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