gs
of past glory and present defiance in their mouths. And the spirits
will not be appeased unless they have many offerings, and there will
be in their paths the Dread Destroyer of Deer[C], he who laughed at
the avenging arrow of the Master of Life, and is gone to prey upon the
moose of the Lake of the Woods.

[Footnote A: The greater part of the Indians of the Western Continent
believe themselves descended from, or colonies of, the Lenni Lenapes,
and hence give to that tribe the epithet, "grandfather." Several of
the tribes have a tradition, that they came from beyond the Rocky
Mountains.]

[Footnote B: Oniagarah, Niagara: the former is the Indian
pronunciation of the name of that celebrated cataract.]

[Footnote C: See the note relating to the Mammoth in the tradition of
"The Coming of Miquon."]

The Lenapes were living in their lodges, warring upon the Flatheads,
feasting upon the salmon, and drinking the juice of the sacred
bean[A], when it happened to one of their young warriors, that he
dreamed a dream. Wangewaha, or the Hard Heart, though his years were
but few, was one of the most celebrated chiefs of the nation. His days
were but those of a young eagle; yet the bravest, even those who had
watched the nut-tree from its sprout to its bloom, ranged themselves
in battle under his faultless command, in the chase followed the ken
of his eagle eye. He had struck more dead bodies, he had stolen more
horses, he had taken more scalps, than any man of his nation. He could
follow the trail of a glass snake from sun to sun, he could see the
wake of a fish a fathom below the surface of the water. When he cast
his eye upon a young maiden, she became his without a wrestle(1); when
he told the revelations of the spirit of sleep, the aged men and wise
councillors never called their truth in question, but acted upon them
without reflection, believing them to be the voice of the Great
Spirit, speaking through his favourite son. If he excelled in war and
perilous pursuits, he excelled as much in those pastimes and games,
wherewith the warrior in times of peace and rest beguiles the tedious
hours. When Wangewaha struck the ball, its flight was above the
soaring of the bird of morning, and he never rose from the game of
bones(2) without giving proof that he was the favourite of heaven.

[Footnote A: Intoxicating bean.--See Long's First Expedition to the
Rocky Mountains.]

It was a beautiful night in the month in which the Ind