"
The Mound-Builder drew out from under his feather robe a gorget of pearl
shell, beautifully engraved with the figure of a young man dancing in an
eagle-beaked mask, with eagles' wings fastened to his shoulders.
"Most of the effigy mounds," he said, taking the gorget from his neck to
let the children examine it, "were built that way to celebrate a treaty
or a victory. Sometimes," he added, after a pause, looking off across
the wide flat mounds between the two taller ones, "they were built like
these, to celebrate a defeat. It was there we buried the Tallegewi who
fell in our first battle with the Lenni-Lenape."
"Were they Mound-Builders, too?" the children asked respectfully, for
though the man's voice was sad, it was not as though he spoke of
an enemy.
"People of the North," he said, "hunting-people, good foes and good
fighters. But afterward, they joined with the Mengwe and drove us from
the country. _That_ was a Mingo,"--he pointed to the Iroquois who had
called himself an Onondaga, disappearing down the forest tunnel. They
saw him a moment, with arrow laid to bow, the sunlight making tawny
splotches on his dark body, as on the trunk of a pine tree, and then
they lost him.
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