. He sings, that the maidens of his
nation have eyes and feet like the antelope, that their songs are
sweeter than the melodies of the song-sparrow, and their motions more
graceful than the motions of a young willow, bowed by the wind. He
sings, that the men of his tribe will smoke in the pipe of peace with
the strange warriors, or they will throw a war-club into the
council-house, as best suits them. The Lenapes are neither women nor
deer, they are not suing for peace, but they ask themselves why the
great storm of war should arise, and the sky be overcast with the
blustering clouds of tumult and quarrel. The Lenapes wish to go to
the land of the rising sun; why should their path be shut up? their
course is over a great river; why should it be made red with the blood
of either nation? As he concluded his song, he held up the pipe of
peace, the bowl of which was of red marble, the stem of which was of
alder curiously carved, painted, and adorned with beautiful feathers.
This, my brother must know is the symbol of peace among all the tribes
of the wilderness.

A Brave, painted for war, met the messenger from the Lenape camp, and,
after he had given his blanket to the winds, conducted him to the
cabin of the assembled chiefs of his nation, not, however, before he
had received the curses of the old women, and had been called "a
wrinkled old man with a hairy chin and a flat nose."

Then meat was placed before the Lenape messenger. When he had
satisfied his hunger, he pulled off his mocassins[A], and presented
the pipe to the Brave who had been his conductor, who, filling it with
tobacco and sweet herbs, handed it to him again. Then the youngest
chief present took a coal from the fire, which flamed high in the
centre of the council-cabin, and placed it on the beloved herb, which
was made to smoke high. Mottschujinga then turned the stem of the pipe
towards the field of the stars, to supplicate the aid of the Great
Spirit, and then towards the bosom of his great mother, the earth,
that the Evil Spirits might be appeased; now holding it horizontally,
he moved round till he had made a circle, whereby he intimated that he
sought to gain the protection of the spirits who sit on the clouds,
and move in the winds of the air, of those who dwell in the deep and
fearful glens and caverns, in the hollows of old and decayed oaks, on
the summits of inaccessible hills, and within the limits of the great
council-fire[B] of Michabou[C]. H