The story of this Iowa chief is the Indian Damon and Pythias tale of the frontier of the 1830s.

The friendship of two young Iowa or Sioux boys was traditional. As one early ethnologist wrote: "Scarcely a Dakota [Sioux] young man could be found who had not some special friend or koda. This was an arrangement of giving themselves to each other, of the David and Jonathan kind. They exchanged bows, or guns, or blankets... what one asked of the other he gave him; nothing could be denied."

When he was a young boy Shauhaunapotinia found his koda in his own village. They hunted together, played games together, and dreamed together of the great days to come when they would go on horse-stealing raids among the Pawnee or fight the Sioux or the savage Osage in the north.

They were in their teens when Shauhaunapotinia's friend was killed and scalped. The grief- stricken young brave blackened his face in mourning and after a long fast slipped out of the village.

He trailed the Sioux raiders for over a hundred miles before he found their village in a deep valley. Shauhaunapotinia painted himself and his pony for war, then, leaning far over the side of his horse's neck, he rode into the village at top speed. The Sioux, who probably thought it was a young boy playing war, ignored him. The Iowa brave slipped off his horse onto the back of a Sioux warrior sitting outside his lodge. Before the alarm was sounded he had taken the Sioux's scalp, and then rode to the outskirts of the village where he killed two more.

Personal bravery above everything else was the ruling passion of every Indian nation, and Shauhaunapotinia's solitary raid made him a warrior of distinction. The council of his people selected him to be a member of the Iowa delegation who visited Washington in the winter of 1836-1837.