Post by tkavanagh on Sept 11, 2010 11:40:46 GMT -5
cf above Bowstring Warrioirs
From a work in progress:
Attockinie, F.J.
The Life of Ten Bears. (accepted by U Nebraska Press)
Chapter 3: The Battle of the Robe Entrenchments
Ûtahookne
[ûtaayu, ‘rawhide’, hoora ‘hole dug in soil, kahne ‘house. ]
The Battle of the Robe Entrenchments
1837
One day in the past, on Isahunu¿bi, ‘Wolf Creek’ to the Comanches, the South Canadian River, a spear-armed Comanche horse-warrior came upon two strange foot-warriors going up a sand dune, one following the other. He stopped his horse and watched them. Finally, the one in the back saw the Comanche and stopped. The one in front took several more steps before he noticed that his companion had stopped; looking back and following his companion’s gaze, he too saw the Comanche, whose horse was almost uncontrollable with battle excitement.
The horse-warrior asked them in sign-language what was their tribe. They made stripes along their arms to denote that they were Cheyennes. He made signs asking what they were looking for. They signed that they were looking for the “snakes travelling backwards,” the sign for the Comanches. He asked why they looked for Comanches. Because they wanted to fight them. He made the signs that he understood and that he was what they were looking for, a Comanche, so now they would have the fight that they had come looking for.
He sprang off his horse and quickly battle-braided its tail. The two enemies also hastily prepared for action, discarding any extra weight, buffalo skin robes and such. The Comanche was now charging them, sand flying. One Cheyenne had a muzzle-loading gun, which he fired at the oncoming Comanche. The other Cheyenne was armed with a bow and arrows.
The Comanche made two or three spear charges and wounded one of the Cheyennes before they ran and jumped into a deep ditch that led into the main river. The bow-armed enemy had given a good account of himself as he had not only wounded the Comanche but also his brave war horse. The other Cheyenne had apparently been unable to reload after his opening shot.
With his enemies in the ditch where his horse would be almost useless for fighting, the Comanche sign-told them that they had defeated him, as he was afraid to fight them anymore. But the Cheyennes gallantly declined; they said the victory was his, as they, though two to his one, had, like wolves, taken refuge in a ditch.
The Cheyennes let him know that they were but the scouts for a large war party of Cheyennes who had come into the Comanche country with war in mind; the main body of war-seeking northerners as beyond two hills and up the river. The Comanche let them know he would convey the wishes of the Cheyennes to his people, who were very many and not very far away. His valiant, wounded horse carried him only part of the way back to his village, but he had to abandon the noble horse and walk the last part of the trip home. He sent word by his mother to the village headman that he had seen two Cheyennes and relayed the message of the war-like visitors.
The exciting news spread through the village, and very early the next morning the warriors began preparing and started leaving in large groups towards the direction of the Cheyenne invaders.
The mounted warriors back-tracked the horseman who had told of the Cheyennes and came upon his fallen horse. More backtracking took them to the scene of the encounter where the warriors followed the tracks and reconstructed the short but hectic fight.
They saw where the muzzle-loader armed Cheyenne had set his gun butt down in the sand and excitedly resumed his attempts to load his gun: unburnt gun powder had been poured in the sand as he missed the gun’s muzzle.
They saw blood in the ditch, and where the Comanche’s horse had restlessly stamped while the enemies communicated by signs.
They then went upriver towards where they had been told the main body of Cheyennes would be found, but they could find no trace of any Cheyennes.
They hunted and looked from hilltops, and finally they began to believe that there had been only the two Cheyennes who had left the country after been discovered by the lone Comanche.
The horse-warriors were gathered in large groups on several hilltops, having just about decided to give up the fruitless search and start the ride back to the village, when the unmistakable flashing of a mirror in the sun started signaling to them from a hill that was still further up the river. “There they are!” went up the cry.
The Comanches started hurrying towards the boldly-beckoning northern foot-warriors. Altough the Cheyennes had a large war-party, they were overwhelmingly outnumbered by the mounted Comanches.
As was sometimes the case, there was at least one Kiowa along on this Comanche war project. Although his name has been lost to time, it is important that this Kiowa be mentioned: he was the son of a Kiowa called Black Horse by the Comanches.
-0-
Later, after peace between the Comanches and Cheyennes had been firmly established, after visits, exchange of information and comparison of each interested tribe’s version, it was brought out that the Cheyenne foot-warriors had come down into the Comanche country under the leadership of three very able brothers.
