Use scalp in a sentence

Wherever a squad of the fugitives was withdrawn from the main body, making ready a boat, the painted fiends would swoop down upon it, performing their murderous work and getting away with a fresh supply of scalps before the victims' friends could rush to their assistance.

Having performed this exploit the Snakes became alarmed, dreading the resentment of the Dakota, and they hastened therefore to signify their wish for peace by sending the scalp of the slain partisan, together with a small parcel of tobacco attached, to his tribesmen and relations.

He knew that the son of the stranger who had slain his young warrior had been wounded, and, as he hoped, mortally; but that did not suffice for his revenge, and he had either suddenly attacked the settlement, in the hope of securing either Rudolph himself or some of his comrades, that he might shed the white man's blood on the grave of his son, and tear off their scalps as trophies of victory.

As for the first, agreeably to savage notions, glory was to be measured by the number of scalps taken and lost; and, counting all the women left in the Hut, there would not be heads enough to supply a sufficient number to prove an offset to those which would probably be lost in the assault.

They had several captured Indian women with them, and half-a-dozen children; the former were absorbed in grief, and one in particular, whose young husband had been shot in the fray, and whose scalp was one of those I have just mentioned, was quite overwhelmed.

At that moment some rays of the setting sun broke through the gray clouds and shone full upon it, lighting up the defiant scalp lock interwoven with the brilliant red feather, the eagle face with the curved Roman beak, and the mighty shoulders and chest of red bronze.

There must have been at least thirty of the wolves, and the five figures that they saw reclining, silent and motionless, against the unburned portion of the house might well have been those of the dead and scalped, whom they had found in such numbers everywhere.

When those poor disarmed and despairing men implored you to pity their condition, reminding you of your promises, and their generosity in making you presents, when you saw them afterwards submit to be plundered, you gave them not pity but the war club and scalping knife.

Suppose him afflicted with a flux or fever, attacked by a panther, bitten by a rattle-snake, or any other of the dreadful circumstances peculiar to his situation: but, above all, suppose a war to break out between the Indians, and him, and his whole family scalped, and their plantations burnt!

If a war party meets the enemy, and kills several of them, losing in the battle one of its own number, it is likely, as the phrase is, to "cover" the slain Blackfoot with all the dead enemies save one, and to have a scalp dance over that remaining one.

I can see her now, as I write these lines, a leap in advance, her gray hair flying in thin tangled strings, the blood dripping down her forehead from some wound in the scalp, in her right hand a hatchet, her left hand, lean and wrinkled, a yellow talon, gripping the air convulsively.

He possessed the longest and thickest pigtail which could possibly grow upon a human scalp, and his left eye was permanently closed, so that a smile which adorned his extraordinary countenance seemed to lack the sympathy of his surviving eye, which, oblique, beady, held no mirth in its glittering depths.

Young Washington, defeated by overwhelming numbers, was going back to Virginia, and Duquesne, the fort of the French at the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny, was a powerful rallying place for their own forces and the swarming Indian bands, pouring out of the wilderness, drawn by the tales of unlimited scalps and plunder.

If his son was scalped or his cattle driven off, he could not be expected to remember that perhaps the Indians who did the deed had themselves been cheated by a white trader, or had lost a relative at the hands of some border ruffian, or felt aggrieved because a hundred miles off some settler had built a cabin on lands they considered their own.

He soon became the best commander against Indians that there was on this part of the border, moving with a rapidity that enabled him again and again to overtake and scatter their roving parties, recovering the plunder and captives, and now and then taking a scalp or two himself.

Supposing the Indians gone, Hood got up softly, wounded and scalped as he was, and began to walk towards the fort on the bluff, when, to his mortification, he saw, standing upon the bank of the creek, a number of Indians, the same who had wounded him before, making sport of his misfortune and mistake.

Bands of Shawnees, who were at this time the most inveterate of the enemies of the frontiersmen, passed much time among them; and the Creek war parties, when they journeyed north to steal horses and get scalps, invariably stopped among them, and on their return stopped again to exhibit their trophies and hold scalp dances.

