Piqua - Page 2

men who came to the battle armed with the real lightning, and hurling unseen death. Even now I see him coming; the shallow streams he has forded; the deep rivers he has swum. He is tired and hungry, and his quiver has no arrows, but he brings a prisoner in his arms. Lay the deer's flesh on the fire, and bring hither the pounded corn. Taunt him not, for he is valiant, and has fought like a hungry bear."

As the wise Chenos spoke these words to the grey-bearded counsellors and warriors the Head Buffalo walked calm and cool into the midst of them. There he stood, tall and straight as a young pine, but he spoke no word, looking on the head chief and the counsellors. There was blood upon his body, dried on by the sun, and the arm next his heart was bound up with the skin of the deer. His eye was hollow and his body gaunt, as though he had fasted long. His quiver held no arrows.

"Where are our sons?" inquired the head chief of the warrior.

"Ask the wolf and the panther," he answered.

"Brother! tell us where are our sons!" exclaimed the chief. "Our women ask us for their sons. They want them. Where are they?"

"Where are the snows of last year?" replied the warrior. "Have they not gone down the swelling river into the Great Lake? They have, and even so have your sons descended the stream of Time into the great Lake of Death. The great star sees them as they lie by the water of the Walkulla, but they see him not. The panther and the wolf howl unheeded at their feet, and the eagle screams, but they hear them not. The vulture whets his beak on their bones, the wild-cat rends their flesh, both are unfelt, for your sons are dead."

When the warrior told these things to our people, they set up their loud death-howl. The women wept; but the men sprang up and seized their weapons, to go to meet the Walkullas, the slayers of their sons. The chief warrior rose again--

"Fathers and warriors," said he, "hear me and believe my words, for I will tell you the truth. Who ever heard the Head Buffalo lie, and who ever saw him afraid of his enemies? Never, since the time that he chewed the bitter root and put on the new moccasins, has he lied or fled from his foes. He has neither a forked tongue nor a faint heart. Fathers, the Walkullas are weaker than us. Their arms are not so strong, their hearts are not so big, as ours. As well might the timid deer make war upon the hungry wolf, as the Walkullas upon the Shawanos. We could slay them as easily as a hawk pounces into a dove's nest and steals away her unfeathered little ones. The Head Buffalo alone could have taken the scalps of half the nation. But a strange tribe has come among them--men whose skin is white as the folds of the cloud, and whose hair shines like the great star of day. They do not fight as we fight, with bows and arrows and with war-axes, but with