-0-
Great clouds of dust rose up from the various groups of horse-warriors approaching, the positions of the entrenched Cheyennes, for entrenched they were. The Cheyenne foot-warriors had dug
and scooped out sand from their positions and made forts. They had brought large rocks and driftwood logs from the nearby river and placed then around their dugout shelters. As a further measure in what they realized was to become for them a desparate struggle, the Cheyennes had stuck stout sticks into the sand at the edges of their forts and on these sticks they had hung and stretched their buffalo robes, the robes serving not unlike a modern duck hunters shooting blind, affording concealment if not turning Comanche bullets and dogwood battle shafts.[ Comanche arrows are made of dogwood.] The Cheyennes were confident the tactics of the Comanche horsemen would be ineffective against the two or three battlements of the gun-armed Cheyennes. Because of these buffalo robe curtains, some Comanche narrators referred to this as Ûtahookne, the’Battle of the Robe Entrenchments.’
-0-
When the Comanches started coming at the Cheyennes in several large, awe-inspiring, dust-raising, groups, the followers of the three Cheyenne brothers lost much of their confidence.
The oldest of the three brothers, to forestall a panicked flight gave out the order that any Cheyenne who broke and ran would be fired upon and killed by his fellow tribesmen. He, the oldest of the three leadrs, would personally see to it.
He told the dug-in foot-warriors that behind the entrenchments, with only their heads and guns exposed, they could pick-off and shoot the Comanches off their mounts all day long or until the Comanches became disheartened; the Comanche’s efforts to dislodge the northern invaders would be futile.
-0-
As the great clouds of dust rose from the approaching horse-warriors, some of the followers of the three brothers lost their confidence. The oldest of the brothers, to forestall a panicked flight, ordered the Cheyenne to fire on and kill anyone who broke and ran.
When the Comanches drew close to the Cheyenne positions, the Northerners were bravely singing and dancing in front of their sand and log fort; the Comanche horsemen could not help but notice that the Cheyennes were dancing what is known to the Comanches as the Tûepukunûûnûhkara, the ‘Little Pony’s Dance’ [tûe ‘little’, puku ‘horse’, nûû, plural, nûhkara ‘dance’]; but instead of rattles, the Cheyennes were holding arrows in their hands, shaking them back and forth. The Comanches even recognized their own Little Pony song, defiantly thrown into their faces by their Cheyenne enemy.
-0-As the Comanches pressed their initial attack, they did not notice that, in spite of the threats of the Cheyenne leaders, two or three Cheyenne foot warriors did try to make a break to escape what they felt was to be an annihilation. The other Cheyennes had immediately started shooting at the deserters at almost point blank range; one might have turned back, one fell, and the other escaped the fusillade. The escaped deserter latter told of how he fell into a ditch and crawled and ran until he felt safe enough to hide.
His hiding place afforded him a distant view of the dust-raising struggle of the two enemy forces. He was too far away to get a good view, but he did know that the battle commenced about mid-day when the sun was high and was over by mid-afternoon. He knew that the battle was over when the gin-fire ceased, and from where he was hiding, he could see that the horse-warriors had gathered and were unhurredly moving around where only recently the Cheyenne foot-warriors had manned their forts. After a while, long columns of Comanches started unhurredly moving back south, down the river. After a fruitless wait for more escapees, the lone Cheyenne started his long journey towards the north.
-0-Besides spears, the Comanches used firearms and other weapons. The Comanches and horses shot down by the Cheyennes from behind their robe-curtained shooting-blind spoke well enough for the Cheyennes’ marksmanship; the foot-warriors inflicted many casualties on the Comanches and their horses. Among these killed by the Cheyennes was the son of the Kiowa chieftain Black Horse. But such shooting could not keep the Comanche horse-warriors from dashing up on foot and spearing the Cheyennes. These hit and run spearing tactics steadily reduced the fighting power of the defenders.
As the fight went on, the outcome of the fight became apparent to both sides as the Cheyennes became fewer and fewer; but the abruptness of the end is worth mentioning. A dozen or more Cheyennes were still desperately trying to ward off the inevitable when a spear-armed Comanche warrior, carrying a conspicuous yellow painted shield, charged up to the edge of the Cheyenne fort. When the Comanche attempted to spear them, the Cheyennes drew away, out of the reach of his double edged spear. The Comanche, now crouching at the rim of the fort with his spear, did not turn away and retreat out of range of the defenders’ frantic shooting, but stayed within range of the Cheyennes, moving and rotating his yellow shield in front of him; to get the Cheyennes to shoot at him, but not to give them too easy a target to shoot at, the Comanche moved his yellow shield to and fro, up and down.
Another Comanche warrior, one who always sought out the yellow-shield warrior as an rival, now saw him crouching at the fort’s edge. He dashed up to his rival, saying, “Just sit here and wave your yellow shield!”
With that, he placed his hand on his rival’s head, and leap-frogged into the midst of the Cheyenne warriors. His yellow-shielded rival followed, as did more Comanche warriors, and they engulfed the remaining Cheyenne occupants of the sand and buffalo-robe forts; the fight thus ending with a violent suddenness.
-0-
One of the Comanches who distinguished himself at that fight was a Yamparika named
Ûhtahuh. Singlehandedly he speared four Cheyenne foot-warriors deep in their fortifications. Ûhtahuh was one of the outstanding Comanche Horse-warriors of his or all time. He was known to have speared twenty-one soldiers in battle.
Ûhtahuh’s son, Tasiwokanbûûtsi¿ turned out to be a very able and daring warrior himself. In later years, when Ûhtahuh was dressing his son for some occasion, the old man painted four marks on his son’s leggings. Those four marks signified that the old warrioir had speared those four Cheyennes at their fort. Then the old man took some blue paint and painted twenty-one more marks on the young man’s leggings to commeorate his spearing of that many soldiers.
-0-
In later years, after peace was made between the Comanches and the Cheyennes, Tasiwokanbûûtsi¿, now a mature warrior, was ironically saved by a mounted Cheyenne warrior from what could have been a sure death from soldier’s bullets.
At the time, the Comanches and Cheyennes, now allied, were fighting a body of U.S. soldiers at Sekwihunu¿bI, [sekwi ‘mud’,hunu¿bI ‘stream’; ‘Mud Creek’] the stream near Henrietta, Texas. The soldiers shot Skinny Buffalo off his horse, shooting him through the thigh; his benumbed leg was all but useless, although he could still stand on it. As the soldiers were trying to finish off Tasiwokanbûûtsi¿, a Cheyenne horseman slowly galloped nearby, calling to Tasiwokanbûûtsi and making hand signs for the wounded Comanche to run and jump behind him so the Cheyenne could take him out of danger.
Trying a couple of times, Tasiwokanbûûtsi¿ found that he could not make it as his leg would not respond to his efforts, and he could only bump against the Cheyenne’s horse as it went by. Tasiwokanbûûtsi¿ could not run or jump. Finally, the brave Cheyenne, realizing the helplessness of the Comanche, rode right up to him and pulled his horse to a full stop, removed his foot from his stirrup, and offered Tasiwokanbûûtsi¿ all the help possioble, and at the same time offering the U.S. soldiers a group of three stationary targets.
The deadly crump and crackling of bullets passing nearby greatly increased as the targets became more inviting, but the rescuer and rescued were at last able to gallop off to safety, the Cheyenne lifting right from under the muzzles of the blue-dressed warriors.
-0-
Years after the Ûtahookne, the battle of the Buffalo Robe Forts, battle site was still a well-known place, remembered from the long white bones of the northerners heaped up in great piles by the Cheyenne fort. The site was often visited when a Comanche village passed near; parents, relatives, and captive-slaves came to mourn their loved ones who had been killed in the assault on the Cheyenne forts.
The name of at least one who visited the Cheyenne forts has been handed down. The Comanche woman who went to mourn for her son had a name which can best explained in the following way. She said, “I can’t keep from dreaming about you; therefore because it has become impossible for you to come me, Umakia (‘You, I have come to you’)”. [ û ‘you’, kima ‘come’.] Thus she was referred to by only the part of incident.
Umakia had a woman captive-companion who was always along with her; she not only came with her to the battle site, but also mourned with her. The captive-companion had the name of Taweki. [ta- ‘with the foot’, wehki ‘search’; ‘To search for an object by feeling with the foot’.]
Attocknie, and his father, Ûhpûitû, were among the Yamparikas who visited the bone-strewn site. Querherbitty also visited the location of the forts that had become depressions in the sand; wind and rains had done an effective job of filling in the scooped-out sand pits. Querherbitty told of listening to the mourning wails of Umakia and her captive-companion, Taweki.
From a work in progress:
Attockinie, F.J.
The Life of Ten Bears. (accepted by U Nebraska Press)
Chapter 3: The Battle of the Robe Entrenchments
Ûtahookne
[ûtaayu, ‘rawhide’, hoora ‘hole dug in soil, kahne ‘house. ]
The Battle of the Robe Entrenchments
1837
One day in the past, on Isahunu¿bi, ‘Wolf Creek’ to the Comanches, the South Canadian River, a spear-armed Comanche horse-warrior came upon two strange foot-warriors going up a sand dune, one following the other. He stopped his horse and watched them. Finally, the one in the back saw the Comanche and stopped. The one in front took several more steps before he noticed that his companion had stopped; looking back and following his companion’s gaze, he too saw the Comanche, whose horse was almost uncontrollable with battle excitement.
The horse-warrior asked them in sign-language what was their tribe. They made stripes along their arms to denote that they were Cheyennes. He made signs asking what they were looking for. They signed that they were looking for the “snakes travelling backwards,” the sign for the Comanches. He asked why they looked for Comanches. Because they wanted to fight them. He made the signs that he understood and that he was what they were looking for, a Comanche, so now they would have the fight that they had come looking for.
He sprang off his horse and quickly battle-braided its tail. The two enemies also hastily prepared for action, discarding any extra weight, buffalo skin robes and such. The Comanche was now charging them, sand flying. One Cheyenne had a muzzle-loading gun, which he fired at the oncoming Comanche. The other Cheyenne was armed with a bow and arrows.
The Comanche made two or three spear charges and wounded one of the Cheyennes before they ran and jumped into a deep ditch that led into the main river. The bow-armed enemy had given a good account of himself as he had not only wounded the Comanche but also his brave war horse. The other Cheyenne had apparently been unable to reload after his opening shot.
With his enemies in the ditch where his horse would be almost useless for fighting, the Comanche sign-told them that they had defeated him, as he was afraid to fight them anymore. But the Cheyennes gallantly declined; they said the victory was his, as they, though two to his one, had, like wolves, taken refuge in a ditch.
The Cheyennes let him know that they were but the scouts for a large war party of Cheyennes who had come into the Comanche country with war in mind; the main body of war-seeking northerners as beyond two hills and up the river. The Comanche let them know he would convey the wishes of the Cheyennes to his people, who were very many and not very far away. His valiant, wounded horse carried him only part of the way back to his village, but he had to abandon the noble horse and walk the last part of the trip home. He sent word by his mother to the village headman that he had seen two Cheyennes and relayed the message of the war-like visitors.
The exciting news spread through the village, and very early the next morning the warriors began preparing and started leaving in large groups towards the direction of the Cheyenne invaders.
The mounted warriors back-tracked the horseman who had told of the Cheyennes and came upon his fallen horse. More backtracking took them to the scene of the encounter where the warriors followed the tracks and reconstructed the short but hectic fight.
They saw where the muzzle-loader armed Cheyenne had set his gun butt down in the sand and excitedly resumed his attempts to load his gun: unburnt gun powder had been poured in the sand as he missed the gun’s muzzle.
They saw blood in the ditch, and where the Comanche’s horse had restlessly stamped while the enemies communicated by signs.
They then went upriver towards where they had been told the main body of Cheyennes would be found, but they could find no trace of any Cheyennes.
They hunted and looked from hilltops, and finally they began to believe that there had been only the two Cheyennes who had left the country after been discovered by the lone Comanche.
The horse-warriors were gathered in large groups on several hilltops, having just about decided to give up the fruitless search and start the ride back to the village, when the unmistakable flashing of a mirror in the sun started signaling to them from a hill that was still further up the river. “There they are!” went up the cry.
The Comanches started hurrying towards the boldly-beckoning northern foot-warriors. Altough the Cheyennes had a large war-party, they were overwhelmingly outnumbered by the mounted Comanches.
As was sometimes the case, there was at least one Kiowa along on this Comanche war project. Although his name has been lost to time, it is important that this Kiowa be mentioned: he was the son of a Kiowa called Black Horse by the Comanches.
-0-
Later, after peace between the Comanches and Cheyennes had been firmly established, after visits, exchange of information and comparison of each interested tribe’s version, it was brought out that the Cheyenne foot-warriors had come down into the Comanche country under the leadership of three very able brothers.
-0-
Great clouds of dust rose up from the various groups of horse-warriors approaching, the positions of the entrenched Cheyennes, for entrenched they were. The Cheyenne foot-warriors had dug
and scooped out sand from their positions and made forts. They had brought large rocks and driftwood logs from the nearby river and placed then around their dugout shelters. As a further measure in what they realized was to become for them a desparate struggle, the Cheyennes had stuck stout sticks into the sand at the edges of their forts and on these sticks they had hung and stretched their buffalo robes, the robes serving not unlike a modern duck hunters shooting blind, affording concealment if not turning Comanche bullets and dogwood battle shafts.[ Comanche arrows are made of dogwood.] The Cheyennes were confident the tactics of the Comanche horsemen would be ineffective against the two or three battlements of the gun-armed Cheyennes. Because of these buffalo robe curtains, some Comanche narrators referred to this as Ûtahookne, the’Battle of the Robe Entrenchments.’
-0-
When the Comanches started coming at the Cheyennes in several large, awe-inspiring, dust-raising, groups, the followers of the three Cheyenne brothers lost much of their confidence.
The oldest of the three brothers, to forestall a panicked flight gave out the order that any Cheyenne who broke and ran would be fired upon and killed by his fellow tribesmen. He, the oldest of the three leadrs, would personally see to it.
He told the dug-in foot-warriors that behind the entrenchments, with only their heads and guns exposed, they could pick-off and shoot the Comanches off their mounts all day long or until the Comanches became disheartened; the Comanche’s efforts to dislodge the northern invaders would be futile.
-0-
As the great clouds of dust rose from the approaching horse-warriors, some of the followers of the three brothers lost their confidence. The oldest of the brothers, to forestall a panicked flight, ordered the Cheyenne to fire on and kill anyone who broke and ran.
When the Comanches drew close to the Cheyenne positions, the Northerners were bravely singing and dancing in front of their sand and log fort; the Comanche horsemen could not help but notice that the Cheyennes were dancing what is known to the Comanches as the Tûepukunûûnûhkara, the ‘Little Pony’s Dance’ [tûe ‘little’, puku ‘horse’, nûû, plural, nûhkara ‘dance’]; but instead of rattles, the Cheyennes were holding arrows in their hands, shaking them back and forth. The Comanches even recognized their own Little Pony song, defiantly thrown into their faces by their Cheyenne enemy.
-0-As the Comanches pressed their initial attack, they did not notice that, in spite of the threats of the Cheyenne leaders, two or three Cheyenne foot warriors did try to make a break to escape what they felt was to be an annihilation. The other Cheyennes had immediately started shooting at the deserters at almost point blank range; one might have turned back, one fell, and the other escaped the fusillade. The escaped deserter latter told of how he fell into a ditch and crawled and ran until he felt safe enough to hide.
His hiding place afforded him a distant view of the dust-raising struggle of the two enemy forces. He was too far away to get a good view, but he did know that the battle commenced about mid-day when the sun was high and was over by mid-afternoon. He knew that the battle was over when the gin-fire ceased, and from where he was hiding, he could see that the horse-warriors had gathered and were unhurredly moving around where only recently the Cheyenne foot-warriors had manned their forts. After a while, long columns of Comanches started unhurredly moving back south, down the river. After a fruitless wait for more escapees, the lone Cheyenne started his long journey towards the north.
-0-Besides spears, the Comanches used firearms and other weapons. The Comanches and horses shot down by the Cheyennes from behind their robe-curtained shooting-blind spoke well enough for the Cheyennes’ marksmanship; the foot-warriors inflicted many casualties on the Comanches and their horses. Among these killed by the Cheyennes was the son of the Kiowa chieftain Black Horse. But such shooting could not keep the Comanche horse-warriors from dashing up on foot and spearing the Cheyennes. These hit and run spearing tactics steadily reduced the fighting power of the defenders.
As the fight went on, the outcome of the fight became apparent to both sides as the Cheyennes became fewer and fewer; but the abruptness of the end is worth mentioning. A dozen or more Cheyennes were still desperately trying to ward off the inevitable when a spear-armed Comanche warrior, carrying a conspicuous yellow painted shield, charged up to the edge of the Cheyenne fort. When the Comanche attempted to spear them, the Cheyennes drew away, out of the reach of his double edged spear. The Comanche, now crouching at the rim of the fort with his spear, did not turn away and retreat out of range of the defenders’ frantic shooting, but stayed within range of the Cheyennes, moving and rotating his yellow shield in front of him; to get the Cheyennes to shoot at him, but not to give them too easy a target to shoot at, the Comanche moved his yellow shield to and fro, up and down.