Thousands of dollars' worth of agricultural machinery lay "rotting in the sun" while the noble red aristocrat played poker in the shade; his original contempt for labor intensified by his power to extract a living from laborers, through their fear of his scalping knife.

The women, who commence as spectators, becoming excited with the scene and the music which their own discordant notes help to make more deafening, rush in, seize the scalps from the hands of the owners, and toss them frantically about, with the screams and yells of demons.

They, for the most part, remove a portion of their hair, the remainder of which is drawn to the back of the head, clubbed and ornamented with beads, ribbons, cock's feathers, or, if they are so entitled, an eagle's feather for every scalp taken from an enemy.

Those important events which give reputation to a warrior, and entitle him to a new name, are: killing a white (or grizzly) bear, stealing individually the horses of the enemy, leading a party who happen to be successful either in plundering horses or destroying the enemy, and lastly, scalping a warrior.

He had anticipated running the gauntlet, having his nails pulled out, powder and salt shot into his flesh, being scalped alive and a host of other Indian tortures, but as he had killed no members of this tribe he had not thought of being burned alive.

She was a wintry little body whose wide marriage band always hung loosely on her finger with an air of not belonging; wore an invariable knitted shawl iced with beads across her round shoulders, and frizzed her graying bangs, which, although fruit of her scalp, had a set-on look.

Since she wasn't exactly next door to Antarctic penguins and these two specimens were infinitely more fascinating than calculating the exact strands of gray hair in the underbrush that lay fully on her scalp, she cast spells onto the dogs making these smelly bodies with panting faces oozing out halitosis objects of mild curiosity.

While the Indians were still firing, and the inmates part exulting in their safety, and the others mourning over their dead and wounded, it was perceived, that one of the wounded, by the name of Harrison, was still alive, and exposed every moment to be scalped by the Indians.

Handing it to me, he said, "Here, Will, take this and ride out a little ways from the corral, and when the Indians come where they can see you, wave it over your head, so they will be sure to see the scalps, and I will get another bunch and I will stand close to you at the same time."

Then the whole tribe pulled out in a westerly direction from us, and in a short time they were out of our sight, and their pace was lively the reader may be sure for the sight of the scalps had frightened them, as they feared they would meet the same fate if they did not get away from us quick.

There wouldn't have been a man of them left in an hour to tell the story, and every one of their scalps would be hanging to the Indians' belts, and I want you to all bear in mind that for the next three hundred miles we are liable to have just such another experience any hour of the day or night, and I want to ask you all to do as you done this time.

I will acknowledge that I have no doubt that all the rest of you thought them to be barbarians when they took the scalps off those first Indians' heads, but the events that followed showed their knowledge of their business and also of our ignorance in Indian warfare for that what we thought barbarism was the means of saving some, if not all our lives.

They will take them to their village and spend two or three days in having a scalp dance, so you will see how useless it would be to try to find them, and what is more to be thought of, if we should stay here two or three days we should in all probability be attacked by the Utes ourselves, and there is no knowing how many of the people would be killed, or how much other damage would be done.

At last come certain new symptoms, such as giddiness, dimness of sight, neuralgia of the face or scalp, with entire nights of insomnia and growing difficulty in the use of the mental powers; so that to attempt a calculation, or any form of intellectual labor, is to insure a sense of distress in the head, or such absolute pain as proves how deeply the organs concerned have suffered.

Wondering what new horror lay in wait, I fought my way into the other room, stumbled over the body of the Thug, barely saved myself, my scalp prickling with terror, from falling upon it, and pitched forward to where Godfrey was bending above that huddled shape I had glimpsed through the smoke.

He ground an old castaway putty knife into a scalping knife; the notch in it for breaking glass was an annoying defect until he remembered that some Indians decorate their weapons with a notch for each enemy it has killed, and this, therefore, might do duty as a kill-tally.

Most of the highest peaks and ridges, as well as the deepest valleys and ravines, were covered with the embowering forest; but here and there a huge boss of granite or porphyry reared its bare scalp out of the verdure like the head and shoulders of some antediluvian monster.

