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THE MOUND-BUILDER’S STORY

The Mound-Builders lived in the Mississippi Valley about a thousand years ago. They built chiefly north of the Ohio River, until they were driven out by the Lenni-Lenape about five hundred years before the English and French began to settle that country. They went south and are probably the same people we know as Creeks and Cherokees.

Tallegewi is the only name for the Mound-Builders that has come down to us, though some people insist that it ought to be Allegewi, and the singular instead of being Tallega should be Allega.

The Lenni-Lenape are the tribes we know as Delawares. The name means “Real People.”

The Mingwe or Mingoes are the tribes that the French called Iroquois, and the English, Five Nations. They called themselves “People of the Long House.” Mingwe was the name by which they were known to other tribes, and means “stealthy,” “treacherous.” All Indian tribes have several names.

The Onondaga were one of the five nations of the Iroquois. They lived in western New York.

Shinaki was somewhere in the great forest of Canada. Namaesippu means “Fish River,” and must have been that part of the St. Lawrence between Lakes Erie and Huron.

The Peace Mark was only one of the significant ways in which Indians painted their faces. The marks always meant as much to other Indians as the device on a knight’s shield meant in the Middle Ages.

Scioto means “long legs,” in reference to the river’s many branches.

Wabashiki means “gleaming white,” on account of the white limestone along its upper course. Maumee and Miami are forms of the same word, the name of the tribe that once lived along those waters.

Kaskaskia is also the name of a tribe and means, “They scrape them off,” or something of that kind, referring to the manner in which they get rid of their enemies, the Peorias.

The Indian word from which we take Sandusky means “cold springs,” or “good water, here,” or “water pools,” according to the person who uses it.

You will find all these places on the map.

“G’we!” or “Gowe!” as it is sometimes written, was the war cry of the Lenape and the Mingwe on their joint wars. At least that was the way it sounded to the people who heard it. Along the eastern front of these nations it was softened to “Zowie!” and in that form you can hear the people of eastern New York and Vermont still using it as slang.