KIENUKA, the peace-home, was desolate. The fire of pine knots that for many generations had burned upon its fire-place was dead and sodden. No voice of welcome was heard within its doors. Its hangings of skins and robes were torn and loosened by the winds of all seasons. The broad paths leading from the sun-rising, the sun-setting, the guide star and the summer land, which for many hundred moons by night and by day had been pressed by the feet of the red children of the forest when in trouble, in danger, in need of counsel, or in want, were now choked with briars and thistles. The wolf whelped her young in the couch of the Peacemaker. Birds without song and of black plumage built their nests and muttered hoarse croakings to their nestlings in the roof of the peace-home.

Blood had been shed in Kienuka and the Great Spirit had made the peace-home desolate.

When Hiawatha, the wise man, was speaking the last words to his children, he told them to ? 150 ? choose from their tribes a maiden possessing wisdom, who should be their peacemaker. So the red men built a home wherein the peacemaker should dwell, and doors were made at each side so that it mattered not whence came the wayfarer he would find a welcome. Then the maidens of the tribes were brought together at the council-place and to them were submitted the questions in dispute among their brothers. The wise men decided that she who would decide the greatest number most justly should be the Peacemaker Queen and dwell within the fortress they had built. Thus the Queen was chosen, and when the Great Spirit called her to the long home she was mourned by the people of all the tribes, and none entered the peace-home until her successor had been selected.

In this manner came to the peace-home Genetaska, the Seneca maiden, whose wisdom and kindness were known to all, and whose beauty was like that of the full summer. She was the most famous of all the Peacemaker Queens, and the red men said that Minnehaha, the daughter of Hiawatha, came often from the sky on the back of the celestial bird and gave her advice and guidance. Whoever went to the doors of the peace-home disputing came from them again, when they had ? 151 ? eaten and rested, with no anger in their hearts, for Genetaska soothed them by her gentle voice. To the sick and wounded she ministered with the greatest medicine herbs; to those heated by passion she told tales of the Great Spirit that taught them moderation. Disputes among the tribes were so adjusted that the hunters or warriors who would come to Kienuka with anger and war in their hearts left its doors as brothers.

One day there came to the peace-home two young chiefs—one from the Oneidas and the other from the Onondagas. Each claimed that his arrow had given the death stroke to a mighty buck they had been trailing in the forest. When they had tried their skill with weapons, agreeing that the most skillful should possess the slain animal, neither could gain advantage over the other. Then said the Onondaga: "I will fight thee, Oneida, and he who lives may carry to his village the mighty buck and the scalp-lock of his............