"Tomahawk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... 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
... yellow oilskins many sizes too big for him, with ferocious mustaches curling up to his eyes. His belt contained a perfect armory of weapons; item, a pistol that had lost its barrel; item, three wooden daggers, assorted sizes; item, one tomahawk, home-made. The mate was scarcely less terrifying, for though a blue petticoat showed beneath his oilskin jacket, and curls flowed from under his sou'wester, he made up for it by a mass of oakum beard ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... the guardian who would have married her for her estates; you are the cousin who played the poltroon and outraged her pride of family; you are the lover who abandoned her,—abandoned her to torture and the tomahawk. Is it strange that it is her wish never to see you? You will spare your pride some hurts if you avoid her in the ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... 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
... I could clear him of other sins as easily as this. The object he was turning and twisting in his left breeches pocket was not a house-key, nor a jimmy, nor a club, nor a tomahawk, nor any infernal machine: It was a small piece of paper containing fourteen stivers, which he had raised on his New Testament with Psalms at the grocer's on the "Ouwebrug"; and the thing that held him fast on the Hartenstraat was nothing more or ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... 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 alarm was general and ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... pay up his box-rent, you might as well put his mail in the general delivery, and when Bob Head gets drunk and insists on a letter from one of his wives every day in the week, you can salute him through the box delivery with an old Queen Anne tomahawk, which you will find near the Etruscan water-pail. This will not in any manner surprise either of ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... name, and both sprang forward. The blow of Newton's sword was warded off by the miscreant; but at the same moment that of Monsieur de Fontanges was passed through his body to the hilt. Newton had just time to witness the fall of Jackson, when a tomahawk descended on his head; his senses failed him, and he lay among ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... unable to control their 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 side ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... everybody got to bow down to it for a idol and if William Tell don't bow down to it he got to shoot a apple for good or evil off 'm his little boy's head. That's all the little boy William Tell and Adam and Eve got, but he ain't going to fall down and worship no gravy image on top a pole, so he put a tomahawk in his bosom and he tooken his bow and arrur and shot the apple plumb th'oo the middle and never swinge a hair of his head. And Eve nibble off the apple and give Adam the core, and Lina all time 'sputing 'bout Adam and Eve and William Tell ain't in the ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... 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 ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... 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, ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... came straight for me and dealt me a desperate blow with his tomahawk, but I threw up my left hand and received a severe cut in my wrist—the mark of which I carry to this day—at the same time I struck him with my knife and almost cut him in two As he was falling he ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... three brothers killed by Indians and his mother reduced from opulence to poverty in a single night, spoke passionately of that power which was taking every "opportunity of intriguing with our Indian neighbors and setting on the ruthless savages to tomahawk our women and children." "War," he exclaimed, "is not to commence by sea or land, it is already begun, and some of the richest blood of our country has ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... the hardest wood; and no bough, however large, would fulfil these requirements, so it must be cut out bodily from the stem of an iron-bark tree, and the nearer the heart he can manage to get, the better will be his weapon. His sole tool with which to attack a giant iron-bark is a miserable tomahawk, or hatchet, made of stone, but little superior to the rude Celtic flint axe-heads, that may be seen in any antiquarian's collection. These are of a very hard stone, frequently of a greenish hue, and resembling jade; and, having been ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... 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 ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... 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 ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... same ez the t'others of the percession o' harnts. 'Twar my niece, Mill'cent—brother's darter—by name, Mill'cent Roxby. Waal, Mill'cent an' a lot o' young fools o' her age—little over fryin' size—they 'tended camp-meetin' down hyar on Tomahawk Creek—'tain't so long ago—along with the old folks. An' 'bout twenty went huddled up tergether in a road-wagin. An', lo! the wagin it bruk down on the way home, an' what with proppin' it up on a crotch, they made out ter reach ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... door and stepped inside, followed by Mr. Jackson. As they did so they saw the man standing in front of the Humming-Bird. He again raised the little hatchet, which was like an Indian tomahawk, and poised it for an instant over the delicate framework and planes of the air craft. Then his arm ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... details, I may briefly say, that to the eastward the coast trended North 62 degrees East to Cape Portland, distant fifty-eight miles; and that at the distance of eight, eighteen, twenty-nine, forty-eight, and fifty-three miles, the rivers Currie, Piper, Forestier, Tomahawk, and Ringarooma, empty themselves into wide bays, which increase in depth as they advance eastwards. That formed by the point opposite Waterhouse Island and Cape Portland,* which receives the two last-mentioned ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... 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
... when he makes an engagement, for the illustration of the playbill. His portrait (which is not at all like him) represents him in the act of dragging to the earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed to have tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a British officer. The design is pure poetry, for there is no such Indian in the piece, and no such incident. He is a dog of the Newfoundland breed, for whose honesty I would be bail to any amount; but whose intellectual qualities in association ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... pursue his course, following him at a distance, for he might have a pistol or a tomahawk; but when they were in the village, within reach of help, the dozen men of the company rushed together ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... 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
