to amuse it, but only at times did they see its eyes beam with pleasure.  One day, while busy in their encampment, they were unexpectedly attacked by unknown Indians.  The skirmish was long contested and bloody; many of their foes were slain, but still they were thirty to one.  The young men fought desperately till they were all killed.  The attacking party then retreated to a height of ground, to muster their men, and to count the number of missing and slain.  One of their young men had stayed away, and, in endeavoring to overtake them, came to the place where the head was hung up.  Seeing that alone retain animation, he eyed it for some time with fear and surprise.  However, he took it down and opened the sack, and was much pleased to see the beautiful feathers, one of which he placed on his head.

Starting off, it waved gracefully over him till he reached his party, when he threw down the head and sack, and told them how he had found it, and that the sack was full of paints and feathers.  They all looked at the head and made sport of it.  Numbers of the young men took the paint and painted themselves, and one of the party took the head by the hair and said—­

‘Look, you ugly thing, and see your paints on the faces of warriors.’

But the feathers were so beautiful, that numbers of them also placed them on their heads.  Then again they used all kinds of indignity to the head, for which they were in turn repaid by the death of those who had used the feathers.  Then the chief commanded them to throw away all except the head.  ‘We will see,’ said he, ’when we get home, what we can do with it.  We will try to make it shut its eyes.’

When they reached their homes they took it to the council-lodge, and hung it up before the fire, fastening it with raw hide soaked, which would shrink and become tightened by the action of the fire.  ’We will then see,’ they said, ‘if we cannot make it shut its eyes.’

Meantime, for several days, the sister had been waiting for the young men to bring back the head; till, at last, getting impatient, she went in search of it.  The young men she found lying within short distances of each other, dead, and covered with wounds.  Various other bodies lay scattered in different directions around them.  She searched for the head and sack, but they were nowhere to be found.  She raised her voice and wept, and blackened her face.  Then she walked in different directions, till she came to the place from whence the head had been taken.  Then she found the magic bow and arrows, where the young men, ignorant of their qualities, had left them.  She thought to herself that she would find her brother’s head, and came to a piece of rising ground, and there saw some of his paints and feathers.  These she carefully put up, and hung upon the branch of a tree till her return.