. Her white silk gown, which was well cut and in keeping with the occasion, contrasted oddly with her threatening demeanor, which was enhanced by a feather hair ornament that stood up belligerently at one ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... has not forgotten the encounter between Jacob Relstaub and Deerfoot, the Shawanoe, when the former plunged headlong through his own door in mortal fear that the tomahawk of the youthful warrior would be sent crashing through his brain; but, much as Deerfoot despised the German, he had no thought of visiting injury upon him. Shoving back the weapon to its place in his girdle, he therefore strode off in the forest, never pausing in his walk ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... is. And though you're perfectly safe if you do just as he tells you, if you rebel, he might—he might TOMAHAWK you!" ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... was never my trade or my sport, I never loaded myself with fowling-piece or rifle. Assiduous exercise had made me master of a weapon of much easier carriage, and, within a moderate distance, more destructive and unerring. This was the tomahawk. With this I have often severed an oak-branch, and cut the sinews of a catamount, at the distance ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... a kettle of provisions, a pair of moccasins, a piece of deer skin and sinews of the deer to sew patches on the moccasins, which it was supposed the deceased would wear out on his journey. They also furnished him with a bow and arrows, a tomahawk and knife, to procure game with to live on while pursuing his way to the land of spirits, the blissful regions of Ha wah ne u.20 Several Indian nations, instead of burying the food, suspended it above the grave, and renewed it from ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... retire. The settlers 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 easily be guessed from his ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... I 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 scalp ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and vigour gone, He faints, and sinks, and dies unknown; While the Destroyer passeth by, And smiles, as if in mockery. Gaze, stranger, on the scene below; 'Tis scarce a century ago, Since here abode another race, The men of tomahawk and bow, The savage sons of war and chase; Yet where, ah! where, abide they now? Go search, and see if thou canst find, One trace which they have left behind, A single mound, or mossy grave, That holds the ashes of the brave; A single lettered stone to say That they have lived, ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... principle, namely, that it as wrong to kill non-combatants, or to kill under any circumstances in time of peace. He favored peace rather than war. He was twenty-five years of age, and had six notches on the handle of his tomahawk, indicating that he had slain half a dozen of his Ojibway foes before he adopted ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... Mrs. Kendal explained. "No sooner are you out of the train than the Indians tomahawk you! Look at this ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... done for him he sure did a good job," Cousin muttered. "He sure did make tomahawk ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... effect when large eyes are required). Make use of your paint-box for mouth, nose, brows, war-paint, etc., according to taste, pin a square of bright flannel about the shoulders, and you have an alarmingly startling likeness of a Pi-ute chief. A boy handy with his penknife can add a wooden tomahawk. ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • 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 one day whilst ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... to have won the victory of "a superman." In that he has carried murder, arson, lying, rapine, lust up to the nth power, let us concede his claim. Not otherwise two hundred years ago the Indian, with his scalping knife, his war-whoop and his tomahawk, was "a superman" in terms of savagery. Not otherwise the Spaniards under Bloody Alva were "supermen" in terms of rack, thumbscrew and ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... to find him, if he want to? Very bad to put anyt'ing where he forget; partic'larly tomahawk. Sometime quarrel come, like rain, when you ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... had numberless new experiences. She got accustomed to seeing the boys climb big trees by cutting steps in the bark with a tomahawk, going out on the most giddy heights after birds' nests, or dragging the opossum from his sleeping-place in a hollow limb. She learned to hold a frenzied fox-terrier at the mouth of a hollow log, ready to pounce on the kangaroo-rat which had taken refuge there, and which flashed out as ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... overtook the Indians while they were at their morning meal. Unfortunately, another party of savages was in his rear, and when he fired upon those in front, he was in turn fired upon from behind. He was now between two fires, and greatly outnumbered. Two of his men fell, his tomahawk was shot from his side, and the enemy shouted for the expected triumph. There was no chance of successful defence in the position of the rangers, and they were compelled ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... bravery; so, when the other Indians seized Robert by the hair to tomahawk him, for killing their comrade, he said, "No;—the pappoose is brave enough to make a chief. He shall go home with Bald ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... courageous killing I heard of on Malaita was that of an old man. A bush chief had died a natural death. Now the bushmen don't believe in natural deaths. No one was ever known to die a natural death. The only way to die is by bullet, tomahawk, or spear thrust. When a man dies in any other way, it is a clear case of having been charmed to death. When the bush chief died naturally, his tribe placed the guilt on a certain family. Since it did not matter which one of the family was killed, they selected this old man who ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... be cut off from the 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 dragging ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... without being hit, just as a big native ran at him with a tomahawk. He hadn't time to put his Snider to his shoulder; but that nigger gave his last jump anyway, for I saw the rifle go off and the nigger topple over. In another five seconds he had lifted the supercargo up, thrown him over his left shoulder, and was running ...
