About four months ago I witnessed a fight between a party of hunters form the Redfoot band of Turpis and a party of hunters form the Lower Madden band of Turpis. Fights between the different bands of turpis are nothing new; in fact if they weren’t fighting each other they would be attacking us.

This was also not the first fight between them I’ve seen, but this one was different. Usually it is a free for all, with a lot of punching and kicking, but not too much dying. This time the Redfeet were swinging clubs and stabbing with spears. The use of weapons caught the Lower Maddens off guard and several of them died in the first minutes of the fight.

The Lower Maddens fell back and regrouped. When they came charging back they were welding clubs and daggers. With both sides armed, the fighting resumed and there we causalities on both sides. They fought for half an hour before the Redfeet finally over powered the Lower Maddens.

This was the second thing that made this fight different. Instead of chasing the losers off and claiming their territory, the Redfeet took prisoners. They tied them up and marched them back towards their camp. I have heard of Turpis taking human prisoners before, but never other Turpis. I followed them for a while, making sure I wasn’t seen, and saw that the captors were treating their prisoners fairly well. At one point they even stopped and gave the prisoners drinks from the prisoners’ water skins.

I had to stop following them when they reached their camp. I’m not sure what happened after that. I made my way back to my camp and decided I should move it a little farther away from the Redfeet village.