... 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
... compensated by the state, but that the sanction of the Pope had been invoked to give effect to an act of a British legislature. The Protestant war-chiefs, D'Alton M'Carthy, Colonel O'Brien, and John Charlton, took up the tomahawk, and called on the Dominion Government to disallow the act. But Sir John Macdonald declined to intervene. A resolution in the House of Commons calling for disallowance was defeated by 188 to 13, the minority being chiefly Conservatives ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... 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 ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... 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 mark to the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... war, 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... tweaked Edward's ear, told Joseph, the second boy, he would bring him an Indian tomahawk, and went back into ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... Isidore de Beaujardin, and at one moment his life was in the greatest peril. An English soldier who had been thrown down in the rush was just about to rise, when a gigantic Indian, yelling out the dreaded war-whoop, darted towards him. Isidore sprang between them. With a sweep of his tomahawk the maddened savage sent de Beaujardin's small sword flying into the air. The weapon of the Indian was already uplifted for the deadly stroke when a strange fantastically-dressed figure passed, noiselessly ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... red ochre to colour their bodies, and larger packets contained soaked Cycas seeds, which seemed to be undergoing fermentation. They were of a mealy substance, and harmless; but had a musty taste and smell, resembling that of the common German cheese. There was also a very large stone tomahawk made of greenstone; and some ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... 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 ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... enforced, by his example, this 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 this ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... wilderness, many hundreds of Alexanders and Caesars, who have never been heard of. At the time I emigrated to Ohio the deadly hatred of the red men toward the whites had reached its acme. The rifle, the tomahawk and the scalping knife were daily at work; and men, women and children daily fell victims to this sanguinary spirit. In this state I found things when I reached the small village opposite the month of Licking river, and now the great city of Cincinnati. Here in this ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... was not of long duration. The Indians, in a body, cautiously approached till within a short distance: they then halted, took deliberate aim, discharged their pieces upon inanimate logs, gave a dreadful war-whoop, and instantly rushed forward, with tomahawk and scalping knife in hand, to dispatch the living, and obtain the scalps ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... master. They had been obliged to escape so rapidly that Captain Clark lost his compass (that is, circumferentor) and umbrella, Chaboneau left his gun, with Captain Lewis' wiping-rod, shot-pouch, and tomahawk, and the Indian woman had just time to grasp her child, before the net in which it lay at her feet was ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... fist. Undaunted the braves of Wakawa's band Leaped into the thicket with lance and knife, And grappled the Chippeways hand to hand; And foe with foe, in the deadly strife, Lay clutching the scalp of his foe and dead, With a tomahawk sunk in his ghastly head, Or his still heart sheathing a bloody blade. Like a bear in the battle Wakawa raves, And cheers the hearts of his falling braves. But a panther crouches along his track— He springs with a yell on Wakawa's back! The tall chief, stabbed to the heart, lies low; ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... of 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, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... of the Senecas, had an only child named Lena. This chief was a noted and dreaded warrior; over many a bloody fight his single eagle plume had waved, and ever in battle he left the red track of his hatchet and tomahawk. Years rolled by, and every one sent its summer offering to the thunder god of the then unexplored Niagara. Oronto danced at many a feast which followed the sacrificial gift, which his tribe had rejoicingly given in their turn. He felt not for the fathers whose children were thus ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... him. His eye met mine; but his look was so forbidding that it struck a chill into the more nervous part of my system. He again seated himself, drew his butcher-knife from its greasy scabbard, examined its edge, as I would do that of a razor suspected dull, replaced it, and again taking his tomahawk from his back, filled the pipe of it with tobacco, and sent me expressive glances whenever our hostess chanced to have her back ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... 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 to ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... 15; three sandstone mortars 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 ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... 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 civilisation 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, and ask ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... its face. I shall, 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 nature. It is impossible for me to withhold ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... bother with that horse NOW," said Dad; "the ploughing can go; I'm DONE with it. We've had enough poking and puddling about. We'll start this business straightaway." And the following morning, headed by the dog and Dad, armed with a tomahawk, we started up ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... a belt of brushwood so dense that for the 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 struggling ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... out," declared the elder brother. "You stay right here and watch, and I'll get some wood." Nuck had brought a tomahawk which, with his skinning knife, was thrust into his belt. With the hatchet he obtained dry branches from the lower limbs of some spruce-trees which grew near, and packed a big fagot through the mire to the ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... fortunately escaped molestation, but saw in 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 or three of the settlers composing my escort, who, on more than one occasion, pointed ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... where 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
