The Trail Book Part 11

"When the Five Nations possessed the country, the buffaloes came to us,"

said the Onondaga.

"Then the Long Knives came on the sea in the East and there was neither buffaloes nor Mengwe," answered the Mound-Builder, who did not like these interruptions. He went on describing the Kaskaskia Trail. "It led along the highlands around the upper waters of the Miami and the drowned lands of the Wabash. It was a wonderful trip in the month of the Moon Halting, when there was a sound of dropping nuts and the woods were all one red and yellow rain. But in summer...I should know," said the Mound-Builder; "I carried a pipe as far as Little Miami once..."

He broke off as though the recollection was not altogether a happy one and began to walk away from the wood, along the trail, which broadened quickly to a graded way, and led up the slope of a high green mound.

The children followed him without a word. They understood that they had come to the place in the Story of the Trails, which is known in the schoolbooks as "History." From the top of the mound they could see strange shapes of earthworks stretching between them and the sh.o.r.e of Erie. Lakeward the sand and the standing gra.s.s was the pale color of the moon that floated above it in the midday sky. Between them the blue of the lake melted into the blue horizon; the turf over the mounds was thick and wilted.

"I suppose I must remember it like this," said the Tallega, "because this is the way I saw it when I came back, an old man, after the fall of Cahokia. But when this mound was built there were towns here, busy and crowded. The forest came close up on one side, and along the lake front, field touched field for a day's journey. My town was the middle one of three of the Eagle Clan. Our Town House stood here, on the top of this mound, and on that other, the tallest, stood the G.o.d-house, with the Sacred Fire, and the four old men watchers to keep it burning."

"I thought," said Oliver, trying to remember what he had read about it, "that the mounds were for burials. People dig into them, you know."

"They might think that," agreed the Tallega, "if all they know comes from what they find by digging. They were for every purpose that buildings are used for, but we always thought it a good omen if we could start a Town Mound with the bones of some one we had loved and respected. First, we laid a circle of stones and an altar with a burnt offering, then the bones of the chief, or some of our heroes who were killed in battle. Then the women brought earth in baskets. And if a chief had served us well, we sometimes buried him on top and raised the mound higher over him, and the mound would be known by his name until another chief arose who surpa.s.sed him.

"Then there were earthworks for forts and signal stations. You'll find those on the high places overlooking the princ.i.p.al trails; there were always heaps of wood piled up for smoke signals. The circles were for meeting-places and for games."

"What sort of games?" demanded Oliver.

"Ball-play and races; all that sort of thing. There was a game we played with racquets between goals. Village played against village. The people would sit on the earthworks and clap and shout when the game pleased them, and gambled everything they had on their home-town players.

"I suppose," he added, looking around on the green tumuli, "I remember it like this, because when I lived here I was so full of what was going on that I had no time for noticing how it looked to me."

"What did go on?" both the children wished immediately to know.

"Something different every time the moon changed. Ice-fis.h.i.+ng, corn-husking. We did everything together; that was what made it so interesting. The men let us go to the fur traps to carry home the pelts, and we hung up the birch-bark buckets for our mothers at the sugar-boiling. Maple sugar, you know. Then we would persuade them to ladle out a little of the boiling sap into plates that we patted out of the snow, which could always be found lingering in the hollows, at sugar-makings. When it was still waxy and warm, we rolled up the cooled syrup and ate it out of hand.

"In summer whole families would go to the bottom lands paw-paw gathering. Winter nights there was story-telling in the huts. We had a kind of corn, very small, that burst out white like a flower when it was parched..."

"Pop-corn!" cried both the children at once. It seemed strange that anything they liked so much should have belonged to the Mound-Builders.

"Why, that was what _we_ called it!" he agreed, smiling. "Our mothers used to stir it in the pot with pounded hickory nuts and bears' grease.

Good eating! And the trading trips! Some of our men used to go as far as Little River for chert which they liked better for arrow-points than our own flints, being less brittle and more easily worked. That was a canoe trip, down the Scioto, down the O-hey-yo, up the Little Tenasa as far as Little River. There was adventure enough to please everybody.

"That bird-shaped mound," he pointed, "was built the time we won the Eagle-Dancing against all the other villages."

The Mound-Builder drew out from under his feather robe a gorget of pearl sh.e.l.l, beautifully engraved with the figure of a young man dancing in an eagle-beaked mask, with eagles' wings fastened to his shoulders.

"Most of the effigy mounds," he said, taking the gorget from his neck to let the children examine it, "were built that way to celebrate a treaty or a victory. Sometimes," he added, after a pause, looking off across the wide flat mounds between the two taller ones, "they were built like these, to celebrate a defeat. It was there we buried the Tallegewi who fell in our first battle with the Lenni-Lenape."

