Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3)

J >> James Athearn Jones >> Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3)

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Wangewaha, or the Hard Heart, awoke from his dream, and calling
together the priests and conjurors of the nation, related to them the
strange things he had seen and heard in his sleep. The expounders of
dreams gave it as their opinion, that the Great Spirit had bidden the
familiar genius of the warrior to reveal to him the work to which he
had ordained the Lenapes. They were unanimous in this opinion. Yet
they advised, that the Master of Life should be consulted by
sacrifices, after the due fasts should have been kept, and that his
assistance should be supplicated by songs and dances(3), as they were
ever wont to be. The advice of the expounders of dreams was followed,
and the priests prepared for the fast. First they feasted themselves,
and the chiefs, and warriors. The remains of the feast were then
removed to the outside of the camp, and the crumbs carefully swept
out, till the cabin, in which the fast was to be held, was as clean as
the brow of a grassy hill after a summer rain. Then it was proclaimed
aloud by the head priest, that the warriors and chiefs of the Lenape
nation should enter the cabin, and observe the fast, and that the
women and children, and all who are uninitiated in war, who had never
hung up a scalp-lock in the temple of the Wahconda, nor offered a
victim to the Great Star, should keep apart from those who had done
both. When those who had bound themselves to observe the sacred
ceremonial had entered the holy square appointed for the fast, a man
armed with the weapons of war was stationed at each of the corners, to
keep out every thing except the initiated. If a dog had but dared to
breathe upon the sacred spot, he had met the fate of a thievish
Flathead.

Then the Lenapes drank, as is their wont, of the root[A], which purges
away their evil and cowardly inclinations and propensities, making
them tellers of nothing but truth, bold and strong in war, cunning and
dexterous in the theft of horses, patient in scarcity, and beneath the
torments of the victor. The while they filled the air with loud
invocations to the great Wahconda, and with petitions to him, that, in
the succeeding sacrifice, he would reveal the meaning of the dream
which had so filled their minds. Lest the unexpiated sins of the
uninitiated, the women and the children, should stifle their own purer
voices, the priest sent by the hands of the oldest of the women a
portion of the small green leaves of the beloved weed[B] to the
sinners. And thus, for three suns, the priests and warriors of the
Lenapes ate no food, but mortified their sinful appetites to please
the Master of Life.

[Footnote A: Button snakeroot.]

[Footnote B: Tobacco.]

The fast being over, and the expiation made, according to the customs
of the nation, the multitude assembled to the feast and sacrifice.
Proclamation was made, that, the holy rites being performed, it was
lawful for the hungry to taste food. But first came the sacrifice. The
deer's flesh was laid on the burning coals, and the warriors who had
fasted danced their most solemn dance around the hearth of sacrifice.
The priest most reputed for intimacy with the Great Spirit, he who had
oftenest, by his incantations, procured plentiful crops of maize, who
had oftenest charmed the bisons to the unsheltered prairies, called
the deer from the tangled coverts, and the horses from the hills of
the Men of Black Garments[A], and given to the enemies of the Lenape
the heart of the bird that runs low among the grass[B], arose, and
began his hymn of supplication:

SONG OF THE LENAPE PRIEST.

Wangewaha dreamed a dream,
The Hard Heart slept,
When to him came the Manitou of Night,
And visions danced before his eyes.
What did Wangewaha see?
This he saw.

He saw the valiant warriors of his land,
Assembled as for warfare; wives and babes
Were at their feet; the aged on their sheds.
The dogs were harnessed;
The bones of many generations
Were taken from the burial places, where
They had reposed for countless suns;
The food was all prepared,
Dried corn and pemmican,
And folded tents proclaimed that the Lenapes
Had shod their mocassins for lengthened travel.

Dread Master of the earth,
Wahconda of the thunder, and the winds,
Who bid'st the earth shake, and the hills be thick
With hail and snow,
Shall we arise, and take
Our father's relics from the burial shed?
Shall we depart, and wilt thou guide
Our feet to fairer lands?
Does success await us,
In this, our distant pilgrimage?
Will these, our young men, strike and overcome?
Shall we possess the lands the dreamer saw?
And will their maidens look with favouring eyes
Upon our warriors?
Answer us, Spirit of the Mighty Voice!

[Footnote A: The Spaniards.]

[Footnote B: The partridge, a common figure with the Indians to
express cowardice.]

