"Pawnee, we were bison, then (Puk-wah-chee-m'-tho-tho), belonging to the same herd and following the same leader. Let us go back to our people and tell them we were brothers in the other world."
They separated, and the war chiefs, understanding well, looked upward, in reverence to the Great Being who had transformed them all in the time long ago, then returned in silence to their villages.
Many Shawnees and Pottawatomies claim that they are of the lost tribes of Israel. Certain customs that have descended to them from time immemorial, seem to bear out this theory. Their Holy of Holies corresponds to the Ark of the Covenant, of the Israelites. Its contents were known only to its possessor, and, under penalty of death, all others, except the medicine men, were forbidden to touch the sacred relic, which was wrapped and re-wrapped with bark until it became a good-sized bundle.
The Shawnee language is a dialect of the Algonquin, which possesses all the vowel sounds. The letters f, r, and v are wanting. X is also wanting in all Algonquin languages except the Delaware and Mohican. There is a strong affinity between the Shawnee and the Mohican dialects. Verbs are full and varied in their inflections. The meanings of whole words are concentrated upon a few syllables or upon a single letter. The prefix tah, indicates futurity. Everything is considered as divided into two classes—animate and inanimate. Terminations change accordingly. Divested of their appendages, words become monosyllables. The syllable e-bun is added to the name of one deceased. This is equivalent to the words "has been" and is a delicate way of indicating a person's demise. For instance, Tecumseh, after death, becomes Tecumseh-e-bun or "Has Been Tecumseh."
A wealthy trader who married the descendant of a French officer stationed in Canada during Colonial days and the daughter of a chief of the Chippewas, passed through many strange experiences while sojourning among the Shawnees.
One moonlight night, riding from Westport, now a part of Kansas City, to Uniontown, on the present site of Valencia, he left the beaten road and took a short cut for home over a seldom used Indian trail. A ghostly stillness prevailed, which was broken, ere he had proceeded far, by a series of blood-curdling groans, sometimes clear and distinct, sometimes like the rushing of the wind, but always seeming to follow in his wake. Drawing a revolver and wheeling to confront the enemy, he found only empty air—while the pale moon still shone serenely down upon the unbroken prairie. Again the terrible sounds became audible; and the horse was urged to its highest rate of speed without avail. A sensation of horror creeping over him, the pioneer turned into a path leading to an Indian hut—the noise sweeping by like the breath of a cyclone—and inquired the cause. His host, well versed in explanations of the medicine men, replied:
"Had you remained upon that trail, the route of a rambling night spirit, you would have surely died before the break of day."
Doubtless these interpretations often served to cover murderous designs.
On another occasion he was urged by a friendly Indian, a member of a secret society, not to undertake his usual journey, as, at a gulley south of Martin's Hill, danger lay in wait. True enough, at that place a large gray wolf sprang out and made a fierce lunge, inflicting deep wounds upon the horse. The traveler fired but missed the animal. Again and again the ferocious creature jumped at him, each time failing to reach the man and burying its teeth in the horse. After a furious conflict, in which the rider succeeded in beating back the wolf with the butt of his pistol, he urged forward the wounded steed and was enabled to outrun his wild adversary.
A Shawnee, descended from the principal characters described, is authority for the following story, of