made ready for the visiting chiefs, had given us some strips of venison.
We were toasting them at a fire we had made close to a creek, to stay
our appetites. My father, who was Keeper of the Smoke for that
occasion,--I was immensely proud of him,--saw the Lenape boy watching us
out of the tail of his eye, and motioned to me with his hand that I
should make him welcome. My father spoke with his hand so that White
Quiver should understand--" The Mound-Builder made with his own thumb
and forefinger the round sign of the Sun Father, and then the upturned
palm to signify that all things should be as between brothers. "I was
perfectly willing to do as my father said, for, except Ongyatasse, I had
never seen any one who pleased me so much as the young stranger. But
either because he thought the invitation should have come from himself
as the leader of the band, or because he was a little jealous of our
interest in White Quiver, Ongyatasse tossed me a word over his shoulder,
'We play with no crop-heads.'
"That was not a true word, for the Lenni-Lenape do not crop the head
until they go on the war-path, and White Quiver's hair lay along his
shoulders, well oiled, with bright bits of shell tied in it, glittering
as he walked. Also it is the rule of the Tellings that one must feed the
stranger. But me, I was never a Name-Seeker. I was happy to stand fourth
from Ongyatasse in the order of our running. For the rest, my brothers
used to say that I was the tail and Ongyatasse wagged me.
"Whether he had heard the words or not, the young Lenape saw me stutter
in my invitation. There might have been a quiver in his face,--at my
father's gesture he had turned toward me,--but there was none in his
walking. He came straight on toward our fire and _through_ it. Three
strides beyond it he drank at the creek as though that had been his only
object, and back through the fire to his father. I could see red marks
on his ankles where the fire had bitten him, but he never so much as
looked at them, nor at us any more than if we had been trail-grass. He
stood at his father's side and the drums were beginning. Around the
great mound came the Grand Council with their feather robes and the tall
headdresses, up the graded way to the Town House, as though all the gay
weeds in Big Meadow were walking. It was the great spectacle of the
year, but it was spoiled for all our young band by the sight of a slim
youth shaking off our fire, as if it had been dew, from his
reddened ankles.
"You see," said the Mound-Builder, "it was much worse for us because we
admired him immensely, and Ongyatasse, who liked nothing better than
being kind to people, couldn't help seeing that he could have made a
much better point for himself by doing the honors of the village to this
chief's son, instead of their both going around with their chins in the
air pretending not to see one another.
"The Lenni-Lenape won the permission they had come to ask for, to pass
through the territory of the Tallegewi, under conditions that were made
by Well-Praised, our war-chief; a fat man, a wonderful orator, who never
took a straight course where he could find a cunning one. What those
conditions were you shall hear presently. At the time, we boys were
scarcely interested. That very summer we began to meet small parties of
strangers drifting through the woods, as silent and as much at home in
them as foxes. But the year had come around to the Moon of Sap Beginning
before we met White Quiver again.
"A warm spell had rotted the ice on the rivers, followed by two or three
days of sharp cold and a tracking snow. We had been out with Ongyatasse
to look at our traps, and then the skin-smooth surface of the river
beguiled us.
"We came racing home close under the high west bank where the ice was
thickest, but as we neared Bent Bar, Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back
turned toward the trail that cut down to the ford between the points of
Hanging Wood. The ice must have rotted more than we guessed, for halfway
across, Ongyatasse dropped through it like a pebble into a pot-hole.
Next to him was Tiakens, grandson of Well-Praised, and between me and
Tiakens a new boy from Painted Turtle. I heard the splash and shout of
Tiakens following Ongyatasse,--of course, he said afterward that he
would have gone to the bottom with him rather than turn back, but I
doubt if he could have stopped himself,--and the next thing I knew the
Painted Turtle boy was hitting me in the nose for stopping him, and
Kills Quickly, who had not seen what was happening, had crashed into us
from behind. We lay all sprawled in a heap while the others hugged the
banks, afraid to add their weight to the creaking ice, and Ongyatasse
was beating about in the rotten sludge, trying to find a place firm
enough to climb out on.
"We had seen both boys disappear for an instant as the ice gave under
them, but even when we saw them come to the surface, with Ongyatasse
holding Tiakens by the hair, we hardly grasped what had happened. The
edge of the ice-cake had taken Tiakens under the chin and he was
unconscious. If Ongyatasse had let go of him he would have been carried
under the ice by the current, and that would have been the last any one
would have seen of him until the spring thaw. But as fast as Ongyatasse
tried to drag their double weight onto the ice, it broke, and before the
rest of us had thought of anything to do the cold would have cramped
him. I saw Ongyatasse stuffing Tiakens's hair into his mouth so as to
leave both his hands free, and then there was a running gasp of
astonishment from the rest of the band, as a slim figure shot out of
Dark Woods, skimming and circling like a swallow. We had heard of the
snowshoes of the Lenni-Lenape, but this was the first time we had seen
them. For a moment we were so taken up with the wonder of his darting
pace, that it was not until we saw him reaching his long shoeing-pole to
Ongyatasse across the ice, that we realized what he was doing. He had
circled about until he had found ice that held, and kicking off his
snowshoes, he stretched himself flat on it. I knew enough to catch him
by the ankles--even then I couldn't help wondering if the scar was still
there, for we knew instantly who he was--and somebody caught my feet,
spreading our weight as much as possible. Over the bridge we made,
Ongyatasse and Tiakens, who had come to himself by this time, crawled
out on firm ice. In a very few minutes we had stripped them of their wet
clothing and were rubbing the cramp out of their legs.
"Ongyatasse, dripping as he was, pushed us aside and went over to White
Quiver, who was stooping over, fastening his snowshoes. It seemed to
give him a great deal of trouble, but at last he raised his head.
"'This day I take my life at your hands,' said Ongyatasse.
"'Does Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back take so much from a Crop-Head?'
said the Lenni-Lenape in good Tallegewi, which shows how much they knew
of us already and how they began to hate us.
"But when he was touched, Ongyatasse had no equal for highness.
"'Along with my life I would take friendship too, if it were offered,'
he said, and smiled, shivering as he was, in a way we knew so well who
had never resisted it. We could see the smile working on White Quiver
like a spell. Ongyatasse put an arm over the Lenape's shoulders.
"'Where the life is, the heart is also,' he said, 'and if the feet of
Ongyatasse do not turn back from the trail they have taken, neither does
his heart.' From his neck he slipped off his amulet of white deer's horn
which brought him his luck in hunting, and threw it around the
other's neck.
"'Ongyatasse, you have given away your luck!' cried Tiakens, whose head
was a little light with the blow the ice-cake had given him.
"'Both the luck and the life of Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back are safe
in the hands of a Lenni-Lenape,' said White Quiver, as high as one of
his own fir trees, but he loosed a little smile at the corner of his
mouth as he turned to Tiakens, chattering like a squirrel. 'Unless you
find a fire soon, Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back will have need of
another friend,' he said; and picking up his shoeing-pole, he was off in
the wood again like a weasel darting to cover. We heard the swish of the
boughs, heavy with new snow, and then silence.
"But if we had not been able to forget him after the first meeting, you
can guess how often we talked of him in the little time that was left
us. It was not long. Tiakens nearly died of the chill he got, and the
elders were stirred up at last to break up our band before it led to
more serious folly. Ongyatasse was hurried off with a hunting-party to
Maumee, and I was sent to my mother's brother at Flint Ridge to learn
stone-working.
"Not that I objected," said the Tallega. "I have the arrow-maker's
hand." He showed the children his thumb set close to the wrist, the long
fingers and the deep-cupped palm with the callus running down the
middle. "All my family were clever craftsmen," said the Tallega. "You
could tell my uncle's points anywhere you found them by the fine, even
flaking, and my mother was the best feather-worker in Three Towns,"--he
ran his hands under the folds of his mantle and held it out for the
children to admire the pattern. "Uncle gave me this banner stone as the
wage of my summer's work with him, and I thought myself overpaid at
the time."
"But what did you do?" asked both children at once.
