Our whiny, prissy man-child of a President is getting all bent out of shape once again. You will recall this incident with Gov. Jindal:

I was expecting words of concern about the oil spill, worry about the pending ecological disaster, and words of confidence about how the federal government was here to help. Or perhaps he was going to vent about BP’s slow response. But no, the president was upset about something else. And he wanted to talk about, well, food stamps. Actually, he wanted to talk about a letter that my administration had sent to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack a day earlier.

The letter was rudimentary, bureaucratic, and ordinary. .  .  . We were simply asking the federal government to authorize food stamps for those who were now unemployed because of the oil spill. Governors regularly make these sorts of requests to the federal government when facing disaster.

But somehow, for some reason, President Obama had personalized this. And he was upset.

There was not a word about the oil spill. He was concerned about looking bad because of the letter. “Careful,” he said to me, “this is going to get bad for everyone.”

Yeah, why try to accomplish something positive when you can just whine about the treatment you receive from those who dare disagree with you.

That wasn’t the first time this little kid got upset, just today he got pissy with Gov. Brewer:

“He was a little disturbed about my book, Scorpions for Breakfast. I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read the excerpt. So.”

Asked what aspect of the book disturbed him, Brewer said: “That he didn’t feel that I had treated him cordially. I said I was sorry he felt that way but I didn’t get my sentence finished. Anyway, we’re glad he’s here. I’ll regroup.”…

She said the president brought up the book.

“I thought we probably would’ve talked about the things that were important to him and important to me, helping one another. Our country is upside down. Arizona was upside down. But we have turned it around. I know again that he loves this country and I love this country.”…

He appeared to walk away from her while they were still talking, and she confirmed that by saying she didn’t finish her sentence.

And what was he pissy about?

“It was though President Obama thought he could lecture me, and I would learn at his knee,” the governor wrote, calling his tone “patronizing.”

“He thinks he can humor me and then get rid of me,” Brewer wrote.

Questioned about the different description, the governor said she did not lie.

“I mean, we weren’t yelling at one another, screaming at one another,” she said.

“But it was a pretty one-sided conversation,” Brewer said. “He was, I believe, condescending. And he was lecturing me about what we were going to do and how we were going to do it.”

Yeah, no one believes that Obama would do something like that do they?

Brewer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And will go out of his way to diss those he believes dissed him….except those who wish to do us REAL harm:

The New York Times, citing U.S. government officials, wrote on January 12 that the Obama administration had sent a message to Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei warning that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a “red line” that would provoke a response by the United States.

…MP Ali Motahhari said on Wednesday, “In the letter, it has been stated that ‘closing the Strait of Hormuz is our red line’ and they have requested direct negotiations.”

…“In the letter, Obama has mentioned cooperation and negotiation based on the interests of the two countries,” Ebrahimi, who is the deputy chairman of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, told the Nasimonline news website.

“He has stated in the letter that they will not take any hostile action against the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he added.

I’m pretty sure Ahmedanutjob has dissed Obama pretty thoroughly….but no need to get pissy then. Only when it’s those who Govern our states.

I don’t know what it’s like in other states, but here in California, we have over 750 new laws (last year saw 725) with an estimate of 40,000 new laws across the nation going into effect this year.

How many of these new laws are actually “necessary”? Will actually improve the human condition more than harm?

One of the more controversial pieces of legislation signed by Governor Brown is the California Dream Act:

Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) said his legislation recognizes the value of young people who graduate from high school in California regardless of where they were born.

“It’s important for California and the future of our economy to take advantage of the investment we have made in these young men and women,” Cedillo said.

The second part signed back in October, it basically increases allowances already on the books, giving eligibility to apply for financial aid and merit-based scholarships to illegal immigrants attending public colleges and universities.

Supporters of the Dream Act also want illegal immigrants to be eligible for drivers licenses as well.

The illegal immigration debate aside….this also comes at a time when California is broke:

According to a legislative analysis, the bill would cost the state up to $40 million per year. Colleges and universities don’t track the immigration status of students, but higher education officials have said that there are about 3,600 students who are undocumented or who have other residency issues in the California State University system, and as many as 642 in the University of California system and 34,000 enrolled in community colleges.

LA Times:

Brown was also criticized for signing a law requiring public schools to include the contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in history lessons and instructional material, although new textbooks for lower grades are not planned for three years.

I have no issue with people’s sexual orientation. But why make a fuss over whether a historical person is gay or straight? Why must sexual identity be significance? What I deplore is that history books will conflate a historical figure’s contributions to society and make more out of him than is warranted, simply because he fulfills the need of special interest groups to feel validated through a misguided sense of equal representation.

Then there’s the ban on open-carry- one of those laws that I think are a waste of ink:

“Law-abiding citizens will start openly carrying unloaded long guns in public because their basic and fundamental civil right to self-defense, as enumerated in the 2nd Amendment, is clearly being infringed upon,” said Yih-Chau Chang, a spokesman for the firearms advocacy group Responsible Citizens of California.

Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge) said he introduced the measure in response to law enforcement officials who felt that public safety was jeopardized by gun owners wearing firearms on their hips at coffee shops and other public venues as they called attention to a right to bear arms.

Meanwhile, obtaining a concealed-carry permit remains difficult in the state of California.

There’s the high-speed rail system being built and touted:

as with many of his other green funding priorities (like Solyndra) this is another money pit. The San Jose Mercury News has more:

Though California’s high-speed train faces an intensifying backlash over its $99 billion price tag, political leaders from Washington to Sacramento justify the cost by touting another huge number: 1 million jobs the rail line is supposed to create.

But like so many of the promises made to voters who approved the bullet train, those job estimates appear too good to be true.

A review by this newspaper found the railroad would create only 20,000 to 60,000 jobs during an average year and employ only a few thousand people permanently if it’s built.

“They have a really hard sales pitch with the real numbers, so they’ve fudged the numbers,” said state Sen. Doug LaMalfa, a Chico-area Republican who is introducing legislation to send the rail line back to voters. “C’mon, a million people working on a 520-mile railroad? I practically laughed out loud when (I heard that).”

One million people — more than the combined workforce of San Jose and San Francisco — would have to cram shoulder-to-shoulder just to fit along the rail line between San Francisco and Anaheim.

The idea of a bullet train sounds great. But if this were anything but a boondoggle you’d have private firms lining up to build one. There’s just no way this is worth $100 billion dollars.

Will it eventually pay for itself? I dunno…maybe, if the car-loving California public actually uses it. But I am not optimistic that this is a wise gamble or smart investment of money California doesn’t have (Did I already mention California is broke?).

Food stamps:

eliminates the requirement that food stamp recipients be fingerprinted to prevent fraud. Another law calls for state agencies to promote more enrollment in the federal food stamp program.

Sexual orientation:

encourages state university systems to collect data on students’ sexual orientation and encourages the legislative analyst to use it to recommend improvements in the quality of life for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.

There’s the new law that expands no texting and hands-on talking on the phone to include any distractions:

According to the Los Angeles Times, text messaging and handheld cell phone use are not the only distracted driving behaviors that will be on law enforcement officers’ radar this weekend.They will also be keeping an eye out for people who are eating, putting on makeup, or reading magazines while operating a motor vehicle.

“Multi-tasking may be a fine way to get things done when your not driving, but combine driving with another activity that requires your attention and the need for you to take one hand off the steering wheel, and you’ve created a deadly situation that can destroy lives,” said Anaheim Personal Injury Attorney Howard.

Other activities that can prove distracting when driving:
• Watching a movie or downloaded television program on a portable electronic device
• Shaving
• Brushing your teeth
• Feeding a child
• Playing with a pet
• Reading a book
• Changing one’s clothes
• Adjusting an MP3 player, CD player, or the radio
• Inputting information into a navigation system

This just seems very broad. Anything you do while in the car, from conversing with someone riding shotgun to reading a street sign/billboard, watching a pretty skirt gliding down the sidewalk, to blowing your nose could all be interpreted as a driver being distracted. What will a CHP officer base his judgment on? How will this play out in court if contested?

Another new traffic law is use of booster seats for children:

IN THE BACK SEAT OF A VEHICLE until they are at least 8 YEARS OLD or 4′ 9″ in height.

What I’m unclear on is what if a kid turns 9 but is still under 4’9″? Does he stay in the booster seat? So then, shouldn’t any person, regardless of age, if he is under 4’9″, to be consistent with safety standard? Why is age then a criteria?

Any comments regarding new laws in your state?

Our fate can change the course of our lives in a split second; often, it is beyond our control, but we must be ready to adapt and be resourceful enough to make the best of new circumstances. America is likely to see some dramatic economic changes in the next few months. We must be resolute to endure the possible collapse of the world’s economic systems. I suggest having supplies on hand to last at least a month and plans to unite with family members in case communications fail. I hope, I am wrong, but with leadership that seems intent on destroying or at least inhibiting the economy, the possibility of collapse is a real possibility that is heightened with the refusal of profligate members of the EU to impose austerity upon their entitled masses or the reluctance of those entitled masses to accept sacrifice; therefore, despite efforts by the overly leveraged Obama administration to avert the collapse of European Socialism, essentially by borrowing money to loan it to countries drowning in debt and unable to borrow the same money from legitimate sources. The world will now see how interrelated the international banking systems are and how fragile the US economy is under an incompetent Socialist leadership that like the leaders of the EU refuses to confront the problems of debt, entitlement, and profligate spending. Perhaps this story will give us hope for the future and for overcoming adversity by turning a disaster into a future with different possibilities.

This is part three of the Oregon Trail story. If you haven’t read the first two parts, Three Island Crossing and The Spaniard don’t worry about it, there’s still an adventure story here, without the other two. The violence is graphic as is life: you will not find me being politically correct, so please don’t bother to mention those indiscretions.

Cougar Cub of the Metis (pronounced MayTee)

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, as he was named by a proud French father with a sense of humor, who spent a total of three winters with a beautiful Indian maiden before deserting her to go trapping in the wilds of what was to become British Columbia, and never bothering to return. She died of starvation four winters later and left her child to beg for survival among the village of teepees belonging to the Metis people of Lac La Biche, near Fort Edmonton. Louis ingratiated himself from family to family as the food supplies fluctuated with the hunting success among different families.

Louis earned the nickname Cougar Cub honestly enough, by raising an abandoned Cougar Cub to maturity, as a boy of about twelve. The cougar stayed with him for almost two years; until, the call of the wild beckoned it, away from Louis, to join nature in its true feral state. From the day the Cougar left and for the rest of his life, Louis was never called Louis again; he was Cougar Cub of the Metis. Cougar was a bright lad destined for leadership. At least, several of the Metis elders considered him an excellent choice. He was not given to hard liquor, a vice that ruined many of the young men. He wasn’t quarrelsome or mean to weaker people. He had a quick mind and often provided good suggestions in the tribal lodge. He also had keen eyesight an uncanny ability to carve objects from wood.

He was an orphan of the mixed blood people, a large tribe called Metis; a mixture of different Native American tribes and French or other European types, they lived not quite as natives and not quite as Whites. They were unique and made every effort to remain that way. True eclectics, they had no reservations against adopting the features they liked from either culture.

They were a hardy race. Horses, hunting, singing, drinking, and the lusty pursuits occupied their free time. They often worked as voyagers, courier du bois, and trappers, but their favorite pastime was hunting buffalo.

Every year, a hunt was organized from Fort Edmonton in the fall. It was not just for men; it was a family affair with a dichotomy of labor that recognized the importance of women within the family. It was also a chance to renew old friendships and learn the news of the Metis people. Women, children, and old people were all anxious to participate in securing meat for the winter and the one big annual gathering of the Metis people.

The vehicle of choice was the Red River Cart, a single axle horse or ox drawn cart with wooden axles; actually, there was no nails or metal; the entire vehicle was built of wood using mortise and tenon, and dove tail joinery. For people who could not afford nails and screws, the Red River Cart, named for the area that would eventually become Manitoba, the wooden cart was a creation of genius. With axles made of Maple to reduce flex, felloes were made of ash or oak because it could be bent with steam and because of its durability, and the hubs were made of elm because of its resistance to splitting; the Red River Cart came into prominence in 1800, primarily to service the fur trade, it was in use from Minnesota and into the farthest trading posts of Canada. The carts were primarily pulled by oxen; especially, in the boggy country, the maximum payload was nine hundred pounds on trail conditions and forage that a horse couldn’t survive on. An ox could cover 25 miles a day in the bog country without roads. In the drier prairies, horses were used about half the time. The could manage sixty miles a day, but the payload was reduced to five hundred pounds.

In the east and in Minnesota, the cart was primarily used for the fur trade, but once the Metis saw the advantages of the Red River Cart in buffalo hunting and migration, their lives were changed almost instantly.

The Red River Cart, named after the original designation for the country that was to become Manitoba, where it was the only vehicle that could travel through the bogs, it became a symbol of pride for the Metis; for it reflected the migratory ability of the horse Indians of the Plains, who used the travois and the pack horse to carry their possessions and yet, the technological advantages of a wheeled vehicle, without a complicated steering mechanism for a front axle, reflected their White heritage.

The Metis’ carts of the plains carried supplies for each family, and their teepee or wickiup, the buffalo hide tents of the plains. The children, old people, and women carrying children or with infants took turns walking and riding; while the young men dashed around on fiery horses trying to impress the young women. Older men, who had already had their share of horse falls and the broken bones that come with such accidents, were content to walk their horses with an occasional burst of speed for something important.

The teenage girls rode their horses in a group at a walk and tried not be too obvious in their admiration of the wild and reckless riding of the young men competing for their attention. They giggled and covered their mouths as they looked at each other when a youth would ride by and drop off one side of his horse at a gallop to let his feet hit the ground and be thrown almost effortlessly back on the horse’s back.

There were approximately 800 carts when they left the campground South of Fort Edmonton and more would join up as they traveled south to hunt the traditional hunting grounds West of Medicine Hat to the mountains. The buffalo could be anywhere in this vast country. The scouts were excellent trackers and they would be sent out to find the herds and then report back. They would find the buffalo eventually, but until then, everyone who wasn’t a scout was taking part in a celebration of life and the social life of the hunt.

The wheels and axles of the carts were without grease, because the grease became a trap for dirt and sand, causing the wheels to seize from trapped dirt; thus the continuous whine of wood upon wood was horrendous. The noise was so loud when hundreds of them were moving, that people could no longer carry on conversations. The screeching noise could be heard for miles. Whites from England, who heard the noise compared it to a thousand bagpipes getting started.

The Metis didn’t like the orderly White man’s method of travel, they preferred to spread out on line and not breathe the dust of those in front of them, at least if they weren’t following a narrow trail.

The Metis were a proud and handsome race from many different tribes, but in time and after a few generations, they lost the cultural traits of their home tribes and felt alienated as their connections became less distinct. Whites often discriminated against them, thus they felt united in their common heritage, which was a diverse mixture of heritages and blood.

There was bitterness among some who felt the sharp slap of rejection from both Whites and Native tribes, but most had a surreal appreciation for life and nature, with a cheerful disposition and a smile for everyone, they were determined to let no one else intrude on their happiness with bigotry and hatred.

Cougar was one of these young men. He loved the outdoors and the animals, but he had an uncanny ability with wood. With only the most basic tools, he made tables, chairs, and desks with a fascinating ease that seemed effortless.

At Lac La Biche, an old carpenter from Switzerland observed him working as a boy, using little more than a knife. He was amused and brought out an old leather satchel with fine old European carpenter tools.

He gave young Cougar a combination square, a ruler, two chisels, a plane, two saws, a brace and bit, and a small spirit level. He spent several hours with the boy teaching him about numbers, how to use the different tools, and how to sharpen them.

From that afternoon of instruction and those few tools, Cougar became a carpenter and eventually had a thriving business in Fort Edmonton by the time he was twenty. He was wealthy enough to buy tools and hardwoods for furniture from Ontario and have it shipped to his shop in Fort Edmonton. The wives of Edmonton’s most successful men, all wanted the furniture that Cougar made in his bustling shop.

He had missed the hunt for several years, but he planned to go this year and renew his old friendships. He had a traditional Red River Cart that he used to deliver his furniture and various projects, but he wanted to show off his skills and appreciable success, with a new finely made Red River Cart. He ordered iron axles and steel rimmed oak wheels with iron races from Ontario and began drawing plans for the most beautiful Red River Cart ever built.

He was not a man who could do anything half way. The cart would reflect his pride and craftsmanship. He had no family, so he would drive the wagon and have a hunting horse tied to the back for the actual hunt.

He ordered a new rifle, he could afford the best, so he bought the new Sharps buffalo rifle. The project was easy for him, but he still went out of his way to make his cart a work of art. The body was framed in Oak, sheathed in Maple, and trimmed in Walnut. The wood was finished with a walnut stain made by Cougar by cooking walnut hulls down to a gelatinous mass and straining away the solids, then applying the stain in thin layers until he obtained the color enhancing quality of the stain that allowed the beautiful grain patterns to show through. Hot bees wax was later rubbed into the wood to preserve the finish. Traditionally, the carts were built free of nails by using classic mortise and tenon and dovetail joinery, this aspect was Cougars stock and trade.

Cougar dreamed of driving his cart across the prairies for more than acquiring a buffalo. For this was a chance for him to say to the friends of his childhood, that he had become a success in life.

When Cougar finished his cart, he hitched up his driving horse and drove through the dirt roads of Fort Edmonton. Whites, Metis, and Indians all cheered the young man and his masterpiece whether they knew him or not, for his cart was an image of grace and beauty, that represented the open prairies and the freedom of the Metis people.

Cougar felt a mixture of pride and happiness for his cart to be so well received. Now, he needed his cooking and sleeping gear, and a teepee. He drove over to the fur trading post and told the manager he needed a smaller buffalo hide teepee and the rails. He bought cooking utensils and a set of crockery; he splurged a bit on the crockery in case he met a potential wife and invited her and her parents for dinner.

He drove out onto the campsite at daylight on the morning the hunt was to begin. The teepees were being taken down and the camping gear loaded on the carts.

He received many admiring glances when he joined the procession and a few faces showed scorn, especially from some of the young men riding spirited half broke horses.

They were the least of Cougar’s worries, he was here to see boyhood friends and find a wife.

Cougar brought his basic carpenter tools and fixed several wagons for people, free of charge.

The Metis hunters traveled far to the Southwest searching for the elusive herds. The scouts had located massive herds of a hundred thousand spread out along the Sheep River, about three hundred miles south of fort Edmonton. These people had a different concept of time, for them the objective of the hunt was to secure meat for the winter, so the distance was of little concern. After driving for several days, they camped on Fish Creek and made plans for the hunt the next morning on Sheep Creek about ten miles to the South.

The hunters planned to encircle the herd before daylight and kill as many as possible before they stampeded, they would then follow the herd until the horses were exhausted and kill as many as possible. They would try to kill enough so that every wagon had a carcass and a buffalo robe to take home for the winter.

There was a problem, Cougar couldn’t hunt and drive his cart at the same time.

He made several repairs for Jerome, who had a charming wife and a beautiful daughter. He had been admiring the sixteen-year old maiden, Hawk’s Cry from a distance; she resembled the high-cheeked native type more than her French ancestors, she had thick long black hair, there was only one feature that gave away her White heritage, her eyes were green with a golden brown ring around them.

Although her father wore the White Man’s clothing like Cougar, she and her mother dressed in traditional native dresses of tanned leather with intricate beadwork and porcupine quills decorating the area covering their breasts. They could barely communicate with Cougar, since they mainly spoke in their native tongue. Cougar spoke in a combination of French and English that was difficult for someone unused to the Metis to understand.

He invited Hawk’s Cry and her parents to dinner that night. It was a simple dinner, but they were impressed with the polite young man’s friendly nature and a well-cooked meal of bacon, beans, potatoes with butter, and cornbread.

After dinner he asked in sign if Hawk’s Cry could drive his wagon to his kill site, since he was alone. Her parents looked at her with a look that said it was her choice. He could see the disappointment in her eyes at first, because she was an excellent rider and hoped to borrow a horse, to be as close to the action as possible, not back with the screaming kids and old people, but she realized that Cougar Cub was a special catch and he might lose interest if she said no.

She agreed with a smile and the dinner party was over, Cougar asked Hawk Cry’s father, Jerome Fast Horses, if he would ride with him in the morning. Jerome’s eyes flashed and he was proud to have the young man ask him to ride with him. He was thirty-nine, and most men were no longer riding on the buffalo hunts at that age. Jerome promised to be ready at two hours before daylight.

It was customary for women to break camp and load the gear, but Cougar thought it might seem presumptuous of him to expect Hawk’s Cry to load his teepee.

Everything was loaded and his driving horse was hitched to the cart when Hawk’s Cry walked to his camp. She smiled, climbed in the driver’s seat and was one of the first carts to get on the trail. She arrived on a hill above Sheep Creek about a mile away and heard the first rifle shots just as the sun was burning away the early morning fog away.

The buffalo stood in silent confusion as thirty or forty of them dropped to their knees and then fell over sideways. One of the shots was poorly aimed and hit a hoof. The animal bellowed in pain and started to run on three legs. This strange behavior caused the rest of the herd to stampede to the West. Some of the herd crossed the creek and were shot as they scrambled up the opposite bank. Soon all the hunters were running alongside the horses and firing at close range into their backs.

Within a few minutes, the majority of the buffalo had outrun the horses, and it was all over. There were buffalo carcasses spread out for five miles along Sheep Creek and she saw where at least two riders and their horses had fallen, and were trampled to death.

She felt a moment of sadness, but this was life, you hunted and sometimes you died in the pursuit of the animals. It was a fairly simple explanation for the human toll below.

She drove Cougar’s cart down to the river to look for the men and her mother followed in her father’s old cart. She heard her mother call her name and turned to see her pointing to a small Fleur de Lis flag waving in the air about a mile up stream. Her father’s father had given it to Jerome when he was a young man. It was awarded by French soldiers to her relative for gallantry in a battle back East. He always had it with him and today it was perfect for his wife to locate his buffalo.

Hawk’s Cry saw Cougar working on a huge carcass about two hundred yards beyond her father; he had the traditional blue and white Metis flag, with the symbol for infinity. She waved to her mother and drove up to Cougar with a big grin. She was dressed in a white smoke tanned deerskin dress trimmed with martin and moose hide moccasins trimmed in beaver. These clothes were not meant for work, they were worn to catch Cougar’s attention.

The ploy worked well, when he saw her, he was speechless. He stood up to look at her, stepped backward to trip and fall over the gut pile. She smiled with flashing eyes and a mouth full of snow white teeth, he still couldn’t say anything in front of her overwhelming beauty.

She told him he had killed a good buffalo in sign language and turned to let him appreciate her feminine form. He still was unable to speak. She said in a language he didn’t understand, “I will put on my work dress, and help,” but he was oblivious. He watched her in awe as she pulled her best dress over her head to reveal one of nature’s most perfect feminine forms. She wondered why Cougar was being rude and staring at her nude body. She wasn’t shy, but it was considered rude to stare at someone’s nude form.

Cougar stared at the first nude female he had ever seen, for half a minute and then dropped down to continue skinning the carcass. Hawk’s Cry laughed at his strangeness and slipped one of her old dresses over her head and changed moccasins. She started to tie the leather thong to tighten the V neck opening over her breasts, but then decided to leave it open, since Cougar seemed to enjoy looking at her nakedness, maybe he might want to look some more.

She was quick with her hands and together they skinned the buffalo in short order. Cougar was lost in love, but he couldn’t look at her, and she was beginning to realize the power she had over this talented young man.

Cougar split the skull with an ax to remove the brain for tanning the hide and cut out the tongue for lunch. They quartered the animal and Cougar lifted the quarters into the cart. Hawk’s Cry tried to help with the lifting, but he was so strong, she was just in the way.

They drove over to her dad’s kill and Hawk’s Cry felt so proud sitting next to this handsome young man with the finely made cart and the freshly killed buffalo in the back. She decided, she wanted this young man for a husband, the sooner the better.

When they drove up to her parent’s buffalo, Cougar handed the reins to Hawk’s Cry and jumped out to help Jerome lift the quarters into the cart and then suggested they wash upstream and cook lunch. Her parents somehow understood or at least agreed to follow him to a nice campsite away from the gore and the stench resulting from butchering so many large animals.

The four of them washed at the creek, Jerome told Hawk’s Cry of what a fearless hunter Cougar was and how he shot four animals by riding right next to the buffalo with the reins on his horses neck and riding with just his legs. He said Cougar was just like the hunters of the old days.

Hawk’s Cry listened, but showed none of her parents’ enthusiasm; she seemed to be oblivious to the hunting abilities of Cougar as she pulled up her skirt to expose thighs the color moose hide moccasins and began to wash the blood from her knees and hands. Cougar was watching from such short range that he lost his balance on a slick rock a fell into the swift water. The others laughed and Cougar felt awkward and humiliated. Jerome and his wife suspected that Cougar was smitten with their daughter, and they were excited to see how this ancient dance of love was to be played out.

They decided to set up their teepees and spend the night, then leave early the next morning. They cooked a big feast that night and many people stopped by to congratulate Cougar and thank him for his hunting skills. There were several single girls who looked at Cougar with an appraising eye, but Hawk’s Cry made sure to be sitting next to him throughout the evening and smiling at all the visitors. Cougar felt funny, he wasn’t self-conscious around the other girls and they were much easier to talk with, since it was more common to speak a mixture of French and English rather than the native tongue, but the other girls respected Hawk’s Cry and her claim to the handsome young buffalo killer.

A group of young men came into their camp after dark. It was obvious they had been drinking. They took plates of food without asking, but it was a feast. The leader was loud and belligerent. After taking a few bites he said the buffalo was spoiled and unfit to eat. He broke his plate by throwing it on a stone next to the fire and then turned to smile at Hawk’s Cry as if she might be impressed with his behavior.

Jerome stood up and tried to walk the young man out of the camp, but he pushed Jerome away and pulled a knife and looked at Jerome and then Cougar.

He told them the girl was his and he was going to take her. Cougar jumped to his feet and walked toward his rifle and suddenly felt the razor edge of a skinning knife cut his cheek through to the teeth. The drunken boy drew back to slash again when he was hit above the eye with a good sized rock, thrown by Hawk’s Cry. Cougar started for his rifle again and felt the boy on top of him. He grabbed the boy’s wrist that held the knife and they were locked in mortal combat.

Cougar tripped the boy and they fell. Cougar wrapped both his hands around the boy’s knife hand, took the knife away from him and stood up. The boy stood up and lunged for Cougar’s rifle, but he had no idea how to work the mechanism and when he realized it was hopeless, he swung it like a club at Cougar’s head.

Cougar ducked and jumped forward and cut into the boy’s gut with the knife. He heard air escaping and the foul odor of a bowel being cut open, the boy had his hands around Cougar’s throat and was cutting off Cougar’s air in a last ditch effort to kill him. Cougar aimed the knife upward and thrust it hard toward the boy’s heart. The hot blood squirted all over his fore arm and wet Cougar’s body from the waist down with the hot pulsing liquid, the boy went limp and fell to the ground. He was dead.

Cougar looked at the boy and knew the Red Coats patrolling the country for American whisky sellers would hang him for killing the boy, no matter what the circumstances. The boy’s friends were mounting their horses and soon galloped away into the night.

He had to move fast. Cougar started loading his cart. Jerome talked with his family for a few minutes and started loading his cart. Cougar had his cart loaded and told Jerome in sign language that he was heading south to the United States. Jerome tapped his chest and then pointed his vertical palm south and then pointed with his index finger.

It looked like Cougar was going to have company along for the ride on his bid for freedom. Suddenly, he had an idea. Jerome and the women would take the carts south to Sweetwater Montana and Cougar would head straight for the Glaciers to the South. The Red Coats would track the wagons and if they caught up to the wagons it would be too late to catch him. They would then drive down to the Great Falls and he would meet them there in two weeks.

The communication was all in sign language, for them it was much more accurate than trying to speak in the fragments of several languages.

They left a few moments later: the wagons bound to the Southeast and Cougar in a lope to the South.

Cougar would cross the High River about ten o’clock and then cross the Oldman River before noon. With luck he should cross the border before daylight the next day.

