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Book, page 91 / 196 Allegheny, but was known to us as the River of the Tallegewi. "Thus they had begun to come, few at first, like the trickle of melting ice in the moon of the Sun Returning, and at the last, like grasshoppers in the standing corn. They fished out our rivers and swept up the game like fire in the forest. Three Towns sent scouts toward Fish River who reported that the Lenape swarmed in the Dark Wood, that they came on from Shinaki thick as their own firs. Then the Three Towns took council and sent a pipe to the Eagle villages, to the Wolverines and the Painted Turtles. These three kept the country of the Tallegewi on the north from Maumee to the headwaters of the Allegheny, and Well-Praised was their war leader. "Still," said the Mound-Builder, "except that he was the swiftest runner, I couldn't understand why they had chosen an untried youth for pipe-carrying." He felt in a pouch of kit fox with the tail attached, which hung from the front of his girdle like the sporran of a Scotch Highlander. Out of it he drew a roll of birch bark painted with juice of poke-berries. The Tallega spread it on the grass, weighting one end with the turtle-back, as he read, with the children looking over his shoulder. [Illustration: Well-Praised, war-chief of the Eagle Clan to the Painted Turtles;--Greeting.] [Illustration: Come to the Council House at Three Towns.] [Illustration: On the fifth day of the Moon Halting.] [Illustration: We meet as Brothers.] "An easy scroll to read," said the Tallega, as the released edges of the birch-bark roll clipped together. "But there was more to it than that. There was an arrow play; also a question that had to be answered in a certain way. Ongyatasse did not tell me what they were, but I learned at the first village where we stopped. "This is the custom of pipe-carrying. When we approached a settlement we would show ourselves to the women working in the fields or to children
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