As their poverty offers no temptation to the marauder, and as they are inoffensive in their habits, they are never the objects of warfare: should one of them, however, fall into the hands of a war party, he is sure to be made a sacrifice, for the sake of that savage trophy, a scalp, and that barbarous ceremony, a scalp dance.

In common with all the Cherokees, his head was polled and bare save for a tuft, always spared to afford a grasp for any hand bold enough and strong enough to take the scalp; but this lock, although still dense and full, was of a snowy whiteness, contrasting sharply with the red paint and belying the warlike aspect of the red-feathered crest that trembled and shivered with the infirmities of his step.

The reason assigned for conduct so absurd that in real life it would have gone far to prove the parties having a hand in it not to be possessed of that sound and disposing mind and memory which the law requires as a condition precedent to making a will is, that hostile Indians, in search of chance scalps, would be hovering about the column of troops, and so leave the by-path unmolested.

There was no sign of a wound that had healed, and it was clear that the injury must have been either the result of a fall, in which case the scalp had been protected by a stiff hat, or else of a blow dealt with something like a sandbag, which had fractured the bone without leaving any mark beyond a bruise, now no longer visible.

Although the red men were quite willing to scalp peaceful and unarmed citizens, when they found their own ranks torn and bleeding by the balls of their foes, and their chiefs biting the dust in the death agony, then courage gave place to terror, and flight became their resource.

There were no malingerers; the bald, brutal facts of crushed bones, or flayed scalp, or broken leg, or poisoned hand were there in evidence, and the men used no extra words after they had modestly described the time and circumstances under which they met with their trouble.

I saw one driver of a wagon who was not content with tying streamers on every part of his horse where streamers could be tied: he had also decorated himself, even to the extent of having had his head cropped to a special pattern, tracts of hair and bare scalp alternating.

At times an immense unreasoning terror would come upon him all of a sudden, horrible, crushing, so that he rolled upon the bed groaning and sobbing, digging his nails into his scalp, shutting his teeth against a desire to scream out, writhing in the throes of terrible mental agony.

The locks may be suffered to flow about the shoulders in ringlets, resembling the tendrils of the vine, by which means much will be done towards softening down the asperities of sex; or they may be cropped close to the scalp in such a manner as to impart a becoming prominence to the ears.

If the hairs appear stunted in their growth upon portions of the scalp or beard, or gray hairs crop up here and there, the method of clipping off the ends of the short hairs, of plucking out the ragged, withered, and gray hairs, will allow them to grow stronger, longer, and thicker.

It was an awful moment of suspense, as there, on his knees, far, far away from the land of his birth, in a strange country, he, in the prime of life, without a friend near, wounded and weak, was waiting to die, like a wild beast, by the hands of savages, with his scalp to be borne hence as a trophy, his flesh to be devoured by wolves, and his bones left to bleach in the open air.

He sprang from his horse, caught one by the throat and the other by the breast, and threw them to the ground; drawing his tomahawk and scalping knife, he ran in between the Americans and Indians, brandishing them with the fury of a mad man, and daring any one of the hundreds that surrounded him, to attempt to murder another American.

It is their great joy to take prisoners; and when the French have extracted from them all the information they can as to the strength and prospects of the English, the Indians will claim them again, to scalp and burn, and the French scarcely raise a protest.

What could have been the foolhardy ideas of this warrior that compelled him to take such a course as he did, not one of the party, when they were informed of the adventure, could conjecture; but, a fact it is, that he lost his life and his scalp by his indiscretion.

We began now to suspect that the white appearance assumed by these objects was owing to the strong sunlight which dazzled our eyesight, and struck on the dressed side of buffalo robes, and that in these robes were concealed human beings who had formed the determination to have our scalps.

Those important events which give reputation to a warrior, and which entitle him to a new name, are killing a white bear, stealing individually the horses of the enemy, leading out a party who happen to be successful either in plundering horses or destroying the enemy, and lastly scalping a warrior.

In contrast, the Sumerians had clean-shaven faces and scalps, and noses of Egyptian and Grecian rather than Semitic type, while they wore short, pleated kilts, and went about with the upper part of their bodies quite bare like the Egyptian noblemen of the Old Kingdom period.

"I have been since informed by Lieutenant McGregor, of our Regiment, who was left on the field wounded, and narrowly escaped being killed, having received two stabs of a bayonet from two French Regulars, that he saw the savages murdering the wounded and scalping them on all sides, and expected every moment to share the same fate, but was saved by a French Officer, who luckily spoke a little English."

They are true grit to the backbone, but they are rough outspoken men, and, on a service when a foot carelessly placed on a dried twig, or a word spoken above a whisper, may bring a crowd of yelping redskins upon us, and cost every man his scalp, they would speak sharply to the king himself, if he were on the scout with them, and you must not take offense at any rough word that may be said.

Here's a paddle for you, and when you begin to feel yourself comfortable, you can start to try with it, easy and gentle to begin with; but you must lay it in when we get near where we may expect that redskins may be in the woods, for the splash of a paddle might cost us all our scalps.

If I had not thought of the French boats, we should have scattered, and a few of us would have been overtaken, no doubt; but even an Indian cannot follow a single trail as fast as a man can run, and I reckon most of us would have carried our scalps back to camp.

The redskins in the canoes, who chased us, would be hot enough over it, for you picked out two if not more of them; but those who started from the fort wouldn't have any particular reason to trouble much, especially as they think it likely that those who were chasing us would get the scalps.

"There's no tiring a redskin when he's out on the scout on his own account, but when he's acting with the whites he's just as lazy as a hog, and, as they must be sure the fort can't hold out many hours longer, they will be too busy feasting, and counting the scalps they mean to take, to think much about scouting tonight."

Repeated the priest in the agony of adjuration, while his cowl fallen back, his few thin hairs around the scalp instinct and alive with terrible emotion, his outspread arms protruded from the sleeves of his habit, and extended toward the awful stranger, suggested the idea of an inspired being in the dreadful rapture of prophetic denunciation.

The Indians, who found themselves beaten in the woods by Morgan, and restrained from scalping and plundering the unarmed by Burgoyne, who saw before them the prospect of hard fighting without profit, grew tired of the service, and deserted in great numbers.

There is no doubt that the red men did not like to have the settlers kill the game, or scare it off by clearing up the land; but the principal motive for the attacks was the desire for scalps and plunder, just as it was in assailing other Indian tribes.

In a really hostile debate it is better to be as strict as possible; but as this is going to be a performance in which three Macs who are on the friendliest terms in private will belabor each other recklessly on wooden scalps and pillowed waistcoats and trouser seats, we need not be particular.

Notwithstanding the latter feeling, and his innate as well as acquired steadiness in danger, he would probably have deserted his post; had not the images of Indians tearing scalps from the human head taken so strong hold of his fancy as to induce him to imagine the canoe a sort of sanctuary.

Whether this wound had anything to do with the condition of which I am about to tell, you will have to decide for yourself; but I must warn you, in the beginning, that there was nothing like a fracture of the skull, and the little path made by the bullet through the scalp healed without trouble, almost without attention, and never afterward gave the slightest pain.

The men cut all their hair close to the head, except a strip about an inch wide, running over the front of the scalp from temple to temple, and another strip, of about the same width, perpendicular to the former, crossing the crown of the head to the nape of the neck.

It was now daylight, and through the morning mist the harassed soldiers could see their agile foes darting forward to cut off stragglers, despatch the wounded, or scalp the dead, leaping back, firing, and running to new positions, all the time yelling like so many demons.

With the prospect of gaining a reward for Indian scalps, all the cupidity of this man's fiendish nature was aroused, and on the approach of Bouquet's army he conceived a plan for enriching himself and at the same time escaping the punishment due him as a deserter.

It suffices to wet a little sponge in the oil, and after parting the hair with the comb, to apply it at the roots in such a manner that the whole skin of the head may be enabled to imbibe it, after the scalp has received a preliminary cleansing with brush and comb.

The Pilgrim Fathers, in rather odd hats and coats, are seen approaching the savages; the savages, in no coats or hats to speak of, are evidently undecided whether to shake hands with the Pilgrim Fathers or to make one grand rush and scalp the entire party.

