The Trail Book | Page 5

there were Pale
Faces, there were trade trails and graded ways, and walled ways
between village and village. We traded for cherts as far south as Little
River in the Tenasas Mountains, and north to the Sky-Blue Water for
copper which was melted out of rocks, and there were workings at Flint
Ridge that were older than the great mound at Cahokia."
"Oh," cried both the children at once, "Mound-Builders!"--and they
stared at him with interest.

He was probably not any taller than the other Indians, but seemed so on
account of his feather headdress which was built up in front with a
curious cut-out copper ornament. They thought they recognized the
broad banner stone of greenish slate which he carried, the handle of
which was tasseled with turkey beards and tiny tails of ermine. He
returned the children's stare in the friendliest possible fashion, twirling
his banner stone as a policeman does his night stick.
"Were you? Mound-Builders, you know?" questioned Oliver.
"You could call us that. We called ourselves Tallegewi, and our trails
were old before the buffalo had crossed east of the Missi-Sippu, the
Father of all Rivers. Then the country was full of the horned people,
thick as flies in the Moon of Stopped Waters." As he spoke, he pointed
to the moose and wapiti trooping down the shallow hills to the
watering-places. They moved with a dancing motion, and the multitude
of their horns was like a forest walking, a young forest in the spring
before the leaves are out and there is a clicking of antlered bough on
bough. "They would come in twenty abreast to the licks where we lay
in wait for them," said the Tallega. "They were the true trail-makers."
"Then you must have forgotten what I had to do with it," said a voice
that seemed to come from high up in the air, so that they all looked up
suddenly and would have been frightened at the huge bulk, if the voice
coming from it in a squeaky whisper had not made it seem ridiculous. It
was the Mastodon, who had strolled in from the pre-historic room,
though it was a wonder to the children how so large a beast could move
so silently.
"Hey," said a Lenni-Lenape, who had sat comfortably smoking all this
time, "I've heard of you--there was an old Telling of my
father's--though I hardly think I believed it. What are you doing here?"
"I've a perfect right to come," said the Mastodon, shuffling
embarrassedly from foot to foot. "I was the first of my kind to have a
man belonging to me, and it was I that showed him the trail to the sea."
"Oh, please, would you tell us about it?" said Dorcas.

The Mastodon rocked to and fro on his huge feet, embarrassedly.
"If--if it would please the company--"
Everybody looked at the Buffalo Chief, for, after all, it was he who
began the party. The old bull pawed dust and blew steam from his
nostrils, which was a perfectly safe thing to do in case the story didn't
turn out to his liking.
"Tell, tell," he agreed, in a voice like a man shouting down twenty rain
barrels at once.
And looking about slyly with his little twinkling eyes at the attentive
circle, the Mastodon began.

III
HOW THE MASTODON HAPPENED FIRST TO BELONG TO A
MAN, AS TOLD BY ARRUMPA
"In my time, everything, even the shape of the land was different. From
Two Rivers it was all marsh, marsh and swamp with squidgy islands,
with swamp and marsh again till you came to hills and hard land,
beyond which was the sea. Nothing grew then but cane and coarse
grass, and the water rotting the land until there was no knowing where
it was safe treading from year to year. Not that it mattered to my people.
We kept to the hills where there was plenty of good browse, and left the
swamp to the Grass-Eaters--bunt-headed, woolly-haired eaters of
grass!"
Up came Arrumpa's trunk to trumpet his contempt, and out from the
hillslope like a picture on a screen stretched for a moment the flat
reed-bed of Two Rivers, with great herds of silly, elephant-looking
creatures feeding there, with huge incurving trunks and backs that
sloped absurdly from a high fore-hump. They rootled in the tall grass or
shouldered in long, snaky lines through the canes, their trunks
waggling.

"Mammoths they were called," said Arrumpa, "and they hid in the
swamp because their tusks curved in and they were afraid of
Saber-Tooth, the Tiger. There were a great many of them, though not
so many as our people, and also there was Man. It was the year my
tusks began to grow that I first saw him. We were coming up