... song of the thrush and the mocking-bird, interrupted every now and then by the impudent observation of a stray parrot and the ominous rattle of a huge snake as it wound its way among the leaves. Every moment I expected to hear the grunts and cries of the redskins, as with tomahawk in hand they came eagerly searching about for me. I durst not move to look around. They might come talking carelessly, or they might steal about in dead silence, if they suspected that I ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... bower-bird collects gaily- coloured articles, such as the blue tail-feathers of parrakeets, bleached bones and shells, which it sticks between the twigs or arranges at the entrance. Mr. Gould found in one bower a neatly-worked stone tomahawk and a slip of blue cotton, evidently procured from a native encampment. These objects are continually re-arranged, and carried about by the birds whilst at play. The bower of the Spotted bower-bird "is beautifully lined with tall ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... resolved to defend their country extending from the Ohio Northward to the Great Lakes and westward to the Mississippi, an immense tract, in which they found the deer, the bear, the wild wolf, game of all sorts in profusion. They employed the Tomahawk and Scalping Knife against such deluded settlers who on the faith of the treaty to which they did not consent, ventured to cross the Ohio, secretly encouraged by the Agents of Government, supplied with Arms, Ammunition, and provisions they maintained an obstinate & destructive war against ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Marse Santion Claws," said Agnes; and Diddie thought that was so funny that 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
... with the Seminoles in Florida. All wondered if Lizzie's love for her 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 the look of tenderness with which her husband regarded her as he replied ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... got onto one the other afternoon 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 on the steps to see how it would turn out. She ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... was afterward called Fisher Ames' Tomahawk Speech, because he endeavored to show that, if the posts were not surrendered and not garrisoned by American troops, the Indians could not be kept in check, and would fill the ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... 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 was born ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... service. Jack was the very first on board, cheering his men as he darted 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, still breathing ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... found Indian arrowheads. So everywhere Indian arrowheads. Whether a hundred or a thousand years old, who knows? who cares? There is no history to the red race,—there is hardly an individual in it;—a few instincts on legs and holding a tomahawk,—there is the Indian of all time. The story of one red ant is the story of all red ants. So, the poet, in trying to wing his way back through the life that has kindled, flitted, and faded along our watercourses and on our southern hillsides for unknown generations, finds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the Western solitudes are no nearer heaven than civilisation. My two red friends having escaped and got back, which they did on purpose to tomahawk me—I gave the tribe the slip, and am here in New York. There I accidentally received ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... 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 ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... worn for the purpose, makes a circular incision to the bone round the upper part of the head, and tears off the scalp with his fingers. Previous to this execution, he generally despatches the prisoner by repeated blows on the head, with the hammer-side of the instrument called a tomahawk: but sometimes they save themselves the trouble, and sometimes the blows prove ineffectual; so that the miserable patient is found alive, groaning in the utmost agony of torture. The Indian strings the scalps ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... was again pitched in the bed of the creek. A large number of natives were seen to-day—one mob was disturbed at a waterhole, where they were cooking fish, which they left in their alarm, together with their arms. The spears were the first that had been observed made of reed, and a stone tomahawk was seen, as large as the largest-sized American axe. These blacks were puny wretched-looking creatures, and very thin. They had a great number of wild dogs with them—over thirty being counted by the party. 10 miles, N.W. by ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... the cottage settlements is a struggling little park, dedicated to the only Indian saint I ever heard of, though there may be others. His statue, colossal in sheet-lead, and painted the copper color of his race, offers any heathen comer the choice between a Bible in one of his hands and a tomahawk in the other, at the entrance of the park; and there are other sheet-lead groups and figures in the white of allegory at different points. It promises to be a pretty enough little place in future years, but as yet it is not much ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... story and a half high, yet a respectable merchant had lived there formerly. Before the door stood a battered wooden image of a savage Indian, holding out a bunch of cigars in his hand, and looking as if he meant to tomahawk you if you didn't take one. The Indian was quite stuck over with snow-balls, for he was a fine mark for the boys in the court, who divided their attention between his head and the knob on top of the Pump. If it were not so dark, one might spell out on the dingy sign ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... of 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 bolt ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... They awaited silently in 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, ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... 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 Tandakora, ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... who knew about him said he was one of the fiercest red men that ever went on the warpath. A few years before, there had been a massacre of the settlers, and Omas was foremost among the Indians who swung the tomahawk and fired his rifle at ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... they were armed with guns and tomahawks, not bows and arrows, and he took confidence from this circumstance, knowing that the Indian is a poor marksman with firearms when mounted, and that none could do him harm with the tomahawk unless within arm's ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... 