Head, rotund body, and immensely fat legs tapering to very small feet, formed a complete oval, while his ivory-tinted skin, and a curious crease running round forehead and ears beneath a scalp wholly devoid of hair, suggested that the egg had been boiled, and the top cut off and replaced.

Captain Barker, who stood at the lower end of the garden and stooped over his beloved tulips, started at the sound of footsteps, looked round, and hastily plucking his wig from the handle of a spade that stood upright in the mold by his elbow, arranged it upon his bald scalp and awaited the other's advance.

The scalp, being covered by hair, does not perspire so freely as the rest of the skin of the body; but a considerable amount of oily waste matter is poured out on it, and the surface of its skin scales off in exactly the same way as does the rest of the body.

Wetting the hair for the purpose of "slicking" it or combing it, is about as bad a thing as could be done; for the moisture sets up a sort of rancid fermentation in the natural oil of the scalp, giving the well-known sour smell to hair that is combed instead of brushed, and furnishing a splendid soil for germs and bugs of all sorts to breed in.

In olden times it was the custom of the vanquished to indicate submission by plucking out a handful of hair and offering it to the victim as a token of submission, but whether this grew out of the custom of scalping, or whether the latter was an outgrowth of the hair token, is not known.

If you tell an Indian that his children have greatly signalized themselves against an enemy, have taken many scalps, and brought home many prisoners, he does not appear to feel any extraordinary pleasure on the occasion; his answer generally is, "It is well," and he makes very little further inquiry about it.

He then passes on to discuss the cutaneous diseases to which the scalp is liable, and by which of course the hair is affected to its detriment, devotes some chapters to the discussion of some diseases peculiar to the face, and concludes his volume with an Appendix containing an exposition of the constituents of many favorite and famous cosmetics, pointing out at the same time their true character, the danger and unpleasantness of which, he says, are disguised with much empirical skill.

For greasy compounds he has no tolerance, charging upon them, that, although they may for the moment lubricate and soften the hair, they burden the scalp, clog its pores, deaden the roots of the hair, and cause or increase many abnormal conditions of the cuticle.

I felt the hair of my scalp bristle, and a violent shudder thrilled through me as those dreadful cries smote upon my ear, for they seemed to be the utterance of some human being in the very last extremity of both physical and mental anguish, the protest of a lost soul being wrenched violently out of its sinful human tenement, cries of such utter, unimaginable despair as the finite mind of man is unable to find a cause for.

Seeing no signs of blood on his white clothes, he took off his cap and passed his hand over his head; and found that the blood was flowing from a wound just on the top, where a bullet had cut away the hair and scalp, and made a wound nearly three inches long, at the bottom of which he could feel the bone.

The poor woman, although almost exhausted, knows full well, by the bitter experiences of the past, that to delay an instant would bring upon herself severe punishment, and so she quickly seizes the scalping knife and deftly skins the animal, and fills a pot with the savory venison, which is soon boiled and placed before his highness.

Some of them bore on face or scalp the marks of the wounds received in close tomahawk encounter, and, for the gift of a pocketknife or gaudy handkerchief from our eager boys, rehearsed with all due enlargement the story of the fierce encounter with superior numbers of their bitterest enemies, how they had so gloriously triumphed, but had not come off unscathed, as these great scars did testify.

Some of them wore armor and helmets that they themselves make of thin reeds and strings braided upon each other so that no arrow or axe can pass through to wound them severely; and after they had been playing thus a good while the parties closed and dragged each other by the hair, just as they would have done to their enemies after defeating them and before cutting off their scalps.

Aperture of entry (Mauser), at the anterior margin of the hairy scalp on the left side; course, through the anterior part of the left frontal lobe, roof of the left orbit, cutting the optic nerve and injuring the back of the eyeball, floor of the orbit, the antrum, the hard palate, and tongue.

Entry (Mauser), at the margin of the hairy scalp above and to the left of the frontal eminence; course, through anterior third of left frontal lobe, roof of orbit, obliquely across line of optic nerve, inner wall of orbit, nose, right superior maxilla piercing alveolar process, and passing superficial to inferior maxilla: exit, one inch anterior to angle of jaw.

