American Museum of Natural History -- Fiction; Indians of North America -- Fiction; Nature stories, American; Western stories
"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 passage 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 Ongyatasse; 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 Ongyatasse.
"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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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