— Sarreo - 1901 • Louis Becke
... and fish there. Payment was to be made in money as well as coats, shirts, and kettles. The white men signed their names, but the Indians could not write. The children then saw Wehanownowit with the point of a wild goose quill make his mark of a man holding a tomahawk. Pummadockyon drew a man with a bow and arrow, and Aspamabough, who also signed the deed, drew for his mark an arrow and bow. And thus a friendly feeling was established between the natives and the colonists at the time ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... the Berlin philosopher is really on a lower mental level than the Arab who respects the salt, or the Brahmin who preserves the caste. And in this quarrel we have a right to come with scimitars as well as sabres, with bows as well as rifles, with assegai and tomahawk and boomerang, because there is in all these at least a seed of civilization that these intellectual anarchists would kill. And if they should find us in our last stand girt with such strange swords and following unfamiliar ensigns ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... and fragments of four others; probably 100 cobblestones used as hammers and pestles, some of them pitted on the sides, a few showing marks of much use (pl. 16, A); a small, very solid piece of hematite worn round by use as a hammer; a small, imperfect tomahawk made of quartzite (pl. 16, B, a); many mussel shells, some used as knives and scrapers; animal bones, some of them worked into implements, including a perfect skiver (pl. 16, B, b); several pieces of hematite and limonite used as paint stones (pl. 16, B, c); many fragments of pottery, some of them ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... 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 ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... natural, when Sherman goes "marching through Georgia," than that this thumb should come in for a share of attention. The bang it gets sends the acutest pain running up and down its owner's spine. In a frenzy (in a moment, we may say, of emotional insanity) he draws a tomahawk and buries it in the head of the captain of that bass drum. The infuriated musician, supposing it to be the cornet who has mutinied, at once gets his Smith & Wesson in range. When the smoke has cleared away three shots are found ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... 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 ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... 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
... 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
... was not willing anyone should share the sweetness of revenge with him. He traveled fast, and drew nigh enough to catch sight of the two on the second day following their flight. He did not carry his bow, but had his knife and tomahawk, while the youth possessed no weapon at all. Had a knife been his, he would not have used it against Wahla, because he was the father of the maiden whom he loved ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... seized with a disgust for town life. The city seemed to me a prison, and I longed to get back to the wild life of my fathers. At last I resolved to return to my tribe, and one morning I came to Lopez, clad in the dress of the Natchez, with bow and arrows in one hand, and a tomahawk in the other. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... I'd like to know her. She's a woman a man could make a friend of, I do believe," and Dr. Eben jumped into bed, and was fast asleep in five minutes, and dreamed that Hetty came towards him, dressed like an Indian, with her brown curls stuck full of painted porcupine quills, and a tomahawk brandished in ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... the 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
... 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 ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... forty years had he worn it, from the time he received it in London from Queen Anne. He asked him to kneel at his couch, and, putting his withered hand across his brow, placed the feathery crown upon his head, and gave him the silver-mounted tomahawk—symbols of power to rule and power to execute. Then, looking up to the heavens, he said, as if in despair for his race, 'The hills are our pillows, and the broad plains to the west our hunting-grounds; our brothers ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... Atotarho shook his tomahawk towards the ceiling, uttered a piercing war-whoop, and commenced to execute the war-dance, chanting this song in his native ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... athletic than the savages, equally capable of endurance, and alike incapable of betraying groans, fear, or even marks of regret in their countenance. They knew enough of savage modes to beware that the least indications of weariness, and inability to proceed, would have brought the tomahawk and scalping-knife upon their skulls—weapons with which they were thus early supplied from Detroit. They therefore pushed resolutely on, with cheerful countenances, watching the while with intense earnestness, to catch from the signs and gestures of the Indians, what was ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... one of the pines in 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 savage hurled his keen weapon; ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... precedence allotted to the Wyandots. These warriors, however, were picked men of the valley nations, splendidly built, tall, lean and full of courage and ferocity. They were all armed with improved rifles, and every man carried a tomahawk and hunting knife. They were also amply ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... our veins. Although we prided ourselves on our quality as "braves," and secretly pined to be led on the war-path, we were shy of walking in that vicinity in daylight, and no power on earth, not even the offer of the tomahawk or snow-shoes for which our souls longed, would have taken us there ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... amiable shove and rejoined his fellow Mohawks, each of whom, Joe noticed suddenly, had somewhere on his person a twelve-inch Stillson wrench or a reasonable facsimile to serve as a substitute tomahawk. They grinned at him ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... world has been in a large measure deceptive and factitious. The ferocity, craft, and cruelty, which have been deemed their leading traits, have been merely the natural accompaniments of wars of self-preservation, and no more indicated their genuine character than the war-paint, plume, and tomahawk of the warrior displayed the customary guise in which he appeared among his own people. The cruelties of war, when war is a struggle for national existence, are common to all races. The persistent desire for ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... 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
