Native American Watercolors by Craig L. White
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Among many of the Plains tribes there were "crazy" warriors who did everything backwards. The Cheyenne called them Contrary Ones; the Crow Indians, Crazy Dogs Wishing to Die. The Comanche, too, had a few of these men, called pukutsi.
Sources indicate that among the Comanche, any man brave enough and desiring to do so could become a pukutsi. He carried a buffalo-scrotum rattle in his hand and would go about the camp singing, no matter what else might be going on. Everything he did was in inversion, but no one ever molested a pukutsi, because he was so recklessly brave.
He wore a long sash over his shoulder and rolled up under his arm. In battle, he rolled out his sash, stuck the free end into the ground with an arrow, and there took his stand. With bow in one hand and rattle in the other, he stood singing, tethered by his sash. He neither fought nor charged, but sang his songs until victory was won or death took him. Only a friend could come and free him. Should he waver under the stress and danger of the battle and release himself, he was subject to public ridicule, or the ultimate end, death inflicted by warriors of his own tribe.
a Pukutse is afraid of nothing. there were not many men such as these among the Comanche.
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