Chapter V: Part 5

"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.

"Jays that squawked and fell silent as we passed, called the alarm again 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.

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.

"I had it in mind to take her to the camp of the Wabaniki at Owenunga, but when she found out where we were going she tried to run away. After that I carried her, for the cut in her foot opened and bled.

"She lay in my arms like a hurt fawn, but what could I do? There was a tent of cloud all across the Adirondack, and besides, it is not proper for a young girl to be alone in the woods with a strange man," said the Onondaga, but he smiled to himself as he said it.

"It was supper-time when we came to Crooked Water. There was a smell of cooking, and the people gathering between the huts.

"There was peace between the Five Nations and the Wabaniki, so I walked boldly into the circle of summer huts and put the girl down, while I made the stranger's sign for food and lodging. But while my hand was still in the air, there was a shout and a murmur and the women began snatching their children back. I could see them huddling together like buffalo cows when their calves are tender, and the men pushing to the front with caught-up weapons in their hands.

"I held up my own to show that they were weaponless.

"'I want nothing but food and shelter for this poor girl,' I said. I had let her go in order to make the sign language, for I had but a few words of their tongue. She crouched at my feet covering her face with her long hair. The people stood off without answering, and somebody raised a cry for Waba-mooin. It was tossed about from mouth to mouth until it reached the principal hut, and presently a man came swaggering out in the dress of a Medicine Man. He was older than I, but he was also fat, and for all his Shaman's dress I was not frightened. I knew by the way the girl stopped crying that she both knew and feared him.

"The moment Waba-mooin saw her he turned black as a thunderhead. He scattered words as a man scatters seeds with his hand. I was too far to hear him, but the people broke out with a shower of sticks and stones. At that the girl sprang up and spread her arms between me and the people, crying something in her own tongue, but a stone struck her on the point of the shoulder. She would have dropped, but I caught her, I held her in my arms and looked across at the angry villagers and Waba-mooin. Suddenly power came upon me....

"It is something all Indian," said the Onon-daga,--"something White Men do not understand. It is Magic Medicine, the power of the Shaman, the power of my thought meeting the evil thought of the Wabaniki and turning it back as a buffalo shield turns arrows. I gathered up the girl and walked away from that place slowly as becomes a Shaman. No more stones struck me; the arrow of Waba-mooin went past me and stuck in an oak. My power was upon me.

"I must have walked half the night, hearing the drums at Crooked Water scaring away evil influences. I would feel the girl warm and soft in my arms as a fawn, and then after a time she would seem to be a part of me. The trail found itself under my feet; I was not in the least wearied. The girl was asleep when I laid her down, but toward morning she woke, and the moment I looked in her eyes, I knew that whatever they had stoned her for at Owenunga, her eyes were friendly.

"'_M'toulin_,' she said, which is the word in her language for Shaman, 'what will you do with me?'

"There was nothing I could do but take her to my mother as quickly as possible. There was a wilderness of hills to cross before we struck the trail through Mohawk Valley. That afternoon the snow began to fall in great dry flakes, thickening steadily. The girl walked when she could, but most of the time I carried her. I had the power of a Shaman, though the Holder of the Heavens had not yet spoken to me.

"We pushed to the top of the range before resting, and all night we could hear the click and crash of deer and moose going down before the snow. All the next day there was one old bull moose kept just ahead of us. We knew he was old because of his size and his being alone. Two or three times we passed other bulls with two or three cows and their calves of that season yarding among the young spruce, but the old bull kept on steadily down the mountain. His years had made him weather-wise. The third day the wind shifted the snow, and we saw him on the round crown of a hill below us, tracking."

The Onondaga let his pipe go out while he explained the winter habits of moose.

"When the snow is too deep for yarding," he said, "they look for the lower hills that have been burnt over, so that the growth is young and tender. When the snow is soft, after a thaw, they will track steadily back and forth until the hill is laced with paths. They will work as long as the thaw lasts, pushing the soft snow with their shoulders to release the young pine and the birches. Then, when the snow crusts, they can browse all along the paths for weeks, tunneling far under.

"We saw our bull the last afternoon as we came down from the cloud cap, and then the white blast cut us off and we had only his trail to follow. When we came to the hill we could still hear him thrashing about in his trails, so I drew down the boughs of a hemlock and made us a shelter and a fire. For two days more the storm held, with cold wind and driven snow. About the middle of the second day I heard a heavy breathing above our hut, and presently the head of the moose came through the hemlock thatch, and his eyes were the eyes of a brother. So I knew my thought was still good, and I made room for him in the warmth of the hut. He moved out once or twice to feed, and I crept after him to gather grass seeds and whatever could be found that the girl could eat. We had had nothing much since leaving the camp at Crooked Water.

