The Trail Book Part 12

"'Where the life is, the heart is also,' he said, 'and if the feet of Ongyata.s.se 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.

"'Ongyata.s.se, 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. Ongyata.s.se 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-sh.e.l.l. "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 quant.i.ty, 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 Ongyata.s.se 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.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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.

"Ongyata.s.se 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 pa.s.sing 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 gra.s.shoppers 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 gra.s.s, weighting one end with the turtle-back, as he read, with the children looking over his shoulder.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Well-Praised, war-chief of the Eagle Clan to the Painted Turtles;--Greeting.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Come to the Council House at Three Towns.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: On the fifth day of the Moon Halting.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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. Ongyata.s.se 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 Ongyata.s.se 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.

"Ongyata.s.se drew an arrow from his quiver and sc.r.a.ped 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. Ongyata.s.se sc.r.a.ped and the Head Man watched him.

"'There are many horned heads in the forest this season,' he said at last.

"'Very many,' said Ongyata.s.se; '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 Ongyata.s.se, 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 pa.s.sage 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 Ongyata.s.se; 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 Ongyata.s.se.

"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 Ongyata.s.se 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.