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 "wobbly," and ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... seven months. Many of the farmers have lost stock in consequence of the drought. A few years ago this part of Illinois was inhabited only by the rude and uncivilized savage. The scalping knife and tomahawk, graced their bark dwellings and were often used in the most inhuman manner. The murdering of women and children whom they viewed as their enemies was not an uncommon occurrence. But who could have believed that when the red men of the forest had retired from this beautiful ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... 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 scalps ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... Silas he looked for; and, with the speed of a 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 for that night of horror—when ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... dream! a dream! That they saw a bright gleam Through the dusk boughs stream, Where wild bees dwell, And a tomahawk fell, In moons which have faded; Faded, and faded, and faded, From woods where a chieftain lies shaded! Do you hear her, Ulmarra? Oh! where doth her ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... 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
... 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 Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... 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 ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... English, and that you say they kept their word, and that their rifles and blankets were good. I know that the blankets of the Americans are thin and cold. (I did not think it worth while to say that they were all made in England.) We have buried the hatchet now; but should the tomahawk be raised again between the Americans and the English, you must not take ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... presented to the Indians, which pleased them greatly, and they concluded an alliance by binding themselves to take up the hatchet against the patriots, and to continue their warfare until the latter were subdued. To each Indian were then presented a brass kettle, a suit of clothes, a gun, a tomahawk and scalping-knife, a piece of gold, a quantity of ammunition, and a promise of a bounty upon every scalp he should bring in. Thayendanega was thenceforth the acknowledged grand sachem of the Six ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... and at night; he seems to have lost his voice and speaks only in whispers. Were he to 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 is to harm ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... running 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 in it. Followed ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... and out of Parliament, it became a question whether all this was for good or evil. The Boffinites had of course much to say for themselves. Everything was torpid. There was no interest in the newspapers,—except when Mr. Slide took the tomahawk into his hands. A member of Parliament this Session had not been by half so much bigger than another man as in times of hot political warfare. One of the most moving sources of our national excitement seemed to have vanished from life. We all know what happens to ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... 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 from its moorings clear out to sea, and there ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... entre nous only, and pray let it be so, or my maternal persecutor will be throwing her tomahawk at any of my curious projects,) I am going to sea for four or five months, with my cousin Capt. Bettesworth, who commands the Tartar, the finest frigate in the navy. I have seen most scenes, and wish to look at a naval life. We are going probably to the Mediterranean, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... 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 ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... was 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 ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... sticks 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
... prevailed, and at last they gave him leave. A ride of a few days over rich prairies brought him to the Pawnees, who, coming as he did from the hated Osages, took him for an enemy and threatened to kill him. Twice they raised the tomahawk over his head; but when the intrepid traveller dared them to strike, they began to treat him as a friend. When, however, he told them that he meant to go fifteen days' journey farther, to the Padoucas, or Comanches, ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... philosophers who dwelt in security far from the frontier posts of danger, have been much disposed in the past to extol the virtues of the savage and bewail his misfortunes, at the expense of the rugged pioneer who had to face his tomahawk and furnish victims for his mad vengeance. They went into rhapsodies when speaking of the "poor Indian," assuming that in his primitive state, before he was corrupted by contact with the manners and customs of the white man, he represented all that was pure, good ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... 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
... to a rapid flight. We, however, were too close to them to allow them to escape altogether with impunity, and three of them were knocked off the backs of their steeds, two of whom were mortally wounded. A third, I thought, was lead. He lay on the ground without moving, or apparently breathing, his tomahawk still held in his death-grasp. The cowardly Mexicans very soon put the other two poor wretches out of their pain, by running them through and through with their lances. Two or three of the heroes were in the act of charging the dead man, with the intention of running him through, when ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... geologist and mining prospector. She could ride almost before she could walk, and soon became an expert shot. Once, when only ten years of age, she shot down an Indian who was in the act of killing a white woman with his tomahawk; and on another occasion, when her father's camp was surrounded by hostile Indians, she galloped out upon her pony and brought relief. "She was so much at home with the shy, wild creatures of the woods that she learned their calls, and they would come to her like so many ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... 