"And by and by with the hunger and anxiety about Nukewis, which was the name she said she should be called by, my thought was not good any more. I would look at the throat of the moose as he crowded under the hemlock and think how easily I could slit it with my knife and how good moose meat toasted on the coals would taste. I was glad when the storm cleared and left the world all white and trackless. I went out and prayed to the Holder of the Heavens that he would strengthen me in the keeping of my vow and also that he would not let the girl die.

"While I prayed a rabbit that had been huddling under the brush and the snow, came hopping into my trail; it hopped twice and died with the cold. I took it for a sign; but when I had cooked it and was feeding it to the girl she said:--

"'Why do you not eat, M'toulin,' for we had taught one another a few words of our own speech.

"'I am not hungry,' I told her.

"'While I eat I can see that your throat is working with hunger,' she insisted. And it was true I could have snatched the meat from her like a wolf, but because of my vow I would not.

"'M'toulin, there is a knife at your belt; why have you not killed the moose to make meat for us?'

"'Eight moons I have done no killing, seeking the Vision and the Voice,' I told her. 'It is more than my life to me.'

"When I had finished, she reached over with the last piece of rabbit and laid it on the fire. It was a sacrifice. As we watched the flame lick it up, all thought of killing went out of my head like the smoke of sacrifice, and my thought was good again.

"When the meat she had eaten had made her strong, Nukewis sat up and crossed her hands on her bosom.

"'M'toulin,' she said, 'the evil that has come on you belongs to me. I will go away with it. I am a witch and bring evil on those who are kind to me.'

"'Who says you are a witch?'

"'All my village, and especially Waba-mooin. I brought sickness on the village, and on you hunger and the breaking of your vow.'

"'I have seen Waba-mooin,' I said. 'I do not think too much of his opinions.'

"'He is the Shaman of my village,' said Nukewis. 'My father was Shaman before him, a much greater Shaman than Waba-mooin will ever be. He wanted my father's Medicine bundle which hung over the door to protect me; my father left it to me when he died. But afterward there was a sickness in the village, and Waba-mooin said it was because the powerful Medicine bundle was left in the hands of an ignorant girl. He said for the good of the village it ought to be taken away from me. But _I_ thought it was because so many people came to my house with their sick, because of my Medicine bundle, and Waba-mooin missed their gifts. He said that if I was not willing to part with my father's bundle, that he would marry me, but when I would not, then he said that I was a witch!'

"'Where is the bundle now?' I asked her.

"'I hid it near our winter camp before we came into the mountains. But there was sickness in the mountains and Waba-mooin said that it also was my fault. So they drove me out with sticks and stones. That is why they would not take me back.'

"'Then,' I said, 'when Waba-mooin goes back to the winter camp, he will find the Medicine bundle.'

"'He will never find it,' she said, 'but he will be the only Shaman in the village and will have all the gifts. But listen, M'toulin, by now the people are back in their winter home. It is more than two days from here. If you go without me, they will give you food and shelter, but with me you will have only hard words and stones. Therefore, I leave you, M'toulin.' She stood up, made a sign of farewell.

"'You must show me the way to your village first,' I insisted.

"I saw that she meant what she said, and because I was too weak to run after her, I pretended. I thought that would hold her.

"We should have set out that moment, but a strange lightness came in my head. I do not know just what happened. I think the storm must have begun again early in the afternoon. There was a great roaring as of wind and the girl bending over me, wavering and growing thin like smoke. Twice I saw the great head of the moose thrust among the hemlock boughs, and heard Nukewis urging and calling me. She lifted my hands and clasped them round the antlers of the moose; I could feel his warm breath.... He threw up his head, drawing me from my bed, wonderfully light upon my feet. We seemed to move through the storm. I could feel the hairy shoulder of the moose and across his antlers Nukewis calling me. I felt myself carried along like a thin bubble of life in the storm that poured down from the Adirondack like Niagara. At last I slipped into darkness.

"I do not know how long this lasted, but presently I was aware of a light that began to grow and spread around me. It came from the face of the moose, and when I looked up out of my darkness it changed to the face of a great kind man. He had on the headdress of a chief priest, the tall headdress of eagle plumes and antlers. I had hold of one of them, and his arm was around and under me. But I knew very well who held me.

"'You have appeared to me at last,' I said to him.

"'I have appeared, my son.' His voice was kind as the sound of summer waters.

"'I looked for you long, O Taryenya-wagon!'

"'You looked for me among your little brothers of the wild,' he said, 'and for you the Vision was among men, my son.'

"'How, among men?'

"'What you did for that poor girl when you put your good thought between her and harm. That you must do for men.'

"'I am to be a Shaman, then?' I thought of my father.

"'According to a man's power,' said the Holder of the Heavens,--'as my power comes upon him....'"

The Onondaga puffed silently for a while on his pipe.

Dorcas Jane fidgeted. "But I don't understand," she said at last; "just what was it that happened?"

"It was my Mystery," said the Onondaga; "my Vision that came to me out of the fasting and the sacrifice. You see, there had been very little food since leaving Crooked Water, and Nukewis--"

"You gave it all to her." Dorcas nodded. "But still I don't understand?"

"The moose had begun to travel down the mountain and like a good brother he came back for me. Nukewis lifted me up and bound me to his antlers, holding me from the other side, but I was too weak to notice.

"We must have traveled that way for hours through the storm until we reached the tall woods below the limit of the snow. When I came to myself, I was lying on a bed of fern in a bright morning and Nukewis was cooking quail which she had snared with a slip noose made of her hair. I ate--I could eat now that I had had my Vision--and grew strong. All the upper mountain was white like a tent of deerskin, but where we were there was only thin ice on the edges of the streams.

"We stayed there for one moon. I wished to get my strength back, and besides, we wished to get married, Nukewis and I."

"But how could you, without any party?" Dorcas wished to know. She had never seen anybody get married, but she knew it was always spoken of as a Wedding Party.

"We had the party four months later when we got back to my own village," explained the Onondaga. "For that time I built a hut, and when I had led her across the door, as our custom was, I scattered seeds upon her--seeds of the pine tree. Then we sat in our places on either side the fire, and she made me cake of acorn meal, and we made a vow as we ate it that we would love one another always.

"We were very happy. I hunted and fished, and the old moose fed in our meadow. Nukewis used to gather armfuls of grass for him. When we went back to my wife's village he trotted along in the trail behind us like a dog. Nukewis wished to go back after her father's Medicine bag, and being a woman she did not wish to go to my mother without her dower. There were many handsome skins and baskets in her father's hut which had been given to him when he was Medicine Man. She felt sure Waba-mooin would not have touched them. And as for me, I was young enough to want Waba-mooin to see that I was also a Shaman.

"We stole into Nukewis's hut in the dark, and when it was morning a light snow was over the ground to cover our tracks, and there was our smoke going up and the great moose standing at our door chewing his cud and over the door the Medicine bag of Nukewis's father. How the neighbors were astonished! They ran for Waba-mooin, and when I saw him coming in all his Shaman's finery, I put on the old Medicine Man's shirt and his pipe and went out to smoke with him as one Shaman with another."

The Onondaga laughed to himself, remembering. "It was funny to see him try to go through with it, but there was nothing else for him to do. I ought to have punished him a little for what he did to Nukewis, but my heart was too full of happiness and my Mystery. And perhaps it was punishment enough to have me staying there in the village with all the folk bringing me presents and neglecting Waba-mooin. I think he was glad when we set out for my own village in the Moon of the Sap Running.

"I knew my mother would be waiting for me, and besides, I wished my son to be born an Onondaga."

"And what became of the old moose?"

"Somewhere on the trail home we lost him. Perhaps he heard his own tribe calling...and perhaps... He was the Holder of the Heavens to me, and from that time neither I nor my wife ate any moose meat. That is how it is when the Holder of the Heavens shows Himself to his children. But when I came by the tree where I had cut the first score of my search for Him, I cut a picture of the great moose, with my wife and I on either side of him."

The Onondaga pointed with his feathered pipe to a wide-boled chestnut a rod or two down the slope. "It was that I was looking for to-day," he said. "If you look you will find it."

And continuing to point with the long feathered stem of his pipe, the children rose quietly hand in hand and went to look.

XI

THE PEARLS OF COFACHIQUE: HOW LUCAS DE AYLLON CAME TO LOOK FOR THEM AND WHAT THE CACICA FAR-LOOKING DID TO HIM; TOLD BY THE PELICAN

One morning toward the end of February the children were sitting on the last bench at the far end of the Bird Gallery, which is the nicest sort of place to sit on a raw, slushy day. You can look out from it on one side over the flamingo colony of the Bahamas, and on the other straight into the heart of the Cuthbert Rookery in Florida. Just opposite is the green and silver coral islet of Cay Verde, with the Man-of-War Birds nesting among the flat leaves of the sea-grape.