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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.
"'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.
Then the Three Towns took council and sent a pipe to the Eagle villages, to the Wolverines and the Painted Turtles. These three kept the country of the Tallegewi on the north from Maumee to the headwaters of the Allegheny, and Well-Praised was their war leader.
"The Lenni-Lenape won the permission they had come to ask for, to pass through the territory of the Tallegewi, under conditions that were made by Well-Praised, our war-chief; a fat man, a wonderful orator, who never took a straight course where he could find a cunning one. What those conditions were you shall hear presently. At the time, we boys were scarcely interested.
"'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.
To save the game, we told him, which seemed to us reasonable; though I think from that hour we began to feel that the Tallegewi, with all their walled towns and monuments, had been put somehow in the wrong by the wild tribes of Shinaki. "We stayed on in the ravine, waiting on Ongyatasse's knee, until we saw the new rim of the Halting Moon curled up like a feather.
"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.
"'Does Young-Man-Who-Never-Turns-Back take so much from a Crop-Head? said the Lenni-Lenape in good Tallegewi, which shows how much they knew of us already and how they began to hate us. "But when he was touched, Ongyatasse had no equal for highness.
"When we had smoked our last pipe, we were still two or three days from Three Towns, and we decided to try for a cut-off by a hunting-trail which Ongyatasse had been over once, years ago, with his father. These hunting-traces go everywhere through the Tallegewi Country. You can tell them by the way they fork from the main trails and, after a day or two, thin into nothing.
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.
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