The Young British Soldier
by Rudyard Kipling
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!
Native American, e.g., Abenaki, Lakota, Wyandotte, Shawnee, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, etc., women commonly mutilated bodies of dead and wounded enemy after battles. They were also known to assist with ritual torture of enemy, but they didn't do anything the men wouldn't have done in their absence. BTW, white autrocities were equally as bad.
The description of the burning of Colonel David Crawford by Wilshire Consul Butterfield relates the story told by Dr. John Knight who witnessed and reported the torturing of the former.
After describing the tying of Crawford with a rope “long enough for him to sit down or walk around the post once or twice and return the same way” and stating that Captain Pipe made a speech to the Indians to which “they all yelled a hideous and hearty assent” Butterfield thus describes what followed:
So soon as Captain Pipe had finished his speech to the assembled savages-men, squaws and children-the Indian men took up their guns and shot powder into Crawford’s naked body from his feet as far up as his neck. it was the opinion of Knight that not less than seventy loads were discharged upon him! They then crowded about him, and, to the best of Knight’s observation, cut off both his ears; for, when the throng dispersed, he saw the blood running from both sides of his head!
The fire was about six or seven yards from the post to which Crawford was tied. It was made of small hickory poles burnt quite through the middle, each end of the poles remaining about six feet in length. Three or four Indians by turns would take up, individually, one of these burning pieces of wood and apply it to his naked body, already burnt black with powder.
These tormentors presented themselves on every side of him, so that, whichever way he ran round the post, they met him with the burning faggots. Some of the squaws took broad boards, upon which they would carry a quantity of burning coals and hot embers, and throw on him; so that, in a short time, he had nothing but coals of fire and hot ashes to walk on!
In the midst of these extreme tortures, Crawford called to Girty and begged of him to shoot him; but the cruel renegade making no answer, he called again. Girty then, by way of derision, told Crawford he had no gun; at the same time, turning about to an Indian who was behind him, he laughed heartily and , by all his gestures, seemed delighted at the horrid scene!
Crawford, at this period of his suffering, besought the Almighty to have mercy on his soul, spoke very low, and bore his torments with the most manly fortitude. He continued, in all the extremities of pain, for an hour and three-quarters or two hours longer, when, at last, being unable to stand, he lay down upon his stomach. The savages then scalped him, and repeatedly threw the scalp into the face of Knight, telling him that was his “great captain.”
That this description of the tragedy is essentially true there is little room to doubt. It is an all-sufficient exhibition of the vengeance of the “noble red man” and the depravity of Simon Girty.
It is equally true that the murder of the Moravian converts, which Butterfield passes over rather lightly, presents a picture equally black and revolting.
In his The Histories, Herodotus wrote of female Scythian warriors and the legendary female society of warrior women known as Amazons.