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"'There was peace on my mouth and peace between Lenni-Lenape and Tallegewi. Why should you chase us? "'The Tallegewi send a Pipe to the Three Clans. Will you swear that the message that went with it had nothing to do with the Lenni-Lenape? "'What should two boys know of a call to Council? said Ongyatasse, and showed him the birch-bark scroll, to which White Quiver paid no attention.
"'Now, I think, said my friend, when the Lenape had left us with some question about a hunting-party, which they had evidently invented to excuse their rudeness, 'that it was for such as these that the scroll was written. But we could not understand why Well-Praised should have gone to all that trouble to let the Lenni-Lenape know that he had called a Council.
Not in the Kanonsis, nor yet in the Kanonsionni may the Mohicans read to the Mohawks the ancient wampum records. The Lenni-Lenape are Algonquin, not Huron-Iroquois. Let those degraded Delawares who still sit in the Long House count their white belts while, from both doors of the Confederacy, Seneca and Mohawk belt-bearers hurl their red wampum to the four corners of the world."
"That was not a true word, for the Lenni-Lenape do not crop the head until they go on the war-path, and White Quiver's hair lay along his shoulders, well oiled, with bright bits of shell tied in it, glittering as he walked. Also it is the rule of the Tellings that one must feed the stranger. But me, I was never a Name-Seeker. I was happy to stand fourth from Ongyatasse in the order of our running.
When the Lenni-Lenape speaks of a Telling of his Fathers about the mastodon or the mammoth, he was probably thinking of the story that is pictured on the Lenape stone, which seems to me to be the one told by Arrumpa. Several Indian tribes had stories of a large extinct animal which they called the Big Moose, or the Big Elk, because moose and elk were the largest animals they knew.
Smoke arose, from Wabashiki, from the direction of the Maumee settlements, from the lake shore towns; tall plumes of smoke shook and threatened. Curtly, while we ate, White Quiver told us what had happened; how the Tallegewi, in violation of the treaty, had fallen suddenly on scattered bands of the Lenni-Lenape and all but exterminated them.
Now, according to some of the old histories, a woman appeared in the double character of peacemaker and guardian angel. Among the Lenni-Lenape, as well as the other tribes of North America, women often had a peculiar part to play in national and social affairs. If ever the services of a peacemaker were desired, that position was always given to a woman.
"'Concerning the call to Council, there was more to it than was written on the scroll, the meaning of which was hidden from me who carried it. "'Which is no news to me, said the Lenni-Lenape; 'also, he said, 'the message was arranged beforehand, for it required no answer. "I asked him how he knew that, and he mocked at me.
White Quiver asked us one day what reason Well-Praised had given for requiring that the Lenni-Lenape should pass through the country with not more than twenty fighting men in the party.
It was there we buried the Tallegewi who fell in our first battle with the Lenni-Lenape." "Were they Mound-Builders, too?" the children asked respectfully, for though the man's voice was sad, it was not as though he spoke of an enemy. "People of the North," he said, "hunting-people, good foes and good fighters. But afterward, they joined with the Mengwe and drove us from the country.
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