A'daltem Ano'nde

A'daltem Ano'nde, or Screaming Skull, was a standard issue carbine converted in the late 1860s to shoot .50/70 gauge cartridges. It was originally used by African American Sergeant James Rufus Daly during the Indian Wars, but during a skirmish at Fort Sill during the summer of 1875, he lost it to Kiowa prophet and Remote soldier Pai'ngya. Pai'ngya killed Daly and turned his scalp into a medicine bag to hold various totems, including the knucklebone of Pai'ngya's own little finger, which he had lost in the skirmish.
Based on a vision he had received during a Ghost Dance two weeks prior, Pai'ngya believed that the rifle would resurrect his Native American ancestors and drive whites from their lands forever. He believed himself to be an extension of the weapon and a tool to its shadow-spirit, (PROSE: ) and he used it to kill hundreds in fifteen campaigns against white settlers in Oklahoma and Texas between October of 1876 and January of 1879. (PROSE: , )
The account of one survivor, Nancy Sims, described Pai'ngya's spectral warriors rising from beneath the ground, then a "black devil" emerging from the rifle. The spirit wore a flowing black gown and the skull of a strange, large animal. The skull's jaw opened and screamed with "such a sound as if the very ether had been torn". (PROSE: )
However, Pai'ngya said the dakina deserted the gun (taking with it the cartouche ordinarily stamped on converted rifles) in late December 1890, just before the massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. (PROSE: ) The Book of the War suggested that A'daltem Ano'nde was the earliest Remote totem-weapon. (PROSE: {{cs|The Book of the War (novel)|namedpart=Weaponstores]])
== External links ==
Category:Handheld weapons
Category:Totems