The scalp should be first shaved and cleansed; if for any reason an operation is impossible, this procedure at least should be carried out, with a view to ensuring, as far as possible, future asepsis, infection in head injuries being almost the only danger to be feared.

They built mills on the streams, and in the streams, where the current turned their wheels, and after a first summer of rejoicing they quieted down to the serious business of clearing farms, having ague, and saving their scalps from the hospitable Delawares and their allies.

We must therefore call them murderers, but we must remember that they had been hardened against mercy by the atrocities of the savages, and we must make allowance for men who had seen their wives and little ones tomahawked and scalped or carried off into captivity, their homes burnt, and their fields wasted.

Horses and riders had been stripped of their trappings and clothes, most of the men scalped, with terrible gashes on their bodies, while all around, the trampled blood-stained ground showed the fierce struggle which had taken place before our brave fellows had succumbed.

A very ordinary young man has before now been lifted into fame by the twists of his mustache, and another of less than mediocre ability has been prevented from sinking in the flood of forgetfulness by the kindly efforts of a caricaturist who supported him by a simple lock on his scalp.

As I have before observed, an Indian will never fire his rifle upon an enemy who is armed only with his lance, bow, and arrows or if he does, and kills him, he will not take his scalp, as it would constantly recall to his mind that he had killed a defenseless foe.

The fact was, this little orphan girl who had taken up the life her mother had laid down at dawn of day nineteen years ago, had collected my scalp, and was at leave to string it on her belt as that of an ardent faithful lover who never entertained one unworthy thought of her, or wavered in affection from the hour she first flashed upon her.

The boldest of military leaders hesitated to attack them in their fortresses, and prudently left the scalping knives, rifles, powder, and shot, provided by a paternal government for their welfare, lying on the ground a few miles from their encampment, with the request that they were not to be used until the military had safely retired.

Sometimes a portion of hairy scalp or section of cheek flies up into the air, to be carefully preserved in an envelope by its proud possessor, or, strictly speaking, its proud former possessor, and shown round on convivial evenings; and from every wound, of course, flows a plentiful stream of blood.

Dirt of all sorts is a mighty good thing to keep absolutely out of the wound, but practically a whole handful of ordinary soil or dust rubbed into a wound might not, unless it happened to contain fertilizer of some sort, be half so dangerous as a single touch with a finger which had been dressing a wound, picking a scab out of the nose, rubbing an ulcerated gum, or scratching an itching scalp.

Ludicrous as is the reason which is gravely assigned for its use, it does, in some cases, greatly relieve the pain, a fact which we were entirely at a loss to account for until our later knowledge showed us that the pain, instead of being inside the skull, was outside of it in the sensitive nerves supplying the scalp.

A medium of the tribe had a dream or vision and announced that he would guide and direct two young members of the tribe, who were desirous of winning the right to wear an eagle's feather, as the sign to all that they had killed and scalped an enemy, to the place where this would be consummated.

He is a murderer by habit, engendered from his earliest age; and the scalping knife and the tomahawk, and the unforgiving pursuit of his own enemy, or his father's enemy, till he has drenched his hands in, and satiated his revenge with his blood, is but the necessary issue of a principle on which his education has been formed.

It was not only the nervous effect of having these two men so intent upon her every word and movement, but there was something extraordinarily disturbing in the atmospheric conditions that made the palms of her hands ache and her scalp prickle as from a thousand tiny thorns.

He had a curious knack of putting the whole of his scalp into motion whenever he moved his eyebrows up or down; a comical peculiarity of which he availed himself whenever he wished to make anyone laugh, and saw that his words did not have the desired effect.

Within the memory of the last three generations the Muir glacier filled the bay for miles below our anchorage; and while it recedes, it is creeping slowly down, scalping the mountains, grinding all the sharp edges into powder or leaving a polished surface behind it.

I have never been able to get any positive information as to the persons who committed this murder, yet circumstances render it highly probable that they were a party of young Indians who were returning from an unsuccessful foray, and they were unable to resist the temptation of taking the scalp and horse of the lieutenant.