The Honor of Counting Coup The bravest thing a Plains warrior could do was touch a living enemy and leave him standing. That act is what outsiders later called counting coup. The word is French. Fur traders and voyageurs on the northern Plains used coup, meaning a blow or strike, as a rough translation of a phrase already common among the tribes: to strike the enemy. Among the Oceti Sakowin (oh-CHAY-tee shah-KOH-ween) the honor was Tȟóka Kté (TOH-kah k’TAY). The stick used to deliver it was Čhaŋwápaha (chahn-WAH-pah-hah). Reciting the deed afterward was WaktóglakA (wahk-TOH-glah-kah). Other nations had their own words for the same family of acts. The French label stuck because it was short and travelers needed a single term. The practice itself was older than the word they gave it. It grew on the Great Plains as a precise language of honor and reached its classic form after horses arrived and raids became fast, personal, and fiercely competitive. Pedestrian warriors already prized the dangerous close approach. Late prehistoric rock art shows shield-bearing men striking or touching opponents who lack comparable arms. Oral traditions place the honor of striking an enemy deep in the time before these peoples lived as equestrian societies. The horse changed the scale and the theater. A man could close at a gallop, touch a living enemy with hand, bow, quirt, or slender stick, and peel away. The first touch on an uninjured opponent usually ranked highest. Second and third touches on the same man still counted. Stealing a horse picketed beside an enemy lodge often stood near the top as well. Killing mattered, but in many rankings it sat below the touch because the touch required you to put your body inside the enemy’s reach and come back. Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow, Blackfeet, Arapaho, Assiniboine (uh-SIN-uh-boin), Comanche, and Kiowa made this system central. A warrior’s standing, his right to speak, his place in a society, even his path toward leadership, rested on deeds the camp could hear recited and see marked: notches on a stick, eagle feathers worn at particular angles, painted shirts, later ledger drawings. The Crow who chased defeated Oglala and struck them with sticks instead of finishing them were not being merciful. They were announcing that those men were not worth the powder. Wooden Leg at the Little Bighorn counted coup with a whip on a fleeing soldier and took his carbine, then left him, because after the touch the kill felt cheap. The same measure of honor outlived the open Plains. Joseph Medicine Crow, a Crow scout with the U.S. Army in Europe during the Second World War, completed the four traditional Crow war deeds: he led a successful war party, took an enemy’s weapon, stole enemy horses, and touched a living German soldier without killing him. When he returned home, Crow elders recognized him as a war chief. The battlefield had changed. The standard had not. That exact combination of rules was uncommon beyond the Plains. The touch on a living enemy as the highest honor, the graded first-second-third claims on the same man, the coup stick, the public recitation, and the feather tallies formed one tightly fitted system. Pueblo nations fought from villages and in organized campaigns. Eastern Woodlands peoples valued captives, revenge, and different war honors. Northwest Coast, California, and Arctic societies measured prestige by other means. Analogues exist elsewhere in the world, because many warrior cultures reward the man who accepts more risk than the job strictly requires. Medieval knights sought first blood or the capture of a notable opponent. Some African and Pacific societies staged regulated fights that displayed courage without always aiming at slaughter. Samurai codes prized open approach over stealth. None of those systems is counting coup. They share a family resemblance: honor attached to proximity, self-command, and public witness rather than to body count alone. The practice was theirs, shaped by grass, horse, and the need to turn individual daring into social rank. It was brilliant, narrow, and local. That is why it still startles people who expect every Native nation to have lived by the same rules of war. Image: Charles M. Russell, Counting Coup (Medicine Whip), 1902, oil on canvas. Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. The painting shows a running fight between Blood (Kainai) and Lakota warriors and was based on a story told to Russell by a Blood veteran. It is a later artist’s reconstruction of the honor, not a Native ledger drawing. The post is in response to request by @D_Rives_B

Is it LSU? Is it Lakers? 🤨 Stay tuned …

Every time the Haakaa gets mentioned

This book is amazing! The Bible keeps being proven true despite academentia trying to hide it. Another great work from @DineshDSouza . He discusses it with me here “LIVE” in five. rumble.com/v7eh34i-dinesh-is…

Jack Smith is set to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week--the former disgraced special counsel will take questions from the very same Republican senators he investigated. Is an indictment of Smith imminent? open.substack.com/pub/juliek…

CNN and MSNOW thinks they can play hardball with President Trump. Think again. The White House just locked out CNN and MSNOW out of the State Dinner arrivals with President Xi. Their reporter is standing outside the gate while every other network walks in.😂

Mind-Blowing Reality: 81% of Americans COVID-19 vaccinated, 94% of whom have synthetic mRNA in their bodies producing the potentially lethal Spike protein. Unless the library of anti-Spike antibodies is perfectly neutralizing, Spike will cause tissue damage and result in chronic illness. Unnatural, unsafe. Courtesy Marissa Streit, Prager University. @marissastreit @prageru @McCulloughFund

GOOD RIDDANCE: 300 of 400 DOJ Civil Rights Attorneys QUIT Rather Than Clean America’s Voter Rolls and KILL DEI — Dhillon Says They “Self-Deported” thegatewaypundit.com/2026/09…

This is what’s happened in California Gavin Newsom made it illegal to check Voter ID, mandated universal mail in ballots, made ballot harvesting legal, expanded drop boxes, gave all illegals IDs He then made it a felony to take and verify ballots before elections are certified

Well we’ve just learned that women are so emotional and hormonal that they can’t even be blamed for mass murdering their children so with that in mind I think I’ll pass on putting more women in leadership positions, thanks anyway

🚨 IT'S OFFICIAL: Unvaccinated Chief Warrant Officer 5 Kennie Kelly — a Master Aviator — has officially been REINSTATED to the US military, with full backpay, entitlements, station preference and benefits... ...after being REMOVED due to refusing the COVID jab under Biden LFG! I VOTED FOR THAT! Bless this hero 🙏🏻🇺🇸

Absolutely beautiful gold dress worn by Second Lady, Usha Vance to the White House State Dinner last night. The beadwork on the dress is amazing. She and the @VP look so good. ✨ @OscardelaRenta posted these photos on Instagram.

