a few minutes later. A porcupine which we saw, asleep upon a log, woke
up and came running from behind us. We thought of the Lenni-Lenape.
Where a bare surface of rock across our path made it possible to turn
out without leaving a track, we stole back a few paces and waited.
Presently we made out, through the thick leaves, a youth, about our age
we supposed, for his head was not cropped and he was about the height of
Ongyatasse. When we had satisfied ourselves that he was alone, we took
pleasure in puzzling him. As soon as he missed our tracks in the trail,
he knew that he was discovered and played quarry to our fox very
craftily. For an hour or two we stalked one another between the buckeye
boles, and then I stepped on a rotten log which crumbled and threw me
noisily. The Lenape let fly an arrow in our direction. We were nearing a
crest of a ridge where the underbrush thinned out, and as soon as we had
a glimpse of his naked legs slipping from tree to tree, Ongyatasse made
a dash for him. We raced like deer through the still woods, Ongyatasse
gaining on the flying figure, and I about four laps behind him. A low
branch swished blindingly across my eyes for a moment, and when I could
look again, the woods were suddenly still and empty.
"I dropped instantly, for I did not know what this might mean, and
creeping cautiously to the spot where I had last seen them, I saw the
earth opening in a sharp, deep ravine, at the bottom of which lay
Ongyatasse with one leg crumpled under him. I guessed that the Lenape
must have led him to the edge and then slipped aside just in time to let
the force of Ongyatasse's running carry him over. Without waiting to
plan, I began to climb down the steep side of the ravine. About halfway
down I was startled by a rustling below, and, creeping along the bottom
of the bluff, I saw the Lenni-Lenape with his knife between his teeth,
within an arm's length of my friend. I cried out, and in a foolish
effort to save him, I must have let go of the ledge to which I clung.
The next thing I knew I was lying half-stunned, with a great many pains
in different parts of me, at the bottom of the ravine, almost within
touch of Ongyatasse and a young Lenape with an amulet of white deer's
horn about his neck and, across his back, what had once been a white
quiver. He was pouring water from a birch-bark cup upon my friend, and
as soon as he saw that my eyes were opened he came and offered me a
drink. There did not seem to be anything to say, so we said nothing, but
presently, when I could sit up, he washed the cut on the back of my
head, and then he showed me that Ongyatasse's knee was out of place, and
said that we ought to pull it back before he came to himself.
"I crawled over--I had saved myself by falling squarely on top of White
Quiver so that nothing worse happened to me than sore ribs and a finger
broken--and took my friend around the body while our enemy pulled the
knee, and Ongyatasse groaned aloud and came back. Then White Quiver tied
up my finger in a splint of bark, and we endured our pains and
said nothing.
"We were both prisoners of the Lenape. So we considered ourselves; we
waited to see what he would do about it. Toward evening he went off for
an hour and returned with a deer which he dressed very skillfully and
gave us to eat. Then, of the wet hide, he made a bandage for
Ongyatasse's knee, which shrunk as it dried and kept down the swelling.
"'Now I shall owe you my name as well as my life,' said Ongyatasse, for
if his knee had not been properly attended, that would have been the end
of his running.
"'Then your new name would be Well-Friended,' said the Lenape, and he
made a very good story of how I had come tumbling down on both of them.
We laughed, but Ongyatasse had another question.
"'There was peace on my mouth and peace between Lenni-Lenape and
Tallegewi. Why should you chase us?'
"'The Tallegewi send a Pipe to the Three Clans. Will you swear that the
message that went with it had nothing to do with the Lenni-Lenape?'
"'What should two boys know of a call to Council?' said Ongyatasse, and
showed him the birch-bark scroll, to which White Quiver paid no
attention.
"'There is peace between us, and a treaty, the terms of which were made
by the Tallegewi, all of which we have kept. We have entered no town
without invitation. When one of our young men stole a maiden of yours we
returned her to her village.' He went on telling many things, new to us,
of the highness of the Lenni-Lenape. 'All this was agreed at the Three
Towns by Cool Waters,' said he. 'Now comes a new order. We may not enter
the towns at all. The treaty was for camping privileges in any one place
for the space of one moon. Now, if we are three days in one place, we
are told that we must move on. The Lenni-Lenape are not Two-Talkers. If
we wear peace on our mouths we wear it in our hearts also.'
"'There is peace between your people and mine, and among the Tallegewi,
peace.'
"'So,' said White Quiver. 'Then why do they rebuild their stockades and
fetch arrow-stone from far quarries? And why do they call a Council in
the Moon of the Harvest?'
"I remembered the good trade my uncle, the arrow-maker, had had that
summer, and was amazed at his knowledge of it, so I answered as I had
been taught. 'If I were a Lenape,' said I, 'and thought that the
Councils of the Tallegewi threatened my people, I would know what those
Councils were if I made myself a worm in the roof-tree to overhear it.'
"'Aye,' he said, 'but you are only a Tallega.'
"He was like that with us, proud and humble by turns. Though he was a
naked savage, traveling through our land on sufferance, he could make us
crawl in our hearts for the Tallegewi. He suspected us of much evil,
most of which was true as it turned out; yet all the time we lay at the
bottom of the ravine, for the most part helpless, he killed every day
for us, and gathered dry grass to make a bed for Ongyatasse.
"We talked no more of the Council or of our errand, but as youths will,
we talked of highness, and of big game in Shinaki, and of the ways of
the Tallegewi, of which for the most part he was scornful.
"Corn he allowed us as a great advantage, but of our towns he doubted
whether they did not make us fat and Two-Talkers.
"'Town is a trade-maker,' he said; 'men who trade much for things, will
also trade for honor.'
"'The Lenni-Lenape carry their honor in their hands,' said Ongyatasse,
'but the Tallegewi carry theirs in their forehead.'
"He meant," said the Mound-Builder, turning to the children, "that the
Lenni-Lenape fought for what they held most dear, and the Tallegewi
schemed and plotted for it. That was as we were taught. With us, the
hand is not lifted until the head has spoken. But as it turned out,
between Tallegewi and Lenape, the fighters had the best of it."
He sighed, making the salutation to the dead as he looked off, across
the burial-grounds, to the crumbling heap of the god-house.
"But I don't understand," said Dorcas; "were Ongyatasse and White Quiver
friends or enemies?"
"They were two foes who loved one another, and though their tribes fell
into long and bloody war, between these two there was highness and, at
the end, most wonderful kindness. The first time that we got Ongyatasse
to his feet and he found that his knee, though feeble, was as good as
ever, he said to White Quiver, leaning on his shoulder,--
"'Concerning the call to Council, there was more to it than was written
on the scroll, the meaning of which was hidden from me who carried it.'
"'Which is no news to me,' said the Lenni-Lenape; 'also,' he said, 'the
message was arranged beforehand, for it required no answer.'
"I asked him how he knew that, and he mocked at me.
"'Any time these five days you could have gone forward with the answer
had it been important for you to get back to Cool Waters!'
"That was true. I could have left Ongyatasse and gone on alone, but
nothing that had happened so far had made us think that we must get back
quickly. White Quiver asked us one day what reason Well-Praised had
given for requiring that the Lenni-Lenape should pass through the
country with not more than twenty fighting men in the party. To save the
game, we told him, which seemed to us reasonable; though I think from
that hour we began to feel that the Tallegewi, with all their walled
towns and monuments, had been put somehow in the wrong by the wild
tribes of Shinaki.
"We stayed on in the ravine, waiting on Ongyatasse's knee, until we saw
the new rim of the Halting Moon curled up like a feather. The leaves of
the buckeye turned clear yellow and the first flock of wild geese went
over. We waited one more day for White Quiver to show us a short cut to
the Maumee Trail, and just when we had given him up, we were aware of a
strange Lenape in warpaint moving among the shadows. He stood off from
us with his arms folded and his face was as bleak as a winter-bitten wood.
"'Wash the lie from your mouth,' he said, 'and follow.'
"Without a word he turned and began to move from us through the smoky
light with which the wood was filling. His head was cropped for
war--that was why we did not know him--and along the shoulder he turned
toward us was the long scrape of a spear-point. That was why we
followed, saying nothing. Toward daylight the lame knee began to give
trouble. White Quiver came back and put his shoulder under Ongyatasse's,
so we moved forward, wordlessly. Birds awoke in the woods, and hoarfrost
lay white on the crisped grasses.
"On a headland from which the lake glinted white as a blade of flint on
the horizon, we waited the sunrise. Smoke arose, from Wabashiki, from
the direction of the Maumee settlements, from the lake shore towns; tall
plumes of smoke shook and threatened. Curtly, while we ate, White Quiver
told us what had happened; how the Tallegewi, in violation of the
treaty, had fallen suddenly on scattered bands of the Lenni-Lenape and
all but exterminated them. The Tallegewi said that it was because they
had discovered that the Lenni-Lenape had plotted to fall upon our towns,
as soon as the corn was harvested, and take them. But White Quiver
thought that the whole thing was a plan of Well-Praised from the
beginning. He had been afraid to refuse passage to the Lenape, on
account of their great numbers, and had arranged to have them broken up
in small parties so that they could be dealt with separately."
"And which was it?" Oliver wished to know.
"It was a thousand years ago," said the Mound-Builder. "Who remembers?
But we were ashamed, my friend and I, for we understood now that the
secret meaning of our message about the Horned Heads had been that the
Tallegewi should fall upon the Lenape wherever they found them. You
remember that it was part of the question and answer that they 'came
into the fields and ate up the harvest.'
"There might have been a plot, but, on the other hand, we knew that the
painted scroll had been a blind to make the Lenni-Lenape think that the
Tallegewi would do nothing until they had taken counsel. But we had
carried a war message with peace upon our mouths and we were ashamed
before White Quiver. We had talked much highness with him, and besides,
we loved him. As it turned out we were not wrong in thinking he loved
us. As we stood making out the points of direction for the trail,
Ongyatasse's knee gave under him, and as White Quiver put out his arm
without thinking, a tremor passed over them. They stood so leaning each
on each for a moment. 'Your trail lies thus ... and thus ...' said the
Lenape, 'but I do not know what you will find at the end of it.' Then he
loosed his arm from my friend's shoulder, took a step back, and the
forest closed about him.
"We were two days more on the trail, though we did not go directly to
Cool Waters. Some men of the Painted Turtles that we met, told us the
fight had passed from the neighborhood of the towns and gathered at Bent
Bar Crossing. Our fathers were both there, which we made an excuse for
joining them. At several places we saw evidences of fighting. All the
bands of Lenni-Lenape that were not too far in our territory had come
hurrying back toward Fish River, and other bands, as the rumor of
fighting spread, came down out of Shinaki like buzzards to a carcass.
From Cool Waters to Namae-sippu, the Dark Wood was full of war-cries and
groaning. At Fish River the Tallegewi fell in hundreds ... there is a
mound there ... at Bent Bar the Lenni-Lenape held the ford, keeping a
passage open for flying bands that were pressed up from the south by the
Painted Turtles. Ongyatasse went about getting together his old band
from the Three Towns, fretting because we were not allowed to take the
front of the battle.
"Three days the fight raged about the crossing. The Lenni-Lenape were
the better bowmen; their long arrows carried heavier points. Some that I
found in the breasts of my friends, I had made, and it made my own heart
hot within me. The third day, men from the farther lake towns came up
the river in their canoes, and the Lenape, afraid of being cut off from
their friends in the Dark Wood, broke across the river. As soon as they
began to go, our young men, who feared the fight would be over without
them, could not be held back. Ongyatasse at our head, we plunged into
the river after them.
"Even in flight the Lenni-Lenape were most glorious fighters. They dived
among the canoes to hack holes in the bottoms, and rising from under the
sides they pulled the paddlers bodily into the river. We were mad with
our first fight, we youngsters, for we let them lead us up over the bank
and straight into ambush. We were the Young-Men-Who-Never-Turned-Back.
"That was a true name for many of us," said the Mound-Builder. "I
remember Ongyatasse's shrill eagle cry above the '_G'we! G'we_!' of the
Lenni-Lenape, and the next thing I knew I was struggling in the river,
bleeding freely from a knife wound, and somebody was pulling me into a
canoe and safety."
"And Ongyatasse--?" The children looked at the low mound between the
Council Place and the God-House.
The Mound-Builder nodded.
"We put our spears together to make a tent over him before the earth was
piled," he said, "and it was good to be able to do even so much as that
for him. For we thought at first we should never find him. He was not on
the river, nor in our side of the Dark Wood, and the elders would not
permit us to go across in search of him. But at daylight the gatherers
of the dead saw something moving from under the mist that hid the
opposite bank of the river. We waited, arrow on bowstring, not knowing
if it were one of our own coming back to us or a Lenape asking for
parley. But as it drew near we saw it was a cropped head, and he towed a
dead Tallega by the hair. Ripples that spread out from his quiet wake
took the sun, and the measured dip of the swimmer's arm was no louder
than the whig of the cooter that paddled in the shallows.
"It had been a true word that Ongyatasse had given his life and his luck
to White Quiver; the Lenape had done his best to give them back again.
As he came ashore with the stiffened form, we saw him take the white
deer amulet from his own neck and fasten it around the neck of
Ongyatasse. Then, disdaining even to make the Peace sign for his own
safe returning, he plunged into the river again, swimming steadily
without haste until the fog hid him."
The Mound-Builder stood up, wrapping his feather mantle about him and
began to move down the slope of the Town Mound, the children following.
There were ever so many things they wished to hear about, which they
hoped he might be going to tell them, but halfway down he turned and
pointed. Over south and east a thin blue film of smoke rose up straight
from the dark forest.
"That's for you, I think. Your friend, the Onondaga, is signaling you;
he knows the end of the story."
Taking hands, the children ran straight in the direction of the smoke
signal, along the trail which opened before them.
[Illustration]
X
THE MAKING OF A SHAMAN: A TELLING OF THE IROQUOIS TRAIL, BY THE ONONDAGA
Down the Mound-Builder's graded way the children ran looking for the
Onondaga. Like all the trail in the Museum Country it covered a vast
tract of country in a very little while, so that it was no time at all
before they came out among high, pine-covered swells, that broke along
the watercourses into knuckly granite headlands. From one of these,
steady puffs of smoke arose, and a moment later they could make out the
figure of an Indian turning his head from side to side as he searched
the surrounding country with the look of eagles. They knew him at once,
by the Medicine bundle at his belt and the slanting Iroquois feather,
for their friend the Onondaga.
"I was looking for you by the lake shore trail," he explained as Oliver
and Dorcas Jane climbed up to him. "You must have come by the
Musking-ham-Mahoning; it drops into the Trade Trail of the Iroquois
yonder,"--he pointed south and east,--"the Great Trail, from the
Mohican-ittuck to the House of Thunder." He meant the Hudson River and
the Falls of Niagara. "Even at our village, which was at the head of the
lake here, we could hear the Young Thunders, shouting from behind the
falls," he told them.
A crooked lake lay below them like a splinter of broken glass between
the headlands. From the far end of it the children could see smoke
rising. "We used to signal our village from here when we went on the
war-trail," said the Onondaga; "we would cut our mark on a tree as we
went out, and as we came back we added the war count. I was looking for
an old score of mine to-day."
"Had it anything to do with the Mound-Builders?" Dorcas wished to know.
"He said you knew the end of that story."
The Onondaga shook his head.
"That was a hundred years before my time, and is a Telling of the
Lenni-Lenape. In the Red Score it is written, the Red Score of the
Lenni-Lenape. When my home was in the village there, the Five Nations
held all the country between the lakes and the Mohican-ittuck. But there
were many small friendly tribes along the borders, Algonquian mostly."
He squatted on his heels beside the fire and felt in his belt for the
pipe and tobacco pouch without which no Telling proceeds properly.
"In my youth," said the Onondaga, "I was very unhappy because I had no
Vision. When my time came I walked in the forest and ate nothing, but
the Mystery would not speak to me. Nine days I walked fasting, and then
my father came to find me under a pine tree, with my eyes sunk in my
head and my ribs like a basket. But because I was ashamed I told him my
Mystery was something that could not be talked about, and so I told
the Shaman.
"My father was pleased because he thought it meant that I was to be a
very great Shaman myself, and the other boys envied me. But in my heart
I was uneasy. I did not know what to make of my life because the Holder
of the Heavens had not revealed himself to me. To one of my friends he
had appeared as an eagle, which meant that he was to be a warrior, keen
and victorious; and to another as a fox, so that he studied cunning; but
without any vision I did not know what to make of myself. My heart was
slack as a wetted bowstring. My father reproached me.
"'The old women had smoke in their eyes,' he said; 'they told me I had a
son, now I see it is a woman child.'
"My mother was kinder. 'Tell me,' she said, 'what evil dream unknots the
cords of your heart?'
"So at last I told her.
"My mother was a wise woman. 'To a dog or a child,' she said, 'one
speaks the first word on the lips, but before a great Shaman one
considers carefully. What is a year of your life to the Holder of the
Heavens? Go into the forest and wait until his message is ripe for you.'
She was a wise woman.
"So I put aside my bow and quiver, and with them all desire of meat and
all thought of killing. With my tomahawk I cut a mark in that chestnut
yonder and buried my weapon at the foot of it. I had my knife, my pipe,
and my fire-stick. Also I felt happy and important because my mother had
made me believe that the Holder of the Heavens thought well of me. I was
giving him a year in which to tell me what to do with my life.
"I turned east, for, I said, from the east light comes. It was an old
trail even in those days. It follows the watershed from the lake to
Oneida, and clears the Mohawk Valley northward. It was the Moon of
Tender Leaves when I set out, and by the time nuts began to ripen I had
come to the lowest hills of the Adirondacks.