"Everything, from knocking out the crude flakes with a stone hammer to
shaping points with a fire-hardened tip of deer's horn. The ridge was
miles long and free to any one who chose to work it, but most people
preferred to buy the finished points and blades. There was a good trade,
too, in turtle-backs." The Tallega poked about in the loose earth at the
top of the mound and brought up a round, flattish flint about the size
of a man's hand, that showed disk-shaped flakings arranged like the
marking of a turtle-shell. "They were kept workable by being buried in
the earth, and made into knives or razors or whatever was needed," he
explained.
"That summer we had a tremendous trade in broad arrow-points, such as
are used for war or big game. We sold to all the towns along the north
from Maumee to the headwaters of the Susquehanna, and we sold to the
Lenni-Lenape. They would appear suddenly on the trails with bundles of
furs or copper, of which they had a great quantity, and when they were
satisfied with what was offered for it, they would melt into the woods
again like quail. My uncle used to ask me a great many questions about
them which I remembered afterward. But at the time--you see there was a
girl, the daughter of my uncle's partner. She was all dusky red like the
tall lilies at Big Meadow, and when she ran in the village races with
her long hair streaming, they called her Flying Star.
"She used to bring our food to us when we opened up a new working, a
wolf's cry from the old,--sizzling hot deer meat and piles of boiled
corn on bark platters, and meal cakes dipped in maple syrup. I stayed on
till the time of tall weeds as my father had ordered, and then for a
while longer for the new working, which interested me tremendously.
First we brought hickory wood and built a fire on the exposed surface of
the ridge. Then we splintered the hot stone by throwing water on it, and
dug out the splinters. In two or three days we had worked clean through
the ledge of flint to the limestone underneath. This we also burnt with
fire, after we had protected the fresh flint by plastering it with clay.
When we had cleared a good piece of the ledge, we could hammer it off
with the stone sledges and break it up small for working. It was as good
sport to me as moose-hunting or battle.
"We had worked a man's length under the ledge, and one day I looked up
with the sun in my eyes, as it reddened toward the west, and saw
Ongyatasse standing under a hickory tree. He was dressed for running,
and around his mouth and on both his cheeks was the white Peace Mark. I
made the proper sign to him as to one carrying orders.
"'You are to come with me,' he said. 'We carry a pipe to Miami.'"
[Illustration]
IX
HOW THE LENNI-LENAPE CAME FROM SHINAKI AND THE TALLEGEWI FOUGHT THEM:
THE SECOND PART OF THE MOUND-BUILDER'S STORY
"Two things I thought as I looked at Never-Turns-Back, black against the
sun. First, that it could be no very great errand that he ran upon, or
they would never have trusted it to a youth without honors; and next,
that affairs at Three Towns must be serious, indeed, if they could spare
no older man for pipe-carrying. A third came to me in the night as I
considered how little agreement there was between these two, which was
that there must be more behind this sending than a plain call
to Council.
"Ongyatasse told me all he knew as we lay up the next night at Pigeon
Roost. There had not been time earlier, for he had hurried off to carry
his pipe to the village of Flint Ridge as soon as he had called me, and
we had padded out on the Scioto Cut-off at daybreak.
"What he said went back to the conditions that were made by Well-Praised
for the passing of the Lenni-Lenape through our territory. They were to
go in small parties, not more than twenty fighting men to any one of
them. They were to change none of our landmarks, enter none of our towns
without permission from the Town Council, and to keep between the lake
and the great bend of the river, which the Lenni-Lenape called
Allegheny, but was known to us as the River of the Tallegewi.
"Thus they had begun to come, few at first, like the trickle of melting
ice in the moon of the Sun Returning, and at the last, like grasshoppers
in the standing corn. They fished out our rivers and swept up the game
like fire in the forest. Three Towns sent scouts toward Fish River who
reported that the Lenape swarmed in the Dark Wood, that they came on
from Shinaki thick as their own firs. Then the Three Towns took council
and sent a pipe to the Eagle villages, to the Wolverines and the Painted
Turtles. These three kept the country of the Tallegewi on the north from
Maumee to the headwaters of the Allegheny, and Well-Praised was their
war leader.
