owd. The Wahconda bade them gather up the bones of their
fathers, burn them, and take the ashes, with which, and their women
and children, and every thing they held valuable, they were to depart.
They were to repair to the great Memahoppa, or Medicine Stone, which
stood in the midst of a prairie, many suns beyond their hunting-grounds;
and to this stone they were to be directed by a mighty wise man, of
very low stature and of cross and passionate disposition, wearing a
particoloured robe, and carrying a bag of rattles. Upon this memahoppa
they would find further directions for their march engraved. Having
pointed out their path, he gave them his blessing for brave men and
expert horse-stealers, and his parting voice was as sweet as the voice
of a maiden, who has died from ill-requited affection, and revisits
the shades of earth in the form of a little white dove.

The Lenapes, having obeyed the orders of the Wahconda, set out on
their march. The moment that their knapsacks were slung to their
shoulders, and their journey made certain, the spirits of their
departed friends struck up their glorious dance[A], far away over the
great lakes, the favourite regions of the spirits of winds and
tempests. The northern sky became lit all over with an effulgence
brighter than that which glimmers in the Path of the Master of
Life[B]. It was our departed friends who were showing their joy at the
contemplated removal of our nation to the pleasant shades of the
Lenape wihittuck, and the rich and beautiful lands which fringe its
border.

[Footnote A: Northern lights, _aurora borealis_.]

[Footnote B: The milky way.]

The Lenapes had not travelled very far, when they heard in the grass
near them a loud shaking, which sounded like the rattling of nuts in a
dry gourd, and soon they saw a little head with open jaws, and a
tongue moving quicker than the sparkle of the fire-fly, peering out of
the low grass. The Lenapes knew not what it was, but they saw that it
assumed a menacing posture: so one went forward with his raised
war-club to dispatch it. When he drew near, the unknown creature threw
itself into the form which our white brother gives to his whip; the
motion of his tail became so rapid, that it seemed but the soul of a
vapour; his body swelled through excessive rage, till it became four
times its former size, rising and falling like the Longknife's wind
medicine[A]; his beautiful skin became speckled and rough, his head
and nec