... and will add but one word—BEWARE OF A SURPRISE. I repeat it, BEWARE OF A SURPRISE—you know how the Indians fight us. He went off with that as my last solemn warning thrown into his ears. And yet!! to suffer that army to be cut to pieces, hack'd, butchered, tomahawk'd, by a surprise—the very thing I guarded him against!! O God, O God, he's worse than a murderer! how can he answer it to his country;—the blood of the slain is upon him—the curse of widows and ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... what he promised he would fulfill faithfully. Thus the planters were freed from the terror of the forest which haunted their neighbors, north and south. They could found cities in the wilderness and till their scattered farms without fear of tomahawk or firebrand. Penn himself went twenty miles from Philadelphia, near the present Bristol, to lay out his country place ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... be about five feet tall and sturdily 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 instantly ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... 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 and ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... shirt-sleeved, Burl was like the patient, plodding, slow-paced ox; but let the alarm-cry of "Indians! Indians!" ring along the border, and in a trice, with moccasins on feet, war-cap on head, rifle on shoulder, tomahawk and limiting-knife in belt, he was out upon the war-path—a roaring lion, thirsting for scalps and glory. Indeed, so famous did he in time become for his martial exploits as to win for himself among Whites a distinguished title of "The Fighting ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... States were English colonies then, for the War of the Revolution did not begin until about thirteen years later. The messengers of Pontiac carried with them the red-stained tomahawk and a wampum war-belt, the Indian fashion of indicating that war was purposed, and those to whom the articles were sent were invited to take ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... hunter in his war paint is to an inhabitant of Philadelphia or Boston. Artists and actors represented Bruce and Douglas in striped petticoats. They might as well have represented Washington brandishing a tomahawk, and girt with a string of scalps. At length this fashion reached a point beyond which it was not easy to proceed. The last British King who held a court in Holyrood thought that he could not give a more ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... going on to say that I am afraid the savages will take vengeance on my helpless little boys for the braves I shot in the fight," continued Mr. Wentworth. "If they don't do that, they will probably hold them for ransom; but they might as well tomahawk the boys at once and put them out of their misery, for I haven't a horn nor a hoof nor a cent of money to give in exchange for them. I know I have seen them for the last time, but won't I make it hot for those who ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... "It is only a tomahawk-improvement," said Telie Doe, shaking her head, as he turned towards her a look of joyous inquiry; and she pointed towards what seemed to have been once a cabin of logs of the smallest size—too small indeed for habitation—but which, more than half fallen down, was ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... the tree-toad, and delving with his walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull, with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death-blow had been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foothold of ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... excitement and bustle around him, there was a sullen fierceness mingled with the quiet of the savage, that was likely to arrest the attention of much more experienced eyes than those which now scanned him, in unconcealed amazement. The native bore both the tomahawk and knife of his tribe; and yet his appearance was not altogether that of a warrior. On the contrary, there was an air of neglect about his person, like that which might have proceeded from great and recent exertion, which he had not yet found ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... passed away, the war-whoop resounded through the forest. The shriek of mothers and maidens pierced the skies as they fell cleft by the tomahawk; and all the horrid clangor of war, with "its terror, conflagration, tears, and blood," imbittered ten thousand fold the ever bitter ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... his uncle's property in the Mohawk valley. He settled about twenty miles west of Schenectady, and engaged in the Indian trade. He dealt honestly with the Indians, learned their language, attended their feasts, and, tomahawk in hand, danced their dances in Indian dress. He even took as his wife a sister of Brant, a Mohawk chief. So great was his influence with the Indians that in 1746 he was made Commissary of New York for ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Courtenay 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 ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... must have been a false report. Here have we been waiting, gun in hand, for the last two months, and not a sign of a Redskin's tomahawk have we seen," said Rosalind cheerfully, as she and her parents rose from their ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... humbly crave peace; he would make with them no treaty except in concert with his Indian allies, whom he would never fail in fatherly care. To impress the council by the reality of his oneness with the Indians, Frontenac now seized a tomahawk and brandished it in the air shouting at the same time the Indian war-song. The whole assembly, French and Indians, joined in a wild orgy of war passion, and the old man of seventy, fresh from the court of ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... whom they supposed to be Sioux, rushed 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 young ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... 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 ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... 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. ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... to whom Mr. Oxley had given a tomahawk, discovered the broad arrow, with which it was marked on both sides, and which exactly resembles the print made by the foot of an emu. Probably the youths thought it a kobong, for they frequently pointed to it and to the emu skins which the party had with them.—See ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... to the French. He announced his purpose to come to America, where he would arrive in October. A few days after the letter came, she went out in a low carriage to visit her work-people, and was blessing the food for their luncheon, when she fell dead, struck by an Indian tomahawk, as did all the rest save one. They were buried where the massacre took place, and a stone was erected, which (possibly) still remains. The lady's family had a grant from Sir Ferdinando Gorges of the territory thereabout, and her brother had likewise come over and settled ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... genus: he very much 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 ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... on 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
... he had some other feelings towards women than towards grouse and foxes, 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 ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot |
