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Tomahawk   Listen
verb
Tomahawk  v. t.  (past & past part. tomahawked; pres. part. tomahawking)  To cut, strike, or kill, with a tomahawk.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tomahawk" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 by ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... Susan last night for the first time since we had our game; and I wish he had never come back, for he got me into an awful scrape. This was the way it happened. I was playing Indian in the yard. I had a wooden tomahawk and a wooden scalping-knife and a bownarrow. I was dressed up in father's old coat turned inside out, and had six chicken feathers in my hair. I was playing I was Green Thunder, the Delaware chief, and was hunting ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... in the middle downstairs, with a slit on one side of it called a door—looking remarkably skully in ghastly dawns, afterglows, and rainy afternoons and evenings. The slits look as if the owners of the skulls got it there from an upward blow of a sharp tomahawk, from a shorter man—who was no friend of theirs—just about the time they died. The slits open occasionally, and mothers of the nation, mostly holding their garments together at neck or bosom, lean out—at right angles ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... positive—there is not one of those characteristics wherein the Western American differs from the Eastern, in which he does not, at the same time, approach the Eskimo. In the absence of the scalping-knife, the tomahawk, the council fire, the wampum-belt, the hero chief, and the metaphorical orator, the Eskimo differs from the Ojibway, the Huron, and the Mohawk. True. But the Haidah and the Chimsheyan ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... there was silence for the space of a minute in the forest. Then came a wild scream, mingled with another Indian yell; a moment later the leading pursuers came upon the body of the Chippewa. His skull had been cleft with a tomahawk ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... 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 W. ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine

... ago 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 stunned ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... piece, and stood with head erect, steady as one of the pines in the calm of a June morning, watching the result; while the savage gave the yell that has become historical for its appalling influence, leaped through the bushes, and came bounding across the open ground, flourishing a tomahawk. Still Deerslayer moved not, but stood with his unloaded rifle fallen against his shoulders, while, with a hunter's habits, his hands were mechanically feeling for the powder-horn and charger. When about forty feet from his enemy, the savage hurled ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... ten seconds every nigger in the whole camp had deserted his work and was frantically dashing out on to the veldt. They uttered shrill cries as they ran, and every man had some sort of weapon in his hand, either a tomahawk, a billet of wood, or a rock. With marvellous celerity they formed a huge circle, though what they were after was a puzzle to me. I fancied for awhile that one of their number must have run "amuck," and the rest meant to send him to slumber. Quickly they narrowed the circle, the whole body of them ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... in the Wild West. Cowboys, miners and Western demi-mondaines playing cards at top speed and drinking heavily. Enter Ferdinand, drunk and carrying a huge revolver in each hand and a tomahawk between his teeth. He forces the bar-tender to "hands up" and begins shooting down the bottles ranged along the counter. Enter Phyllis. As soon as Ferdinand sees her he drops the pistols and trembles violently. Phyllis regards ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various

... knew," 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 so easily; but Malcolm ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... comparatively easy task in pushing me over. Fortunately, my head fell toward the camp and my fast-approaching comrades. The two Indians held my legs to prevent my rising, while the third one, who was standing over me, drew from his belt a tomahawk, and shrugging his head in his blanket, at the same time looking over his shoulder at my friends, with a tremendous effort and that peculiar grunt of all savages, plunged his hatchet, as he supposed, into my head, but instead of scuffling to ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... before his eyes a wholesome fear of the Jupiter. But the Head of Affairs, much belaboured as he was, knew that he might pay too high even for Mr. Supplehouse and the Jupiter; and the saviour of the nation was told that he might swing his tomahawk. Since that time he had been swinging his tomahawk, but not with so much effect as had been anticipated. He also was very intimate with Mr. Sowerby, and was decidedly one of the Chaldicotes set. And there were many others included in the stigma ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... Gallagher—I mean, of course, old Dr. Gallagher, not the young doctor (who was always out in the country in the afternoon)—would come over and bring his latest Indian relics to show to the Dean, the latter always read to him a passage or two. As soon as the doctor laid his tomahawk on the table, the Dean would reach for his Theocritus. I remember that on the day when Dr. Gallagher brought over the Indian skull that they had dug out of the railway embankment, and placed it on the rustic table, the ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... 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)

... sturdily built. 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 doctor ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... 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 & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... many the ambuscades, surprisals, and deadly onslaughts that took place among its fastnesses, of which it grieves me much that I cannot furnish the details for the gratification of those gentle but bloody-minded readers of both sexes, who delight in the romance of the tomahawk and scalping-knife. Suffice it to say that the wizard chieftain was at length victorious, though his victory is attributed in Indian tradition to a great medicine or charm by which he laid the sachem of Sing-Sing and his warriors asleep among the rocks and recesses of ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... tomahawk towards the ceiling, uttered a piercing war-whoop, and commenced to execute the war-dance, chanting this song in his ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... enemies slain in battle; the feet were encased in moccasins, embroidered with beads and the quills of the porcupine dyed in various colors; from his neck was suspended a collar, made of the tusks of the javali; his tomahawk hung gracefully from his waist, and a fine robe of jaguar-skins draped his back. Such a costume I felt sure was only worn on state occasions; and his presence filled me with apprehensions. I was ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... but you are a droll fellow!" Bouchard exclaimed. "This Indian is accompanied by Fathers Chaumonot and Jacques. It is not impossible that they have relieved La Chaudiere Noire of his tomahawk and scalping-knife. And besides, this is France; even a Turk is harmless here. Monsieur the Black Kettle speaks French and ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... will let it alone for the present. It will keep. The other young man will be back to-morrow, and he will shout for it, split or no split, rest assured of that. He will prance into this political ring with his tomahawk and his war-whoop, and then you will hear a crash and see the scalps fly. He has none of my diffidence. He knows all about these nominees, and if he don't he will let on to in such a natural way as to deceive the most critical. He knows everything—he knows more than Webster's Unabridged and the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... and serve him, while he goes through a series of painful and exhausting performances, which are necessary on his part to enlist favorable notice of the gods. These performances consist chiefly of vapor baths, fastings, chants, prayers, and nightly vigils. The spear and the tomahawk being prepared and consecrated, the person who is to receive them approaches the wakan man (priest), and presents a pipe to him. He asks a favor, in substance as follows: 'Pity thou me, poor and helpless, a woman, ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... up the ground with a tomahawk, and covered him over with logs and grass and my shirt and trousers. That night I left him near dark. I would go through the scrub, and the blacks threw spears at me, a good many, and I went back again into the scrub. Then I went ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... in the depths of this western 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, ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell

... professional remarks, informed her that the Bannisters were to go with him to Barport. When Miss Panney heard this she sprang from her chair with the air of an Indian of the Wild West bounding with uplifted tomahawk upon a defenceless foe. The doctor involuntarily pushed back his chair, but before he could make up his mind whether he ought to be frightened or amused, Miss Panney sat down as promptly as she had risen, and a grim smile appeared ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton

... an aged relative will arise and dance excitedly around the central person, vociferating, and with wild gesture, tomahawk in hand, imprecate the evil spirit, which he drives to the land where the sun goes down. The evil spirit being thus effectually banished, the mourning gradually subsides, blending into succeeding scenes of feasting and refreshment. ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... during the year 1650, by their fugitive brethren of the West, until they counted above 600 souls. Even under the guns of the picket Fort of Orleans, which had changed its name to Ile St. Marie, in remembrance of their former residency, the tomahawk and scalping-knife reached them; on the 20th May, 1656, eighty-six of their number were carried away captives, and six killed, by the ferocious Iroquois; and on the 4th June, 1656, again they had to fly before their merciless tormentors. The big guns of Fort St. Louis, which then ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... a tomahawk disfigured his head; the woolly hair was matted with blood. But there remained still something of the PREUX ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... 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 ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... described carries the reader back to the time of the fierce and devastating war waged by King Philip against the settlers of New England, in which all the worst elements of the Indian nature came to the surface. The firebrand and the tomahawk were the weapons employed by the Indians to accomplish their purpose of destroying the advancing power of the white man; and so mercilessly did they use these that the outposts of civilization were swept away as ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various

... he might eat the other, but he didn't, for he 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 gone before as ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... a meerschaum myself, for I DO NOT, though I have owned a calumet since my childhood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mohawk species) my grandsire won, together with a tomahawk and beaded knife-sheath; paying for the lot with a bullet-mark on his right check. On the maternal side I inherit the loveliest silver-mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw. It is a little box- wood Triton, carved with charming liveliness and truth; I have often compared it to a figure in Raphael's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... it passed with a bucket of milk, of which he gave a drink to each of the men. Bultje put us on the right road to the next nearest water-holes (Mr. Gilmore's station), and having rendered me the service he promised, I gave him the tomahawk, pipe, and two figs of tobacco promised him, and also took a sketch of his singularly Socratic face. This native got a bad name from various stockmen, as having been implicated in the murder of Mr. ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... of yours entitled 'Luck.' That sketch is current in England, and you will surely need your tomahawk." ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... upon another's grounds uninvited. If any one belonging to another family or tribe is found trespassing, all his goods are taken from him; a handful of powder and shot, as much as he would need to shoot game for his sustenance in returning straight home, and his gun, knife, and tomahawk only are left, but all his game and furs are taken from him: a message is sent to his chief, and if he transgresses a third time, he is banished and outlawed.—Life of G. Copway, Missionary, written by himself.] I have heard my father say,—and he knows a great deal about ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... been in a 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, pursued for centuries in federal unions, and ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... 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 hillock where Bryce stood guard. ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster

... possible care and precaution taken to prevent them is undenyable. Captain Butler, who had command of the expedition, was indefatigable in his endeavours and exertions to restrain and mitigate the fury and ferocity of the savages often at the risk of the Tomahawk being made use of against himself as well as the Indian officers.... Out of a hundred and seventy scalps three-fourths were those of Women and Children." Butler's name is still looked upon in the United States as that ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... 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

... which confronted the pioneers in the first American "West." There every jewel of promise was ringed round with hostility. The cheap land the pioneer had purchased at a nominal price, or the free land he had taken by "tomahawk claim"—that is by cutting his name into the bark of a deadened tree, usually beside a spring—supported a forest of tall trunks and interlacing leafage. The long grass and weeds which covered the ground in a wealth of natural pasturage ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner

... should share the sweetness of revenge with him. He traveled fast, and drew nigh enough to catch sight of the two on the second day following their flight. He did not carry his bow, but had his knife and tomahawk, while the youth possessed no weapon at all. Had a knife been his, he would not have used it against Wahla, because he was the father of the maiden whom he loved more than ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... supernatural. One day some Indians, having taken away a horse of his, he put on his armor, pursued them alone, and soon overtook them. The chief of the party seeing him approach unsupported, advanced menacingly with uplifted tomahawk. Prescott dared him to strike, and was immediately taken at his word, but the rude weapon glanced harmless from the helmet, to the amazement of the red men. Naturally the Indian desired to try upon his own head so wonderful a hat, and the owner obligingly gratified him claiming the privilege, ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... consternation and dismay which were every where spreading around them; and many a staid heart among them secretly trembled for the fate of the near and dear ones left at homes in which the red tomahawk might, even at that very moment, be busy at its work of death; while the bosoms of all were burning to be freed from their present duties, that they might seize the sword or musket and fly to the relief of their ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... travelling. We 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 ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... 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 offer me any ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... magnificent point lace—light-blue velvet hat and feather, with an aigrette of sapphires and diamonds. Voila! Lord Jeffrey came up to me, and we had such a flirtation! When he comes to Ireland we are to go to Donnybrook Fair together: in short, having cut me down with his tomahawk as a reviewer, he smothers me with roses as a man. I always say of my enemies before we meet, 'Let me at them!'" Of the same soiree she writes again: "There was Miss Jane Porter, looking like a shabby canoness. There was Mrs. Somerville in an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... purchase everything they would need from their precious ten shillings; but each carried a blanket which Mrs. Elliott had found for them. Then Chippy carried a tin billy—a present from their instructor—and Dick bore, slung at his belt, a tiny axe, tomahawk shape, its head weighing fourteen ounces. This was intended for cutting wood; and, beside the axe, each had a strong, sharp jack-knife, with spring back, so that the blade could not close on the fingers. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... time he escaped all efforts at apprehension. Treachery did the work, as it has usually in bringing such bold and dangerous men to book. Two members of his gang proved traitors to their chief. Seizing an opportunity they crept behind him and drove a tomahawk into his brain. They cut off the head and took it along as proof; but as they were displaying this at the seat of government, the town of Washington, they themselves were recognized and arrested, and were later tried and executed; which ended the Meason gang, one of ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... other feelings towards women than towards grouse and foxes, and did not regard his future wife in the light of prey, valuable chiefly for the excitements of the chase. Neither was he so well acquainted with the habits of primitive races as to feel that an ideal combat for her, tomahawk in hand, so to speak, was necessary to the historical continuity of the marriage-tie. On the contrary, having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... and the shifting clouds let the moonlight fall upon him. He put his hand to his head where it ached, and when he took it away, there was blood on his fingers. He inferred that a heavy blow had been dealt to him with the flat of a tomahawk, but with the stained fingers he made a scornful gesture. One of the warriors, apparently a chief, noticed the movement, and he muttered a word or two which seemed to have the note of approval. Henry rose ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... better than might have been expected. At any rate I hope that there will be no ill-will. I shall do myself the honour of asking you and Mr. Western to come and dine with me at the Criterion. It is the little place that Lord Tomahawk had last year." Then he departed without another ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope

... destroy their inhabitants. He called his people together, and the war-cry was sounded throughout the mountains. Taking advantage of the night, they surrounded the settlement, and applying torches to the dwellings, rushed into the midst with tomahawk in hand, and murdered all save two young men, who fought so bravely that they spared their lives in order to torture them with more prolonged sufferings. The names of these young men it is said were HARRIS and SNELLING. They were bound and taken to the rock, where ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... 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 ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... supposing no posts and no treaty! the settlers will remain in security? Can they take it upon them to say, that an Indian peace, under these circumstances, will prove firm? No, sir, it will not be peace, but a sword; it will be no better than a lure to draw victims within reach of the tomahawk. On this theme my emotions are unutterable. If I could find words for them, if my powers bore any proportion to my zeal, I would swell my voice to such a note of remonstrance, it should reach every log house beyond the mountains. I would say to the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... as if a whole pack of Indians were dancing like wild round me, in full war-paint and feathers, and nipping little pieces out of my arms and legs. I stood it as long as I could, and then I began to hit out at 'em. All at once one of the creatures commenced flourishing his tomahawk at me, getting nearer and nearer all the time. "I have tried, but I can't get in," he said, grinning horribly, and the voice sounded just like Phil's; "he's locked his door, and he won't even ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... "you've stopped that fellow's galop." As soon as the robber could disentangle himself from the fallen horse, he took to his heels and ran down a sloping ground as fast as he could. The hunter drew his tomahawk from his belt, and gave chase after him. As he was more of an equestrian than a pedestrian, the nimbleness of the hunter soon shortened the distance between them, and the last of the robbers fell. Thus perished this dangerous gang of ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... lifted now his ferocious battle cry; advancing upon the blazed sapling he sank his tomahawk deep into the soft white wood, then moved swiftly out of the circle to his own fire. This was the act by which he announced his assumption ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... o' the rest an' had his tomahawk raised to brain me with it when—bing!—an' 'Mord' fetches him down like he did the fellow that was goin' to skelp Father. That made the others mad an' they took after me, but 'Mord' he drops the head one jist when he's goin' to hit me. But all I knowed at the time was that them ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... be summed up: the strangers were taller, more powerful and better formed than Sauks. Each carried a rifle, tomahawk and knife as his weapons; they had blankets, and their clothing, while nearly the same as that of the Sauks, was of a darker and more sober color. They had no beads or ornaments; their leggings, moccasins, and the fringe of their hunting shirts, were less gaudy in ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... Fitz-Urse, Sir George takes another of his guests, and proceeds to work upon him. "My dear Mr. Bludyer, how do you do? Mr. Fitz-Boodle, Mr. Bludyer, the brilliant and accomplished wit, whose sallies in the Tomahawk delight us every Saturday. Nay, no blushes, my dear sir; you are very wicked, but oh! SO pleasant. Well, Mr. Bludyer, I am glad to see you, sir, and hope you will have a favourable opinion of our genius, sir. As I was saying to Mr. Fitz-Boodle, she has the graces of a Venus with the ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... pair of 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 ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... does not 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 ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... cold night, about eleven o'clock, I happened to awake, and looking out toward the fire, I was surprised to see standing there, erect and quiet, a tall, brawny Indian, wrapped in his blanket; his long hunting knife and tomahawk dangling from his belt; and his rifle in his hand. Had he been in his own wigwam, he could not have looked about him with more satisfaction and independence. I instantly sprang to my feet, and demanded ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward

... these trees were counted in a tract of country thirty miles long and eight wide. Each tree yields an average of three table-spoonfuls of sap daily, but the trees are so close together that one man can gather the sap of eighty in a day. Starting at daylight, with his tomahawk and a ball of clay, he goes from tree to tree, making five or six incisions in each, and placing under each incision a cup made of the clay which he carries. In three or four hours he has completed his circuit and comes home to breakfast. In the afternoon he slings ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... more alight in my father when I got back to our camp that morning; and one might have supposed it nourished him, if one had judged from the cursory manner in which his share of our simple breakfast was dispatched. Then, carrying with him a tomahawk, I remember, he led us down across the sand to where the ship lay, so deeply bedded that one stepped over her rail as it might have been the coaming of a hatch. Her deck, and indeed every uncovered part of the Livorno, was encrusted in the droppings of multitudinous ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... 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 ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... they must protect themselves. All hearts turned to George Washington, a delegate from Virginia, and he was unanimously chosen to be commander-in-chief. When Congress met in July, 1776, the people had been branded as traitors; the slaves of Virginia had been incited to insurrection, the torch and tomahawk of the savage had been let loose on frontier settlements, an army of foreign mercenaries had landed on their shores, their ports were blockaded, an the army under Washington for their defence only numbered 6,749 men. On the second day of July, 1776, ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple

... 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 ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... 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 ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... the prayer of faith. The Indian was the first native convert baptized by the American missionary, who came about two years after to a station some few miles distant from Sullivan's cottage. After a lengthened course of instruction and trial the warrior, who once had wielded the tomahawk in mortal strife against both whites and redskins, went forth, armed with a far different weapon, "even the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God," to make known to his heathen countrymen ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... Man House,' he said, pointing with his finger towards the Settlement, 'Indian want kill white man, one, two, three, six, all!' and he clutched the tomahawk at his belt with a gruesome gesture. 'Indian come, see White Man sit in house; no gun, no arrow, no knife; all quiet, all still, worshipping Great Spirit. Great Spirit inside Indian too;' he pointed to his breast; 'then Great Spirit say: "Indian! No kill them!"' With these words, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... "Your life is more valuable." Her daughter Margaret, then about twelve years of age, hearing this, ran down for the baby, snatched it from the cradle, and started up the stairs with it. An Indian threw a tomahawk at her. It grazed the infant's head, cut a hole in Margaret's dress, and lodged in the mahogany stair rail. That infant became Mrs. Cochrane, and Margaret became the wife of Stephen Van Rensselaer, the Patroon, at Albany. The mansion yet stands; and ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... tales they had heard of the ferocious Sioux, and of a great western river on which they dwelt. Two years later the aged Jesuit Mesnard attempted to plant a mission on the southern shore of the lake, but perished in the forest by famine or the tomahawk. Allouez succeeded him, explored a part of Lake Superior, and heard in his turn of the Sioux and their great river, the "Messipi."—Introduction to Parkman's Discovery of the Great West. There can ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... fished, hunted, played, fought, and gamboled in mimic warfare as brothers along the sparkling streamlets that rise in the mountain ridges, their sparkling waters leaping and jumping through the gorges and glens and flowing away to the "great river." All was peace and happiness; the tomahawk of war had long since been buried, and the pipe of peace smoked around their camp fires after every successful hunting expedition. But dissentions arose—distrust and embittered feelings took the place of ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... offender. Grundy, who had seen 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 ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... 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

... savage nations under his dominion, so that they obeyed his slightest word. With majestic sweep of the limbs he whirled through the pantomime of capturing and scalping an enemy, struck the painted post with his tomahawk, and raised the awful war whoop. His young braves stamped and yelled with him. Another leaped into the ring, sung his deeds, and struck the painted post, warrior after warrior following, until a wild maze ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... 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

