The Trail Book Page 8

  VIII

  YOUNG-MAN-WHO-NEVER-TURNS-BACK: A TELLING OF THE TALLEGEWI, BY ONE OFTHEM

  It could only have been for a few moments at the end of Moke-icha'sstory, before the cliff picture split like a thin film before thedancing circles of the watchmen's lanterns, and curled into the shadowsbetween the cases. A thousand echoes broke out in the empty halls andmuffled the voices as the rings of light withdrew down the long galleryin glimmering reflections. When they passed to the floor below a veryremarkable change had come over the landscape.

  The Buffalo Chief and Moke-icha had disappeared. A little way ahead thetrail plunged down the leafy tunnel of an ancient wood, along which thechildren saw the great elk trotting leisurely with his cows behind him,flattening his antlers over his back out of the way of the low-branchingmaples. The switching of the brush against the elk's dun sides startledthe little black bear, who was still riffling his bee tree. The childrenwatched him rise inquiringly to his haunches before he scrambled downthe trail out of sight.

  "Lots of those fellows about in my day," said the Mound-Builder. "Weused to go for them in the fall when they grew fat on the dropping nutsand acorns. Elk, too. I remember a ten-pronged buck that I shot onewinter on the Elk's-Eye River..."

  "The Muskingum!" exclaimed an Iroquois, who had listened in silence tothe puma's story. "Did you call it that too? Elk's-Eye! Clear brown andsmooth-flowing. That's the Scioto Trail, isn't it?" he asked of theMound-Builder.

  "You could call it that. There was a cut-off at Beaver Dam to FlintRidge and the crossing of the Muskingum, and another that led to themouth of the Kanawha where it meets the River of White-Flashing."

  "He means the Ohio," explained the Iroquois to the children. "At floodthe whole surface of the river would run to white riffles like the flashof a water-bird's wings. But the French called it La Belle Riviere. I'man Onondaga myself," he added, "and in my time the Five Nations held allthe territory, after we had driven out the Talle-gewi, between the Lakesand the O-hey-yo." He stretched the word out, giving it a littledifferent turn. "Indians' names talk little," he laughed, "but theysay much."

  "Like the trails," agreed the Mound-Builder, who was one of theTallegewi himself, "every word is the expression of a need. We had atrade route over this one for copper which we fetched from the Land ofthe Sky-Blue Water and exchanged for sea-shells out of the south. At themouth of the Scioto it connected with the Kaskaskia Trace to theMissi-Sippu, where we went once a year to shoot buffaloes onthe plains."

  "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 neitherbuffaloes nor Mengwe," answered the Mound-Builder, who did not likethese interruptions. He went on describing the Kaskaskia Trail. "It ledalong the highlands around the upper waters of the Miami and the drownedlands of the Wabash. It was a wonderful trip in the month of the MoonHalting, when there was a sound of dropping nuts and the woods were allone red and yellow rain. But in summer...I should know," said theMound-Builder; "I carried a pipe as far as Little Miami once..."

  He broke off as though the recollection was not altogether a happy oneand began to walk away from the wood, along the trail, which broadenedquickly 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 hadcome to the place in the Story of the Trails, which is known in theschoolbooks as "History." From the top of the mound they could seestrange shapes of earthworks stretching between them and the shore ofErie. Lakeward the sand and the standing grass was the pale color of themoon that floated above it in the midday sky. Between them the blue ofthe lake melted into the blue horizon; the turf over the mounds wasthick and wilted.

  "I suppose I must remember it like this," said the Tallega, "becausethis is the way I saw it when I came back, an old man, after the fall ofCahokia. But when this mound was built there were towns here, busy andcrowded. 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 ofthree of the Eagle Clan. Our Town House stood here, on the top of thismound, and on that other, the tallest, stood the god-house, with theSacred 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 comesfrom what they find by digging. They were for every purpose thatbuildings are used for, but we always thought it a good omen if we couldstart a Town Mound with the bones of some one we had loved andrespected. First, we laid a circle of stones and an altar with a burntoffering, then the bones of the chief, or some of our heroes who werekilled in battle. Then the women brought earth in baskets. And if achief had served us well, we sometimes buried him on top and raised themound higher over him, and the mound would be known by his name untilanother chief arose who surpassed him.

  "Then there were earthworks for forts and signal stations. You'll findthose on the high places overlooking the principal trails; there werealways heaps of wood piled up for smoke signals. The circles were formeeting-places and for games."

  "What sort of games?" demanded Oliver.

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

  "I suppose," he added, looking around on the green tumuli, "I rememberit like this, because when I lived here I was so full of what was goingon 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-fishing,corn-husking. We did everything together; that was what made it sointeresting. 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 thesugar-boiling. Maple sugar, you know. Then we would persuade them toladle out a little of the boiling sap into plates that we patted out ofthe snow, which could always be found lingering in the hollows, atsugar-makings. When it was still waxy and warm, we rolled up the cooledsyrup and ate it out of hand.

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

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

  "Why, that was what _we_ called it!" he agreed, smiling. "Our mothersused 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 asLittle River for chert which they liked better for arrow-points than ourown flints, being less brittle and more easily worked. That was a canoetrip, down the Scioto, down the O-hey-yo, up the Little Tenasa as far asLittle River. There was adventure enough to please everybody.

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

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

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

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

  "Peopl
e of the North," he said, "hunting-people, good foes and goodfighters. But afterward, they joined with the Mengwe and drove us fromthe country. _That_ was a Mingo,"--he pointed to the Iroquois who hadcalled himself an Onondaga, disappearing down the forest tunnel. Theysaw him a moment, with arrow laid to bow, the sunlight making tawnysplotches on his dark body, as on the trunk of a pine tree, and thenthey lost him.

  "We were planters and builders," said the Tallega, "and they werefighters, so they took our lands from us. But look, now, how timechanges 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. Wasthat--anything particular?"

  "It might be peace or war," said the Mound-Builder. "In my case it wasan order for Council, from which war came, bloody and terrible. APipe-Bearer's life was always safe where he was recognized, though whenthere is war one is very likely to let fly an arrow at anything movingin the trails. That reminds me..." The Tallega put back his featheredrobe carefully as he leaned upon his elbow, and the children snuggledinto a little depression at the top of the mound where the fire-hole hadbeen, to listen.

  "There was a boy in our town," he began, "who was the captain of all ourplays from the time we first stole melons and roasting-ears from thetown gardens. He got us into no end of trouble, but no matter what cameof 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 blamefrom Ongyatasse. I don't know why, unless it was because he couldout-run and out-wrestle the best of us; and yet he was never pleasedwith himself unless the rest of us were satisfied to have it that way.

  "Ongyatasse was what his mother called him. It means something verypretty about the colored light of evening, but the name that he earnedfor himself, when he was old enough to be Name-Seeking, wasYoung-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back.

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

  "Before we were old enough to go up to the god-house and hear the sacredTellings, he had half the boys in our village bound to him in anunbreakable vow never to turn back from anything we had started. It gotus into a great many difficulties, some of which were ridiculous, but ithad its advantages. The time we chased a young elk we had raised, acrossthe squash and bean vines of Three Towns, we escaped punishment on theground of our vow. Any Tallega parent would think a long time before heexpected 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 huntingoutfit until we had run down some big game, and brought it in alive toprove ourselves proper sportsmen. So partly for that and partly becauseOngyatasse always knew the right words to say to everybody, we wereforgiven the damage to the gardens.

  "That was the year the Lenni-Lenape came to the Grand Council, which washeld here at Sandusky, asking permission to cross our territory towardthe Sea on the East. They came out of Shinaki, the Fir-Land, as far asNamae-Sippu, and stood crowded between the lakes north of the river. Forthe last year or two, hunting-parties of theirs had been warned backfrom trespass, but this was the first time we youngsters had seenanything of them.

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

  "Because of the Mark they bore no weapons but the short hunting-bow andwolfskin quivers, with the tails hanging down, and painted breastbands.They were chiefs, by their way of walking, and one of them had broughthis son with him. He was about Ongyatasse's age, as handsome as a youngfir. Probably he had a name in his own tongue, but we called him WhiteQuiver. Few of us had won ours yet, and his was man's size, of whitedeerskin and colored quill-work.

  "Our mothers, to keep us out of the way of the Big Eating which theymade 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 stayour appetites. My father, who was Keeper of the Smoke for thatoccasion,--I was immensely proud of him,--saw the Lenape boy watching usout of the tail of his eye, and motioned to me with his hand that Ishould make him welcome. My father spoke with his hand so that WhiteQuiver should understand--" The Mound-Builder made with his own thumband forefinger the round sign of the Sun Father, and then the upturnedpalm to signify that all things should be as between brothers. "I wasperfectly willing to do as my father said, for, except Ongyatasse, I hadnever seen any one who pleased me so much as the young stranger. Buteither because he thought the invitation should have come from himselfas the leader of the band, or because he was a little jealous of ourinterest in White Quiver, Ongyatasse 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 headuntil they go on the war-path, and White Quiver's hair lay along hisshoulders, well oiled, with bright bits of shell tied in it, glitteringas he walked. Also it is the rule of the Tellings that one must feed thestranger. But me, I was never a Name-Seeker. I was happy to stand fourthfrom Ongyatasse in the order of our running. For the rest, my brothersused to say that I was the tail and Ongyatasse wagged me.

  "Whether he had heard the words or not, the young Lenape saw me stutterin my invitation. There might have been a quiver in his face,--at myfather's gesture he had turned toward me,--but there was none in hiswalking. He came straight on toward our fire and _through_ it. Threestrides beyond it he drank at the creek as though that had been his onlyobject, and back through the fire to his father. I could see red markson his ankles where the fire had bitten him, but he never so much aslooked at them, nor at us any more than if we had been trail-grass. Hestood at his father's side and the drums were beginning. Around thegreat mound came the Grand Council with their feather robes and the tallheaddresses, up the graded way to the Town House, as though all the gayweeds in Big Meadow were walking. It was the great spectacle of theyear, but it was spoiled for all our young band by the sight of a slimyouth shaking off our fire, as if it had been dew, from hisreddened ankles.

  "You see," said the Mound-Builder, "it was much worse for us because weadmired him immensely, and Ongyatasse, who liked nothing better thanbeing kind to people, couldn't help seeing that he could have made amuch better point for himself by doing the honors of the village to thischief's son, instead of their both going around with their chins in theair pretending not to see one another.

  "The Lenni-Lenape won the permission they had come to ask for, to passthrough the territory of the Tallegewi, under conditions that were madeby Well-Praised, our war-chief; a fat man, a wonderful orator, who nevertook a straight course where he could find a cunning one. What thoseconditions were you shall hear presently. At the time, we boys werescarcely interested. That very summer we began to meet small parties ofstrangers drifting through the woods, as silent and as much at home inthem as foxes. But the year had come around to the Moon of Sap Beginningbefore we met White Quiver again.

  "A warm spell had rotted the ice on the rivers, followed by two or threedays of sharp cold and a tracking snow. We had been out with Ongyatasseto look at our traps, and then the skin-smooth surface of the riverbeguiled us.

  "We came racing home close under the high west bank where the ice wasthickest, but as we neared Bent Bar, Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Backturned toward the trail that cut down to the ford between the points ofHanging Wood. The ice must have rotted more than we guessed, for halfwayacross, Ongyatasse dropped through it like a pebble into a pot-hole.Next to him was Tiakens, grandson of Well-Praised, and between me andTiakens a new boy from Painted Turtle. I heard the splash and shout ofTiakens following Ongyatasse,--of course, he said afterward that hewould have gone to the bottom with him rather than t
urn back, but Idoubt if he could have stopped himself,--and the next thing I knew thePainted Turtle boy was hitting me in the nose for stopping him, andKills Quickly, who had not seen what was happening, had crashed into usfrom behind. We lay all sprawled in a heap while the others hugged thebanks, afraid to add their weight to the creaking ice, and Ongyatassewas beating about in the rotten sludge, trying to find a place firmenough to climb out on.

  "We had seen both boys disappear for an instant as the ice gave underthem, but even when we saw them come to the surface, with Ongyatasseholding Tiakens by the hair, we hardly grasped what had happened. Theedge of the ice-cake had taken Tiakens under the chin and he wasunconscious. If Ongyatasse had let go of him he would have been carriedunder the ice by the current, and that would have been the last any onewould have seen of him until the spring thaw. But as fast as Ongyatassetried to drag their double weight onto the ice, it broke, and before therest of us had thought of anything to do the cold would have crampedhim. I saw Ongyatasse stuffing Tiakens's hair into his mouth so as toleave both his hands free, and then there was a running gasp ofastonishment from the rest of the band, as a slim figure shot out ofDark Woods, skimming and circling like a swallow. We had heard of thesnowshoes of the Lenni-Lenape, but this was the first time we had seenthem. For a moment we were so taken up with the wonder of his dartingpace, that it was not until we saw him reaching his long shoeing-pole toOngyatasse across the ice, that we realized what he was doing. He hadcircled about until he had found ice that held, and kicking off hissnowshoes, he stretched himself flat on it. I knew enough to catch himby the ankles--even then I couldn't help wondering if the scar was stillthere, for we knew instantly who he was--and somebody caught my feet,spreading our weight as much as possible. Over the bridge we made,Ongyatasse and Tiakens, who had come to himself by this time, crawledout on firm ice. In a very few minutes we had stripped them of their wetclothing and were rubbing the cramp out of their legs.

