The doom trail

ARTHUR D. HOWDEN SMITH
Author of Spears of Destiny, The Audacious Adventures of Miles McConaughy, The Wastrel, etc.
NEW YORK BRENTANO'S Publishers
COPYRIGHT 1922, BY BRENTANO'S COPYRIGHT 1921, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY All rights reserved PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER

O my reader, rest a while at our Council Fire before you set your feet upon the long trail which leads into the dim regions of Ta-de, which is—or was—Yesterday.
See, we will sprinkle tobacco leaves upon the flames and on the spirals of the smoke ascending upward our words shall be carried to the ears of Ha-wen-ne-yu, the Great Spirit.
Behold, O my reader, we give you a White Belt in token that our words are straight.
That which has been is no more. We of the Ho-de-no-san-nee, the People of the Long House, are scattered so that only Ga-oh, the Old Man of the Winds, can tell where the remnants dwell. The Long House, where our women sowed and reaped and our warriors hunted, is the spoil of the white man. His roads have wiped out the trails stamped by our war parties in the days of our power. His towns have replaced our villages. He has chased the wild things into the recesses of the Adirondack hills.
The Great League itself, which Da-ga-no-we-da and Ha-yo-wont-ha, the Founders, intended should live for all time, is no more than a memory locked in our breasts. The Council Fire which they kindled no longer burns at Onondaga. Gone is the Ho-yar-na-go-war, the Council of the Roy-an-ehs, whose word was supreme from the shores of the Great Lakes to the lands of the Wa-sa-seh-o-no, whom the white men call the Sioux, and the O-ya-da-ga-o-no, whom the white men name the Cherokees. The Seneca Wolves have abandoned their watch at the Western Door of the Long House which opens upon the Thunder Waters of Jagara; the Mohawk Wolves no longer guard the Eastern Door by the shores of the Ska-neh-ta-de, which the white men have renamed the Hudson.