"Choctaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon; of the configuration of the brain, and its relative powers; do all this, and what will he know of your meaning? So of all science. Words are to be understood from the things they are employed to represent. You may as well talk to a man in the hebrew, chinese, or choctaw languages, as in our own, if he does not know what is signified by the words selected as ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... presented was the original Passe Especial, the one with the big seal on it, written in Portuguese; had it been in Choctaw the governor would have read it with the same facility that he did this, which he stared at knowingly and said, "all right, take all the water you want; it ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... you wish me to consider myself as relatively a Choctaw. But what I do not understand is; what bearing that has upon—upon the Fourth Dimension, I ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... broke these rules, they believed that the soul of the man they had killed would work their death by magic, that they would gain no more successes over the enemy, and that the least wound inflicted on them would prove mortal. When a Choctaw had killed an enemy and taken his scalp, he went into mourning for a month, during which he might not comb his hair, and if his head itched he might not scratch it except with a little stick which he wore fastened to his wrist for the purpose. This ceremonial mourning for the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... be on board this boat, in addition to the usual dreary crowd of passengers, one Pitchlynn, a chief of the Choctaw tribe of Indians, who SENT IN HIS CARD to me, and with whom I had the pleasure of ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... a jargon! And when this young simpleton, Claiborne, attempts to cram it down the public windpipe in the courts, as I understand he intends, he will fail! Hah! sir, I know men in this city who would rather eat a dog than speak English! I speak it, but I also speak Choctaw." ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... boys placed themselves upon three bases and tossed a ball across from one to the other. Points were won as in base ball by running bases, if possible, without being put out by the one who at the time had the ball. The Choctaw [Footnote: Romans, p. 70, Bossu, Vol. I, p. 308.] boys made use of a cane stalk, eight or nine feet in length, from which the obstructions at the joints had been removed, much as boys use what is called a putty blower. The Zuni children are said to play checkers ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... in Choctaw you write, Sweet singer who gave us the Voices of Night, Though in buskin or slipper your song may be shod; Or the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the fact that between babyhood and manhood their sons do not boast of them. The boy, with boys, is a Choctaw; and either the influence or the protection of women is shameful. "Your mother won't let you," is an insult. But, "My father won't let me," is a dignified explanation and cannot be hooted. A boy is ruined ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... with those of some other tribe of Indians, and they first pitched their tepees with those of the Cherokees. But the Cherokee Chief and old Chief Wahpanucka of the Delawares did not agree. So the little band of Delawares continued rambling until they reached the Choctaw Nation, where they again tried to make terms with the Chief of the tribe. Evidently no agreement was reached between that Chief and Wahpanucka, for the Delawares continued their roving until they reached the ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... from the Secretary of the Interior, with accompanying papers, in reference to the applications of the Chicago, Texas and Mexican Central and the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway companies for a right of way across the lands of the Choctaw Nation in the Indian Territory for the building of a proposed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... about 1859, in Victoria, Texas. She belonged to George Heard. Her mother was born free, a member of the Choctaw Nation, but she was stolen and sold as a slave. Josie ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... presently. X turned away a moment, and I asked the mariner if he could not find a board, and so construct an additional seat. I spoke in the purest German, but I might as well have spoken in the purest Choctaw for all the good it did. The man tried his best to understand me; he tried, and kept on trying, harder and harder, until I saw it was really of no use, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... races began in the vacant lot just outside the town. The old showman we had brought up from Memphis was made master of ceremonies, 'cause he could talk Choctaw, and Comanche, and other Indian jargon, and things got busy. The Indians wouldn't run their ponies more than an eighth of a mile, or a quarter, and we consented, because the poor little things didn't look ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... approve nor disapprove of him. I don't well know whether I have any right to do either—I mean so far as to influence her choice. He belongs to a sort of men I know as little about as I do of the Choctaw Indians. They have lives and notions and ways all unlike ours. The world is so civil to them that it prepares everything to their taste. If they want to shoot, the birds are cooped up in a cover, and only let fly when they're ready. When they fish, the salmon are kept prepared ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... British aid they rose in arms, massacred several hundred settlers who had taken refuge in Fort Mims, near the junction of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, and in a short time no white family in the Creek country was safe outside a palisade. The Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians, however, remained the faithful allies of the whites, and volunteers from Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee, and later United States troops, marched to the rescue of the threatened settlements. In the campaign ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... tribe, band against band; they had inherited the rancor and bitterness of the White Man's war with neither the fruits of victory nor the dignity that attends honorable defeat. The reservations that belonged originally to the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole and Creek tribes, were reduced in area to make room for new tribes from Kansas, Colorado and other states, and the Indian wars resulted. For a time the scalp-knife was crimsoned, the stake was charred, bands stole in single file over mountains ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... Ranger and Anna Frostwinch want him pushed. I don't know but they may believe in him. Mrs. Ranger does, of course, but the dear old soul knows no more about art than I do about Choctaw. As to the statues, I don't think it makes much difference, they are always laughed at, and I don't think anybody could make one in this age that wouldn't ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... that day when the little Lord Mayor makes a great man of himself. A great man is the Lord Mayor on that day on which he sacrifices all his good sense to an ancient and much-beloved show, in which he permits himself to be made the fool of the farce. No Choctaw war-train was ever half so extravagant of colored cloth and feathers. A great day for London loafers is it, when my Lord Mayor puts on the big chain, and issues his mandate to the sprats, who then come up the river, to the great joy of the poor, who have it thus in tradition. Well, Smooth ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... familiar or colloquial style. The former was given to antithesis, repetition, elaborate figures, unusual metaphors, and more sonorous and lengthened expressions. The Rev. Mr. Byington gives a number of the oratorical affectations in the Choctaw, as akakano for ak, okakocha for ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... replied laughing grimly. "You ought to know, what I am fast finding out, that a young fellow, like me, can no more understand a woman, unless she is frank, than he can Choctaw." ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... the Choctaws are in like manner descended from real crawfish, which used to live under ground, only coming up occasionally through the mud to the surface. Once a party of Choctaws smoked them out, taught them the Choctaw language, taught them to walk on two legs, made them cut off their toe nails and pluck the hair from their bodies, after which they adopted them into the tribe. But the rest of their kindred, the crawfish, are crawfish under ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others |