... but your hopes are with our friends the English and you in person fight for them. We Mohawks know whom to hate. We know that the French have robbed us more than any others. We know, that their Quebec is our Stadacona. So we have dug up the tomahawk and last night we showed to Sharp Sword and his men and Tandakora the Ojibway ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... decently. Now the Saturday Review has neither this, that, nor the other qualification. Indeed his words read like subtle and lurking irony by the light of those phenomenal and portentous vagaries which ever and anon illuminate his opaque pages. What correctness can we expect from a journal whose tomahawk-man, when scalping the corpse of Matthew Arnold, deliberately applies the term "sonnet" to some thirty lines in heroic couplets? His confusion of Dr. Jenner, Vaccinator, with Sir William Jenner, the President ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... Valley is well known to most of my readers from its romantic association with the struggles of the vast army of emigrants, who not only braved the dangers of its uncertain fords and deceitful quicksands, but the tomahawk and scalp knife, ofttimes leaving a nameless grave beside its waters; and, were it not for a laughable incident in this connection, I would ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... to their custom, having been wrapped in a blanket, and placed in a rude coffin, along with his guns, tomahawk, pipes, and a quantity of tobacco, had been carried to the most elevated point of the hill opposite the fort, followed by an immense procession of his people, whooping, beating their drums, howling, and making altogether what ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... looked for their home, no home was there! Instead, burning rafters and smoking ruins: around, the ground was trodden down by many feet of moccasined men. Partly consumed by the fire, lay the bodies of two farm-servants who had been in Mr. Buckingham's employ; a tomahawk, smeared with fresh blood, lay among the smoking embers; and a golden curl singed by fire, was near it—all they could discover of ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... the British squadron was not more than a quarter of a mile distant—so, you see, there was a little risk. We didn't halt long. Pitts led the way on board the Dartmouth, and we followed, musket and tomahawk in hand. Nobody offered any show of fighting for the tea. We cut open the hatches, and some of the men went down and passed up the chests, while others cut 'em open and emptied the green stuff into the water. The crew of the vessel were afeard to stir in stopping us, for we told 'em we'd ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson

... Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property of others has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting facts, in your simple innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper. Trading for forty-rod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy and tomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with the picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of the purlieus of New York. For shame! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the days of bronze man knew no weapon or implement of any sort save the stone axe, or tomahawk, and the flint-tipped arrow. Consider, that the highest stage of human culture he had then reached was hardly higher than that of the scalp-hunting Red Indian or the seal-spearing Esquimaux. Consider, that in his Stone Age agriculture and grains were almost unknown—the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... Hudson, calling it Wildercliff—Wilder Klipp, a Dutch word meaning wild man's cliff, from the fact that early settlers found on a smooth rock on the river shore a rough tracing of two Indians with tomahawk and calumet. Garrettson was educated in the Church of England, but left it to become a Methodist; a man of strong personality, he soon rose to a prominent place in the church. Being a native of Maryland, he was naturally a slave owner, but becoming convinced ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine

... Berlin philosopher is really on a 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 civilization that these intellectual anarchists would kill. And if they should find us in our last stand girt with such strange swords ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... there is some one coming up the back path," and rising as she spoke, she hurried out to the side porch, closely followed by Moppet, who said to herself, with all a child's vivid and dramatic imagination, "Perhaps it's an Indian coming to tomahawk us in our beds!" which thought caused her to seize a fold of Miss Bidwell's gown ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln

... 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 so much required ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... an eye to let him escape unobserved, and when he came within his reach he would turn his spear and throw it like a dart, seldom missing his aim. The poor fish would struggle desperately, but soon came to the surface, when he would be drawn in and knocked in the head with a tomahawk to quiet him, when the spear was cut out and the process repeated. We watched them about an hour, and during that time some one of the boats was continually hauling in a fish. They were sturgeon and very large. This was the first time we had ever seen ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... them and a Virginia to the south. From the one they get in the autumn salted fish, from the other store of swine and cattle. Famine and pestilence are far from them. They build a "fort" and perhaps a stockade, but there are none of the stealthy deaths given by arrow and tomahawk in the north, nor are there any of the Spanish alarms that terrified the south. From the first they have with them women and children. They know that their settlement is "home." Soon other ships and colonists follow the Ark and the Dove to St. Mary's, and the history ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... 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 ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... deaconed out the psalm, One slashed the scalping hell-hounds of calm; The praying father's pious work is done, Now sword in hand steps forth the fighting son. On many a field he fought in wilds afar; See on his swarthy cheek the bullet's scar! There hangs a murderous tomahawk; beneath, Without its blade, a knife's embroidered sheath; Save for the stroke his trusty weapon dealt His scalp had dangled at their owner's belt; But not for him such fate; he lived to see The bloodier strife that ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... they were," Nat said scornfully. "They wouldn't surprise men that knew their business; but those chaps would just jump out of their boats, as if they was landed on a quay at New York, and would scatter about among the bushes. Why, Lord bless you, the Indians might ambush and tomahawk the lot, before they had time to think of opening their lips to ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... forest, and they would have in him a brave and robust leader worthy of their tradition. Joseph, on the other hand, was dissatisfied. He had lived and communed with white men and had come to know a greatness that was not to be won by following the war-path. He had wielded the tomahawk; he had bivouacked among armed men on the field of battle: now he was eager for the schoolroom. He wished to widen his knowledge and to see the great world that lay beyond the rude haunts of ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood

... 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 ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... 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 resorted to by the excursions which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... slab on two pairs of crosslegs; and on the slab were papers and letters, a black ink-horn, some leaves of native tobacco, and a large gray-horn drinking-cup—empty. Under the table was a lately emptied bottle.O'Bannon sat in a rough chair before this drinking-cup, smoking a long tomahawk-pipe. His head was tilted backward, his eyes followed the ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... Ferguson ought to have been more careful. Why, the very chief of that village at Numa Numa—the man who cut him down with a tomahawk—had killed two other white men. Ferguson knew that, and yet would allow him to come aboard time after time with hundreds of his people, and gave him and them the run of his ship. I knew the fellow well. He told me to my face, the first time I met ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... Indians, and which might be brought, with such fearful emphasis, upon their own heads. They reminded the people that the Indians were not exterminated, that they still hung in numerous hordes about the frontiers, and that it needed but a single word from the Crown, to bring them, once more, with tomahawk and scalping-knife, upon their defenceless homes. Already, indeed, had the emissaries of Great Britain taken measures to this end. The savage was already shaking off his apathy, scenting the carnage from afar, and ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... mainland. We had now time to examine the contents of the canoe, and had much reason to be gratified with our acquisition. It had three bear-skins at the bottom, several pounds of yams, cooked and uncooked, two calabashes full of water, bows and arrows, three spears, a tomahawk, three fishing-lines and hooks, and some little gourds full of black, white, and red paint; and what we prized more than all, some flints and a large rusty nail, with rotten wood to ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... 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

... 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 upon ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... 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 colonies, were ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... done for him he sure did a good job," Cousin muttered. "He sure did make tomahawk ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... have won the victory of "a superman." In that he has carried murder, arson, lying, rapine, lust up to the nth power, let us concede his claim. Not otherwise two hundred years ago the Indian, with his scalping knife, his war-whoop and his tomahawk, was "a superman" in terms of savagery. Not otherwise the Spaniards under Bloody Alva were "supermen" in terms of rack, ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... 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

... New York. The long thin line of French settlements lay naked before them. They were gathered in the woods, like hounds in leash, waiting for the orders of their chiefs, which should precipitate them with torch and with tomahawk upon ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... get a fire? They first took a piece of dry wood, which they scraped flat with stones. Then, with a blow of his tomahawk of deer's horn, Keketaw made a round hole in the wood. One end of a dry stick was placed in this hole. The other end was supported in the hollow of a shell which ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston

... 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 ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker

... 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 heavily. He was hoisted on board, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... now to assume for herself an hypothetical guilt,—after bringing the African to her American Colonies for purposes of gain, and after exercising an intolerable tyranny over the white race in those colonies, and even invoking the aid of the tomahawk and scalping knife of the American savage in their attempted subjugation,—for the purpose now, when her arms and diplomacy have repeatedly failed, of seeking to overthrow the freedom of a Republic, which has risen, in despite of her, to ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... 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 rubbed smooth, are fitted with a handle on the same principle that ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... Indians who were all Black Cats, or Po'gum'k. One of them, the cleverest and bravest, went forth every day with bow and arrow, tomahawk and knife, and killed moose and bear, and sent meat to the poor, and so he fed them all. When he returned they came to him to know where his game lay, and when he had told them they went forth with toboggins [Footnote: Toboggin, a sled made very simply by ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland



Words linked to "Tomahawk" :   hatchet, arm, kill



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