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The matters to be settled by the head-chief sitting in council with the subordinate chiefs are those affecting the whole village, questions of war and peace and of removal, disputes between houses, trials for murder or serious personal injuries.
How Indian Social Life originated. The Family Tie the Central Principle. Gradual Development of a Family into a Tribe. The Totem. The first white visitors to America found men exercising some kind of authority, and they called them kings, after the fashion of European government. The Spaniards even called the head-chief of the Mexicans the "Emperor Montezuma."
These ties of kindred, together with this fraternal strength, and his reputation as a sagacious councillor, gave Dekanawidah great influence among his people. But, in the Indian sense, he was not the leading chief. Each nation has always had a head-chief, to whom belonged the hereditary right and duty of lighting the council fire and taking the first place in public meetings.
The big council-lodge was erected everything was arranged the great ceremonial-pipe was filled and the council-fire kept smoldering. Many packages of beaver-skins were unloaded by squaws at the gate of the traders and all important persons foregathered in the lodge. When the pipe had passed slowly and in form the head-chief asked the trader if he saw beaver enough outside his window.
This was occupied by his mother, the widow of the head-chief of that band, and who was called by them the Old Queen. On entering her presence, her son presented her the little girl, saying, "My mother, I bring you a child to supply the place of my brother, who was killed by the Lenape six moons ago. She shall dwell in my lodge, and be to me a sister.
But these chiefs had little control, and could not do much more than influence or advise their subjects; they were dependent on the will of the majority. Each town was a little hotbed of party spirit; the inhabitants divided on almost every question. If the head-chief was for peace, but the war-chief nevertheless went on the war-path, there was no way of restraining him.
He thought of appealing to Makamuk, the head-chief; but his judgment told him that such appeal was useless. Then, too, he thought of bursting his bonds and dying fighting. Such an end would be quick. But he could not break his bonds. Caribou thongs were stronger than he. Still devising, another thought came to him.
Turning from Cloud to the head-chief of the party, a warrior whom he had no difficulty in recognizing, after having so long watched his movements in the earlier part of the night, he pushed the same subject a little further. "Yes; this place is called by the whites Whiskey Centre," he added "which means that it is the centre of all the whiskey of the country round about."
This assumption was denied by Hopothlayohola, chief of the Tuscahatchees, Tuskega, and other chiefs of the nation, who insisted upon the ancient usages, and the power attaching through these to the recognized head-chief of the nation.
The masterly political machinations of Tscholens and the mystery in which they were enveloped did not permanently impair the cordial relations existing between his tribe and the Cherokees, for so late as 1779 a delegation of fourteen Cherokees is chronicled as appearing in the country of the Lenni Lenape at their council-fire, to condole with them on the death of their head-chief; but neither before nor since is there any record of another visit of the turbulent "grandfather" to the banks of the Tennessee River.
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