He proceeded to narrate the advent of De Soto and his followers into the
country of the Cherokees, embellishing his account with unrecorded
particulars of their stay, especially in their digging for gold and
silver, in which enterprise he himself seemed to have actively
participated--only some two centuries previous!

Tscholens, listening, looked about absently at the "beloved square,"
which was vacant, with its open piazza-like building on each of the four
sides. Two or three men were talking in the "war cabin," painted a vivid
red. On the western side of the square the roof of the "holy cabin"
showed dark against a lustrous reach of the shimmering river; despite
the shadows within the broad entrance, the "sacred white seat" and the
red clay transverse wall that partitioned off the _sanctum sanctorum_
were plainly visible, but all was empty, deserted--the cheera-taghe had
departed for the night.

As Tsiskwa paused to cough, the Delaware, suddenly taking heart of
grace, observed that it had always been the boast of the Lenni Lenape
that they were the first tribe to welcome the European, the Dutch, to
the land that they now called New York.

Whereupon Tsiskwa retorted in a tempest of racking coughs that, whoever
welcomed the Europeans here or there, it was no credit that the Lenape
should be so forward to appropriate it! The white people were not the
friends of the red man. They wanted the whole country. Finally they
would have it.

"_Mattapewiwak nik, schwannakwak_!" (The white people are a deceiving
lot!) said Tscholens, seeking some common ground on which they could
meet with a mutual sentiment.

And at once Tsiskwa was all animation and as aggressive as at twenty.
Well, indeed, might the Lenape say that! They were forever an easy
prey--not only of the astute Europeans, but of the simple Indian as
well. For a hundred years they had been the dupe of the Mengwe! As the
mind of Tsiskwa dwelt on the various subtleties of the diplomatic
attitude of the Mengwe toward the Lenape, its craft so appealed to him
that his lips curved with relish; a smile irradiated his blurred eyes
and intensified his wrinkles; his cough, shaking the folds of his outer
fur garments above his wasted chest, mingled with his gay chuckle of
merriment, as young as a boy's, while he cried, "Iroquois!
Iroquois!"--the characteristic exclamation of the Mengwe confederation,
whence they take their modern and popular name, and signifying, "I have
s