The NWMP detachment sent one man to bring in the killer, Mike Irons or Iron Mike as he was known to the Indians and American Whiskey traders. Most outlaws gave up when they knew Iron Mike was on their trail. He inspired respect and fear in the wild country. He was fair, but if you resisted, Iron Mike shot you before the court could hang you. He was an expert tracker and used to Indians making a run for the border. He was on the trail of the two carts by nine the next morning. It would be easy to run down the two Red River Carts.

The story he heard from the Metis boys didn’t add up, but that wasn’t his problem. That’s what they have courts for, he was just a man hunter and the law west of Medicine Hat. He slowed his pace and tried to piece together the odd story. Young man by himself, old man with beautiful daughter and wife, they are hunting buffalo and camped together. They get two buffalo and a young man comes into their camp and gets butchered.

“Wait a dang minute,” Mike said aloud to himself, “They were supposed to have four horses. There’s only tracks for three.”

He dismounted and walked a circle around the tracks to be sure, “Well, I’ll be, they almost out smarted Iron Mike.”

He rode hard to the southwest looking for a lone track headed straight south.

About ten miles from the border, he picked up a single track. The horse was exhausted and unable to track straight. This had to be him. He came to the border and saw Cougar leading his horse about sixty yards into the US.

“This is Constable Mike Irons of the North West Mounted Police, turn around and come back or I will shoot you dead.”

Mike fired a warning shot and Cougar pulled his rifle from the scabbard and shot Mike’s horse through the heart in less than a second, and then dropped down below a hill and disappeared.

Mike felt fear for the first time in his career, he felt his blood turn cold and he felt himself shaking; he had just looked death in the eye, this young man was a stone cold killer and a deadeye shot.

He took his tack off the dead horse and started the long walk home, feeling lucky to be alive.

Cougar kept his horse walking until they had walked several miles to the east and came to a nice valley with good feed and a creek. He turned his horse loose and laid down to sleep between two rocks. Cougar slept the rest of the day and all through the night. He caught his horse the next morning. The horse was still exhausted and sore. He walked beside his horse, so that the only weight he carried was the saddle. Cougar carried his rifle; he didn’t want to have someone like Iron Mike getting the drop on him again.

After two days of walking beside his horse, the horse seemed to be regaining its strength, but Cougar kept walking, hoping to insure the recovery of his horse.

A few days ago, he had a beautiful cart that was admired by almost everyone in the Metis nation, a possible romance with the most alluring girl he had ever seen, a closeness with a family group he genuinely liked, a buffalo carcass in his wagon, and a good meal in his belly. Now, because a drunk walked into his camp, he could be hanged in Canada, he was on the verge of starvation, and leading a lame horse.

Life’s fortunes can change quickly; especially when you are trying to be someone you aren’t. He was a carpenter with a good business at Fort Edmonton, not a buffalo hunter.

They will be shocked to hear he is wanted for murder. He had a few carpenter tools in the wagon, not much more than the old Swiss carpenter had given him when he was a boy, but they were in his cart and hopefully his cart was in Great Falls.

He met some Indians on the trail. He had never seen Indians like these. There were three of them and they each had human scalps tied to their saddles.

Cougar used sign language to tell them he was Metis from Canada and the Red Coats wanted to hang him for killing a man.

Their faces showed no emotion, until he said a Red Coat was hunting him and wanted to hang him, he then saw a measure of respect emerge from the eyes of these warriors. They asked when he had last seen the Red Coat and he said he had shot his horse two days ago at the border.

The warriors admired his rifle and he thought they might try to kill him for his rifle, but instead they gave him a foot long piece of pemmican. Cougar asked how far to Great Falls and the warriors said it was two more days to walk and he would cross a good trail when he walked through these rocks hills.

He was surprised when they told him they wanted to hunt this Red Coat and they had to leave. The three warriors rode off silently as they followed Cougar’s back trail.

The three warriors were the most dangerous men Cougar had ever seen, but he had learned some valuable lessons: never show fear, and violent men respect men who are capable of violence.

They had treated him well and had even given him food to ward off starvation, but now he had a new problem, his moccasins were worn out after walking over this rocky trail and his feet would soon be bleeding if his horse didn’t overcome his lameness.

Iron Mike cached his tack under a cottonwood and continued on with just his rifle, when the bullet ripped through his thigh and he felt his right boot fill up with blood almost immediately. He looked down to see the pulsing of his blood moving his military issue riding trousers. He knew this would be his last fight.

The rider who shot him now was riding straight towards Mike with a lance aimed for his chest. Mike waited until the horse was only two strides away and sent a bullet through the center of the man’s chest.

The Indian dropped his lance and rode harmlessly by Mike to fall and die a few seconds later. The second rider was charging right behind the first, he fired and missed Mike. Mike drew his revolver and fired three rounds before the last round hit the man in the center of the forehead, rolling him backwards out of the saddle. Mike emptied his revolver at the third rider as the lance tore through his chest, killing him instantly.

The third rider turned his horse to look at the battle scene and the glory that no one would hear ever about at tribal fires. He could hear the air sucking through the hole in his chest as the lung filled with blood and he felt lightheaded while drowning in his own blood.

He thought to himself, “These Red Coats are great warriors,” he raised his hand to appeal to the spirit world and fell from his saddle to die a few minutes later gasping for air.

Cougar rode the last thirty miles into Great Falls and found his people camped upstream on the North side of the river. They greeted him like long lost family and made cooked a feast of buffalo hump roast and potatoes.

Hawk’s Cry traded several roasts for a new pair of over the ankle winter moccasins for Cougar and he was touched by her concern for his welfare.

After dinner that night, Cougar asked Jerome what he planned to do. Jerome said there was free land in Oregon and he thought they could all go there together in the spring. Cougar felt tears come to his eyes at the sense of belonging to a family group. The two men embraced and Cougar told him they would head to Oregon together.

That night, as Cougar was sleeping in his teepee, Hawk’s Cry slipped in between his blankets. At first he thought she was cold, but then he realized she had ideas of her own. He had no idea of what to do, but Hawk’s Cry was an excellent teacher. From that moment on, they communicated in the language of love. The next morning, she moved all her belongings into Cougar’s teepee and they became a couple for the rest of their days.

The winter seemed a magical time for Cougar’s family. He and Hawk’s Cry fell deeper in love with the passage of time. The family had great meals in the evening and Jerome’s family had a quick mind for learning the English of the frontiersmen.

The fur trader of Great Falls paid Cougar a twenty dollar gold piece to build a twenty by twenty log home.

People were amazed at Cougar’s craftsmanship and tried to entice Cougar into staying in the area to build homes, but Cougar wanted to distance himself from his crime in Canada and Oregon, with its free land, seemed like a good idea.

In the spring after the creeks and rivers settled down and were safe to cross, the little family of four, that was soon to be a family of five, set out to the southwest, hopefully to join up with emigrants on the North side of the snake, and continue on to Oregon.

They were on a well-worn trail that had been used for thousands of years by buffalo hunters, but now the trail was busy with miners headed north to the Montana Gold Rush of 1860. The miners were causing resentment among the native people, and there were already incidents of violence.

Cougar’s family avoided the hostility, because they traveled with women and showed respect to the natives they met on the trail.

The trail was an ancient migration route that had served Indians and wildlife for thousands of years as it weaved through the mountain valleys and crossed into the country that was to become Idaho. In Idaho the winds raged and left them exhausted at the end of each day.

They met some Shoshone along a fast, deep river and asked the name of the river. The leader made a wriggling motion with his hand out away from his body several times. In the international language of the Plains Indian, this meant the River of Many Fish.

Jerome and Cougar made sure they traded with the Indians they met. Cougar kept them well supplied with buffalo and elk with his Sharps rifle. Cougar also carved small figures of buffalo, fish, eagles, and horses. The Indians considered them to be sacred talismans and traded valuable goods and camas root for them.

On an early morning during breakfast, Cougar and his family saw five Indian buffalo hunters on horseback chasing a buffalo that bristled from so many arrows stuck in its hide, that he looked like a big speed porcupine; except the bull was much faster than a porcupine and much faster than the exhausted Indian ponies. None of the arrows seemed to be deep or lethal enough to cause the animal to slow down enough to allow them to finish him with their spears.

Cougar pulled his Sharps out of the scabbard and at a distance of two hundred yards, put a 50 caliber round just behind the left shoulder of the running buffalo in mid-stride. In the split second before the front feet hit the ground, the animal lost all control and power in its front legs and collapsed onto his great shaggy head. His momentum caused him to roll on over onto his back after standing on his head for an instant, he bounced on his back and into the air twice before the massive body came to a complete stop. He was dead.

The Indians yelled out some cheers and held their bows in the air and then rode over to the dead bull and attacked the still bleeding carcass like wolves. While Cougar’s family began to break camp, they noticed the Indians cutting off long portions of the gut and squeezing out the contents from one end and eating the intestine from the other end. Another Indian was eating the heart and still another was eating from a huge chunk of raw liver.

Jerome laid his hand on Cougar’s shoulder and said in a mixture of languages and sign, “They are starving. Their bodies tell them to eat the most nutritious organs first; this is what starvation looks like. You are a good provider my son; otherwise, we might be in the same condition.”

The scene had a profound effect on Cougar, and he vowed to never allow his wife or her parents to ever go hungry.

They passed near the carcass and the Indians waved them over. There were five of them and they had the bull cut up and divided into six equal piles on the hide. The Indians loaded one of the piles into the two carts along with the huge tongue as a measure of appreciation. They each rode up to Cougar and touched him with their hands and bows to try and share in his uncanny accuracy with the rifle.

Cougar reached under the seat and gave each of them a small wooden talisman and for the young chief, Bull Calf, he placed a buffalo carving, about half the size of a fist with a small hole drilled through its back and suspended from a leather thong, around his neck.

It was this small act of kindness that insured the legacy of Cougar and their safety. The Blackfeet were in a famine and Cougar broke the famine. He later gave the hunters talismans and they all had great success from that point forward. Cougar was given a status of protection until they passed into Oregon and later on the protection was extended to Colonel Fallon’s wagon train. He was considered to be a shaman and a legend among Indians of the Northwest.

The word spread by moccasin telegraph of the Metis from Canada with the repeating rifle who never needed a second shot, who was a shaman who carved animal spirits from wood that gave hunters and warriors extra spiritual guidance. Thus many Indians were willing to travel for days to get a buffalo or elk carving that would enhance their hunting skills.

Whether there was actually magic in the carvings is debatable, but the results were never in dispute, for the Blackfoot nation once again regained their hunting luck and the tribe began eating well. To the mind of a stone-age man, Cougar was the man who changed their luck, many gamblers of modern cultures blame lesser objects for good luck or bad. Perhaps Cougar gave them the confidence they needed or maybe there was magic in his carvings, the main thing was that the people were no longer starving and they gave the credit to Cougar.

Cougar had heard the miners speak of the Snake River and how treacherous it was, but if it was more treacherous than the River of Many Fish, it must be an extremely dangerous river, it was at that moment, he realized the problem. The Whites were interpreting the wavy hand-signal as the symbol for a Snake, when it was actually the symbol for many fish. This was a great relief and he quit looking for a ford. He could now follow the Snake on the North bank and join up with a wagon train on this side or he could meet a wagon train on the north side of the Three Island Crossing.

As they traveled on the plateaus of the North Snake, they were accepted without the hostility and animosity that was building because of the increased traffic of miners and emigrants. The Indians were intrigued by these mixed bloods, who were fluent in sign and traveling in these amazing carts. They came to trade salmon and flint knives for amulets carved by Cougar. The carved salmon, buffalo, horses, and eagles were the most popular.

Cougar’s group came to the Three Island Crossing and he did a brisk business repairing damaged wagons. He passed up opportunities to travel with different groups because he felt there was a need to wait for the right wagon train.

Jerome had learned to trust the instincts of Cougar, and even though he wanted to go on to Oregon, he trusted Cougar’s judgment.

When Cougar saw Colonel Fallon with his cavalry hat, he knew that this was the group he was supposed to pair up with. He stood by on the bank and watched helplessly while Captain Levin drowned, but when his body was recovered along with the wreckage of his wagon, he started building the Captain a casket from the wreck of the wagon.

Colonel Fallon was astounded at the speed and accuracy that the young man used to create the dove tail corners and mortise and tenon top and bottom.

After the little ceremony, Cougar asked the Colonel for permission to join the wagon train. He told him he comes with his own Blackfeet escort that will follow them to Oregon and make sure they will not lose stock to horse thieves and they will not be attacked.

The Colonel was suspicious, but Cougar told him he was regarded as a type of shaman and the Blackfeet had sworn to protect him as long as he was in their territory.

The Colonel called over Mr. Tomlin to translate for him since there was a combination of languages and the Colonel wasn’t sure of the message. Mr Tomlin and Cougar talked in sign and then Cougar turned to call in the Blackfoot chief with the buffalo carving, and he and Mr. Tomin engaged in several minutes of parley in sign.

“Colonel, we best take this young Metis, Cougar is his name, with us. He is the best insurance policy we can have. Anyone who tries to hurt him will die by the hand of these hostiles. They rarely like each other, but Cougar kept their tribe from starving and they figure he is pretty special. We better take him and be glad he wants to travel with us.”

The Colonel was surprised at Mr. Tomlin’s candor and trust. He turned to look Cougar in the eye and said to Mr. Tomlin, “Tell him we try to make fifteen to twenty miles a day and he and his father-in-law will be expected to keep up and pitch in with camp chores.”

Mr. Tomlin used sign to translate the message and Cougar broke into a big grin and replied in sign.

Mr. Tomlin looked at the Colonel and said, “He says the two carts can easily make fifty miles a day and he is an excellent hunter and marksman, if we need meat.”

“He’ll make friends fast if he can bring a buffalo into camp,” the Colonel told Mr. Tomlin.

Cougar laughed grabbed his rifle and said something to his wife in the native language and jumped on his horse to ride off with the Blackfeet.

Later on that afternoon, Cougar returned and the two carts headed North and returned close to dark with half a buffalo in each cart. Some of the wagon train members came to him with tears in their eyes to thank him for the fresh meat; many of them had been living on fry bread and a few bits of smoked salmon they had traded the last of their silver coins for.

Cougar had made friends once again.

Epilogue: This is a novel with a degree of historical accuracy. The characters are fictional; their struggles are real and based heavily on the author’s experiences in the wild country.

Prologue: This is a story of two Stone Age chieftains, who migrated to America during the last Ice Age, approximately twenty thousand years ago: one came from the East and one came from the West, but before you begin to recite the teachings of Archaeology from twenty years ago, you might be surprised to know of startling new discoveries about the migration of man and the inconvenient facts surrounding the theories of Anthropomorphic Global Warming.

The Whale People, Their Homeland (Europe’s Western Coast, now submerged)

Yellow Hair was an anomaly; he was ancient, almost forty years old, but strongest among all the men of the Whale People. He was chief of the Whale People, and he ruled his tribe with rules etched in flint. Breaking the rules often meant death for the offender; for life was a tedious and constant struggle between survival and death, and death came all too often twenty-thousand years ago, during the height of the last great Ice Age in the area off the coast of Western France.

Much of the world’s water was locked up in ice sheets that a mile high covering much of Europe, Asia, and North America; in fact, the ice sheets covered one-third of the earth’s land masses and depleted the oceans of so much water, the ocean depths were a hundred meters less than they are now. There were coast lines connecting Europe with North America, and Asia with North America, they extended nearly a thousand miles from north to south on each corridor. It was a temperate area of grasslands and coniferous forests with limited precipitation, because of the amount of water frozen in the glaciers. There were thousands of creeks and rivers fed by springs and lakes that are now a hundred meters under water. It was a harsh ecosystem that supported the mastodon, a creature much larger than the elephant, as well as musk ox, giant sloths, saber toothed tigers, large bears, caribou, giant moose, elk, horses, and camels, all of whom migrated freely back and forth from Asia and Europe to North America.

No one knows why the giant glaciers appeared or why they receded, but the Ice Ages were real events in the story of the earth; the Ice Ages spanned tens of thousands of years and facilitated the dispersal of man all over the world.

The Whale People were a hardy bunch that had drawn their genetic pools from the blue and green eyed traders from the East, the tall, blonde haired, white skinned people from the land to the North, and the darker people of the South. It was a fairly short walk from North Africa to what would become Spain; the drought conditions of the world brought on by so much water being sequestered in ice forced many of the darker people of Africa to migrate north to be near the life giving water from glacial melt in summer and the springs that formed creeks and rivers on the Southern boundaries of the European Glacier and to the western shores of Spain and France.

The Whale People had originally occupied a coastal area that was next to the Southern ice shield of Europe approximately twenty-thousand years ago. Almost nothing could survive on these ever increasing glaciers that covered large portions of the continents, but there was a strip of new land exposed from the ocean depths, extending well beyond our present shorelines, because of so much of the earth’s water being frozen in the glaciers. This strip of land was warmed by the ocean, but it still remained a cold climate in summer, from the cooling effects of the great mass of ice on its borders. On this narrow strip of land, a micro-climate existed that had allowed animals, grasses, and a few hardy trees to proliferate in a wondrous abundance for tens of thousands of years, but the pressure by humans and the ever encroaching ice was reducing the availability of food sources and thus the livable space was under fierce competition by all species, but the competition among humans was the probably the fiercest.

Yellow Hair’s tribe had occupied the Southern coastal regions since the beginning of time or at least as far back as their oral history recorded their time here on earth. Yellow Hair wasn’t a singer who memorized the family lines and history of his tribe, but he knew his fathers had been chiefs far back in time. He had remembered his fathers and his personal history by assigning each of them, one of his fingers. He could go back in time by looking at a finger and tell you the name of that father, going back in time, nine generations.

The Ice People, The Migration (From Central Asia)

Tiger Paw loved to hunt and here in the land of the North Star, this land the North People call Beringia (the land bridge connecting Siberia to Alaska), the hunting was better than in the stories of the First Days.

It was told in the oral traditions of history, on the nights of the full moon, of how his people, the Ice People, had followed the herds over the Great Grasslands and forests to the West, just South of the great walls of ice. In the beginning, they were the first people, because the Father of the Ice had shown them great favor by providing them with flint for spears and the many animals to hunt. At first everyone was hungry during the winter, but the Father of the Ice liked the Ice People and gave them the beasts of the Steppes and the stone technology to kill the beasts, he also gave them fire and taught the women how to cook and how to brain tan furs and leather.

They learned that the brain of each animal, when allowed to break down to a gelatinous mass in a covered ceramic bowl, was sufficient to tan its own hide. They marveled at the skills of the ice Father and how he put all these mysteries of life within reach of those with the intelligence to figure out the answers. The Ice Father taught the women to love the hunters and to entertain them at night, so the tribe would be happy and always have new little ones.

Tiger Paw’s belief was essentially correct in the oral history of his tribe, but his concept of time wasn’t capable of comprehending the enormity of his tribe’s migration. His ancestors started moving east through the mountains and grasslands of Southern Russia and Northern Asia, several thousand years ago. Using the logic of 20,000 years ago, they figured the sun was always refueled in the East and traveled overhead to the West, only to get tired at the end of each day, needing to sleep through the night to be strong and hot the next morning, much like the hunter who hunts all day, breeds his woman at night, and then sleeps to be strong in the morning. They wanted to see this land where the sun is refreshed; there is surely much fuel to warm the sun, just beyond the horizon to the east. Sadly, the sun seemed to be weakening, because the great ice sheets were getting larger and eating more and more land. They were over a mile high and moving to the South at the rate of several man strides every day.

The idea of a great source of fuel to the East, was essentially the idea for migrating to the East. For over a thousand years, they followed the basic idea of moving east, always east. There were hostile tribes to contend with and periods of starvation coupled with disease, but they kept moving east.

Their culture and customs were ill suited for sedentary life. It was a simple matter of hygiene; a concept that was understood by sedentary tribes, for they knew that human waste was dangerous and should be deposited in a hole dug specifically for that purpose, they also understood the need to maintain clean drinking water.

It seems a simple concept, but migrating people rarely suffered from the ravages of cholera and dysentery, for they rarely made camp for longer than it took for a kill to be consumed or to spoil, except in the winter and the effects of disease were lessened during the extreme cold of winter.

Sedentary tribes, without cultural customs for contending with human waste, were condemned to die of disease if they stayed too long in one place. The problem was self-correcting in time, since tribes that lacked certain cultural conventions were weakened and often annihilated by other tribes who looked upon them as unclean or they simply died out from the ravages of disease.

During the migration of the Ice People, they had acquired many customs from the women they had traded for and the occasional lost hunter they had adopted. Even though Tiger Paw believed his tribe to be the only true people walking the earth, he understood advantages in acquiring new people with new technologies and customs.

The Whale People of Europe

Nine generations would place Yellow Hair’s father in the time when the great mother whale, Olalla of the big wild salt water, gave birth to man and all the creatures of the earth. In Yellow Hair’s mind, his distant relative was the first human to slide through Olalla’s birth canal and swim to shore; therefore, his birthright was one of leadership and a semi-divinity, for he was a direct descendant of Olalla. He couldn’t explain the bloodlines of other people or even those in his tribe and he forbid himself and others from asking frivolous questions that complicate the simple explanations of their life.

It was this natural birth of Yellow Hair’s relative that intrigued the Whale People and provided the common bond that held them together. The secrets of their existence and their connection with divinity was thought to exist through the navel of Yellow Hair, for that umbilical connection was directly related to Olalla the Whale Mother who had birthed the first relative of Yellow Hair, the very first human.

Unfortunately, it was the natural scheme of their life that was in jeopardy at this time; for the success of the Whale People made them the envy of many tribes. They had mastered the science of not only trapping great bounties of salmon in the rivers, but more importantly, they smoked and dried the salmon over smoldering fires to preserve them for months. This was a quantum leap in technology for the people of the world. News spread for over a thousand miles to the East along with the tasty morsels of the pink colored fish flesh.

Tribes with many huge warriors and advanced stone weapons ventured into the traditional lands of the Salmon People and brought many wondrous trade goods to trade for the smoked salmon of the Whale People. Trade was good for the Whale people, but some of these tribes decided to stay and there were now tribes camped in their winter hunting grounds and on their fishing grounds.

The winters were too cold to fish in the great salt water and the rivers and creeks were frozen. Rather than eat smoked salmon all winter, the Whale people had learned the different migration routes of the Caribou and devised traps to catch the Caribou in blind canyons for the winter. If there was enough feed for the Caribou, they would slaughter them as they needed meat; if the valley floor ran out of the lichens that the Caribou eat, they would slaughter them all at once and smoke the flesh like that of the salmon. In a gaunt world of starvation and hardship, the Whale People lived in a world of plenty.

They were happy to live under the leadership of Yellow Hair; not only was he divine, but he was a fair and intelligent leader, who could sense when and where the Caribou were migrating and when the Salmon started their runs or when there was a whale trapped in a small estuary by the tide. His people made boats with oak frames with greased leather for hulls that worked well if you kept the hide well greased with seal oil or whale blubber.

If his people observed the rules, they lived in harmony within the group: if they broke the law, Yellow Hair might cut their throat or trade them into slavery. He was feared, but loved as well. He was the nucleus that kept his tribe strong.

In these early days and up up until the present, there were several aspects of a society that needed to be worked into a particular culture for that society to exist and thrive. Survival, procreation, food, and leadership were all important elements that had to be defined culturally for a tribe to exist. If the rules or laws were broken, the society broke down.

Yellow Hair could control his own people; unfortunately, there were other tribes moving in and occupying their traditional Caribou hunting grounds. They observed the Caribou techniques of the Whale People and just repaired the log fences and gaits while waiting for the Caribou to pass through the mountain valleys.

This was no problem for Yellow Hair, he knew the mountain passes and could divert the Caribou with fire and by dressing his men in wolf and bear hides to drive the Caribou into different blind canyons. He would just build new gaits and fences at the entrances. These new people would have to live off the few Caribou that might be separated and the odd elk, horse, camel, or moose they could kill. If they were desperate or if they found a mastodon trapped in mud or lame, they could fight the mastodon to the death, for it was only possible to kill one at great risk to the hunters. He knew these new green and blue eyed people would often be facing starvation and that the Whale People almost always had plenty of Caribou and fish; therefore, they were at risk from these starving tribes.

These interlopers should have stayed in their own country, Yellow Hair reasoned. They were unfit for life between the ice and the salt sea. Their eyes were light colored and they suffered from the sun’s glare, their skin was too white in color and they couldn’t work naked in the glacier fed waters to catch the salmon. They didn’t engage in ritual washing and smoking their bodies in the traditional way. That alone prevented them from being hardy enough to survive the fierce cold and winds of these ancient lands. The blue and green eyed people were weak beyond measure, but they were large people and dangerous.

Yellow Hair knew he carried the seed of the first human, but it was this first human’s lusty ways and hunger for wild women of the forests that had produced all these uncultured barbarians. This ancient father had produced these excess humans of his own blood, and were now posing a threat to the very existence of the Whale People.

Yellow Hair had little sympathy for weakness, he had seen a weakness of character in the previous chief, his own father, and challenged the chief to personal combat for leadership of the tribe and to possess the young princess wife of his father. He killed his own father and claimed his father’s earthly goods and wives as his own. He was hardy enough, but that was back when men were men. (The weakest of the men was many times stronger than an NFL linebacker.) In those early days they hunted and killed the near humans for sport. There weren’t enough of them left now to worry over; besides, they can’t speak words, the men run like pregnant women, and they make the crudest tools and weapons. They are laughable, but in a wrestling match they are deadly, for they are strong like the mastodon. No, it is much safer to kill them with spears from a goodly distance. The near humans’s muscles are so large, they can only thrust a spear, if they try to throw a spear it is laughable.

He didn’t like to think about it, but these near humans, might be the result of his relative, the First Human, coupling with some creature of the forest. It was an ugly thought, but how else do you explain the presence of these near humans. He tried not to dwell on the negative aspects of the heritage of the First Human, but sometimes this irresponsible behavior of his family was embarrassing and impossible to ignore.

Yellow Hair had several wives and at least nine children, aged from twenty-four years to one winter. He enjoyed his kids; however, they were expected to meet the same requirements for life and work as everyone else, if the rules were relaxed for his family, he knew there would be resentment among his people.

Women who chose a mate from another tribe were expected to leave, but if a suitable mate was a loner and could prove himself as far as fishing, hunting, courage, and work, he could be accepted into the tribe. Yellow Hair would never allow slackers and free loaders a wooden soup bowl; charming a maiden of his tribe, did not warrant a free meal around the cook fire.

Everyone had to contribute with meaningful work or be banished or possibly executed by Yellow Hair. Life was a precious gift, but the nature of living next to the ice made it imperative that everyone worked to insure survival of the group. When the Salmon got lost and didn’t return to their rivers and creeks in sufficient numbers or the Caribou were called by Olalla to rest a year and not migrate, the old frail people were expected to walk alone into the night and not return, infanticide was also practiced to keep the numbers of the tribe down when food was scarce to help keep the nutritional requirements low. There were always hard decisions to be made, but the Whale People realized they must be ready to sacrifice just to survive next to the ice.

Killing a huge mastodon could mean survival through the winter, but unless they were mired in a bog hole or suffering from a severe lameness, it was far too dangerous to try and kill them and even when they were trapped, it often took hours to kill the monsters and many times his hunters were killed as well.

Sea lions were also dangerous to kill for they could travel much faster than a man can run. They were usually killed with a fusillade of spears when the animal was caught sunning himself beneath a ledge. The spears were made with sharp narrow points and heavier shafts, but the lighter javelin was also used, these weapons were designed to penetrate a tough hide and several layers of blubber; unless, the spear throws were lethal, the animal would run to the sea to escape and a valuable cache of spears and javelins would be lost with him. The sea lions were unafraid of humans and would run over a man who stood in his way as if he wasn’t there. The man would be crushed under several tons of sea lion, traveling faster than a horse.

The wild horses were trapped in blind canyons like the caribou, but they were more wary than the caribou and often sensed a trap and would turn just before being caught, to run over the men and sacrifice a few members of the herd to insure that the herd would survive.

Stealth and hunting discipline was primary in killing any of these animals, for even though man was a strong lethal killer, if an animal turned to fight and a man was caught without his weapon, humans always died. Yellow Hair explained to his elder sons, Sea Otter and Ivory Tusk, that Olalla, the whale mother that had birthed their first father, had given them superior brains to stand against the fierce animals of the grasslands and the ocean; otherwise they would have starved long ago. They accepted these truths without question; yet, there were many unanswered mysteries for the twenty year old lads.

The Ice People of Asia

Often the men had some hunting trick or knowledge of nature that helped them secure food: the women the hunters acquired for wives, always brought new knowledge of food preparation and garment making that made life better for the Ice People.

Several generations ago, the Ice People adopted a small band of tiny people with black silky hair (from the tribes that would form Japan, then a mountainous area connected to Asia and on the Eastern shore of a large lake). Their tribe had been wiped out by barbarians and they were starving. Chief Four Fingers, Tiger Paw’s grandfather, was intrigued by the women and thought if they had some meat on their bones they would be intriguing bed warmers.

The kindness shown by Four Fingers was rewarded not only by having attractive bed warmers, but these people were excellent fishermen, they also knew how to smoke fish and meats, but most importantly, they understood boatbuilding and using a mast with a short gaff rigged sail and rudder.

Although, the Ice People were on the coast, it is important to remember that so much water was frozen in the great ice sheets, that the ocean depth was reduced by over a hundred meters. The land bridge connecting Alaska and Siberia was over a thousand miles wide. Coastal areas often extended hundreds of miles farther into the sea than they do now. Thousands of rivers and creeks existed that are now on the sea floor. Beringia was a dry grassland that teemed with migrating herds traveling freely between Asia and North America.

Four Fingers had welcomed these fishermen into the tribe and did his best to insure the little people adopted the Ice Culture, but the technology that was gained by the little people was transforming their culture. He was primarily concerned with the combining the two DNA groups by spreading his seed around as much as possible, but the cultural and technological aspects of these ancient fishermen kept the Ice People from starving many times.

The original DNA pool of the Ice People had been slowly diluted for thousands of years as they traveled through Asia, along the borders of the ice; but rather than weakening the gene pool of the Ice People, they became stronger. Instead of a fair-haired tribe with green and blue eyes, they were primarily dark haired people with almond eyes. There would be an occasional child born with round blue eyes and fair hair, amid great laughter and jokes directed toward the mother and father, but the Ice People were a loving people and the throwback was always accepted as one of the true people.

The Ice People had managed to keep their own numbers close to one hundred hunters, not counting women and children. They lived well, but there were dangers from larger hostile tribes. Many tribes were driven into Beringia by starvation, but killing the great mastodon required advanced hunting skills and coordination among hunters; and yet, the skills for hunting horses, camels, muskox, caribou, and other animals of this huge grassland were advanced as well. Fishing required the skills and knowledge for building fish traps and a willingness to work naked in near freezing cold water. Boat building skills consisted of carefully burning and scraping a log with sharp instruments, until a boat shaped form appeared. Their sails were abbreviated, since the heavy keel technology would take thousands of years to be discovered; however, with paddles, these fairly fast, sleek canoe type vessels could be used for fishing and sealing and perhaps more importantly for continued migration to the land of fuel to the East.

The Ice People were hunting and fishing on the Northern edge of the glacier that extended into Southern British Columbia and north into the Yukon and Alaska. Although, it was an enormous glacier, in comparison to the glacier to the East, covering the rest of Canada and much of the US, it was a miniature glacier. Tiger Paw’s People knew there was a corridor of excellent winter hunting between the two glaciers, but they were also enjoying excellent fishing and sealing in the stormy salt sea, during the summer months.

Life was good for the Ice People, but with success in the struggle for life, comes those who want to steal that success.

The Whale People of Europe

Both of Yellow Hair’s sons had chosen good mates from outside the tribe. Yellow Hair had examined the potential mates closely for sickness or deformities and then deemed them sound women suitable for work and childbirth. He had paid a man’s weight in smoked salmon and several pairs of winter moccasins for the young girls, but each one had been an excellent purchase from the barbarian tribes of green and blue eyes, since they each produced a healthy son for the tribe. Thus his tribe would be guaranteed to survive with the superior intellect and knowledge that Yellow Hair was passing on to his sons. Yellow Hair was respected by his tribe for his infinite knowledge of nature, animals, survival, food preservation, weather, the seasons, and the land itself.

Mates were an important aspect of tribal life, adultery was not permitted without a formal declaration by a woman in front of the tribe at dinner. A man could have several wives if he could care for them, but if one of them stated her desire to be with another, there might be a fight to the death or the choice might go unchallenged for various reasons. Yellow Hair was a detached observer and official of these domestic disputes. Someone might die in a fight as a result of hard feelings and tempestuous desires, so the divorce option was not to be taken lightly. He thought it was a good system that helped keep his tribe strong and stable and especially, in helping to control these wild mating desires of both men and women.

Yellow Hair liked to keep about a hundred men in the tribe and twice that many women. The number of children fluctuated, because so many children died from the harsh life. It was obvious that Olalla wanted only the strongest of children to survive and she had to test them every winter. Everyone was expected to work in the cold glaciers streams to help catch the salmon and the boys were expected to join in the difficult and dangerous hunts. The work of women was much safer, but many of them died in childbirth, so in time, Olalla provided twice as many women as men. Yellow Hair also purchased wives for his men, when there always seemed to be a shortage of unmarried women.

He gave them a thorough physical exam before purchase. He demanded clear eyes, preferably of the earth colors and not the colors of plants and sky, broad hips for child birth, good sound teeth that met in a fairly uniform manner, well formed milk paps, and a well formed birth canal with no infection.

He had an unfortunate incident in the past, a woman was infected and gave birth to two blind children. Yellow Hair had been forced to kill the babies and after becoming suspicious, he examined the woman and discovered that she was infected. He killed her and drove her husband out of the village to prevent the spread of infection to other members of the tribe. He hesitated to only banish the man, who was a cousin of his, rather than kill him, for he knew the infection would probably continue through the populations of other tribes.

Yellow Hair had picked his eldest son, Ivory Tusk, to succeed him as chief. The lad was strong, had good eyes, and an uncanny way of understanding the animals and fish. He was a good strong son.

It all happened very quickly. A group of several tribes raided the fishing camp in the early morning before the sun chased away the thick fog. They intended to kill and rob the Whale People of their dried salmon. Many of the Whale men were overwhelmed and killed, the survivors were forced to retreat to their canoes. They lost over half the adults and most of the children in the initial minutes of the attack. They had few personal belongings with them, but they felt lucky to escape with their lives. They pushed the canoes into the surf as spears were landing around them. They managed to retrieve a few of the spears that were thrown, but they escaped with only a few stones for knives and a few spears.

Yellow Hair counted people, there were forty-five men and twenty-three women with just a few suckling children and adolescents that had survived the raid. They had suffered a terrible defeat. The raiders might be following them in the extra canoes, they kept paddling all day to the North. Ivory Tusk was wounded in the gut and in a few hours, he could no longer continue to paddle. Yellow Hair took the time to transfer him to his canoe.

He looked his brave, handsome son in the eye and felt tears for the first time, since he was a child. “Olalla is calling you home” he said, “You have the chance to see her in this world, before you cross over to the spirit world. Are you ready, to see the Whale Mother?”

Ivory Tusk nodded his head, yes, and looked to the blue sky of morning, while thongs secured his legs and arms to prevent him from swimming and prolonging his agony. He was proud to be a strong leader like his father and made sure to maintain his honor and dignity as the men prepared him for the depths.

His father said to him, “We will sing of you at the winter fires and I will see you in the Spirit World, my son,” as he slipped his son’s bound body into the great salt sea.

The Whale People all said their goodbyes as Ivory Tusk disappeared under the waves and still looking up at them, the Whale People then resumed paddling as the storm clouds began forming.

The Ice People of Asia

Tiger Paw knew there were food thefts taking place by some of the other tribes and some of them were making threatening signs at kill sites. Life was hard in Beringia, starvation was everywhere, the Ice People were well fed, their women had meat on their bones and produced children every year or two; they were successful, but the other tribes wanted this good life and the riches associated with success and eating well.

The Ice People had a simple life and a simple formula for success, but it required a keen observation of nature, the intelligence to apply the skills of hunting, and the willingness to work tirelessly to secure food; for everything was easier if you secured food. If you had excess food, like dried and smoked fish and meat, you could trade for tools, weapons, furs, and women.

Tribes who weren’t successful had to trade their women and girls for food to live; eventually, the young men of less successful tribes became despondent and angry. They looked at the wealth of Tiger Paw’s people and wondered why their tribe wasn’t rich with the bounty of the world. After all, the bounty was put on earth for everyone, all the tribes should have healthy women and dried fish; the Ice People were just acting like bears, they took their share and everyone else’s share as well.

Blue Duck, the only son of Chief One Eye, of the Muskeg people, was one of those consumed with envy and hatred. He and several of his companions watched as a small band of Ice People brought down one of the giant moose with several well placed spear throws. He was incredulous that women accompanied the men on the hunt. This fact alone made his heart burn with hatred and anger; these people had no respect for the ancient customs of his people and now they were going to enjoy the tasty internal morsels of this magnificent animal, an animal that rightfully belonged to Blue Duck and his people. He decided it was time for the Muskeg people to assert their authority over the greedy tribes of the world and take what is rightfully theirs.

The three men of the Ice People had the moose deboned and cut into roast sized pieces that were packed into six backpacks, while the women prepared a feast of the heart and liver cut into small chunks and stuffed into the stomach with blueberries, onions, and edible grasses that the moose had eaten on his own. The stomach was roasted over the coals until it swelled and pressure cooked the contents into a nutritious feast for the three couples.

Blue Duck gathered his hunters around him and devised a plan; they would sneak up on the camp and attack the group when they started to eat the wrongfully acquired feast. They would kill the men and try to capture the women; if the women fought too hard, they would kill them as well. They would then eat the feast and pack the meat back to their own camp. It was a momentous decision, the men were reluctant to resort to murder and theft, but their stomachs had been empty for a week and they had not known a woman for months.

Blue Duck had five men to attack three men and three women in a camp that was celebrating. It was almost dark by the time they had crawled close enough to hear the Ice People laughing and talking. They crawled to within several caribou strides, just after dark. The stomach had the entrance and exit sections tied in a knot and it was under extreme pressure from the steam and heat locked inside. One of the men split the top with his flint knife and the delicious aroma made the Ice people cheer and laugh, while the Muskeg men felt their senses sharpened by the scent of food; until, they were even more determined to commit murder and mayhem.

The Ice People let their meal cool for a few minutes, while they waited with their wooden spoons ready to dig into the stomach.

Blue Duck had his right index finger in the air to remind his men to wait for his signal, before beginning the attack.

Just as the Ice People closed around the stomach to eat, Blue Duck and his men attacked with a fierce savagery. The Ice men were each killed with multiple wounds from the spears. An older woman managed to jump on the back of one of the attackers and mortally wound him through the neck with a knife, before a spear entered her rib cage from the side and pierce both her lungs. A second woman was hit in the mouth with the butt end of a spear and fell backwards in an unconscious state. The men fell on the meal and had turns breeding the woman like a pack of ravenous wolves. It was an hour or two later, before Blue Duck noticed a woman was missing. He tried to get his men to leave, but once a leader encourages his men to break the cultural laws, the men begin to lose respect for that man’s leadership and authority; besides, their bellies were distended after eating like animals and they were exhausted after having their way repeatedly with the woman, who now appeared to be lifeless. They wanted to sleep and leave in the morning, and there was nothing Blue Duck could do to get them moving.

Blue Duck realized it was hopeless and drifted off to sleep. Just before morning, a well disciplined group of hunters, led by Bear Killer, son of Tiger Paw, descended on Blue Duck and his men and within seconds, three more of the Muskeg men were dead, Blue Duck and another were wounded, but still alive.

They brought the wounded men back to Tiger Paw’s camp and tied them to a tree. Tiger Paw raged inside, but he didn’t show emotion to his people or to these criminals. He used his serrated flint knife, with an edge as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, but far more durable, to cut the fur clothing from the two men, exposing their nakedness.

Blue Duck was screaming threats and insults, but his efforts were wasted, for the Ice People noticed the silhouette tattoo of a right hand on Blue Duck’s chest. It was a well known symbol of a chief’s hand, designating his choice for leadership; it was a black tattoo done with ashes.

This was big medicine for the Ice People; it could mean war, the Muskeg tribe was a large tribe with oversized people, who were often starving.

The Whale People of Europe

The Whale People followed the shore line and passed camps on shore with people who waved to them, but yellow Hair pushed on wanting to find a new hunting and fishing ground. The shoreline no longer allowed them to head north, they had been paddling west for several days when the storm clouds finally unleashed a fury on the Whale People. The waves were higher than the boats were long. Yellow Hair yelled to the other leaders to paddle to the peak of the waves at an angle and to paddle down at a high rate of speed to keep the waves from cresting and breaking over the top of them and burying them under a wall of water.

It was hopeless, the canoe captains couldn’t hear him over the noise of the storm; hopefully, his captains would follow his lead and survive the storm. He saw one of the canoes trapped in the trough, when a huge wave many times as high as a man buried them and drove them to the bottom of the salt water.

The storm raged for three days and at the end, the Whale People were so exhausted they collapsed in the hulls of their canoes and let the storm have its way with them. Yellow Hair awoke on the fourth morning and looked out to see only one other canoe floating near-by. The temperature was mild, nearly seventy degrees, Yellow Hair had never felt such a mild temperature, on the shore, there was a forest of huge trees he had never seen before. He thought he might be in the Spirit World. He called out to the other boat, three men, including his youngest son, sat up and waved. There was also a woman in that canoe with a suckling child. There were three men and an adolescent girl in his canoe. Yellow Hair made a motion with is hand towards shore and the two canoes landed on a sandy shore; although, they were a hundred and fifty miles from the present coast of Virginia, they were the first Europeans to reach the East Coast of North America.

That night at low tide, they walked far out on a sand bar to look for the tell-tale yellow flickering of campfires in the distance: for the first time in their lives, they realized they were utterly alone in the world, like the beginning of time and being born by Olalla, they were alone in the world.

The Ice People of Asia

Tiger Paw knew this was a crucial and defining moment in the leadership of his tribe. His son and his raiding party had been correct in their method of revenge on this Chief’s son and his raiding party and now Blue Duck was screaming for mercy. Tiger Paw yelled for a wooden gag to be placed in each of the captive’s mouths and tied behind their heads with a leather thong. He skinned the tattoo from the chest of Blue Duck and tied it with a thong to the neck of the other captive.

