I think the Reverend was a mite mixed up about 'counting coup'. This was considered exceptionally brave to whack an enemy over the head with a 'coup stick' instead of killing him, and doing such earned eagle feathers as a symbol of bravery, but so did killing your enemy. The way the feather was painted or cut, depending on tribe, indicated the deed that earned it.
The meaning of head dress feathers
The meaning of different birds' feathers.
A group of Metis were attacked by Sioux while in camp. The Metis used Red River Carts and hunted for the Fur companies (Northwest Fur and Hudson's Bay Company). As such, they were crack shots, and handed the Sioux their arses during several separate attacks on the camp. When that little dust-up was over, the Sioux never again attacked the Metis.
The Chippewa (Ojibway), displaced by the Eastern tribes moving west, in turn displaced the Sioux from the lake country of Northern Minnesota and most of the pothole country (glacial moraine) of Northern and Northeast North Dakota. While that did not cause so much of a scrap, the Sioux later got horses and became the prairie warriors they were because of that displacement.
Well, the preacher had it wrong.
Ya think?
He also claimed the American Indians never wasted anything in lived in pure harmony with nature. He was a bit flustered when I described “Buffalo Jump, Montana.”
He recovered and claimed they gathered everything from the animals they ran off the cliff.