While Tadeuskund was at the head of his nation, he was frequently distinguished by the title of “King of the Delawares.” While passing and repassing to and from the enemy with messages, many people called him the “War Trumpet.” In his person he was a portly well-looking man, endowed with good natural sense, quick of comprehension, and very ready in answering the questions put to him. He was rather ambitious, thought much of his rank and abilities, liked to be considered as the king of his country, and was fond of having a retinue with him when he went to Philadelphia on business with the government. His greatest weakness was a fondness for strong drinks, the temptation of which he could not easily resist, and would sometimes drink to excess. This unfortunate propensity is supposed to have been the cause of his cruel and untimely death.
CHAPTER XLI.
COMPUTATION OF TIME—ASTROMICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.
The Indians do not reckon as we do, by days, but by nights. They say: “It is so many nights’ travelling to such a place;” “I shall return home in so many nights,” &c. Sometimes pointing to the heavens they say: “You will see me again when the sun stands there.”
Their year is, like ours, divided into four parts: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. It begins with the spring, which, they say, is the youth of the year, the time when the spirits of man begin to revive, and the plants and flowers again put forth. These seasons are again subdivided into months or moons, each of which has a particular name, yet not the same among all the Indian tribes or nations; these denominations being generally suited to the climate under which they respectively live, and the advantages or benefits which they enjoy at the time. Thus the Lenape, while they inhabited the country bordering on the Atlantic, called the month which we call March, “the shad moon,” because this fish at that time begins to pass from the sea into the fresh water rivers, where they lay their spawn; but as there is no such fish in the country into which they afterwards removed, they changed the name of that month, and called it “the running of the sap” or “the sugar-making month,” because it is at that time that the sap of the maple tree, from which sugar is made, begins to run; April, they call “the spring month,” May, the planting month, June, the fawn month, or the month in which the deer bring forth their young, or, again, the month in which the hair of the deer changes to a reddish colour. They call July the summer month; August, the month of roasting ears, that is to say, in which the ears of corn are fit to be roasted and eaten. September, they call the autumnal month, October, the gathering or harvest month; December, the hunting month, it being the time when the stags have all dropped their antlers or horns. January is called the mouse or squirrel month, for now those animals come out of their holes, and lastly, they call February the frog month, because on a warm day the frogs then begin to croak.
Some nations call the month of January by a name which denotes “the sun’s return to them,” probably because in that month the days begin to lengthen again. As I have said before, they do not call all the months by the same name; even the Monseys, a tribe of the Delawares, differ among themselves in the denominations which they give to them.
The Indians say that when the leaf of the white oak, which puts forth in the spring, is of the size of the ear of a mouse, it is time to plant corn; they observe that now the whippoorwill has arrived, and is continually hovering over them, calling out his Indian name “Wekolis” in order to remind them of the planting time, as if he said to them “Hackiheck! go to planting corn!”