At dawn my Indians began to paint.
After we had eaten a bowl of samp I called them around me, shewed them the map I had made in my carnet, told them what I had decided, and invited opinions from everybody. I added that there now was no time for any customary formalities of deliberation so dear to all Indians: I told them that Tharon and God were one; and that our ancestors understood and approved what we were about to do.
Then I laid a handful of dry sticks upon the ground, pretended that this was a fire; warmed my hands at it; lighted an imaginary pipe; puffed it and passed it around in pantomime.
Still employing symbols to reassure these young Oneida warriors concerning time-honoured formalities which they dared not disregard, I drew a circle in the air with my finger, cut it twice with an imaginary horizontal line to indicate a sunrise and a sunset, then turned to Tahioni and bade him answer my speech of yesterday after a night's deliberation.
The young warrior replied gravely that he and his comrades had consulted, and were of one mind with me. He said that it was with sorrow that they turned their backs on McDonald, who was a great villain and who surely would now be coming to Schoharie to murder and destroy; but that it did no good to sever the tail of a snake. He said that the fanged head of the Tory Serpent was somewhere east of Oneida Lake; that if we scouted swiftly and thoroughly in that direction we could very soon surmise where the poisonous head was about to strike, by discovering and then observing the direction in which the body of the serpent was travelling.
One by one I asked my young men for an opinion: the youthful warriors were unanimous.
Then I turned and gazed fearfully at Thiohero, knowing well enough that these other adolescents would obey her blindly, and in dread lest her own dreams should sway her judgment and counsel her to advise us to some folly. She was their prophetess; there was nothing to do without her sanction. I could not order these Oneidas; I could only attempt to use them through their own instincts and personal loyalty to myself.
The early sun gilded the painted body of their sorceress, making of her clan ensign and the Little Red Foot two brilliant and jewelled symbols.
She stood lithely upright, one smooth knee nestling to the other, her feet in their ankle moccasins planted parallel and close together, and her body all glistening like a gold dragon-fly.
From her painted cincture hung her war-sporran,—a narrow cascade of pale blue wampum barred with scarlet and lined with winter weasel. Hatchet and knife swung from either hip; powder-horn and bullet-wallet dangled beneath her arm-pits. A war bow and a quiver full of scarlet arrows hung at her back. Her hair, shoulder-short and glossy-thick, was bound above the brows by a tight scarlet circlet. From this, across her left ear, sagged a heron's feather.