Tiger Paw then ordered his son to take half the tribe and circle the North end of the glacier and head south through the Yukon and into British Columbia. They were loaded and starting their migration within the hour. It was a big gamble; Tiger Paw had no idea whether the two glaciers maintained a corridor of land between them, he just had a fairly good hunch that there was a corridor of good hunting between the glaciers.

They had to leave this country or be annihilated by the Muskeg People. There were only enough canoes for half the tribe. He might be sending his son and half his tribe to their doom, but he knew the coast line couldn’t support people traveling by land; therefore, there was no choice, he had to send half his people inland. He told his son to follow the Western Glacier and he would meet him at the southern end of the ice, in the area that was to become Seattle; Tiger Paw would take half the tribe by boat and they will join up at the end of the ice.

He turned to Blue Duck and emasculated him, so that his father would know he would never reproduce in the spirit world and certainly not on this earth ever again. He waited until Blue Duck had accepted his fate and was no longer struggling, he then cut his throat and ordered the rest of his people into their canoes. He let Blue Duck’s warrior go with his hands tied behind him and the tattoo still tied to his neck.

Tiger Paw and the rest of the Ice people left Beringia forever.

Tiger Paw and his did meet each other in the Puget Sound area, but Tiger Paw had no idea it would take twelve years for his son to make the trip. Tiger Paw’s son had gray hair and Tiger Paw was now little more than an ancient old man, but for the survivors it was a great reunion and a chance for marriages and procreation.

Eventually, nearly five hundred years later, the descendants of Tiger Paw and Yellow Hair would meet in the area that was to become Omaha, Nebraska. The names of Tiger Paw and Yellow Hair had been forgotten, but traces of their DNA are still present in many Americans. The same qualities that drove these chiefs to succeed against all odds and care for their people were carried down through the eons and it is still in the blood of tens of millions of their descendants, now walking the earth in North America.

Epilogue: This story is of course fiction; however it is based in fact, since we now know that there were land bridges that connected Europe and Asia to North America. Cultural and technologic traits as well as DNA evidence record the presence of DNA tracings of ancient Europeans among our indigenous native people of North America. This is significant, because the DNA evidence illustrates, that in spite of superficial cultural differences and phenotypical variation, people are much more closely related than anyone’s wildest imagination ever dreamed.

It is the author’s dream, that as new DNA science is discovered, people will have a softening of preconceived ideas of racial differences and a greater harmony can be achieved through knowledge and science, rather than relying on ignorance and cultural division.

Although the events in this article are based on supposition by the author, a man who has experience living on a sharp divide between survival and death, at least more than most people, it is easy to combine human nature with a harsh environment and find these behaviors close to the surface, even with our superior cultural attitudes.

The envious wailings of the OWS people who bemoan their pitiful existence and hide their selfish pleadings behind the cloak of Marxism and a dubious desire for an end to corruption; yet, their cries for equality seem to be hypocritical at best as they perpetuate and promote a code of lawlessness. Yes, under the guise of fairness and equality, greed begets more greed and the veneers of advanced culture become laughable with their pretensions of enlightenment.

This article, the preface of a novel, is not meant to belittle prehistoric man, but rather to illustrate that our advancements are mainly technological and we who consider ourselves so highly evolved culturally, are not that far removed from seeking shelter in caves and tents made of hides.

These people are modern in the sense that a baby from their culture could be raised in a twenty-first century family and no one would know the difference, but switching adults would be nearly impossible because of the cultural differences.

The extent of the land bridge between Europe and North America will be argued for decades, but the new DNA evidence suggests that if it was not complete, the exposed land masses permitted human migration with short trips by boat.

Newt Gingrich risked his standing with conservatives on Tuesday night by calling for a “comprehensive approach” to immigration reform. “Comprehensive immigration reform” is a poisonous a term to conservatives because of the reckless dishonesty with which it has been applied to a long series of bills that have been anything BUT comprehensive. In particular, these bills have promised to both secure the border and establish a path to citizenship for those illegals who are already here (amnesty), while only actually providing amnesty, which together with our still unsecured borders dramatically increases illegal immigration. It’s like hosing gasoline on a burning house and calling it “a comprehensive approach to firefighting.” Comprehensively dishonest and comprehensively disastrous perhaps. It took a huge fight to turn back the last such attempt (the McCain-Kennedy Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007). Newt had been asked about his vote for the first such phony-comprehensive bill and stepped in it by making a renewed appeal to comprehensiveness:

I did vote for the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. Ronald Reagan, in his diary, says he signed it — and we were supposed to have 300,000 people get amnesty. There were 3 million. But he signed it because we were going to get two things in return. We were going to get control of the border and we were going to get a guest worker program with employer enforcement. We got neither. So I think you’ve got to deal with this as a comprehensive approach that starts with controlling the border, as the governor said.

A comprehensive approach vs. a comprehensive bill It is a tricky rhetorical question: how to call for a genuinely comprehensive approach to immigration reform when the term “comprehensive immigration reform” has been systematically used in the most dishonest fashion as cover for what are actually pro-illegal-immigration policies? But there is a simple answer.

Truly comprehensive immigration reform MUST be a two-step process. The border must be secured FIRST. Until that is accomplished, even to talk of amnesty, never mind legislate about it, only increases illegal immigration. In other words, a “comprehensive immigration” BILL is the diametric opposite of a comprehensive immigration APPROACH. Anyone who talks about a comprehensive immigration reform bill (McCain) is a anti-conservative fraud who should be routed out of the party.

Newt’s control-the-border-first statement shows he understands the problem, but does he understand the solution? Does he understand that a comprehensive approach to immigration requires, not just that legislation to control the border comes first, but that actual achieved control of the border has to come first, before any other steps can be taken? It is not a good sign that Gingrich spent most of his “comprehensive” immigration reform comment talking about the need to provide a path to citizenship for long-term illegals. A lot of us agree with him that such a path should be enacted AFTER the borders are secure. But if Newt would try to achieve it through the same bill that initiates border control it’s a total fail, it’s hosing the burning house with gasoline.

If Newt wants to keep from terrifying his would-be supporters, he needs to be specific that by comprehensive reform he does not mean a comprehensive bill, but a comprehensive approach that enacts and achieves border security before any amnesty legislation is considered.

The Seville family survived the Moors during the invasion of Spain in the early 8th Century; actually, their sword making techniques, during the occupation, made the Seville family wealthy. The Moors had a deep respect for the technology involved in manufacturing a fine honed blade, thus they allowed the Seville family to prosper; eventually, Moors married into the family and the family became one of the wealthiest families in Spain.

Over a thousand years later, the family members were titled and wealthy aristocrats; they were a handsome family, noted for dark skin tones as well as blue and green eyes. They were considered to be capable and intelligent; unfortunately, because of the early practice of marrying cousins to keep the family estate intact and perhaps, because of incestuous relationships over time, there was a strain of madness that permeated the Seville bloodline. However, Toledo made the best steel swords in the world and the Seville family was considered to be the best sword and knife makers in Toledo.

A good sword had strength, flex, and the ability to hold a razor’s edge. The Seville swords and sabers were easily recognized by men of arms, whether they were duelists or the arms buyers for the armies of Europe. Inferior swords often broke in combat and if they couldn’t hold an edge they were useless and cost lives. The secret was in the purity of the iron, the carbon and the tempering process. In an era of coal fired forges, there were no thermometers; however, temperatures were critical, if the temperatures were too high when the steel was quenched, the iron would be too brittle and the steel would break like glass. If the steel was too cold, the blade wouldn’t hold an edge and the sword would bend. The control of the temperature, the application of carbon, and the quench or cooling phase were all important factors needed to make a good sword.

Young Ignacio was the son of a younger brother of the Don who headed up the family. He would never inherit the wealth of the family. His most obvious options were the military or the church. Young men like Ignacio were supposed to be men of leisure, horse riding, fencing, and seducing astronomical numbers of maidens were considered worthy pursuits for wealthy dilettantes, but Ignacio was different. He learned the steel business from the smelting of iron to the sharpening and polishing of the finished blade.

His family was incensed when young Ignacio came from working in the mills and forges with coal dust and dirt covering his body and clothes. His male cousins laughed at him and the females rolled their eyes with smirking grins. Despite his family’s disapproval, Ignacio was being recognized as an important member of the sword making enterprise.

If someone was sick or if someone died, Ignacio stepped forward and trained a new worker. He still rode horses and took fencing lessons; except, he had a strength of both body and mind that his brothers and cousins secretly envied.

There was one cousin that envied Ignacio’s skills and hated him for his work ethic and his knowledge; Carlos was in line to inherit the sword making factory. His life was spent in gluttony, wine drinking and being a bully to anyone beneath his social station, which was almost everyone. He was waiting for his invalided father to die so that he could inherit all the money to continue his life of unfettered debauchery, until the family estate went bankrupt or he died of excess.

Such young men resent those who make them look useless. Thus, Carlo’s hatred for Ignacio seethed; he waited patiently for the chance to rid himself of this cousin who served only to remind him of his wasted and irresponsible life.

Saturday evening belonged to Ignacio and he would go to a small cafe on the plaza to get a glimpse of the love of his life. Louisa would be there with her older brothers. Her impossibly blue eyes that flashed and sparkled like the forges at work and her long flowing black hair that curled in waves down to her lower back were her most striking features. At 5 foot 8, she towered over most of the men in the village. Yet she was the romantic daydream of every male with a libido in the village.

Ignacio was allowed to join Louisa and her two brothers to stroll on the promenade where flirting and flashing eyes were a formal tradition in selection of possible matrimonial partners. Young girls paraded their charms and chastity while chaperoned by older male relatives who glared at men who showed an interest. To walk with a young girl, a suitor must ask the chaperone for permission to speak to the maiden. He then had to ask to walk alongside of her. This was his chance to engage in conversation and make a favorable impression. Many potential suitors asked, but few were accepted; it was fashionable to be in demand, but not to seem too approachable.

If a man was deemed suitable, he was asked to Sunday dinner. After several dinners, he was expected to propose or he might be challenged to a duel by a brother or cousin of the maiden. Honor and respect were expected and disputes were often settled with blood and death. Courtship was a serious matter to the caballeros of this class and to those who ascribed to the old traditions.

Young single women of lower socio-economic classes and some who weren’t so young or single used the promenade as a chance to set up liaisons of passion. A glance, an eye movement, or a toss of the head were all part of a ritual that helped unite lovers later on that evening. The danger from male relatives and husbands was intimidating in a village where every man owned a sword and was trained in its use. But in the village of Paloma near Toledo, it was accepted that its people were a lusty bunch, even by Latin standards.

Ignacio could have met with hundreds of peasant girls or frustrated married women for a few minutes of lust, but he had already been invited to Louisa’s family dinner and he was under close scrutiny as a possible mate for Louisa, it was imperative not to be caught up in some scandal. It was easy to be caught, for although it was considered the actions of a degenerate for a man to speak of his sexual conquests, it was a great topic of conversation for women to speak of their sexual conquests, listing all the important details of each encounter to any female who would listen. Thus men sometimes died after a glowing review was told and retold, until an enraged male relative demanded satisfaction and one of the two men was either seriously wounded or killed. It was a part of their culture, flawed as it may have been, it kept a measure of honor and cohesion within the group.

On this fateful night, after walking with Louisa and her brothers for a respectable twenty minutes, one of the brothers said it was time to say goodnight. Ignacio stood about 18 inches away, a distance that made her relatives nervous and said good night to Louisa and telling her he hoped to see her soon. He bowed his head and his torso slightly. When he stood up, one of the brothers told him they would be serving dinner tomorrow at 3 o’clock and that he should come at 2 o’clock.

Ignacio thanked the relative and said he would be at their hacienda at 2 o’clock.

The trio walked toward their home and Ignacio was ecstatic. This was his second invitation; if he were invited two more times, he was expected to propose. He decided to have a glass of wine to calm his nerves while he was oblivious to the admiring glances of many females.

After drinking the wine without tasting it, he mounted his horse and decided to ride by Louisa’s family estate on the way home. He had to feel close to her, just one more time this evening. He was in a dream world and the beautiful Spanish maiden never left his thoughts.

A short distance out of town, Ignacio saw two men in the road and one of them was in agony. He jumped off his horse and held onto the reins as he knelt to offer assistance. It was Louisa’s brothers, they had been stabbed multiple times and were bleeding profusely. The one who asked him to dinner said they were dying and not to worry over them, but Louisa had been kidnapped by Carlos Seville and several brigands. He pointed to the wagon tracks of a carriage and told him to save Louisa.

Ignacio said, “May God hold you in his arms tonight.” The dying man said, “Vaya con Diaz” (“Go with God) and laid back to die. Ignacio jumped on his horse and followed the tracks to a room in the back of a cantina. The carriage was parked beneath a tree and several evil looking men were lounging around the carriage. Without forethought he walked up to the men as they slowly stood and put their hands on swords and knives. He drew his sword and slashed the first man through the right collar bone and down through the chest cavity. The sword finished its diagonal arc through the left abdomen of the man and Ignacio brought his sword up at lightening speed and thrust it through the breast bone and the heart of the next man, killing him instantly. He lost valuable seconds while trying to dislodge his sword from the bone. One of the cowards ran into the night, but the other one drew his sword and thrust at Ignacio just as his sword broke free. The thrust of the sword was stopped by the ribs of Ignacio, the man lacked the strength to break the ribs and force his sword into the chest cavity to deliver a killing thrust. The blade glanced off the ribs leaving only a jagged cut and chipped ribs. Ignacio raised his sword and brought the razor sharp edge across with speed and power. The blade entered the side of the man’s neck and exited the other side without slowing down. He dropped his sword and grabbed his neck with both hands in a futile effort to stop the bleeding. Ignacio left him to bleed out on his knees and ran into the small room. His cousin was on the naked Louisa, she was bitten and bruised as if the hunting hounds had nearly torn her to pieces, her face was unrecognizable, her eyes were bruised and swollen shut, her nose was broken, and her lips protruded many times beyond their normal shape.

