The Lenni Lenapes, who are the grandfather of nations[A], were quietly
reposing in their lodges on the banks of a shallow and noisy river,
that finds an outlet in the mighty waters beyond the great mountains,
and far, very far, towards the setting sun. If my brother would see
this river; if he would behold the cataract that impedes the progress
of the Indian canoe; if he would witness the strife that takes place
when the waters that are fresh first mingle with those that are salt,
let him call together his youngest and stoutest warriors, the nimble
of foot, and strong of heart--the faint and failing, the old and
trembling, the weak and cowardly, will not do, for the path is beset
with savage beasts and strong warriors, and hostile spirits. Let him
load his women with much provision, and make his mocassins of tanned
bear-skin, for many are the suns it will take to journey thither, and
rocky is the path that leads to that far abode. Mountains must be
crossed, which are covered with snow, and upon whose summits the
clouds break as the mist rises from the Oniagarah[B]. The warriors,
who shall be seen in its path, will not bow down their heads to the
axe of the stranger, till their spears are broken, and their quivers
are bare of arrows. Nor then will they die like women, but with songs
of past glory and present defiance in their mouths. And the spirits
will not be appeased unless they have many offerings, and there will
be in their paths the Dread Destroyer of Deer[C], he who laughed at
the avenging arrow of the Master of Life, and is gone to prey upon the
moose of the Lake of the Woods.
[Footnote A: The greater part of the Indians of the Western Continent
believe themselves descended from, or colonies of, the Lenni Lenapes,
and hence give to that tribe the epithet, "grandfather." Several of
the tribes have a tradition, that they came from beyond the Rocky
Mountains.]
[Footnote B: Oniagarah, Niagara: the former is the Indian
pronunciation of the name of that celebrated cataract.]
[Footnote C: See the note relating to the Mammoth in the tradition of
"The Coming of Miquon."]
The Lenapes were living in their lodges, warring upon the Flatheads,
feasting upon the salmon, and drinking the juice of the sacred
bean[A], when it happened to one of their young warriors, that he
dreamed a dream. Wangewaha, or the Hard Heart, though his years were
but few, was one of the most celebrated chiefs of the nation. His days
were but those of a young eagle; yet the bravest, even those who had
watched the nut-tree from its sprout to its bloom, ranged themselves
in battle under his faultless command, in the chase followed the ken
of his eagle eye. He had struck more dead bodies, he had stolen more
horses, he had taken more scalps, than any man of his nation. He could
follow the trail of a glass snake from sun to sun, he could see the
wake of a fish a fathom below the surface of the water. When he cast
his eye upon a young maiden, she became his without a wrestle(1); when
he told the revelations of the spirit of sleep, the aged men and wise
councillors never called their truth in question, but acted upon them
without reflection, believing them to be the voice of the Great
Spirit, speaking through his favourite son. If he excelled in war and
perilous pursuits, he excelled as much in those pastimes and games,
wherewith the warrior in times of peace and rest beguiles the tedious
hours. When Wangewaha struck the ball, its flight was above the
soaring of the bird of morning, and he never rose from the game of
bones(2) without giving proof that he was the favourite of heaven.
[Footnote A: Intoxicating bean.--See Long's First Expedition to the
Rocky Mountains.]
It was a beautiful night in the month in which the Indians gather
their first green corn, when, as the chief lay sleeping on his bed of
skins, with the mother of his youngest child on his arm, he saw
strange things in his slumbers. He dreamed that the bands of the Lenni
Lenapes had taken the bones of their fathers from the burying places
of the nation, loaded their women with pemmican and dried corn, folded
up their tents, and departed towards the regions of their great
father, the sun. He saw mountains, whose summits breathed fire, and
others, which were the abode of the snow spirit--now noisy with the
war of the Holy People above the clouds, and now with the hissing of
the Great Serpent in the deep, awful, and inaccessible valleys of the
bright old inhabitants.[A] They overcame, he thought, the impediments
of fire and storm; they charmed away the wrath of the evil spirits,
and looked at length from the eastern ridge of those mighty hills upon
the interminable glades and prairies spread out in their shade. Onward
they went, he thought, till at length they saw rolling before them a
mighty river, upon whose banks abode a nation of warriors, whose size
was much greater than that of the Lenape, and who dwelt behind hills
of their own making, whence they would make incursions into the
territories of the neighbouring tribes. Before him stood one of the
maidens of the land. She was beautiful as a straight tree, as a meadow
of flowers, as a tree covered with blossoms, as a clear sky lit up
with stars. Her voice was sweeter than the notes of the
Mocking-Bird[B], and her eye brighter and softer than the eye of the
mountain-goat. She wore a cloak made of the tender bark of the
mulberry-tree, interlaced with the white feathers of the swan, and the
gay plumage of the snake-bird, and the painted vulture. Strings of
shells depended from her ancles, and flowers were braided into her
hair. When she spoke to the young Lenape, it was with a soft voice, as
if it would assure him, that the heart which dwelt within was as
gentle as that voice, and as mild as that eye. He thought he wooed
that maiden to be his wife, but, when she would have become such, and
he would have pressed to his bosom the lovely flower of the giant
people, there only appeared a little white dove which flew away, and
nestled in the branches of the great medicine trees[C].
[Footnote A: See the tradition, entitled "The Valley of the Bright Old
Inhabitants."]
[Footnote B: When an Indian wishes to express his admiration of music,
he likens it to the notes of the Mocking-Bird. When the Winnabagoes
visited Philadelphia, in the winter of 1828, they went to the
Chesnut-street theatre, to hear Mrs. Knight sing: one of the chiefs,
wishing to testify his delight, plucked an eagle's feather, and sent
it to her by the box-keeper, with the message, that "she was a
mocking-bird squaw."--_American paper._]
[Footnote C: The _physic-nut_, or Indian olive. The Indians, when they
go in pursuit of deer, carry this fruit with them, supposing that it
has the power of charming or drawing that creature to them.]
Then the dream of the warrior took another direction, and he had
visions, and saw sights, and the phantoms of things more congenial to
his disposition than even the smiles of beautiful maidens. He heard,
in his sleep, the shrill war-cry of his nation, among whose foremost
warriors he stood; and his ears were open to a loud shout of defiance
from the enemy. He saw himself and his nation victorious, the Great
River crossed, and the last canoe of his enemies committed in flight
to its rapid bosom. The beautiful maiden became his wife. Again his
course was onward like a torrent unchecked, and again other mountains
opposed his course; but nothing offers insurmountable obstacles to the
ardent spirit of an Indian warrior. He stands on the sunny brink of
that mountain, and sees the beautiful lands spread out before his eye.
A voice speaks to him from the hollow wind, "Warrior of the Lenni
Lenape, how likest thou the land which I place before thee? The
rivers are beautiful--are they not? and yet thou canst not see, as I
see, their better part--the sleek and juicy fish which glide through
them, or the fowls which feed on their margin. The forests are
tall--are they not? but thine eyes do not pierce their glades as mine
do, to behold the stately bucks which browze in their flowery copses,
or the gay birds which sing their soft songs of love and joy, perched
on the lofty branches of the chesnut and the hickory. I have given
these lands to thy tribe, and thou shalt continue to occupy them till
the coming of Miquon."
Wangewaha, or the Hard Heart, awoke from his dream, and calling
together the priests and conjurors of the nation, related to them the
strange things he had seen and heard in his sleep. The expounders of
dreams gave it as their opinion, that the Great Spirit had bidden the
familiar genius of the warrior to reveal to him the work to which he
had ordained the Lenapes. They were unanimous in this opinion. Yet
they advised, that the Master of Life should be consulted by
sacrifices, after the due fasts should have been kept, and that his
assistance should be supplicated by songs and dances(3), as they were
ever wont to be. The advice of the expounders of dreams was followed,
and the priests prepared for the fast. First they feasted themselves,
and the chiefs, and warriors. The remains of the feast were then
removed to the outside of the camp, and the crumbs carefully swept
out, till the cabin, in which the fast was to be held, was as clean as
the brow of a grassy hill after a summer rain. Then it was proclaimed
aloud by the head priest, that the warriors and chiefs of the Lenape
nation should enter the cabin, and observe the fast, and that the
women and children, and all who are uninitiated in war, who had never
hung up a scalp-lock in the temple of the Wahconda, nor offered a
victim to the Great Star, should keep apart from those who had done
both. When those who had bound themselves to observe the sacred
ceremonial had entered the holy square appointed for the fast, a man
armed with the weapons of war was stationed at each of the corners, to
keep out every thing except the initiated. If a dog had but dared to
breathe upon the sacred spot, he had met the fate of a thievish
Flathead.
Then the Lenapes drank, as is their wont, of the root[A], which purges
away their evil and cowardly inclinations and propensities, making
them tellers of nothing but truth, bold and strong in war, cunning and
dexterous in the theft of horses, patient in scarcity, and beneath the
torments of the victor. The while they filled the air with loud
invocations to the great Wahconda, and with petitions to him, that, in
the succeeding sacrifice, he would reveal the meaning of the dream
which had so filled their minds. Lest the unexpiated sins of the
uninitiated, the women and the children, should stifle their own purer
voices, the priest sent by the hands of the oldest of the women a
portion of the small green leaves of the beloved weed[B] to the
sinners. And thus, for three suns, the priests and warriors of the
Lenapes ate no food, but mortified their sinful appetites to please
the Master of Life.
[Footnote A: Button snakeroot.]
[Footnote B: Tobacco.]
The fast being over, and the expiation made, according to the customs
of the nation, the multitude assembled to the feast and sacrifice.
Proclamation was made, that, the holy rites being performed, it was
lawful for the hungry to taste food. But first came the sacrifice. The
deer's flesh was laid on the burning coals, and the warriors who had
fasted danced their most solemn dance around the hearth of sacrifice.
The priest most reputed for intimacy with the Great Spirit, he who had
oftenest, by his incantations, procured plentiful crops of maize, who
had oftenest charmed the bisons to the unsheltered prairies, called
the deer from the tangled coverts, and the horses from the hills of
the Men of Black Garments[A], and given to the enemies of the Lenape
the heart of the bird that runs low among the grass[B], arose, and
began his hymn of supplication: