"'Do we sit at a game of knuckle-bone?' said Opata at last, 'or is this
a Council of the Elders?'

"'Game or Council,' said Taku-Wakin, 'I sit in my father's place until I
have a Sign from him whom he will have to sit there.'"

"But I don't understand--" began Oliver, looking about the circle of
listening Indians. "His father was dead, wasn't he?"

"What is 'dead'?" said the Lenni-Lenape; "Indians do not know. Our
friends go out of their bodies; where? Into another--or into a beast?
When I was still strapped in my basket my father set me on a bear that
he had killed and prayed that the bear's cunning and strength should
pass into me. Taku-Wakin's people thought that the heart of Long-Hand
might have gone into the Mastodon."

"Why not?" agreed Arrumpa gravely. "I remember that Taku would call me
Father at times, and--if he was very fond of me--Grandfather. But all he
wanted at that tune was to keep Opata from being elected in his father's
place, and Opata, who understood this perfectly, was very angry.

"'It is the custom,' he said, 'when a chief sleeps in the High
Places,'--he meant the hilltops where they left their dead on poles or
tied to the tree branches,--'that we elect another to his place in
the Council.'

"'Also it is a custom,' said Taku-Wakin, 'to bring the token of his
great exploit into Council and quicken the heart by hearing of it. You
have heard, O Chiefs," he said, "that my people had a plan for the good