The Trail Book Part 25

ARRUMPA'S STORY

I am not quite certain of the places mentioned in this story, because the country has so greatly changed, but it must have been in Florida or Georgia, probably about where the Savannah River is now. It is in that part of the country we have the proof that man was here in America at the same time as the mammoth.

Sh.e.l.l mounds occur all along the coast. No doubt the first permanent trails led to them from the hunting-grounds. Every year the tribe went down to gather sea-food, and left great piles of sh.e.l.ls many feet deep, sometimes covering several acres. It is from these mounds that we discover the most that we know about early man in the United States.

There are three different opinions as to where the first men in America came from. First, that they came from some place in the North that is now covered with Arctic ice; second, that they came from Europe and Africa by way of some islands that are now sunk beneath the Atlantic Ocean; third, that they came from Asia across Behring Strait and the Aleutian Islands.

The third theory seems the most reasonable. But also it is very likely that some people did come from the lost islands in the Atlantic, and left traces in South America and the West Indies. It may be that Dorcas Jane and Oliver will yet meet somebody in the Museum country who can tell them about it.

The Great Cold that Arrumpa speaks about must have been the Ice Age, that geologists tell us once covered the continent of North America, almost down to the Ohio River. It came and went slowly, and probably so changed the climate that the elephants, tigers, camels, and other animals that used to be found in the United States could no longer live in it.

THE COYOTE'S STORY

_Tamal-Pyweack_--Wall-of-s.h.i.+ning-Rocks--is an Indian name for the Rocky Mountains. _Backbone-of-the-World_ is another.

The Country of the Dry Washes is between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas, toward the south. A dry wash is the bed of a river that runs only in the rainy season. As such rivers usually run very swiftly, they make great ragged gashes across a country.

There are several places in the Rockies called _Wind Trap_. The Crooked Horn might have been Pike's Peak, as you can see by the pictures. The white men had to rediscover this trail for themselves, for the Indians seemed to have forgotten it, but the railroad that pa.s.ses through the Rockies, near Pike's Peak, follows the old trail of the Bighorn.

It is very likely that the Indian in America had the dog for his friend as soon as he had fire, if not before it. Most of the Indian stories of the origin of fire make the coyote the first discoverer and bringer of fire to man. The words that Howkawanda said before he killed the Bighorn were probably the same that every Indian hunter uses when he goes hunting big game: "O brother, we are about to kill you, we hope that you will understand and forgive us." Unless they say something like that the spirit of the animal killed might do them some mischief.

THE CORN WOMAN'S STORY

Indian corn, _mahiz_, or maize, is supposed to have come originally from Central America. But the strange thing about it is that no specimen of the wild plant from which it might have developed has ever been found.

This would indicate that the development must have taken place a very long time ago, and the parent corn may have belonged to the age of the mastodon and other extinct creatures.

Different tribes probably brought it into the United States at different times. Some of it came up the Atlantic Coast, across the West Indies.

The fragments of legend from which I made the story of the Corn Woman were found among the Indians that were living in Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee at the time the white men came.

Chihuahua is a province and city in Old Mexico, the trail that leads to it one of the oldest lines of tribal migration on the continent.

To be given to the Sun meant to have your heart cut out on a sacrificial stone, usually on the top of a hill, or other high place. The Aztecs were an ancient Mexican people who practiced this kind of sacrifice as a part of their religion. If it was from them the Corn Woman obtained the seed, it must have been before they moved south to Mexico City, where the Spaniards found them in the sixteenth century.

A _teocali_ was an Aztec temple.

MOKE-ICHA'S STORY

A _tipi_ is the sort of tent used by the Plains Indians, made of tanned skins. It is sometimes called a _lodge_, and the poles on which the skins are hung are usually cut from the tree which for this reason is called the lodge-pole pine. It is important to remember things like this. By knowing the type of house used, you can tell more about the kind of life lived by that tribe than by any other one thing. When the poles were banked up with earth the house was called an _earth lodge_.

If thatched with brush and gra.s.s, a _wickiup_. In the eastern United States, where huts were covered with bark, they were generally called _wigwams_. In the desert, if the house was built of sticks and earth or brush, it was called a _hogan_, and if of earth made into rude bricks, a _pueblo_.

The Queres Indians live all along the Rio Grande in pueblos, since there is no need of their living now in the cliffs. You can read about them at Ty-uonyi in "The Delight-Makers."

A _kiva_ is the underground chamber of the house, or if not underground, at least without doors, entered from the top by means of a ladder.

_s.h.i.+papu_, the place from which the Queres and other pueblo Indians came, means, in the Queres language, "Black Lake of Tears," and according to the Zuni, "Place of Encompa.s.sing Mist," neither of which sounds like a pleasant place to live. Nevertheless, all the Queres expect to go there when they die. It is the Underworld from which the Twin Brothers led them when the mud of the earliest world was scarcely dried, and they seem to have gone wandering about until they found Ty-uonyi, where they settled.

The stone puma, which Moke-icha thought was carved in her honor, can still be seen on the mesa back from the river, south of Tyuonyi. But the Navajo need not have made fun of the Cliff-Dwellers for praying to a puma, since the Navajos of to-day still say their prayers to the bear.

The Navajos are a wandering tribe, and pretend to despise all people who live in fixed dwellings.

The "ghosts of prayer plumes," which Moke-icha saw in the sky, is the Milky Way. The Queres pray by the use of small feathered sticks planted in the ground or in crevices of the rocks in high and lonely places. As the best feathers for this purpose are white, and as everything is thought of by Indians as having a spirit, it was easy for them to think of that wonderful drift of stars across the sky as the spirits of prayers, traveling to Those Above. If ever you should think of making a prayer plume for yourself, do not on any account use the feathers of owl or crow, as these are black prayers and might get you accused of witchcraft.

The _Uakanyi_, to which Tse-tse wished to belong, were the Shamans of War; they had all the secrets of strategy and spells to protect a man from his enemies. There were also Shamans of hunting, of medicine and priestcraft.

It was while the Queres were on their way from s.h.i.+papu that the Delight-Makers were sent to keep the people cheerful. The white mud with which they daubed themselves is a symbol of light, and the corn leaves tied in their hair signify fruitfulness, for the corn needs cheering up also. There must be something in it, for you notice that clowns, whose business it is to make people laugh, always daub themselves with white.

THE MOUND-BUILDER'S STORY

The Mound-Builders lived in the Mississippi Valley about a thousand years ago. They built chiefly north of the Ohio River, until they were driven out by the Lenni-Lenape about five hundred years before the English and French began to settle that country. They went south and are probably the same people we know as Creeks and Cherokees.

_Tallegewi_ is the only name for the Mound-Builders that has come down to us, though some people insist that it ought to be _Allegewi_, and the singular instead of being _Tallega_ should be _Allega_.

The _Lenni-Lenape_ are the tribes we know as Delawares. The name means "Real People."

The _Mingwe_ or _Mingoes_ are the tribes that the French called Iroquois, and the English, Five Nations. They called themselves "People of the Long House." _Mingwe_ was the name by which they were known to other tribes, and means "stealthy," "treacherous." All Indian tribes have several names.

The _Onondaga_ were one of the five nations of the Iroquois. They lived in western New York.

_s.h.i.+naki_ was somewhere in the great forest of Canada. _Namaesippu_ means "Fish River," and must have been that part of the St. Lawrence between Lakes Erie and Huron.

The _Peace Mark_ was only one of the significant ways in which Indians painted their faces. The marks always meant as much to other Indians as the device on a knight's s.h.i.+eld meant in the Middle Ages.

_Scioto_ means "long legs," in reference to the river's many branches.

_Wabas.h.i.+ki_ means "gleaming white," on account of the white limestone along its upper course. _Maumee_ and _Miami_ are forms of the same word, the name of the tribe that once lived along those waters.

_Kaskaskia_ is also the name of a tribe and means, "They sc.r.a.pe them off," or something of that kind, referring to the manner in which they get rid of their enemies, the Peorias.

The Indian word from which we take _Sandusky_ means "cold springs," or "good water, here," or "water pools," according to the person who uses it.

You will find all these places on the map.

"_G'we_!" or "_Gowe_!" as it is sometimes written, was the war cry of the Lenape and the Mingwe on their joint wars. At least that was the way it sounded to the people who heard it. Along the eastern front of these nations it was softened to "_Zowie_!" and in that form you can hear the people of eastern New York and Vermont still using it as slang.

THE ONONDAGA'S STORY

The _Red Score_ of the Lenni-Lenape was a picture writing made in red chalk on birch bark, telling how the tribe came down out of s.h.i.+naki and drove out the Tallegewi in a hundred years' war. Several imperfect copies of it are still in existence and one nearly perfect interpretation made for the English colonists. It was in the nature of short-hand memoranda of the most interesting items of their tribal history, but unless Oliver and Dorcas Jane meet somebody in the Museum country who knew the Tellings that went with the Red Score, it is unlikely we shall ever know just what did happen.

Any early map of the Ohio Valley, or any good automobile map of the country south and east of the Great Lakes, will give the _Muskingham-Mahoning Trail_, which was much used by the first white settlers in that country. The same is true of the old Iroquois Trade Trail, as it is still a well-traveled country road through the heart of New York State. _Muskingham_ means "Elk's Eye," and referred to the clear brown color of the water. _Mahoning_ means "Salt Lick," or, more literally, "There a Lick."

_Mohican-ittuck_, the old name for the Hudson River, means the river of the Mohicans, whose hunting-grounds were along its upper reaches.

_Niagara_ probably means something in connection with the river at that point, the narrows, or the neck. According to the old spelling it should have been p.r.o.nounced Nee-a-gar'-a, but it isn't.