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 ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... several curs raised a shrill alarm, and a great mastiff, chained to his kennel in the yard of the largest house, snapped his chain and sprang upon the raiders. The dog bore an Indian to the ground, and then fell dead, with a tomahawk buried in his skull. At the same moment the long, strident yell of the Micmacs rang through the hamlet, and a half dozen hatchets beat in every door. There was no time for resistance. The butchers were at the bedsides of their ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... in her. Nothing must disconcert me I said to myself—I must spare no labour, but act a hearty sailor's part and ask for God's countenance. So I trotted below, and selecting some weapons from the arms-room, such as a tomahawk, a spade-headed spear, a pike and a chopper, I returned to the pumps and fell upon them with a will. The ice flew about me, but I continued to smite, the exercise making me hot and renewing my spirits, and in an hour—but it took me an hour—I had chopped, hacked, and beaten one of the pumps ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... 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 ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... closed, and the fatal instrument, lifted above her head, was now visible in the sight of all. The executioner rushed forward to interpose, but he came too late. The tomahawk was driven deep into the skull, and but a single sentence from his lips preceded the final insensibility ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... falls, and instantly the Indian war-whoop resounds close at hand, and numbers of braves seem to spring from the ground, one of whom approaches her as she rises with his tomahawk raised.) ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... stone archways breaths of dead, vault-chilled air coughed upon him; his feet struck jingling iron rings in staples stone-buried for half a cycle. Along these paltry avenues had swaggered the arrogant Don, had caracoled and serenaded and blustered while the tomahawk and the pioneer's rifle were already uplifted to expel him from a continent. And Tansey, stumbling through this old-world dust, looked up, dark as it was, and saw Andalusian beauties glimmering on the balconies. Some of them were laughing and listening to the goblin music that still followed; ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... 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 Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... had much to suffer from the increasing 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 so visibly ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... arrow and the tomahawk," he answered,—"yea, and by the guns you have given the red men. To-morrow's sun, and the next, and the next—three suns—and the tribes will fall upon the English. At the same hour, when the men are in the fields and the women and children are in the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... as soon as the Indians were mentioned. There he stood, straight as the trunk of a pine, light and agile in person, with nothing but his breech-cloth, moccasins, and a blue calico shirt belted to his loins with a scarlet band, through which was thrust the handle of his tomahawk, and to which were attached his shot-pouch and horn, while his rifle rested against his body, butt downward. Trackless was a singularly handsome Indian, the unpleasant peculiarities of his people being but faintly ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... galloping madly at a wilder buffalo; then he was practicing with bow and arrow at a genuine archery target; then he stood in the opening of a tent made of skins; then he lay in the tall grass, rifle in hand, awaiting some deer that were slowly moving toward him. He even saw Paul tomahawk and scalp a white boy of his own size, and although the face of the victim was that of Joe Appleby, the hair somehow was long enough to tie around the belt which Paul, like all Indians in picture-books, wore for the express purpose of ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... discovered any 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 what had ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... a tomahawk disfigured his head; the woolly hair was matted with blood. But there remained still something of the ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... distance from the town where he could have a little garden ground, and attempted to rob him; but the owner surprised them, and, in endeavouring to secure them, was wounded so severely in the arm with a tomahawk, that the tendon was divided; and it was supposed that he never would recover the perfect use of the limb. They even carried their audacity so far, as to be secretly meditating an attempt upon the barrack and storehouse at ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... half his face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands. Put the scalp-knife carefully in his belt—then lying down, resting moment, Rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence his extended hand to each and all, Sank faintly low to the floor (tightly grasping the tomahawk handle,) Fix'd his look on ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Gweeon, n. a 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
... plenty of work to be done, the clearing away of the wreck being our first task. Simpson and I accordingly armed ourselves with a tomahawk each, and went forward to make a commencement. Simpson began at the jibboom-end, cutting away the stays attached thereto, and working his way in, while I made an attack upon the shrouds and backstays. Our intention was to cut away everything in the first instance, in case of bad weather coming ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... first general court of Connecticut convened at Hartford, upward of thirty persons had fallen beneath the tomahawk. The promptest measures were necessary; and without waiting for the assistance of Massachusetts, whose indiscretion had brought on the war, ninety men (nearly half the effective force of the colony) were raised,[8] and placed under the command of Captain John Mason, an officer who had served in ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... much room in it; and has destroyed so many of our lives, that it causes our young men to say, 'we had better be at war with the white people.' This liquor, which they introduce into our country, is more to be feared than the gun and the tomahawk. There are more of us dead, since the treaty of Greenville, than we lost by the six years war before. It is all owing to the introduction of this liquor ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... can 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, ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... found 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 ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... 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 forget to paint ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... think, 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, ...