The Ojibwe: the people who walked until food grew on the water Ojibwe (oh JIB way) oral history says they left the Atlantic coast because a prophecy told them to keep moving west until they found a place where food grew on the water. That food was wild rice, manoomin (muh NOH min). They call themselves Anishinaabe (ah nish ih NAH bay), the original people. Chippewa is not another nation. It is the usual American form of the same name, taken from older French spellings such as Otchipwe. Saulteaux (SO toh) later named the western bands around Lake Winnipeg and onto the Plains. Mississauga (miss ih SAW guh) names some of the southern Ontario communities. Oji-Cree (OH jee Cree) names communities where Ojibwe and Cree speech and kinship mixed. Ethnically they are Algonquian speaking Anishinaabe. Their closest relatives are the Odawa (oh DAH wah) and the Potawatomi (pot uh WAH tuh mee). The three form the Council of Three Fires. Tradition says they were once one people who divided at Michilimackinac (mish ih lih MACK ih naw). The Ojibwe became the Older Brother and Keepers of the Faith. The Odawa kept trade. The Potawatomi kept the fire. Other close Central Algonquian peoples include the Cree, Menominee (muh NAH muh nee), Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, Shawnee, and Miami. Genetically, living Ojibwe belong to the main founding Native American lineage of the continent. The ancestors of nearly all Native nations south of the Arctic came from Siberian peoples who entered the Americas by the Bering land region and then moved south and east. Ojibwe ancestry is the same stock as other woodland peoples of the Northeast and Great Lakes. They are not a separate race from those neighbors. They are not Na Dene (NAH deh neh). Athabaskan peoples such as Navajo, Apache, and northern Dene carry extra ancestry from a later northern stream. Ojibwe do not. Some families show later European admixture from the fur trade country. That is recent family history, not the origin of the people. That does not mean there were no earlier arrivals to the Americas. Evidence such as the White Sands footprints in New Mexico suggests people were already in the interior 21,000 to 23,000 years ago, during the last glacial maximum, likely by other routes than the old ice free corridor story. That earlier presence may belong to the same founding population arriving sooner, or to a group that left tracks and little ancestry in nations alive today. The genomes do not show a separate surviving origin for the Ojibwe. Three origin accounts should be kept apart. The Seven Fires teaching starts the people on the Atlantic and walks them west to the rice. Historical linguistics usually runs the other way. Proto Algonquian is reconstructed west of the Great Lakes and spreading east, with Ojibwe and Potawatomi as a later Great Lakes branch. Eastern Algonquian on the Atlantic is not the source of Ojibwe speech. Archaeology does not show a labeled march from the ocean. The people first appear by name in the Jesuit Relations of 1640, still near the St. Marys River and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. From there the record follows their spread around Superior, into Wisconsin and Minnesota, and onto the Plains. Older woodland sites in that country may belong to ancestral Algonquian speaking populations. They are not a proven Ojibwe trail from the salt water. The origin of the prophecy is lost to time, but the teaching says seven prophets came to the Anishinaabe on the northeastern salt water. Each spoke of a coming era, called a fire. The first told them to follow the sacred miigis (MEE gis) shell of the Midewiwin (mih DAY wih win) west through seven stopping places to the land where food grew on the water, and warned that staying would mean destruction. Later fires told of losing the way and finding it again, of light skinned strangers judged by the face they wore, of broken teachings, and of a seventh fire in which new people would retrace the trail and ask the elders for what had been left behind. The teachings were kept in the Midewiwin. The version most often quoted in English is the one Edward Benton-Banai recorded from elders in The Mishomis Book. Some tellings say the first prophet was also heard by eastern nations such as the Mi’kmaq (MEEG mah). In that telling the stopping places included the St. Lawrence, Niagara, the Detroit country, Manitoulin Island, Sault Ste. Marie, and finally Madeline Island in the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior. The Ojibwe name for that island is Mooningwanekaaning (moo ning wah neh KAH ning), often rendered as the place of the golden breasted woodpecker. It became a principal town and a spiritual center for the Lake Superior bands. There the rice stood in the shallows and the walking ended. Manoomin was not a side dish. It was the sign they had arrived, a winter staple when meat and fish ran thin, and a gift used in ceremony and feast. Whole communities timed late summer around the beds. Families held rights in particular lakes. A good year meant stores. A ruined bed meant hunger. That is why the rice is treated as a relative and a responsibility, not as a crop a person owns outright. It is an annual grass that grows in clear, shallow lakes and slow rivers. The ripe seed hangs over the water. Harvest is done from a canoe. One person poles. The other bends the stalks over the gunwale with one stick and knocks the ripe grain in with the other. Green heads are left for seed. On shore the grain is dried, parched, threshed, and winnowed. Lake rice is what the treaties and the teachings mean. Commercial paddy rice is a different crop. The canoe that opened that country was an elegant machine. A birchbark hull was stretched over cedar ribs and planks, sewn with split spruce root, and sealed with pitch mixed with fat and charcoal. The skin was thin. The frame was springy. The whole boat could weigh under a hundred pounds and still carry a family, a rice harvest, or a load of furs. One person could lift it and walk a portage. It drew almost nothing, so it slipped through rice beds and over beaver dams. The high ends shed Superior chop. A tear could be patched in camp with bark, root, and heated pitch. French traders copied the design because nothing they brought from Europe did the same work as well. From the 1640 country they spread with the fur trade, new hunting ground, and pressure from the east. They allied early with the French and moved goods by canoe from Montreal to the far end of Superior. By the 1700s and 1800s some bands had moved south of Lake Superior and displaced Dakota communities in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota. Other bands kept going west and became the Plains Ojibwe or Saulteaux. They are still there. In the United States the main country is Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Dakota, with related communities in Montana. Minnesota bands include Red Lake, White Earth, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs (mill LACKS), Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, and Bois Forte (bwah FORT). Wisconsin and Michigan hold Lake Superior Chippewa communities such as Bad River, Red Cliff, Lac Courte Oreilles (lah KOORT oh RAY), Lac du Flambeau (lah duh flam BO), Sokaogon (so KAH gun), St. Croix, Bay Mills, Sault Ste. Marie, and Keweenaw Bay (KEE wuh naw). In North Dakota the Turtle Mountain Band is the large Plains Chippewa community. Many more people live off reservation in Minneapolis, Duluth, Milwaukee, Detroit, and other cities. In Canada they are the second largest First Nations population after the Cree. The country runs from western Quebec across Ontario and Manitoba into Saskatchewan and eastern Alberta. Manitoba and Saskatchewan are the heart of the Saulteaux country. The clan system, the doodem (DOH dem), tied distant villages together. A person belonged to the father’s clan and could not marry inside it. Birchbark covered the canoe, the wigwam, and the containers. The Midewiwin kept teaching on birchbark scrolls marked with figures and signs that helped a trained person remember ceremony, songs, and origin stories. They were not an alphabet. A stranger could not sound the bark out like a printed page. The name Ojibwe is commonly explained two ways: the puckered seam on their moccasins, or the practice of marking figures on bark. The language is Anishinaabemowin (ah nish ih NAH bay moh win). The Seven Grandfather Teachings still name the measure of a person: wisdom, love, respect, bravery, honesty, humility, and truth. Treaties in 1837, 1842, and 1854, including the Treaty of La Pointe signed near Madeline Island, ceded millions of acres but reserved the right to hunt, fish, and gather, including rice, on the ceded lands. Those rights have been upheld in court. They are many bands and First Nations, not one capital. What they share is the lakes, the rice, the bark, and the story of why they stopped walking. Photos: A birchbark canoe in the shallows of a northern lake, high ends and sewn hull on clear water. Manoomin standing in a lake bed, seed heads leaning over the water. Photo: Peter M. Dziuk, Minnesota Wildflowers.

Tamales are about to get steamy. Sadly I had to wrap them in parchment paper because the bag of corn husks I got were Temu quality 😂

RT @Tashibite1: The ONLY remedy is PRISON fir those who signed off on this massive theft

The ONLY remedy is PRISON fir those who signed off on this massive theft

HOLY CR*P 🚨 Democrats laundered SO MUCH MONEY before Donald Trump took office In the 76 day period between Trump winning and Biden leaving office $93 billion was sent from the DOE, who GAVE IT AWAY WITH NO OVERSIGHT, TO ENTITIES WITH NO FINANCIALS “The 76-day period you're talking about, that's the period between the time that President Trump was elected and President Biden left office — How much taxpayer money went out the door of the Department of Energy? From the Loan Program Office in Loans and Commitments $93 billion. Well over twice as much as in the previous 15 years” — You’re you're telling me that the Department of Energy in the 76-day period before their boss was gonna leave office gave our own money to entities that had no business plan? “Correct.” “No financials?” “Correct.” FOLLOW ME THE NEXT DROP WILL BE SHOCKING

HOLY SHIT >"We are currently witnessing the single most egregious instance of oil-industry price-gouging in all of American history."

The new treatment literally grows new neural connections in the brain. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have developed a groundbreaking molecule that delivers the powerful brain-repairing benefits of LSD — without any hallucinations. By simply swapping two atoms in the LSD structure (what lead researcher David E. Olson playfully called a molecular “tire rotation”), the team created JRT — a non-hallucinogenic “neuroplastogen.” This innovative compound keeps LSD’s remarkable ability to stimulate neuronal growth and repair damaged synapses, while eliminating the psychedelic effects that make traditional LSD too risky for many patients. The results are impressive: in preclinical studies, JRT increased dendritic spine density by 46% and was nearly 100 times more potent than ketamine as an antidepressant. Crucially, it avoided the gene expression patterns and behaviors linked to psychosis. This could be a game-changer for psychiatric care — especially for people with schizophrenia and other conditions involving synaptic loss and brain atrophy, who were previously excluded from psychedelic-based therapies.

Ok this is genuinely funny with the music 🤣🤣🤣 He’s only human… (I think) 🤔