Scarcely had the song of the priest ceased, when the voice of the
Wahconda was heard sounding as sweetly as the notes of the
mocking-bird rejoicing for the return of her mate, whom she chides for
his long absence. The chiefs and warriors understood not the words he
spoke, but they were heard by the priest, who repeated them to the
awe-struck crowd. The Wahconda bade them gather up the bones of their
fathers, burn them, and take the ashes, with which, and their women
and children, and every thing they held valuable, they were to depart.
They were to repair to the great Memahoppa, or Medicine Stone, which
stood in the midst of a prairie, many suns beyond their hunting-grounds;
and to this stone they were to be directed by a mighty wise man, of
very low stature and of cross and passionate disposition, wearing a
particoloured robe, and carrying a bag of rattles. Upon this memahoppa
they would find further directions for their march engraved. Having
pointed out their path, he gave them his blessing for brave men and
expert horse-stealers, and his parting voice was as sweet as the voice
of a maiden, who has died from ill-requited affection, and revisits
the shades of earth in the form of a little white dove.

The Lenapes, having obeyed the orders of the Wahconda, set out on
their march. The moment that their knapsacks were slung to their
shoulders, and their journey made certain, the spirits of their
departed friends struck up their glorious dance[A], far away over the
great lakes, the favourite regions of the spirits of winds and
tempests. The northern sky became lit all over with an effulgence
brighter than that which glimmers in the Path of the Master of
Life[B]. It was our departed friends who were showing their joy at the
contemplated removal of our nation to the pleasant shades of the
Lenape wihittuck, and the rich and beautiful lands which fringe its
border.

[Footnote A: Northern lights, _aurora borealis_.]

[Footnote B: The milky way.]

The Lenapes had not travelled very far, when they heard in the grass
near them a loud shaking, which sounded like the rattling of nuts in a
dry gourd, and soon they saw a little head with open jaws, and a
tongue moving quicker than the sparkle of the fire-fly, peering out of
the low grass. The Lenapes knew not what it was, but they saw that it
assumed a menacing posture: so one went forward with his raised
war-club to dispatch it. When he drew near, the unknown creature threw
itself into the form which our white brother gives to his whip; the
motion of his tail became so rapid, that it seemed but the soul of a
vapour; his body swelled through excessive rage, till it became four
times its former size, rising and falling like the Longknife's wind
medicine[A]; his beautiful skin became speckled and rough, his head
and neck flattened, his cheeks swollen with ungovernable anger, his
lips drawn up, showing his dreadful fangs, his eyes red as burning
coals, and his forked tongue of the colour of the hottest flame.

[Footnote A: The name given by the Indians to the bellows.]

"Back, back," said he, "I am very passionate; I shall bite you. If you
value your safety, go back before I make you very sorry that you have
bit your thumb at me. Or, if you are really mad, let me know, that I
may pity you, and not harm you."

Shamonekusse drew back with astonishment, and called the priest to
come and talk with the strange creature. The priest, having made a
short petition to his guardian Okki, which was the stuffed skin of a
horned owl, came forward, and demanded of the strange creature, "Who
are you?"

"I am," answered he, "the partisan leader of the rattlesnakes. I am
the 'mighty wise man of very low stature, and of cross and passionate
disposition, wearing a particoloured robe, and carrying a bag of
rattles,' spoken of by the Great Wahconda, as he who was ordered to
guide the Lenapes to the River of Fish."

"We are the Lenapes," answered the priest.

"Then you are the men I expected and was looking for," answered the
chief of the rattlesnakes. "But why were you about to declare war
against me--me, who alone possess, under the Wahconda, the means of
conducting you in safety to the end of your journey? You are too brave
and valiant, too hasty and choleric, Lenapes; it will be good for you
to lose some of your blood to make you tamer."

"We are very sorry," answered the priest, perceiving the wisdom of
conciliating the old fellow, "that the war-club was raised, and the
hatchet raked up. It is our wish that the hatchet shall be buried
again, and that there shall be a clear sky between us. Shall it be so,
rattlesnake?"

"The hatchet shall be buried again, and there shall be a clear sky
between us," answered the snake. "Yet, a little bird tells me that a
black cloud shall arise, and that the hatchet may as well be put under
the bedstead[A], whence it may be easily drawn forth. The rattlesnakes
and the Lenapes, ere many suns shall pass, will be enemies, and each
attempt the extermination of the other."

