Tukup was eager to tell Hendricks the stories of his great deeds. A tribal warrior's honor is reputation, and so a tribal warrior wants his deeds to be known. Often, as we have seen in Tukup's case, these deeds entered into the oral history of the tribe or clan. It is of just such warrior deeds that Achilles sings upon the lyre, “singing of men's fame” (Iliad: 9.189). Fame, kleos, the stuff of heroic poetry.

But usually it was the warrior himself who told his deeds, just as 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg have sung their gangsta deeds on CDs and iTunes. Such stories about warrior deeds were essential to the whole idea of the warrior and his ambition. At Yanomami feasts, Helena Valero remembers, the old men would tell of their great deeds, their victories, the enemies they had killed and their head- clubbing contests (no. 33: 178– 79). The Maasai called such a story ol kilempe, the song of a warrior who has killed a man (Berntsen 1979: 229). Among many North American tribes telling warrior deeds was known as “counting coup.” To strike an enemy with a coup stick was to “count coup”; to tell of such great exploits was also to “count coup.”

These stories were told very often. Assiniboine Indians, for example, upon returning from a successful raid, would be invited into tipi after tipi to feast and tell about their deeds (Rodnick 1938: 43). As Mishkin said of the Kiowas, “The warrior who has been successful in accomplishing certain heroic acts must capitalize upon them immediately. He does not automatically attain [high status] by merely performing his deeds […]. Extensive publicity […] is essential” (Mishkin 1992: 40). Crow clans sometimes staged competitions, to see which clan could count the greatest number of warlike deeds. One old Crow warrior remembered just such a contest between Crow clans: