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Whit at Apr 27, 2020 12:32 PM

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he infinitely prefers to suffer at the stake, with all the tortures that ingenuity can devise, than die by hanging. The other eternal disaster is by scalping the head of the dead body. This annihilation; the soul ceases to exist. This accounts for eagerness of Indians to scalp all their enemies and the care they take to avoid being scalped themselves. Not unfrequently Indians do not scalp slain enemies, believing that each person killed by them, not scalped will be their servant in the next world. It will be found invariably that the slain foe were either very cowardly or very brave. The first he reserves to be his servant because he will have no trouble in managing him, and the last to gratidy his vanity in the future state by having a servant well known as a renowned warrior in this world.

This superstition is the occasion for the display of the most heroic traits of Indian character. Reckless charges are made and desperate chances taken to carry off unscalped the body of a loved chief, a relative, or friend. Numerous instances have occurred where many were killed in vain efforts to recover and carry off worthy of burial. A Homer might find many an Indian hero as worthy of immortal fame as Achilles for this efforts to save the body of his friend, and no Christian missionary ever evinced a more noble indifference to danger, than the savage Indian displays in his efforts to save his friend's soul and ensure a transit to the "Happy Hunting Grounds". -- Vol. Dodge in Our Wild Indians.

(IMAGE)

WIth all the attraction in the line of amusements, there seems to be no abatement in the interest manifested by the public in the peculiarities to be found in the daily presentation of the realistic scenes of the "Wild West". Each participant has passed through, in the Far West, all the various acts which they are called upon to represent, and the public are assured that every thing and person is as stated in the programme.

"UATH FRANK"
(THE GREAT INDIAN FIGHT AT HORSESHOE)
Was born on the banks of the Missouri, and raised at Trader's Point, about eight miles below where now stands the city of Council Bluffs, at a time when the primitive state of that section was almost unmolested. He has followed "the march of empire" in its westward course, and always at the head of the column- riding pony express when a boy from Nebraska City (then the fitting-out depot for "prairie schooner" caravans across the Great Desert) to the Otoe Agency. At the breaking out of the Pike's Peak excitement Frank endured the well-known a vicissitudes attendant on a prilous journey to and return from that most disappointing of Eldorados. Fought the savage with General Sully's command, and was the first party attacked by the Indians in the great outbreak on the South Platte, his partner being the first white man killed, and only by determined fighting and good horseflesh saved his own scalp. Drove stage on the Overland Route under Old Slade, Hi Kelly, and others, gaining a reputation for ability and courage in the most dangerous and trying times of that memorable line. Was considered a reliable train-wagon master, during which occupation he received his first idea of a locomotive on the completion of the U.P.R.R to the Forks of the Platte and the arrival of the first "iron-horse", indicating that "Othello's occupation" was gone. He started, with others, a ranch on the Horseshoe, twenty-eight miles north of Fort Laramie, where occured the most starling experience of his life: one, the recounting of which will ever be a part of the history of the sauguinary border- in which his gallant and succesful struggle against odds, while being well authenticated, will seem more like fiction than fact.

Anticipating the result, the ranch building was connected by an underground passage with a bush-covered ravine about sixty feet behind it, with a carefully concealed entrance, the ravine running down the hill to the bottom. One morning in January, 1808, a band of sixty savages were descried, who surrounded the place and

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he infinitely prefers to suffer at the stake, with all the tortures that ingenuity can devise, than die by hanging. The other eternal disaster is by scalping the head of the dead body. This annihilation; the soul ceases to exist. This accounts for eagerness of Indians to scalp all their enemies and the care they take to avoid being scalped themselves. Not unfrequently Indians do not scalp slain enemies, believing that each person killed by them, not scalped will be their servant in the next world. It will be found invariably that the slain foe were either very cowardly or very brave. The first he reserves to be his servant because he will have no trouble in managing him, and the last to gratidy his vanity in the future state by having a servant well known as a renowned warrior in this world.

This superstition is the occasion for the display of the most heroic traits of Indian character. Reckless charges are made and desperate chances taken to carry off unscalped the body of a loved chief, a relative, or friend. Numerous instances have occurred where many were killed in vain efforts to recover and carry off worthy of burial. A Homer might find many an Indian hero as worthy of immortal fame as Achilles for this efforts to save the body of his friend, and no Christian missionary ever evinced a more noble indifference to danger, than the savage Indian displays in his efforts to save his friend's soul and ensure a transit to the "Happy Hunting Grounds". -- Vol. Dodge in Our Wild Indians.

(IMAGE)

WIth all the attraction in the line of amusements, there seems to be no abatement in the interest manifested by the public in the peculiarities to be found in the daily presentation of the realistic scenes of the "Wild West". Each participant has passed through, in the Far West, all the various acts which they are called upon to represent, and the public are assured that every thing and person is as stated in the programme.

"UATH FRANK"
(THE GREAT INDIAN FIGHT AT HORSESHOE)
Was born on the banks of the Missouri, and raised at Trader's Point, about eight miles below where now stands the city of Council Bluffs, at a time when the primitive state of that section was almost unmolested. He has followed "the march of empire" in its westward course, and always at the head of the column- riding pony express when a boy from Nebraska City (then the fitting-out depot for "prairie schooner" caravans across the Great Desert) to the Otoe Agency. At the breaking out of the Pike's Peak excitement Frank endured the well-known a vicissitudes attendant on a prilous journey to and return from that most disappointing of Eldorados. Fought the savage with General Sully's command, and was the first party attacked by the Indians in the great outbreak on the South Platte, his partner being the first white man killed, and only by determined fighting and good horseflesh saved his own scalp. Drove stage on the Overland Route under Old Slade, Hi Kelly, and others, gaining a reputation for ability and courage in the most dangerous and trying times of that memorable line. Was considered a reliable train-wagon master, during which occupation he received his first idea of a locomotive on the completion of the U.P.R.R to the Forks of the Platte and the arrival of the first "iron-horse", indicating that "Othello's occupation" was gone. He started, with others, a ranch on the Horseshoe, twenty-eight miles north of Fort Laramie, where occured the most starling experience of his life: one, the recounting of which will ever be a part of the history of the sauguinary border- in which his gallant and succesful struggle against odds, while being well authenticated, will seem more like fiction than fact.

Anticipating the result, the ranch building was connected by an underground passage with a bush-covered ravine about sixty feet behind it, with a carefully concealed entrance, the ravine running down the hill to the bottom. One morning in January, 1808, a band of sixty savages were descried, who surrounded the place and

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