— Sarreo - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the 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 off ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... is 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 about ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... protect the same from all 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, steel traps ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... unearthed one descendant of the Red man who kept a small tavern in the lower part of the town; a dirty frame tenement almost entirely hidden by an immense sign hanging outside, having the figure, heroic size of an Iroquois in full evening dress, feathers, bare legs and tomahawk. ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... 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 ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... could not be far from the house, and went to make 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 an ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... wars between France and England had assumed a form, happily unknown to other parts of the civilised world. Not confined, as in Europe, to men in arms; women and children were its common victims. It had been carried by the savage to the fire side of the peaceful peasant, where the tomahawk and scalping knife were applied indiscriminately to every age, and to either sex. The hope was now fondly indulged that these scenes, at least in the northern and middle ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... 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
... them when they're right in your face. You don't suppose you're anything like Evie May Poore, do you? or Roberta Wicks, or Mrs. Clay Burt? Every time I see Evie May Poore I wish I was an Indian so I could tomahawk her hair. Most of her money goes in hair and chewing-gum. Mr. Crimm says he thinks girls who dress like Roberta Wicks ought to be run in, but there ain't any law which lets him do it. Mr. Crimm's going to a big wedding to-night. ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... dancing lights that flickered before him, together with the hum that filled his ears, told him that for a moment he had succeeded. But he was soon recalled to a sense of his situation by the zip of a tomahawk within a few inches of his head. Opening his eyes, he soon comprehended the state of things. The savages were amusing themselves by ascertaining who could send his tomahawk nearest the body of their captive without touching him. The first weapon that had been sent had ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... side, 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 world-subduing ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... rory-tory, hurly-burly blue-bottle, is no better than a bully. His head is a humming-top, and his tight blue little body like a tomahawk, cased in glittering steel, which he takes a delight in whirling against your head. I really believe, that to confine a nervous man in a room with one of these winged tormentors, on a July day, would inevitably destroy him in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... name of a brook and parish in the north-east part of Haddam,—appears to have been, originally, the designation of a locality from which the Indians procured stone suitable for making axes,—tomhegun-ompsk-ut, 'at the tomahawk rock.' In 'Higganompos,' as the name was sometimes written, without the locative affix, we have less difficulty in recognizing ...