Another Comanche warrior, one who always sought out the yellow-shield warrior as an rival, now saw him crouching at the fort’s edge. He dashed up to his rival, saying, “Just sit here and wave your yellow shield!”
With that, he placed his hand on his rival’s head, and leap-frogged into the midst of the Cheyenne warriors. His yellow-shielded rival followed, as did more Comanche warriors, and they engulfed the remaining Cheyenne occupants of the sand and buffalo-robe forts; the fight thus ending with a violent suddenness.
-0-
One of the Comanches who distinguished himself at that fight was a Yamparika named
Ûhtahuh. Singlehandedly he speared four Cheyenne foot-warriors deep in their fortifications. Ûhtahuh was one of the outstanding Comanche Horse-warriors of his or all time. He was known to have speared twenty-one soldiers in battle.
Ûhtahuh’s son, Tasiwokanbûûtsi¿ turned out to be a very able and daring warrior himself. In later years, when Ûhtahuh was dressing his son for some occasion, the old man painted four marks on his son’s leggings. Those four marks signified that the old warrioir had speared those four Cheyennes at their fort. Then the old man took some blue paint and painted twenty-one more marks on the young man’s leggings to commeorate his spearing of that many soldiers.
-0-
In later years, after peace was made between the Comanches and the Cheyennes, Tasiwokanbûûtsi¿, now a mature warrior, was ironically saved by a mounted Cheyenne warrior from what could have been a sure death from soldier’s bullets.
At the time, the Comanches and Cheyennes, now allied, were fighting a body of U.S. soldiers at Sekwihunu¿bI, [sekwi ‘mud’,hunu¿bI ‘stream’; ‘Mud Creek’] the stream near Henrietta, Texas. The soldiers shot Skinny Buffalo off his horse, shooting him through the thigh; his benumbed leg was all but useless, although he could still stand on it. As the soldiers were trying to finish off Tasiwokanbûûtsi¿, a Cheyenne horseman slowly galloped nearby, calling to Tasiwokanbûûtsi and making hand signs for the wounded Comanche to run and jump behind him so the Cheyenne could take him out of danger.
Trying a couple of times, Tasiwokanbûûtsi¿ found that he could not make it as his leg would not respond to his efforts, and he could only bump against the Cheyenne’s horse as it went by. Tasiwokanbûûtsi¿ could not run or jump. Finally, the brave Cheyenne, realizing the helplessness of the Comanche, rode right up to him and pulled his horse to a full stop, removed his foot from his stirrup, and offered Tasiwokanbûûtsi¿ all the help possioble, and at the same time offering the U.S. soldiers a group of three stationary targets.
The deadly crump and crackling of bullets passing nearby greatly increased as the targets became more inviting, but the rescuer and rescued were at last able to gallop off to safety, the Cheyenne lifting right from under the muzzles of the blue-dressed warriors.
-0-
Years after the Ûtahookne, the battle of the Buffalo Robe Forts, battle site was still a well-known place, remembered from the long white bones of the northerners heaped up in great piles by the Cheyenne fort. The site was often visited when a Comanche village passed near; parents, relatives, and captive-slaves came to mourn their loved ones who had been killed in the assault on the Cheyenne forts.
The name of at least one who visited the Cheyenne forts has been handed down. The Comanche woman who went to mourn for her son had a name which can best explained in the following way. She said, “I can’t keep from dreaming about you; therefore because it has become impossible for you to come me, Umakia (‘You, I have come to you’)”. [ û ‘you’, kima ‘come’.] Thus she was referred to by only the part of incident.
Umakia had a woman captive-companion who was always along with her; she not only came with her to the battle site, but also mourned with her. The captive-companion had the name of Taweki. [ta- ‘with the foot’, wehki ‘search’; ‘To search for an object by feeling with the foot’.]
Attocknie, and his father, Ûhpûitû, were among the Yamparikas who visited the bone-strewn site. Querherbitty also visited the location of the forts that had become depressions in the sand; wind and rains had done an effective job of filling in the scooped-out sand pits. Querherbitty told of listening to the mourning wails of Umakia and her captive-companion, Taweki.