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