"Were they Mound-Builders, too?" the children asked respectfully, for though the man's voice was sad, it was not as though he spoke of an enemy.

"People of the North," he said, "hunting-people, good foes and good fighters. But afterward, they joined with the Mengwe and drove us from the country. _That_ was a Mingo,"--he pointed to the Iroquois who had called himself an Onondaga, disappearing down the forest tunnel. They saw him a moment, with arrow laid to bow, the sunlight making tawny splotches on his dark body, as on the trunk of a pine tree, and then they lost him.

"We were planters and builders," said the Tallega, "and they were fighters, so they took our lands from us. But look, now, how time changes all. Of the Lenni-Lenape and the Mengwe there is only a name, and the mounds are still standing."

"You said," Oliver hinted, "that you carried a pipe once. Was that--anything particular?"

"It might be peace or war," said the Mound-Builder. "In my case it was an order for Council, from which war came, b.l.o.o.d.y and terrible. A Pipe-Bearer's life was always safe where he was recognized, though when there is war one is very likely to let fly an arrow at anything moving in the trails. That reminds me..." The Tallega put back his feathered robe carefully as he leaned upon his elbow, and the children snuggled into a little depression at the top of the mound where the fire-hole had been, to listen.

"There was a boy in our town," he began, "who was the captain of all our plays from the time we first stole melons and roasting-ears from the town gardens. He got us into no end of trouble, but no matter what came of it, we always stood up for him before the elders. There was nothing _they_ could say which seemed half so important to us as praise or blame from Ongyata.s.se. I don't know why, unless it was because he could out-run and out-wrestle the best of us; and yet he was never pleased with himself unless the rest of us were satisfied to have it that way.

"Ongyata.s.se was what his mother called him. It means something very pretty about the colored light of evening, but the name that he earned for himself, when he was old enough to be Name-Seeking, was Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back.

"He was the arrow laid to the bow, and he could no more take himself back from the adventure he had begun than the shaft can come back to the bowstring.

"Before we were old enough to go up to the G.o.d-house and hear the sacred Tellings, he had half the boys in our village bound to him in an unbreakable vow never to turn back from anything we had started. It got us into a great many difficulties, some of which were ridiculous, but it had its advantages. The time we chased a young elk we had raised, across the squash and bean vines of Three Towns, we escaped punishment on the ground of our vow. Any Tallega parent would think a long time before he expected his son to break a promise."

Oliver kept to the main point of interest. "Did you get the elk?"

"_Of course_. You see we were never allowed to carry a man's hunting outfit until we had run down some big game, and brought it in alive to prove ourselves proper sportsmen. So partly for that and partly because Ongyata.s.se always knew the right words to say to everybody, we were forgiven the damage to the gardens.

"That was the year the Lenni-Lenape came to the Grand Council, which was held here at Sandusky, asking permission to cross our territory toward the Sea on the East. They came out of s.h.i.+naki, the Fir-Land, as far as Namae-Sippu, and stood crowded between the lakes north of the river. For the last year or two, hunting-parties of theirs had been warned back from trespa.s.s, but this was the first time we youngsters had seen anything of them.

"They were fine-looking fellows, fierce, and tall appearing, with their hair cropped up about their ears, and a long hanging scalp-lock tied with eagle feathers. At the same time they seemed savage to us, for they wore no clothing but twisty skins about their middles, ankle-cut moccasins, and the Peace Mark on their foreheads.

"Because of the Mark they bore no weapons but the short hunting-bow and wolfskin quivers, with the tails hanging down, and painted breastbands.

They were chiefs, by their way of walking, and one of them had brought his son with him. He was about Ongyata.s.se's age, as handsome as a young fir. Probably he had a name in his own tongue, but we called him White Quiver. Few of us had won ours yet, and his was man's size, of white deerskin and colored quill-work.

"Our mothers, to keep us out of the way of the Big Eating which they 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 appet.i.tes. 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 Ongyata.s.se, 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, Ongyata.s.se 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 sh.e.l.l 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 Ongyata.s.se in the order of our running. For the rest, my brothers used to say that I was the tail and Ongyata.s.se 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-gra.s.s. 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 Ongyata.s.se, 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 pa.s.s 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 Ongyata.s.se 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, Ongyata.s.se 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 Ongyata.s.se,--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. .h.i.tting 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 Ongyata.s.se 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 Ongyata.s.se 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 Ongyata.s.se 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 Ongyata.s.se 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 Ongyata.s.se 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 Ongyata.s.se 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, Ongyata.s.se 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.

"Ongyata.s.se, 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 Ongyata.s.se.

"'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, Ongyata.s.se had no equal for highness.

"'Along with my life I would take friends.h.i.+p too, if it were offered,'

he said, and smiled, s.h.i.+vering 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. Ongyata.s.se put an arm over the Lenape's shoulders.