"Still," said the Mound-Builder, "except that he was the swiftest
runner, I couldn't understand why they had chosen an untried youth for
pipe-carrying."
He felt in a pouch of kit fox with the tail attached, which hung from
the front of his girdle like the sporran of a Scotch Highlander. Out of
it he drew a roll of birch bark painted with juice of poke-berries. The
Tallega spread it on the grass, weighting one end with the turtle-back,
as he read, with the children looking over his shoulder.
[Illustration: Well-Praised, war-chief of the Eagle Clan to the Painted
Turtles;--Greeting.]
[Illustration: Come to the Council House at Three Towns.]
[Illustration: On the fifth day of the Moon Halting.]
[Illustration: We meet as Brothers.]
"An easy scroll to read," said the Tallega, as the released edges of the
birch-bark roll clipped together. "But there was more to it than that.
There was an arrow play; also a question that had to be answered in a
certain way. Ongyatasse did not tell me what they were, but I learned at
the first village where we stopped.
"This is the custom of pipe-carrying. When we approached a settlement we
would show ourselves to the women working in the fields or to children
playing, anybody who would go and carry word to the Head Man that the
Pipe was coming. It was in order to be easily recognized that Ongyatasse
wore the Peace Mark."
The Mound-Builder felt in his pouch for a lump of chalky white clay with
which he drew a wide mark around his mouth, and two cheek-marks like a
parenthesis. It would have been plain as far as one could see him.
"That was so the villages would know that one came with Peace words in
his mouth, and make up their minds quickly whether they wanted to speak
with him. Sometimes when there was quarreling between the clans they
would not receive a messenger. But even in war-times a man's life was
safe as long as he wore the White Mark."
"Ours is a white flag," said Oliver.
The Mound-Builder nodded.
"All civilized peoples have much the same customs," he agreed, "but the
Lenni-Lenape were savages.
"We lay that night at Pigeon Roost in the Scioto Bottoms with wild
pigeons above us thick as blackberries on the vines. They woke us going
out at dawn like thunder, and at mid-morning they still darkened the
sun. We cut into the Kaskaskia Trail by a hunting-trace my uncle had
told us of, and by the middle of the second day we had made the first
Eagle village. When we were sure we had been seen, we sat down and
waited until the women came bringing food. Then the Head Man came in
full dress and smoked with us."
Out of his pouch the Tallega drew the eagle-shaped ceremonial pipe of
red pipestone, and when he had fitted it to the feathered stem, blew a
salutatory whiff of smoke to the Great Spirit.
"Thus we did, and later in the Council House there were ceremonies and
exchange of messages. It was there, when all seemed finished, that I saw
the arrow play and heard the question.
"Ongyatasse drew an arrow from his quiver and scraped it. There was
dried blood on the point, which makes an arrow untrue to its aim, but it
was no business for a youth to be cleaning his arrows before the elders
of the Town House; therefore, I took notice that this was the meat of
his message. Ongyatasse scraped and the Head Man watched him.
"'There are many horned heads in the forest this season,' he said at
last.
"'Very many,' said Ongyatasse; 'they come into the fields and eat up the
harvest.'
"'In that case,' said the Head Man, 'what should a man do?'
"'What can he do but let fly at them with a broad arrow?' said
Ongyatasse, putting up his own arrow, as a man puts up his work when it
is finished.
"But as the arrow was not clean, and as the Lenni-Lenape had shot all
the deer, if I had not known that Well-Praised had devised both question
and answer, it would have seemed all foolishness. There had been no
General Council since the one at which the treaty of passage was made
with the Lenni-Lenape; therefore I knew that the War-Chief had planned
this sending of dark messages in advance, messages which no
Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back had any right to understand.
"'But why the Painted Scroll?' I said to Ongyatasse; for if, as I
supposed, the real message was in the question and answer, I could not
see why there should still be a Council called.
"'The scroll,' said my friend, 'is for those who are meant to be fooled
by it.'
"'But who should be fooled?'
"'Whoever should stop us on the trail.'
"'My thoughts do not move so fast as my feet, O my friend,' said I. 'Who
would stop a pipe-carrier of the Tallegewi?" "'What if it should be the
Horned Heads?' said Ongyatasse.
"That was a name we had given the Lenni-Lenape on account of the
feathers they tied to the top of their hair, straight up like horns
sprouting. Of course, they could have had no possible excuse for
stopping us, being at peace, but I began to put this together with
things Ongyatasse had told me, particularly the reason why no older man
than he could be spared from Three Towns. He said the men were
rebuilding the stockade and getting in the harvest.
"The middle one of Three Towns was walled, a circling wall of earth half
man high, and on top of that, a stockade of planted posts and wattles.
It was the custom in war-times to bring the women and the corn into the
walled towns from the open villages. But there had been peace so long in
Tallega that our stockade was in great need of rebuilding, and so were
the corn bins. Well-Praised was expecting trouble with the Lenni-Lenape,
I concluded; but I did not take it very seriously. The Moon of Stopped
Waters was still young in the sky, and the fifth day of the Moon Halting
seemed very far away to me.
"We were eleven days in all carrying the Pipe to the Miami villages, and
though they fed us well at the towns where we stopped, we were as thin
as snipe at the end of it. It was our first important running, you see,
and we wished to make a record. We followed the main trails which
followed the watersheds. Between these, we plunged down close-leaved,
sweating tunnels of underbrush, through tormenting clouds of flies. In
the bottoms the slither of our moccasins in the black mud would wake
clumps of water snakes, big as a man's head, that knotted themselves
together in the sun. There is a certain herb which snakes do not love
which we rubbed on our ankles, but we could hear them rustle and hiss as
we ran, and the hot air was all a-click and a-glitter with insects'
wings; ... also there were trumpet flowers, dusky-throated, that made me
think of my girl at Flint Ridge... Then we would come out on long ridges
where oak and hickory shouldered one another like the round-backed
billows of the lake after the storm. We made our record. And for all
that we were not so pressed nor so overcome with the dignity of our
errand that we could not spare one afternoon to climb up to the
Wabashiki Beacon. It lies on the watershed between the headwaters of the
Maumee and the Wabash, a cone-shaped mound and a circling wall within
which there was always wood piled for the beacon light, the Great Gleam,
the Wabashiki, which could be seen the country round for a two days'
journey. The Light-Keeper was very pleased with our company and told us
old tales half the night long, about how the Beacon had been built and
how it was taken by turns by the Round Heads and the Painted Turtles. He
asked us also if we had seen anything of a party of Lenni-Lenape which
he had noted the day before, crossing the bottoms about an hour after he
had sighted us. He thought they must have gone around by Crow Creek,
avoiding the village, and that we should probably come up with them the
next morning, which proved to be the case.
"They rose upon us suddenly as we dropped down to the east fork of the
Maumee, and asked us rudely where we were going. They had no right, of
course, but they were our elders, to whom it is necessary to be
respectful, and they were rather terrifying, with their great bows, tall
as they were, stark naked except for a strip of deerskin, and their
feathers on end like the quills of an angry porcupine. We had no weapons
ourselves, except short hunting-bows,--one does not travel with peace on
his mouth and a war weapon at his back,--so we answered truly, and
Ongyatasse read the scroll to them, which I thought unnecessary.
"'Now, I think,' said my friend, when the Lenape had left us with some
question about a hunting-party, which they had evidently invented to
excuse their rudeness, 'that it was for such as these that the scroll
was written.' But we could not understand why Well-Praised should have
gone to all that trouble to let the Lenni-Lenape know that he had called
a Council.
"When we had smoked our last pipe, we were still two or three days from
Three Towns, and we decided to try for a cut-off by a hunting-trail
which Ongyatasse had been over once, years ago, with his father. These
hunting-traces go everywhere through the Tallegewi Country. You can tell
them by the way they fork from the main trails and, after a day or two,
thin into nothing. We traveled well into the night from the place that
Ongyatasse remembered, so as to steer by the stars, and awoke to the
pleasant pricking of adventure. But we had gone half the morning before
we began to be sure that we were followed.