OCR Text |
Show tfELT SCALPING KKli'S HOW LIVING ENGLISHMAN LOST HIS HAIR. His Original Head Covering Now Scattered Scat-tered Over Two Continents Pre, ence of Mind Saved His Life from the Murderous Redskins. There is a man living now in Eng land who can tell how it feels to be scalped. His hair is now hanging in the public library in Omaha. That Is, part of it is there. He has a fringe around his head still, and another part may still be on an Indian reservation, if the Indians are at all careful about preserving relics of this sort. William Thompson, an Englishman, once in the employment of the Union Pacific railroad, is the man whose hai? is scattered over two continents. He is getting along nicely with a small remnant of his original headgear. Thompson was one of five men who went sent on a handcar out of Omaha in the early days of the Union Pacific to splice a telegraph wire. It was in August, 1867. The railroad only extended ex-tended to North Platte. The rest of the trip to Denver was made by stage, and a perilous trip it was. There had been trouble along the line and the squad of five men were sent out to locate lo-cate and remedy it. It was located near what is now Central City. It was discovered that the Indians had cut the wire. Scarcely had the linemen stopped their car when they were fired on by a party of Cheyenne Indians concealed in the prairie grass. The men returned the fire, but, seeing that they were hopelessly hope-lessly outnumbered, took to their heels. Thompson was shot In the arm while running, and the next moment one of his pursuers knocked him to the ground by a blow with a tomahawk. He was stunned but not rendered unconscious. un-conscious. He had the presence of mind to feign death, and the Indian supposed that all that was necessary was to take his scalp. As to what follows, Thompson says: "With the deftness of an expert, the savage whipped out his knife and made incisions around the top of my head. When he had cut theskin all around, doing it with great speed, he Jerked the hair off. The sensation was just as if a red-hot iron had just been touched to my head." The Indian, in his hurry, tucked the scalp lock Insecurely in his belt. That is why it happens to be now in the Omaha library. Thompson did not dare to move, and while he lay there pretending pre-tending to be dead and suffering from his wound another, Indian found him. He decrded there was a little more hair on the dead man's head which might as well come off, so he repeated the performance of the first and took off some more around the corners. In the meanwhile other Indians had placed obstructions on the track. From wnere he lay Thompson could hear the approaching freight train carrying government gov-ernment supplies. He could not flag It and he heard the. engine crash into the obstruction. The next moment the train was a wreck, with the Indians firing on the train crew. Then began an orgie, which the wounded man was forced to hear. The Indians found whisky, with which they proceeded to get themselves into a beastly state of intoxication. They rigged themselves up in calicoes and woolens which they found on the train. Then they took the still living engineer and fireman and threw them into the furnace of the engine. When darkness came Thompson managed to crawl away. At Willow Creek he fell in with a rescue party which had been sent out and by which he was taken to Omaha. He had noticed no-ticed the scalp lock which had fallen from the Indian's belt, and when he crawled away he picked it up. Chicago Chi-cago Tribune. |