— The Composition of Indian Geographical Names - Illustrated from the Algonkin Languages • J. Hammond Trumbull
... yelling like 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
... 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 her ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to whom Mr. Kirkland was sent as a missionary, kept the hatchet buried during the whole Revolutionary struggle, and by means of this mission, probably, were a multitude of frontier settlements saved from the tomahawk and the scalping-knife. But even if nothing had been accomplished for the benefit of the Indians, yet the zeal which chiefly sought their good, reared up a venerable institution of science, in which many strong minds have been disciplined and made to grow stronger, and ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... ferocious-looking fellows, dressed in skins and feathers, with their faces painted all over in different colours. I was about to cry out for help, hoping that my father might have returned to the camp and would hear me, when the third Indian, who had possession of my gun, raising his tomahawk, threatened to cut me down if I made any noise. Without more ado they dragged me along, but finding that I no longer resisted, did not ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... there, however, for along in the darkest hours of the night I started from sleep and saw those two Indians, one standing at the head and one at the foot of the bed, and each of them armed with a tomahawk. That they had come to kill me I was certain, and that they would succeed in doing so seemed to me equally sure. I tried to scream but I could not. I was as powerless as a baby. I finally managed to move and as I did so I saw them vanish through the open doorway and disappear ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... said he, as he caught Frank's eye fixed on it, while he sat coolly arranging himself on the bedside. "I got it in fair fight, though, by a Crow's tomahawk in the Rocky Mountains. And here's another token (lifting up his black curls), which a Greek robber gave me in the Morea. I've another under my head, for which I have to thank a Tartar, and one or two more little remembrances of flood and field up and down me. Perhaps they may explain ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... become pitied, then despised, then forgotten, entirely forgotten—the frequent steps in a surface reputation. At surface reputation, however great, is always mortal, and always killable if you go at it right—with pins and needles, and quiet slow poison, not with the club and tomahawk. But it is a different matter with the submerged reputation—down in the deep water; once a favorite there, always a favorite; once beloved, always beloved; once respected, always respected, honored, and believed in. For, what the ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... clear to behold him. Over 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 are called ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... 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 peace, ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... embroidered with many-colored beads, on softly-tanned deer skin, was held at one end by the Iroquois chieftains, and at the other by the prominent men of the Dutch Company, in their most showy attire. The pipe of peace was smoked with solemn gravity. The tomahawk was buried, and each party pledged itself to ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... word, the heroic wife brought the foremost of the enemy down to the ground by a bullet, while the husband disposed of two others by two arrows. The fourth warrior was rushing on the woman with uplifted tomahawk, when he stumbled and fell. She darted forward, and buried her knife in his heart. The sole surviving assailant now turned and fled, discharging, however, a bullet which wounded the man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... history of Virginia only in our school histories, Pocahontas is merely a figure in one dramatic scene—her rescue of John Smith. We see her in one mental picture only, kneeling beside the prostrate Englishman, her uplifted hands warding off the descending tomahawk. ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... of the American Indian. The Indian will murder any man who strikes him with a switch, a cowhide, or a whip, twenty years afterward, if he gets an opportunity; but readily forgets blows, however severe, inflicted on him with the fist, a cudgel, or a tomahawk. A remarkable ethnological peculiarity of the prognathous race is, that any deserved punishment, inflicted on them with a switch, cowhide, or whip, puts them into good humor with themselves and the executioner of the punishment, provided he manifest satisfaction by regarding ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... not have been able to detect it. The trappers made another hiding-place, and left there the superfluous garments of civilisation, confining themselves to a shirt and trousers, and a belt which holds the pistol and tomahawk. Speug and Jock, as the two veterans who could discover the trail of the Seminoles by a twisted leaf on a branch, or a broken stick on the ground, warned their friends to lie low, and they themselves disappeared into the brushwood. They had gone to scout, and to make ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... colony in a pitiable condition. The tomahawk of the Indians, famine and pestilence had wrought terrible havoc with the settlers. A mere handful of poor wretched men were left to welcome the newcomers and to beg eagerly to be taken away from ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... for the nonce) into the fire of poetry, to make them glow and glitter as if they were not dull things. Well, I shall soon hear what you like best—and worst. I wonder if you have been very carnivorous with me! I tremble a little to think of your hereditary claim to an instrument called the tomahawk. Still, I am sure I shall have to think most, ever as now, of your kindness; and truth must be sacred to all of us, whether we have to suffer or be glad by it. As for Mr. Horne, I cannot answer for what he has received or not received. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... 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 the ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... the 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
... 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 ...
— A Bell's Biography - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... long since 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
... for savages. Pardon me, madam, but I am not a sheep, nor yet quite a savage with a tomahawk. Thank you, but I don't ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the time he was hoping for a chance to fight the enemy, and each day he brought home some new weapon. One day it was a rude spear which he had forged while he waited for the blacksmith to finish a job, another time it was a wooden club, and another a tomahawk. Once he fastened the blade of a scythe to a pole, and when he reached home began cutting down weeds with it, crying, "Oh, if only I were a man, how I'd cut down ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... fell upon their old enemies, the Hurons, with diabolical fury. In the Indian village of Sillery, while a missionary was celebrating mass in the Catholic Church, and none but old men, women, and children were present, a terrible and foul massacre occurred. The Iroquois rushed into the chapel with tomahawk and scalping knife, murdering all the congregation, nor stayed their hands until upwards of four hundred families, being every soul in the village, were slain. About this time our friends south of the line ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger |
