"Like the trails," agreed the Mound-Builder, who was one of the
Tallegewi himself, "every word is the expression of a need. We had a
trade route over this one for copper which we fetched from the Land of
the Sky-Blue Water and exchanged for sea-shells out of the south. At the
mouth of the Scioto it connected with the Kaskaskia Trace to the
Missi-Sippu, where we went once a year to shoot buffaloes on
the plains."

"When the Five Nations possessed the country, the buffaloes came to us,"
said the Onondaga.

"Then the Long Knives came on the sea in the East and there was neither
buffaloes nor Mengwe," answered the Mound-Builder, who did not like
these interruptions. He went on describing the Kaskaskia Trail. "It led
along the highlands around the upper waters of the Miami and the drowned
lands of the Wabash. It was a wonderful trip in the month of the Moon
Halting, when there was a sound of dropping nuts and the woods were all
one red and yellow rain. But in summer...I should know," said the
Mound-Builder; "I carried a pipe as far as Little Miami once..."

He broke off as though the recollection was not altogether a happy one
and began to walk away from the wood, along the trail, which broadened
quickly to a graded way, and led up the slope of a high green mound.

The children followed him without a word. They understood that they had
come to the place in the Story of the Trails, which is known in the
schoolbooks as "History." From the top of the mound they could see
strange shapes of earthworks stretching between them and the shore of
Erie. Lakeward the sand and the standing grass was the pale color of the
moon that floated above it in the midday sky. Between them the blue of