  "Ongyatasse, dripping as he was, pushed us aside and went over to WhiteQuiver, who was stooping over, fastening his snowshoes. It seemed togive him a great deal of trouble, but at last he raised his head.

  "'This day I take my life at your hands,' said Ongyatasse.

  "'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 knewof us already and how they began to hate us.

  "But when he was touched, Ongyatasse had no equal for highness.

  "'Along with my life I would take friendship too, if it were offered,'he said, and smiled, shivering as he was, in a way we knew so well whohad never resisted it. We could see the smile working on White Quiverlike a spell. Ongyatasse put an arm over the Lenape's shoulders.

  "'Where the life is, the heart is also,' he said, 'and if the feet ofOngyatasse do not turn back from the trail they have taken, neither doeshis heart.' From his neck he slipped off his amulet of white deer's hornwhich brought him his luck in hunting, and threw it around theother's neck.

  "'Ongyatasse, you have given away your luck!' cried Tiakens, whose headwas 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 safein the hands of a Lenni-Lenape,' said White Quiver, as high as one ofhis own fir trees, but he loosed a little smile at the corner of hismouth as he turned to Tiakens, chattering like a squirrel. 'Unless youfind a fire soon, Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back will have need ofanother friend,' he said; and picking up his shoeing-pole, he was off inthe wood again like a weasel darting to cover. We heard the swish of theboughs, heavy with new snow, and then silence.

  "But if we had not been able to forget him after the first meeting, youcan guess how often we talked of him in the little time that was leftus. It was not long. Tiakens nearly died of the chill he got, and theelders were stirred up at last to break up our band before it led tomore serious folly. Ongyatasse was hurried off with a hunting-party toMaumee, and I was sent to my mother's brother at Flint Ridge to learnstone-working.

  "Not that I objected," said the Tallega. "I have the arrow-maker'shand." He showed the children his thumb set close to the wrist, the longfingers and the deep-cupped palm with the callus running down themiddle. "All my family were clever craftsmen," said the Tallega. "Youcould tell my uncle's points anywhere you found them by the fine, evenflaking, and my mother was the best feather-worker in Three Towns,"--heran his hands under the folds of his mantle and held it out for thechildren to admire the pattern. "Uncle gave me this banner stone as thewage of my summer's work with him, and I thought myself overpaid atthe time."

  "But what did you do?" asked both children at once.

  "Everything, from knocking out the crude flakes with a stone hammer toshaping points with a fire-hardened tip of deer's horn. The ridge wasmiles long and free to any one who chose to work it, but most peoplepreferred 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 thetop of the mound and brought up a round, flattish flint about the sizeof a man's hand, that showed disk-shaped flakings arranged like themarking of a turtle-shell. "They were kept workable by being buried inthe earth, and made into knives or razors or whatever was needed," heexplained.

  "That summer we had a tremendous trade in broad arrow-points, such asare used for war or big game. We sold to all the towns along the northfrom Maumee to the headwaters of the Susquehanna, and we sold to theLenni-Lenape. They would appear suddenly on the trails with bundles offurs or copper, of which they had a great quantity, and when they weresatisfied with what was offered for it, they would melt into the woodsagain like quail. My uncle used to ask me a great many questions aboutthem which I remembered afterward. But at the time--you see there was agirl, the daughter of my uncle's partner. She was all dusky red like thetall lilies at Big Meadow, and when she ran in the village races withher long hair streaming, they called her Flying Star.

  "She used to bring our food to us when we opened up a new working, awolf's cry from the old,--sizzling hot deer meat and piles of boiledcorn on bark platters, and meal cakes dipped in maple syrup. I stayed ontill the time of tall weeds as my father had ordered, and then for awhile longer for the new working, which interested me tremendously.First we brought hickory wood and built a fire on the exposed surface ofthe ridge. Then we splintered the hot stone by throwing water on it, anddug out the splinters. In two or three days we had worked clean throughthe ledge of flint to the limestone underneath. This we also burnt withfire, 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 offwith the stone sledges and break it up small for working. It was as goodsport to me as moose-hunting or battle.

  "We had worked a man's length under the ledge, and one day I looked upwith the sun in my eyes, as it reddened toward the west, and sawOngyatasse standing under a hickory tree. He was dressed for running,and around his mouth and on both his cheeks was the white Peace Mark. Imade the proper sign to him as to one carrying orders.

  "'You are to come with me,' he said. 'We carry a pipe to Miami.'"