"Sometimes I met hunting-parties or women gathering berries, and bought
corn and beans from them, but for the most part I lived on seeds and
roots and wild apples.
"By the time I had been a month or two without killing, the smell of
meat left me. Rabbits ran into my hands, and the mink, stealing along
the edge of the marsh to look for frogs, did not start from me. Deer
came at night to feed on the lily buds on the lake borders. They would
come stealing among the alders and swim far out to soak their coats.
When they had made themselves mosquito-proof, they would come back to
the lily beds and I would swim among them stilly, steering by the red
reflection of my camp-fire in their eyes. When my thought that was not
the thought of killing touched them, they would snort a little and
return to the munching of lilies, and the trout would rise in bubbly
rings under my arms as I floated. But though I was a brother to all the
Earth, the Holder of the Heavens would not speak to me.
"Sometimes, when I had floated half the night between the hollow sky of
stars and its hollow reflection, the Vision seemed to gather on the
surface of the water. It would take shape and turn to the flash of a
loon's wet wing in the dawning, Or I would sit still in the woods until
my thought was as a tree, and the squirrels would take me for a tree and
run over me. Then there would come a strange stir, and the creeping of
my flesh along my spine until the Forest seemed about to speak ... and
suddenly a twig would snap or a jay squawk, and I would be I again, and
the tree a tree....
"It was the first quarter of the Moon of Falling Leaves," said the
Onondaga filling his pipe again and taking a fresh start on his story.
"There was a feel in the air that comes before the snow, but I was very
happy in my camp by a singing creek far up on the Adirondacks, and kept
putting off moving the camp from day to day. And one evening when I came
in from gathering acorns, I discovered that I had had a visitor. Mush of
acorn meal which I had left in my pot had been eaten. That is right, of
course, if the visitor is hungry; but this one had wiped out his tracks
with a leafy bough, which looked like trickery.
"It came into my mind that it might have been one of the Gahonga, the
spirits that dwell in rocks and rivers and make the season fruitful."
"Oh!" cried Dorcas, "Indian fairies! Did you have those?"
"There are spirits in all things," said the Onondaga gravely. "There are
Odowas, who live in the underworld and keep back the evil airs that
bring sickness. You can see the bare places under the pines where they
have their dancing-places. And there are the Gandaiyah who loose wild
things from the traps and bring dew on the strawberry blossoms. But all
these are friendly to man. So I cooked another pot of food and lay down
in my blanket. I sleep as light as a wild thing myself. In the middle of
the night I was wakened by the sound of eating. Presently I heard
something scrape the bottom of the pot, and though I was afraid, I could
not bear to have man or spirit go from my camp hungry. So I spoke to
the sound.
"'There is food hanging in the tree,' I said. I had hung it up to keep
the ants from it. But as soon as I finished speaking I heard the Thing
creeping away. In the morning I found it had left the track of one small
torn moccasin and a strange misshapen lump. It came up from and
disappeared into the creek, so I was sure it must have been a Gahonga.
But that evening as I sat by my fire I was aware of it behind me. No, I
heard nothing; I felt the thought of that creature touching my thought.
Without looking round I said, 'What is mine is yours, brother.' Then I
laid dry wood on the fire, and getting up I walked away without looking
back. But when I was out of the circle of light I looked and I saw the
Thing come out of the brush and warm its hands.
"Then I knew that it was human, so I dropped my blanket over it from
behind and it lay without moving. I thought I had killed it, but when I
lifted the blanket I saw that it was a girl, and she was all but dead
with fright. She lay looking at me like a deer that I had shot, waiting
for me to plunge in the knife. It is a shame to any man to have a girl
look at him as that one looked at me. I made the sign of friendship and
set food before her, and water in a cup of bark. Then I saw what had
made the clumsy track; it was her foot which she had cut on the rocks
and bound up with strips of bark. Also she was sick with fright and
starvation.
"For two days she lay on my bed and ate what I gave her and looked at me
as a trapped thing looks at the owner of the trap. I tried her with all
the dialects I knew, and even with a few words I had picked up from a
summer camp of Wabaniki. I had met them a week or two before at
Owenunga, at the foot of the mountains.
"She put her hand over her mouth and looked sideways to find a way out
of the trap.
"I was sorry for her, but she was a great nuisance. I was so busy
getting food for her that I had no time to listen for the Holder of the
Heavens, and besides, there was a thickening of the air, what we call
the Breath of the Great Moose, which comes before a storm. If we did not
wish to be snowed in, we had to get down out of the mountain, and on
account of her injured foot we had to go slowly.