It was a beautiful night in the month in which the Indians gather their first green corn, when, as the chief lay sleeping on his bed of skins, with the mother of his youngest child on his arm, he saw strange things in his slumbers. He dreamed that the bands of the Lenni Lenapes had taken the bones of their fathers from the burying places of the nation, loaded their women with pemmican and dried corn, folded up their tents, and departed towards the regions of their great father, the sun. He saw mountains, whose summits breathed fire, and others, which were the abode of the snow spirit—now noisy with the war of the Holy People above the clouds, and now with the hissing of the Great Serpent in the deep, awful, and inaccessible valleys of the bright old inhabitants.[10] They overcame, he thought, the impediments of fire and storm; they charmed away the wrath of the evil spirits, and looked at length from the eastern ridge of those mighty hills upon the interminable glades and prairies spread out in their shade. Onward they went, he thought, till at length they saw rolling before them a mighty river, upon whose banks abode a nation of warriors, whose size was much greater than that of the Lenape, and who dwelt behind hills of their own making, whence they would make incursions into the territories of the neighbouring tribes. Before him stood one of the maidens of the land. She was beautiful as a straight tree, as a meadow of flowers, as a tree covered with blossoms, as a clear sky lit up with stars. Her voice was sweeter than the notes of the Mocking-Bird[11], and her eye brighter and softer than the eye of the mountain-goat. She wore a cloak made of the tender bark of the mulberry-tree, interlaced with the white feathers of the swan, and the gay plumage of the snake-bird, and the painted vulture. Strings of shells depended from her ancles, and flowers were braided into her hair. When she spoke to the young Lenape, it was with a soft voice, as if it would assure him, that the heart which dwelt within was as gentle as that voice, and as mild as that eye. He thought he wooed that maiden to be his wife, but, when she would have become such, and he would have pressed to his bosom the lovely flower of the giant people, there only appeared a little white dove which flew away, and nestled in the branches of the great medicine trees[12].
Then the dream of the warrior took another direction, and he had visions, and saw sights, and the phantoms of things more congenial to his disposition than even the smiles of beautiful maidens. He heard, in his sleep, the shrill war-cry of his nation, among whose foremost warriors he stood; and his ears were open to a loud shout of defiance from the enemy. He saw himself and his nation victorious, the Great River crossed, and the last canoe of his enemies committed in flight to its rapid bosom. The beautiful maiden became his wife. Again his course was onward like a torrent unchecked, and again other mountains opposed his course; but nothing offers insurmountable obstacles to the ardent spirit of an Indian warrior. He stands on the sunny brink of that mountain, and sees the beautiful lands spread out before his eye. A voice speaks to him from the hollow wind, "Warrior of the Lenni Lenape, how likest thou the land which I place before thee? The rivers are beautiful—are they not? and yet thou canst not see, as I see, their better part—the sleek and juicy fish which glide through them, or the fowls which feed on their margin. The forests are tall—are they not? but thine eyes do not pierce their glades as mine do, to behold the stately bucks which browze in their flowery copses, or the gay birds which sing their soft songs of love and joy, perched on the lofty branches of the chesnut and the hickory. I have given these lands to thy tribe, and thou shalt continue to occupy them till the coming of Miquon."
Wangewaha, or the Hard Heart, awoke from his dream, and calling together the priests and conjurors of the nation, related to them the strange things he had seen and heard in his sleep. The expounders of dreams gave it as their opinion, that the Great Spirit had bidden the familiar genius of the warrior to reveal to him the work to which he had ordained the Lenapes. They were unanimous in this opinion. Yet they advised, that the Master of Life should be consulted by sacrifices, after the due fasts should have been kept, and that his assistance should be supplicated by songs and dances(3), as they were ever wont to be. The advice of the expounders of dreams was followed, and the priests prepared for the fast. First they feasted themselves, and the chiefs, and warriors. The remains of the feast were then removed to the outside of the camp, and the crumbs carefully swept out, till the cabin, in which the fast was to be held, was as clean as the brow of a grassy hill after a summer rain. Then it was proclaimed aloud by the head priest, that the warriors and chiefs of the Lenape nation should enter the cabin, and observe the fast, and that the women and children, and all who are uninitiated in war, who had never hung up a scalp-lock in the temple of the Wahconda, nor offered a victim to the Great Star, should keep apart from those who had done both. When those who had bound themselves to observe the sacred ceremonial had entered the holy square appointed for the fast, a man armed with the weapons of war was stationed at each of the corners, to keep out every thing except the initiated. If a dog had but dared to breathe upon the sacred spot, he had met the fate of a thievish Flathead.
Then the Lenapes drank, as is their wont, of the root[13], which purges away their evil and cowardly inclinations and propensities, making them tellers of nothing but truth, bold and strong in war, cunning and dexterous in the theft of horses, patient in scarcity, and beneath the torments of the victor. The while they filled the air with loud invocations to the great Wahconda, and with petitions to him, that, in the succeeding sacrifice, he would reveal the meaning of the dream which had so filled their minds. Lest the unexpiated sins of the uninitiated, the women and the children, should stifle their own purer voices, the priest sent by the hands of the oldest of the women a portion of the small green leaves of the beloved weed[14] to the sinners. And thus, for three suns, the priests and warriors of the Lenapes ate no food, but mortified their sinful appetites to please the Master of Life.
The fast being over, and the expiation made, according to the customs of the nation, the multitude assembled to the feast and sacrifice. Proclamation was made, that, the holy rites being performed, it was lawful for the hungry to taste food. But first came the sacrifice. The deer's flesh was laid on the burning coals, and the warriors who had fasted danced their most solemn dance around the hearth of sacrifice. The priest most reputed for intimacy with the Great Spirit, he who had oftenest, by his incantations, procured plentiful crops of maize, who had oftenest charmed the bisons to the unsheltered prairies, called the deer from the tangled coverts, and the horses from the hills of the Men of Black Garments[15], and given to the enemies of the Lenape the heart of the bird that runs low among the grass[16], arose, and began his hymn of supplication:
Song of the Lenape Priest.
Wangewaha dreamed a dream,
The Hard Heart slept,
When to him came the Manitou of Night,
And visions danced before his eyes.
What did Wangewaha see?
This he saw.
He saw the valiant warriors of his land,
Assembled as for warfare; wives and babes
Were at their feet; the aged on their sheds.
The dogs were harnessed;
The bones of many generations
Were taken from the burial places, where
They had reposed for countless suns;
The food was all prepared,
Dried corn and pemmican,
And folded tents proclaimed that the Lenapes
Had shod their mocassins for lengthened travel.
Dread Master of the earth,
Wahconda of the thunder, and the winds,
Who bid'st the earth shake, and the hills be thick
With hail and snow,
Shall we arise, and take
Our father's relics from the burial shed?
Shall we depart, and wilt thou guide
Our feet to fairer lands?
Does success await us,
In this, our distant pilgrimage?
Will these, our young men, strike and overcome?
Shall we possess the lands the dreamer saw?
And will their maidens look with favouring eyes
Upon our warriors?
Answer us, Spirit of the Mighty Voice!
Scarcely had the song of the priest ceased, when the voice of the Wahconda was heard sounding as sweetly as the notes of the mocking-bird rejoicing for the return of her mate, whom she chides for his long absence. The chiefs and warriors understood not the words he spoke, but they were heard by the priest, who repeated them to the awe-struck crowd. The Wahconda bade them gather up the bones of their fathers, burn them, and take the ashes, with which, and their women and children, and every thing they held valuable, they were to depart. They were to repair to the great Memahoppa, or Medicine Stone, which stood in the midst of a prairie, many suns beyond their hunting-grounds; and to this stone they were to be directed by a mighty wise man, of very low stature and of cross and passionate disposition, wearing a particoloured robe, and carrying a bag of rattles. Upon this memahoppa they would find further directions for their march engraved. Having pointed out their path, he gave them his blessing for brave men and expert horse-stealers, and his parting voice was as sweet as the voice of a maiden, who has died from ill-requited affection, and revisits the shades of earth in the form of a little white dove.