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I don't know why, unless it was because he could out-run and out-wrestle the best of us; and yet he was never pleased with himself unless the rest of us were satisfied to have it that way. "Ongyatasse was what his mother called him.
But either because he thought the invitation should have come from himself as the leader of the band, or because he was a little jealous of our interest in White Quiver, Ongyatasse tossed me a word over his shoulder, 'We play with no crop-heads.
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?"
"There was a boy in our town," he began, "who was the captain of all our plays from the time we first stole melons and roasting-ears from the town gardens. He got us into no end of trouble, but no matter what came of it, we always stood up for him before the elders. There was nothing they could say which seemed half so important to us as praise or blame from Ongyatasse.
We had been out with Ongyatasse to look at our traps, and then the skin-smooth surface of the river beguiled us. "We came racing home close under the high west bank where the ice was thickest, but as we neared Bent Bar, Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back turned toward the trail that cut down to the ford between the points of Hanging Wood.
"That was a true name for many of us," said the Mound-Builder. "I remember Ongyatasse's shrill eagle cry above the 'G'we! G'we! of the Lenni-Lenape, and the next thing I knew I was struggling in the river, bleeding freely from a knife wound, and somebody was pulling me into a canoe and safety." "And Ongyatasse ?" The children looked at the low mound between the Council Place and the God-House.
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."
"Ongyatasse drew an arrow from his quiver and scraped it. There was dried blood on the point, which makes an arrow untrue to its aim, but it was no business for a youth to be cleaning his arrows before the elders of the Town House; therefore, I took notice that this was the meat of his message. Ongyatasse scraped and the Head Man watched him.
Ongyatasse did not tell me what they were, but I learned at the first village where we stopped. "This is the custom of pipe-carrying. When we approached a settlement we would show ourselves to the women working in the fields or to children playing, anybody who would go and carry word to the Head Man that the Pipe was coming.
A third came to me in the night as I considered how little agreement there was between these two, which was that there must be more behind this sending than a plain call to Council. "Ongyatasse told me all he knew as we lay up the next night at Pigeon Roost.
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