[Footnote A: Put the hatchet under the bedstead, an Indian figure,
signifying that peace will not last long.]

"Oh, we will not talk of that now," answered the priest; "we will put
all thoughts of the evil day afar off. We will smoke with you, snake."
So the Lenapes smoked with their new acquaintance; a firm league of
peace was made between the two nations, and they became very good
friends. They chatted for a long time of various matters, of the wars
which the rattlesnakes had waged against the black snakes, the
copperheads, the hornsnakes, and other warlike tribes of snakes. Again
they moved on, the rattlesnake leading the way, till, much fatigued,
their mocassins torn, and their wives cross, they spread their tents,
and a night's encampment took place[A]. Again their course was onward,
and again they encamped for another night. Spies were sent to search
out the land, while the Lenapes travelled after at their leisure. At
length the cunning old reptile, who still continued to guide them,
declared that he saw, in the dry grass, foot-prints of men who were
before them. While they halted, one went forward to reconnoitre. Soon
he returned, and told our people that there was a band of Indians
encamped in the path of the Lenapes, at a little distance from us. Our
hot-blooded young warriors were for attacking them, but the wise old
snake said, No. After offering many good reasons why peace should, at
all times, be preferred to war, he advised, that a belt of wampum
should be sent, and a league formed with them. The belt of wampum is
delivered to a brave young warrior, Mottschujinga, or the Little
Grizzly Bear. This redoubted chief clothes himself in his best robe;
he puts on his richest leggings; he fastens to his war-pipe the
_trotters_ of the fawn, and the cock-spurs of the wild turkey; he
places in his scalp-lock the wing of the red-bird, the crest of the
bittern, and the tail feathers of the pole-pecker. He paints one side
of his face, to show that he can smoke in the war-pipe, which hangs in
his belt, as gracefully and willingly as in the pipe of peace he
carries in his hand, and as a fearless warrior, that his thoughts are
quite as much of war as peace.

[Footnote A: A night's encampment is a halt of one year at a place.]

As he approaches the camp of the strange people, he puts on his most
martial airs, and commences his song. He sings the lofty and warlike
character of his nation, who never retreated from a foe, nor quailed
before the stern glance of warriors; who can fast for seven suns, and,
on the eighth, tire out the deer in his flight. He sings, that his
fathers have been conquerors of all the tribes who roam between the
mountains and the distant sea. He sings, that the maidens of his
nation have eyes and feet like the antelope, that their songs are
sweeter than the melodies of the song-sparrow, and their motions more
graceful than the motions of a young willow, bowed by the wind. He
sings, that the men of his tribe will smoke in the pipe of peace with
the strange warriors, or they will throw a war-club into the
council-house, as best suits them. The Lenapes are neither women nor
deer, they are not suing for peace, but they ask themselves why the
great storm of war should arise, and the sky be overcast with the
blustering clouds of tumult and quarrel. The Lenapes wish to go to
the land of the rising sun; why should their path be shut up? their
course is over a great river; why should it be made red with the blood
of either nation? As he concluded his song, he held up the pipe of
peace, the bowl of which was of red marble, the stem of which was of
alder curiously carved, painted, and adorned with beautiful feathers.
This, my brother must know is the symbol of peace among all the tribes
of the wilderness.

A Brave, painted for war, met the messenger from the Lenape camp, and,
after he had given his blanket to the winds, conducted him to the
cabin of the assembled chiefs of his nation, not, however, before he
had received the curses of the old women, and had been called "a
wrinkled old man with a hairy chin and a flat nose."

Then meat was placed before the Lenape messenger. When he had
satisfied his hunger, he pulled off his mocassins[A], and presented
the pipe to the Brave who had been his conductor, who, filling it with
tobacco and sweet herbs, handed it to him again. Then the youngest
chief present took a coal from the fire, which flamed high in the
centre of the council-cabin, and placed it on the beloved herb, which
was made to smoke high. Mottschujinga then turned the stem of the pipe
towards the field of the stars, to supplicate the aid of the Great
Spirit, and then towards the bosom of his great mother, the earth,
that the Evil Spirits might be appeased; now holding it horizontally,
he moved round till he had made a circle, whereby he intimated that he
sought to gain the protection of the spirits who sit on the clouds,
and move in the winds of the air, of those who dwell in the deep and
fearful glens and caverns, in the hollows of old and decayed oaks, on
the summits of inaccessible hills, and within the limits of the great
council-fire[B] of Michabou[C]. Having secured the aid of those
invisible beings, in whose power it is to blow away the smoke of the
pipe of peace, so that men shall speak from their lips only, and not
from their hearts, and in consequence their promises shall be but as
the song of a bird that has flown over, Mottschujinga presented his
pipe to the great chief of the strangers, who, before he would smoke
in it, arose and made a speech.

