“The interpreter told me that the Indian’s name was O-way-see’-cha, accent on the third syllable. This word means in the Sioux dialect ‘bad wound,’ ‘see-cha” meaning bad. The Sioux, like the French, put their adjectives after the noun. Wahsee-cha means ‘medicine bad,’ i. e., white-man. I was told that he acquired his name from a fight with the Pawnee Indians down north of Fort Kearney several years before; that he was so badly wounded that they carried him off on an Indian litter between two ponies; and he finally recovered to be as well as ever ; and then, Indian fashion he took a new name. He greeted me with an expression which the interpreter said meant that I was ‘his longknife .son'”