[Footnote A: The Shoshonees, a tribe living west of the Rocky
Mountains, to indicate the sincerity of their professions, pull off
their mocassins before they smoke in the pipe of peace, an action
which imprecates on themselves the misery of going barefoot for ever,
if they are faithless to their words.]

[Footnote B: "Great council fire" means all the land or territory
possessed by the nation.]

[Footnote C: Michabou is generally the Indian Neptune: sometimes,
however, they mean by this title the Great Spirit.]

"Our tribe," said the chief, "are called Mengwe. We too have come from
a distant country, and we also are bound to the land of the rising
sun. We will smoke in the Lenape's pipe, and bury the war-club very
deep; we will assist to make the Lenapes very strong, and will never
suffer the grass to grow in our war-path when the Lenapes are assailed
by enemies. We will draw out the thorns from your feet, oil your
stiffened limbs, and wipe your bodies with soft down. We will lift
each other up from this place, and the burthen shall be set down at
each other's dwelling-place. And the peace we make shall last as long
as the sun shall shine, or the rivers flow. And this is all I have to
say."

So a league was made, though no war had been, and the two nations
freely intermingled. Each man unclosed his hand to his neighbour, the
Lenape warrior took the Mengwe maiden to his tent, and her brother had
a woman of the former nation to roast his buffalo-hump, and boil his
corn.

And now the spies, who had been sent forward for the purpose of
reconnoitring, returned. They had seen many things so strange, that
when they reported them, our people half-believed them to be dreams,
and for a while regarded them but as the songs of birds. They told,
that they had found the further bank of the River of Fish inhabited by
a very powerful people, who dwelt in great villages, surrounded by
high walls. They were very tall--so tall that the head of the tallest
Lenape could not reach their arms, and their women were of higher
stature and heavier limbs than the loftiest and largest man in the
confederate nations. They were called the Allegewi, and were men
delighting in red and black paint, and the shrill war-whoop, and the
strife of the spear. Such was the relation made by the spies to their
countrymen.

This report of the spies increased the fears and dissatisfaction of
the Lenapes to such a height, that part agreed to remain in the lands
in which they then were, and not to attempt to cross the river
occupied by so many hostile warriors. But the greater part declared
that they were men, and rather than turn back from a foe, however
strong, or leave a battle-field without a blow or a war-whoop, they
would march to certain death, and leave their bones in a hostile camp.
So one band, the strongest of the Lenapes, remained beyond the
Mississippi, while the others prepared to encounter the nations who
were the present lords of the soil. But, ere they committed their
fortunes to battle, they fasted, and mortified their flesh, to gain
the favour of the being who presides over war, and their priests were
consulted to learn whether he would be propitious to them. "Shall we
conquer?" "Shall we overcome?" was eagerly asked. The priests replied,
"The Lenapes shall overcome, when they have obtained the great war
medicine." They asked what it was; the priests replied, "It shall be
made known to you on the morrow." The morrow came, and the priests
made known the great war medicine, whose properties brought certain
victory to those possessed of it. In old times, the wild cat had
devoured their people; they set a trap for him and caught him in it,
burned his bones, and preserved the ashes. These ashes had been
carefully kept by the priests, and they now brought them forth. The
great old snake, the father of strife, was in the water; the old men
gathered together and sang, and he shewed himself; they sang again,
and he showed himself a little further out of the water; the third
time he showed his horns. They were enabled to cut off one of the
horns. He showed himself a fourth time, and they cut off the other
horn. A piece of these horns, and the ashes of the bones of the wild
cat compounded, was the great war medicine of our nation. Prepared
with a medicine of such potency, the confederated nations moved
towards the land of reported giants. When they had arrived on the
banks of the Mississippi, they sent a message to the Allegewi, to
request permission to settle themselves in their neighbourhood. That
haughty people refused the request, but they gave them leave to pass
through their country, and seek a settlement farther towards the land
of the rising sun. The Lenapes accordingly began to cross the
Mississippi, when the Allegewi, seeing that their bands were very
numerous, outnumbering the birds on the trees or the fish in the
waters, made a furious attack upon those who had crossed, threatening
all with destruction, if they dared to persist in coming to their side
of the river. Fired at the treachery of these people, and maddened
with the loss of their brothers in arms, the Lenapes retired to the
thick covert to consult on what was best to be done. It was
deliberated in council, whether it was better to retreat in the best
manner they could, or put forth their utmost strength, and let the
enemy see they were not cowards, but men--brave men, who would not
suffer themselves to be driven into the woods, before they had tested
the strength of the enemy, and seen the power of their arms in hurling
the spear, and striking with the war-club, and the truth of their eye
in levelling the bow. It was determined, that brave men never turned
back, that the Lenape were brave men, and must steep their mocassins
in the blood of their enemies. The Mengwe, who till now had only
looked on while our nation had done the fighting, offered to join our
warriors, if, when the country was conquered, they should be allowed
to share it with us. The proposal pleased our councillors, and the two
nations renewed the faith of the calumet, resolved to conquer or die.
The next sun was fixed on to attack the Allegewi in their
intrenchments.

It was night; the bands of the confederate nations were sleeping in
their cabins, dreaming dreams of victory and glory, when Wangewaha, or
the Hard Heart, sleeping in his tent, was aroused by the tread of a
light foot on the earth at his side, and the music of a voice sweeter
than that of the linnet or the thrush. Looking up he saw, by the beams
of the moon, a tall and beautiful woman, straight as a hickory, and
graceful as a young antelope. She wore over her shoulders a cloak made
of the tender bark of the mulberry, interlaced with the white feathers
of the swan, and the gay plumage of the snake bird and the painted
vulture. Wangewaha started from his sleep, for he knew her to be the
beautiful maiden whom he had seen in his dream, ere he quitted the
land of his father's bones--the shape tall and erect, the eye black
and sparkling, the foot small and swift, the teeth white and even, the
glossy dark hair, and the small plump hand. He spoke to the beautiful
stranger in mild accents, and the tones of her reply were as sweet as
the breathings of a babe rocked to rest on the bough of a tree. He
asked her who she was, and she replied she was a maiden from the camp
of the Allegewi. "Why," he demanded, "had she come hither? Why had one
so young and fair adventured her person in a hostile camp, in the dark
hours of night, among fierce warriors, who had sworn the destruction
of her nation?"

"I have come hither," replied the beautiful creature, "because I would
escape the persecutions of a young warrior, the favourite of my
father, who solicits me to become his wife. I love him not, I have
told him so, yet he wishes to have me, while my heart revolts at the
thought of becoming the companion of one, who boasts only the merit of
being able to slay men weaker than himself; and of showing cheeks
painted for war, and hands red with blood."

The Hard Heart, who felt not towards beautiful women the feeling which
his name intimates, spoke to her words of consolation, and bade her
go sleep with his sister, whom he called to him from another part of
the cabin. But the passion of love arose in the warrior's heart, and
he determined that, if the Great Spirit should give him victory in the
approaching contest, the beautiful maiden should become his wife.

The sun of the next morning shone on fields of slaughter and prodigies
of valour. The confederated nations met the giant people; a great
battle was fought, and many, very many, warriors fell. With the potent
war-medicine of the Lenapes, borne by a priest, the confederates
attacked their enemies, and were victors. The beaten and discomfited
Allegewi retreated within the high banks which surrounded their
villages and great towns, and there awaited the assault of our brave
and fearless warriors. They were attacked, and numbers, greater than
the forest leaves, fell in the first engagement. None were spared; the
man who asked for quarter sooner received the arrow in his
bosom--sooner felt the thrust of the spear, than he who was too brave
to beg the poor boon of a few days longer stay on a cold and bleak
earth, and preferred going hence without dishonour. Again, and again,
were the Lenapes victorious. Beaten in many battles, and finding that
complete extirpation awaited them, if they longer delayed flight, the
Allegewi loaded their canoes with their wives and children, and took
their course adown the broad bosom of the Mississippi. Never more were
they or their descendants seen upon the lands where the Lenapes found
them. Of all the countless throngs of the Allegewi, the beautiful
maiden alone remained in our tents, and she was soon after taken to
sleep in the bosom of Wangewaha.

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