He hesitated to stare in horror at the scene of debauchery in front of him. Carlos reached for his sword and the two engaged in mortal combat next to the violated girl. As often happened, when two expert swordsmen meet in combat, they thrust at the same instant and each sword met flesh. Carlos’ sword cleaved the left cheekbone and below the eye of Ignacio, blinding him with pain and blood. The blade of Ignacio pierced the belly of Carlos and would have been a killing wound except for the roll of belly fat around his middle and the intense pain of Ignacio’s wound causing him not to complete his thrust. If Carlos would have been a stronger man, he could have finished off Ignacio, but the sight of his own blood scared him and he ran to his carriage, barely noticing the bodies of his brigands, as he left to acquire medical assistance at home.

Ignacio overcame his pain and covered his love with her torn clothes. With difficulty from the pain of his two wounds he mounted his horse while holding his beloved’s broken and bleeding body. He rode to the home of his older sister Emilia, Emilia and was a serious woman who understood the gravity of the situation. She tended to Louisa and had one of her maids tend to the wounds of Ignacio. She told a stable groom to prepare a coach with their best team.

When the two young people were bandaged, she gave them a hamper of food, two bottles of wine and a bottle of brandy, she told them to drink the brandy for pain and to drink the wine at night to sleep. She pressed a leather sack of gold and silver coins into the hands of Ignacio and told him, “Head for the port of Malaga, Andalucia, we are shipping swords and knives to Lavaca, Matagorda, and the ship leaves in ten days, the ship is the Corazon de Mexico, give the captain this letter and you will be safe, now go!”

The groom drove them to the coast and left them with the ship and the Captain who treated the couple as royalty. Louisa was withdrawn and rarely ventured from their cabin during the five week trip across the Atlantic. Ignacio realized she would need time to recover and he was determined to give her all the time she required.

The village of Lavaca was a cultural shock for the young couple. The roughshod Texican seemed to be little more than uncouth barbarians; yet, they were respectful with a strong sense of justice and fearlessness.

At first Ignacio disliked these frontier ruffians, but he soon realized the very element of independence and self-reliance that made him learn the weapon manufacturing business is what drives these Texans. He learned to admire their rugged individualism and sense of right and wrong.

With the Mexicans, there was a distinct set of social classes that reminded him of Spain. They were among the upper levels of society, since they were born of Spanish aristocracy. The Mexican born of Spanish blood was next, followed by the Mexican born of Indian and Spanish blood. The Indian was of the lowest class. The aristocrats considered beneath their station to associate with lesser people. Yet, people from lower social classes were always trying to marry their children to a higher social group to attain entry to a higher level and hopefully any wealth that might part of the deal.

Ignacio had already seen the caste system at its worst. He preferred the Texans, they showed only a minimal respect to aristocrats; although, it was no wonder, among the Texans, there was a mixing of the social classes, for the wealthy aristocratic Texans were just as uncultured as the lowest classes.

It was a short time after their arrival, they met acquaintances from Spain. Fearing the possibility of Carlos sending assassins or coming to Monterey himself to kill them both in an effort to avoid repercussions in the future, they were anxious to keep moving.

Louisa hated this new country and wanted to socialize with no one, even the one man who loved her. She wore a veil to hide her crooked nose and her shame, for she now knew she was pregnant with the seed of Carlos. She had told Ignacio to tell people they were brother and sister, since she was with child and she felt as if she could never marry, because of her disgrace and her crooked nose.

When she felt the swelling begin in her belly, she told Ignacio. She expected him to throw her into the street, but he told her that he would love this child and raise it as his own. At that moment, she fell in love with the brave young man that had saved her life and told herself that she could never look at another. She told him she wanted to start a new life in Oregon, to be away from the old world and the horrible memories. Ignacio longed for adventure and told her that Oregon would be a good place for them to build a life. He kissed her cheek, she felt herself swoon and she almost fainted.

At some point in the future, she knew they would marry and could live as man and wife; she knew that day would come in their future, when she felt safe and free of the Old World.

Ignacio thought the wagons of Texas were weak and poorly made, there was no comparison in the craftsmanship of Toledo and Mexico, but he bought one of the inferior wagons, for he was sure that his future wife would be unable to ride all the way to Texas in her present condition.

He purchased the best wagon he could find and enough supplies to carry them to Texas. He hired two young vaqueros to guard them and help with the chores. The vaqueros were just boys with quick smiles, but they were quick, brave, strong, and fearless. Alejandro and Pepe were of true Mexican stock. They were illiterate, but possessed the skills of master horsemen and stockmen. They also had that Spanish trait of undying loyalty to a patron. He was sure they would fight to the death to defend Louisa, for that feature was embedded deep within the soul of the Hispanic and his culture of machismo.

Ignacio knew of the Comanche and the even more ruthless Comanchero, the mixed blood offspring who traded with the Comanche for slaves and gold, and supplied them with guns; they had a reputation for hating everyone and everything. He swore if they were under attack, Louisa would never be taken alive. He made sure that his vaqueros understood his wishes in that regard. They each nodded with solemnity, indicating that they understood their responsibilities; at that instant they had both respect and love for their Spanish patron, for he gave them this great measure of trust and responsibility that is so important to the young men of the Mexican culture.

During the trip through Texas, Ignacio was glad he had his vaqueros with him. They rode past many men who looked to be bandits, but the bandits seemed to dislike the possibility of armed resistance from three well armed men. In the desert of North Texas, they were camped for the night when the voice of a gringo caught their attention, “Hello the camp, Ranger Mckee, coming in.”

Ignacio drew his pistol as did his vaqueros.

Ranger Mckee walked into the light of the fire leading his horse. He looked strange and frightening, he stood over six feet tall and had multiple weapons on his belt and in scabbards on his horse. As he walked into camp he smiled and said, “buenos noches”, with the horrible gringo accent. Everyone was silent as they stared at this stranger who seemed to travel alone. He asked if he could have a bowl of beans, Ignacio nodded his head and the ranger opened a saddle bag to withdraw a wooden bowl and spoon. He ate several bites and asked if they knew Querna Vaca was tracking them.

“Who is Querna Vaca?” asked Ignacio.

“If you live long enough, you will meet him and his men just before daylight.”

Ignacio asked the ranger to explain.

He is one of the worst Comanches that has ever lived and he has eight or ten of the most bloodthirsty Comanches and Comancheros in Texas as his companeros. Tommorrow they plan to kill you and your men, and steal your woman and anything you have of value.

At first, Ignacio thought Ranger Makee might be an assassin, but this sounded much worse. He asked the ranger how he knew all this information.

Mckee smiled and said, “I’ve been tracking him for three months; you’ens are the first victims I’ve found, before he killed them.”

“What do you intend on doing,” Ignacio asked.

“I’m going to wait until he comes in the morning and kill him and his men or die trying.”

“Can we help you, Señor?”

“The help would be appreciated, but they will be coming fast and ready to kill. If you hesitate you will die. If they captures you alive, they will torture you for hours, just so you know what to expect.”

“We will fight, Señor. We will fight to the death.”

“I was hoping you wanted to fight. Put out the fire and roll the wagon over here. We’ll turn it over in this coulee and build a redoubt. I want the four of you in the fort, I’m going back in that brush and shoot them in the back as they run past me. I may come up out of that hole with guns blazing if it looks like you are going to be overrun, so don’t shoot me.”

Ignacio made sure his vaqueros understood the battle plan and they began preparing for the battle.

The first Comanche crawled to within thirty yards of Ignacio’s little group and stood up to charge at a full speed run with a blood curdling scream. Ignacio and his vaqueros all three fired into the torso and the Comanche was sliding forward with his momentum and stopped within a few feet of the coulee. One of the vaqueros was shot through the hip, but he turned to fire at another charging Comanche. Ignacio could see the ranger firing into the backs of the attackers and then walking forward with both revolvers firing. It was almost over when a bullet smashed into his kneecap, Ignacio fell forward onto the lifeless body of Pepe. Ignacio raised his revolver to fire just as Querna Vaca brought his war ax down on the left temple of Ignacio, exposing a portion of his brain. Louisa drew Ignacio’s sword and plunged it upward into the belly of Querna Vaca until it pierced his heart. Querna dropped his weapons and touched his fingertips to his chest and mouthed a silent scream; until, he fell forward and pushed the sword all the way through his back. The battle was over, the three men who were protecting her were all dead and she was going into labor.

Ranger McKee carried her from the carnage and into the shade of a small tree. After she tried to deliver the baby for the rest of the day and into the night, Ranger Mckee told her he knew how to help cows deliver and if she didn’t deliver the baby soon, she would be too weak to deliver the baby and they would both die.

Louisa told him to do what he needed to do, while she still had the strength to help.

McKee felt in the birth canal and found the head in a normal position, but one foot was beside the head and there wasn’t enough room for the baby to be born. Using his knowledge of cows, he placed her lower back on his thigh and pushed the baby back with all his might, when he felt the baby slip backward, he pushed on the little foot until it slipped backward and upward in the birth canal. The baby slid forward at a tremendous rate of speed and was born. Louisa passed out when the baby was slid into Mckee’s hands. He cleaned up the baby boy with his bandana and held the baby to Louisa’s breast to suckle. While holding the baby, he laughed at its’ aggressive appetite. He looked sadly at he bite scars on her thighs and breasts and assumed she was ravaged by Comanches, it probably happened at the same time her nose was broken. It wasn’t a terrible break, the lower half was angled to the left a quarter inch or so, but it was the only blemish on an angelic face, a face that was beyond comparison on the frontier of Texas.

She would need help, Makee’s rangering contract was up and since Querna Vaca and his merry band was dead, he no longer had other responsibilities. He would take care of her and the baby, until they were with her people. He held the baby when it was done feeding and drifted into a light sleep, while Louisa slept a deep sleep.

Mckee introduced her to her baby before daylight the next morning and explained that the baby had already fed during the night and he had an excellent appetite. She smiled at the baby as if he was the most beautiful treasure in the world, while Mckee wandered into the brush to round up as many horses as he could find to get them moving. By noon Mckee had his horse, the team for the wagon and the vaqueros’ horses, as well as several of the comanche horses. He didn’t know how she was set for finances, but the horses had value and some of them could fetch a twenty dollar gold piece.

He retrieved all the weapons from the battle and the fine Spanish sword Louisa had used so well to stop that homicidal bastard Querna Vaca. He found the leather pouch carrying the gold and silver Spanish coins on Ignacio and put them into the wagon. She was pretty well set up, he could accompany her wherever she wanted to go and she would have enough money to support herself for a long time or until she could find a husband.

Louisa looked upon Mckee as almost a god, he came to them out of the blue, to warn them of an indian attack, an attack she and her baby would not have survived. He then delivered her baby, when it was caught in a position that would have killed her and the baby. He was truly a special man, yet he was so humble and polite. He had seen her scarred body and crooked nose, but didn’t ask the questions she didn’t want to answer. She could feel herself falling in love with this gentle giant, this gringo, who smiled so openly, when he looked her in the eye, he never stared at her crooked nose. With him she felt safe and accepted: she never wore a veil again for the rest of her life. If this giant gringo could accept her without questions, the rest of the world could accept her as well.

He laid Ignacio, Pepe, and Alejandro in shallow graves and by mid-afternoon, they were ready to travel a few miles before dark. He felt it was important for the mental health of Louisa to get away from the scene of the battle.

When they were ready to start, he asked Louisa where she would like him to take her. He could have fallen over when she said Oregon.

He once rode all the way to Santa Fe to shoot a cold blooded killer, but that was the farthest he had ever been outside of Texas. There was no hope of her reaching Oregon, unless he helped her, but there were no guarantees she would make it, even with his help.

Heading North Out Of Texas

Makee was born on a ranch in West Texas twenty seven years earlier, He had been in twelve skirmishes with Comanches, had fought countless Comancheros, and had hanged many renegades and horse thieves, but he had never been north of Texas. It was late fall, but he knew if he stayed East of the Rockies they could probably travel all winter; at least, if the snow didn’t get too deep.

The woman and the baby seemed to grow stronger each day. Louisa and Ranger Mckee took turns riding and driving the wagon. Mckee was actually beginning to like the baby. He was a strong little fellow that would grab his finger and hang on then smile and giggle. McKee was ten years old and an only child, when the Comanches killed his parents. After the death of his parents, he had lived off the land and by using his wits, until he was big enough to lie about his age of thirteen and become a ranger. He had never been around children and this was a new experience for him, an experience he was really starting to enjoy.

Growing up as a ranger meant long hours in the saddle and moments of extreme danger. They never chased and hanged good men. He had mainly been exposed to the worst examples of human kind. The only women he had known were the women of the saloons. they loved his boyish smiles and shy mannerisms, but he always had an empty feeling in his soul the next morning. After awhile, he stopped joining his ranger buddies for a chance to relax with whiskey and women at a saloon after a successful patrol. He would rather enjoy a full night’s sleep. He never really developed a taste for whiskey; he had just liked the camaraderie of his friends and the attention of the whores.

He became a recluse, there was no chance of securing a wife, there was no woman who wanted to live as a wife alone and never knowing whether her husband was dead and scalped on the Staked Plains or in old Mexico.

In his imagination, he made himself think of Louisa as his wife and of the boy Dominic as his own son. For the first time in his life, Ranger Makee was feeling content and happy. Louisa enjoyed riding and often showed off her equestrian skills. It was obvious she had learned real riding skills from a master in Spain.

They spoke in a mix of Spanish and English and although Mckee had no concept of verb tenses, for few Spanish speakers in the New World mastered the correct usage of Spanish, he was learning the grammatically correct aristocratic Spanish from Louisa; unfortunately, she was picking up the same imperfections in English that Mckee had, as well as his direct, slow speech patterns, but she was learning McKee’s imprecise English at a tremendous rate.

Sometimes Mckee wondered whether she expected him to ride back to Texas after they arrived in Oregon or whether she might want him to stay in Oregon. Maybe he could be a substitute father of Dominic and a friend of Louisa, for he never thought this fine Spanish lady would look upon him as a possible husband. She is a cultured beautiful Spanish Lady: he is an Indian fighter, tracker of horse thieves, and a Texas Ranger, he had been a ranger since he was thirteen, he had spent most of his life in the saddle, he had been wounded by twelve bullets and arrows, she probably thought of him as just a little better than a half civilized Comanche.

For the first time in his life, he was not alone. He had ridden with many rangers and seen too many of them die, but even when he rode with these rough men, he was alone. He now had a spiritual partner and he felt fulfilled. For the first time, since his parents were killed, he had deep loving feelings for a human being; he thought maybe he was falling in love with Dominic and Louisa.

It was mid-afternoon when two human figures came running down from the foothills to the East. They were running very hard and about a mile away from the wagon.

Ranger Mckee, said to himself, “What’s going on here?”

He drew his rifle from his scabbard and started to trot toward the two figures. Suddenly, a group of eight riders rode down from the hill. The ranger spurred his horse into a gallop and said to himself, “I don’t like the way this looks.”

He fired twice at the lead rider and missed both times, the rider was within twenty yards of one of the runners and was ready to throw his lance. McKee aimed as well as could on his galloping horse from sixty yards and fired just as the lance left his hand. The bullet from the Sharps struck the Apache in the center of the chest and he flew backwards out of the saddle, but McKee watched in horror as the lance arced through the air and struck the running Indian woman in the lower back, the blade and part of the shaft were sticking out of her lower abdomen.

McKee could see that she was carrying a newborn baby and he flew into a killing rage. He draped the Sharps over the saddle horn by a leather thong he kept tied to the rifle. He then drew the Navy Colts and killed the other Apaches with a bloodlust he had never felt before. In less than a minute, the Apaches were all knocked from their saddles. He finished off two of them with a double barrel shotgun he kept in a saddle scabbard and finished off the last one with his Bowie knife. As Louisa drove up in the wagon he reloaded his pistols and put a bullet in the head of each Apache. He learned a long time ago not to trust Apaches to die, just because they had a mortal wound. He then joined the Indian who was trying to comfort his dying wife.

Louisa ran up and asked the ranger in Spanish if there was anything they could do. Mckee tightened his lips and shook his head no. She was on her knees and was holding her newborn to her breast. Eventually, she sat down on her calves and tried to be as comfortable as possible while waiting to die.

Mckee and the man were communicating with sign language. Louisa asked what the man was saying. He says his wife can’t die in peace, knowing that her baby daughter will starve to death.

Louisa looked shocked and said, “Ranger Mckee, you tell her that I will feed her baby like it is my own and raise her up to be a young woman.”

Mckee gave the appropriate hand signals and the young Indian woman’s facial expression took on a look of peacefulness. She held out the baby to Louisa and slumped down to die.

They laid her in the wagon and drove to a little hill and buried her at sunset. Louisa fixed dinner, while the men dug the grave. They buried her in silence. After dinner the Indian man sang a funeral song in his own language. It was a haunting song that made the hair stand up on Mckee’s arms. When he was finished, Louisa sang a Spanish song of love, life, and death. During the song, the Indian man started crying and Ranger Mckee felt all the emotion of twenty-six years boil to the surface and he began to cry, not so much from death and sorrow, but from the happiness of having a good woman with him and the expression of kindness she showed by taking on the little Indian baby. His family was getting bigger.

Louisa now began to realize why the Texas Rangers are regarded so highly. Ranger Mckee didn’t hesitate when he saw an injustice. He was not only the peace officer, but he was the judge, jury, and executioner as well. He was a magnificent man, but he was as humble and unassuming as he was brave. She decided that this was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

The next morning at daylight, Mckee was awakened to the sound of an animal in camp. He jumped out of his bedroll to see the Indian cut the throat of an exhausted bull elk. Mckee helped the man butcher the animal, but he was astounded by what he had just seen.

When the men were cooking elk steaks, beans with onions, and coffee, Mckee began to ask the man how he had caught the elk and brought it into camp.

The Indian explained that he was from the Tarahumara tribe from the high mountains of Northwestern Mexico. They were legendary runners who hunt game by running it down. They live in the high mountains and usually don’t venture away from home, because they are shy of the rest of the world.

They had to leave their home because his wife was in a contract of marriage to a chief’s son, it was arranged when she was a small girl, but she had fallen in love with him, Chi Chi and they decided to elope, so they ran away.

They didn’t expect the chief to hire Apaches to hunt them down. The Apaches had been on their trail for over a year and if they wouldn’t have run into Ranger Mckee, he too would have died with his wife and since Ranger Mckee had saved his life he was bound to serve him for the rest of his life.

In all his days of rangering, Mckee had never heard such a story. He had heard of the Tarahumara, but considered them to be legends. They were said to be able to run distances of a hundred and even two hundred miles. No wonder those Apaches looked so gaunt, they had spent a year trying to run down these two young runners, “foot throwers” they call themselves, it was no telling how many horses the Apaches had stolen trying to keep up with the runners. The Apaches were among some of the best trackers, they were considered legendary like McKee, but to run down people who can run over a hundred miles a day would kill horses, you would kill a horse every few days.

Mckee wondered if he could have run down these two. The Apaches were relentless and would have considered it to be a matter of honor; although, from their appearances, they looked more dead than alive, they couldn’t have pursued the young couple much farther before the pursuers would have died on the trail. The story was even more phenomenal when you consider his wife ran during her pregnancy and gave birth a few days ago; yet, they were still running and they looked to be in great shape.

He told the tale to Louisa and she began to cry. Mckee put his hand on her shoulder and said that at least the two lovers were together for a year and that the fruit of their love would now live under their protection. Louisa spun into Mckee and wrapped her arms tightly around his middle and squeezed with an unimagined strength. She was five foot eight, Mckee was six foot two and an extremely strong man, but her strength was almost frightening. She cried even harder and Mckee patted her back with his hand and told her that things would work out.

Later, Mckee was overwhelmed with the strength of Louisa’s bear hug around his belly. She was visibly upset, but was she upset with him, did he do something wrong? It was all very confusing for Mckee, for he was the fearless Indian fighter and tracker of horse thieves, because the fearless hunter and executioner of bad men had no experience in affairs of the heart.

Ranger Mckee had never considered having a servant and disliked the term itself, but Chi Chi was proving himself to be very useful. Every afternoon, he would run ahead to find a good campsite with good water and feed for the horses. He’d have a fire started and fresh meat or fish cooking, when the wagon arrived.

One morning, Chi Chi saw a lone buffalo about a mile in the distance. He told Mckee to be ready because he was going to run way around the buffalo and then spook it towards Mckee and his horse. Mckee started to signal him that buffalo may turn to fight, but Chi Chi was already running away to flank the buffalo.

Chi Chi was an excellent hunter, so Mckee assumed he knew what he was doing.

In the distance, Mckee saw Chi Chi run toward the buffalo to spook him. The buffalo took three strides in retreat and then spun to fight. Chi Chi kept running straight at him and slapped the buffalo on the forehead and ran toward Mckee.

“Well, he don’t lack for nerve,” Mckee said out loud when the buffalo followed Chi Chi with a frightening burst of speed.

The distance was eaten up by the speed of Chi Chi and the rampaging bull in a few minutes. Chi Chi swung North away from the wagon, to take Louisa and the children out of danger and Mckee charged the buffalo at full speed. He saw his first two rounds sink deep into the chest cavity, he was then galloping alongside the buffalo, the animal did not slow or show signs of distress, McKee put the muzzle up against the animal’s back and fired. The bullet destroyed the heart of the beast and he collapsed in a rolling heap.

Chi Chi let out a war cry and came back to dance around the buffalo in celebration. Mckee let out a Comanche war whoop as Louisa drove up in the wagon. They were celebrating because of the kill and partially because they knew, there would be no starvation for the rest of the winter. For they could carry all the meat on the wagon and the meat would be preserved in the cold. That day they celebrated with a day of rest and a meal of tongue with wild prairie onions.

Later that afternoon, Chi Chi began mixing and cooking a pot of cactus and other plants he had been collecting along the trail. He rendered some of the buffalo fat and mixed it in with the residue of the plants. Once it was stirred well, Chi Chi placed it in the snow to cool.

Two hours later it had congealed into a gel, he presented the mixture to Louisa in a wooden bowl. She looked at him with a question on her face. He made the motions of rubbing the mixture on his chest. At first she thought it was meant as a breast salve, but then he pointed to a scar on his forearm and put a small amount on the scar.

He had surely seen the scars from the bites on her breasts, they were still vivid red marks on her ivory skin. She thanked him and thought she would first experiment and apply the mixture to the scars on her abdomen. Her breasts were the only things keeping the helpless babies alive and she didn’t want to take a chance of ruining their feed supply.

She applied the medicine that evening and in the morning she looked at the scars in disbelief, they were nearly gone. The angry looking redness had disappeared and the scars were much harder to see. She was overjoyed and quickly applied the medicine to all the scars she could see and reach. Within days of applying Chi Chi’s salve the scars had all but disappeared, there were only faint traces of the marks.

She thought of the ranger and how good it felt to hug him and hold him to her body. He had been so embarrassed and at a loss to know to hug her back. She laughed at his naive nature that she admired so much. He was a darling man and she needed him to hold her.

She devised a plan. When Chi Chi went out on one of his two hour runs, she called Mckee into the wagon under the pretense of rubbing the salve on her back. He was rubbing the salve into the scars of her back, when she pushed the sheet covering her backside to expose a few scars he had never seen. Mckee began rubbing the salve into these new scars very dutifully and professionally, as Louisa made a low guttural cat noise in her throat and turned around to embrace Mckee to her naked body. Mckee started to panic, when he felt the abnormally strong Louisa grab him in a fit of passion, but he forced himself to relax and returned the raw passion of a woman overwhelmed with a combination of love and lust, and responded with a gentle loving touch, a response that inflamed Louisa’s aggressive raw passion even more.

In less than two hours, they had consummated the passions that had been pent up for years within both these young souls and had pledged their love and commitment to each other for the rest of their lives. Thus a true American love story was born from tragedy and pain.

Their love was to span six decades.

Later on that summer, Ranger McKee and his family met Colonel Fallon’s wagon train in the area that was to become Montana. They were shocked to see the suffering these Americans had endured; for while the American wagons were falling apart and many of the people seemed on the verge of starvation, their wagon was still sound and they had eaten quite well on the trail, thanks to Chi Chi with his unique skills at hunting and gathering wild food.

The Americans found it astounding that the Mckee wagon had been on the trail all winter.

Colonel Fallon was glad to have the experienced lawman and Indian fighter with him, but he had never met a man so instilled with the thoughts of right and wrong and the sense of being the law, the judge, and the executioner. Colonel Fallon took time to explain to Ranger Mckee that the laws of Texas don’t necessarily apply to someone who had never been to Texas. Mckee was in a state of shock at the concept of jurisdictions, in Mckee’s mind, Texas was the only law west of the Red River and the idea that they were in an area with no real law, other than the Colonel’s jurisdiction over the wagon train was very confusing for a Ranger.

The Colonel appointed Ranger Mckee as his second in command and began instructing Mckee in the Constitution and of how America had won its Independence. Thus from these early history lessons and of teaching McKee to read, there emerged a brilliant mind from this rustic frontiersman, for he read every book the people in the wagon train had to offer. Captain Levin introduced him to Plato and they had great philosophical discussions that often left the old sea captain perplexed and amazed at the young man’s ability to grasp complex concepts so soon after learning to read. This was the nucleus of the transformation of a rugged Texas Ranger into a judge for the future state of Oregon.

The Colonel married the couple a few days after they joined the wagon train, Louisa was beginning to swell and she wanted to talk to the other ladies, using her newly acquired English with a back country Texas accent, she wanted to talk about of her new baby and her Ranger. She was quickly accepted among the women of the wagon train, who admired her for taking in the orphaned baby and her knowledge of ladylike culture.

Chi Chi began working closely with the Colonel and the guide Mr Tomlin, to find forage and water.

The new wagon brought hope and strength to the wagon train, because of their positive attitude and their ability to thrive in the wilderness. Americans were fulfilling these dreams of Manifest Destiny. They were bringing these ideas of nationhood and freedom to the Pacific Northwest with a resourcefulness and richness of ability. There was a richness of intellect and ingenuity that would help them tame this new country and make it safe and civilized in the near future.

Epilogue: This is a chapter from a novel about the Oregon Trail. It is meant to portray how Americans from diverse cultures have used their abilities to overcome almost insurmountable obstacles. These people relied on themselves and each other to accomplish great things. There was no need for the government to come in and regulate every phase of their lives, dependency on the government and the hunger for power and control by politicians would come much later. As humans weakened and developed fear of the unknown and the future, some people felt the need for benevolent despots to guide and protect them. These concepts were almost unheard of by those who ventured to Oregon; for them, the weak died along the way and the cowards never started. The cowards came much later.

“What we’ve got here is… failure to communicate.”

A quote from the movie Cool Hand Luke: spoken by The Captain, the imperious warden and by Cool Hand Luke at the conclusion of the film.

Anagnorisis is the moment or instant when ignorance gives way to truth; assumed to be first described by Aristotle in his “Poetics,” it along with peripeteia (reversal of fortune) describe Eric Holder’s recent encounter with facts and soon justice and perhaps federal prison in Leavenworth.

How poetic, the ancient Greeks so aptly described the present situation Holder created for himself by committing perjury, a crime he would no doubt prosecute against another felon with fast and furious efficiency, but now he is the one who faces prosecution and imprisonment for committing perjury during a congressional hearing.

Chain Gang Street Sweepers, DC 1909

The race card will be difficult to play effectively and Affirmative Action has run out for Eric Holder. Actually, the race card has been so overplayed by Obama, Holder, and the Congressional Black Caucus, it may have lost all relevance.

Click here to view the embedded video.

New emails indicate that Holder lied during congressional hearings on May 3, in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. During sworn testimony, he stated that he first heard of Operation Fast and Furious “over the last few weeks;” however, he had been briefed in a memo almost a year earlier on July 5, 2010. Actually, he was briefed on the operation in a continuous stream of emails that updated him and other key members of the administration on the progress and relative success of the operation. He was well aware of the fact that thousands of weapons were being bought by the Sinaloa cartel and being carried across the border.

Here is a sample excerpt:

From July 12 through July 16, the National Drug Intelligence Center Document and Media Exploitation Team at the Phoenix Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCTDETF) Strike Force will support the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ Phoenix Field Division with its investigation of Manuel Celis-Acosta as part of OCDETF Operation Fast and Furious. This investigation, initiated in September 2009 in conjunction with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Phoenix Police Department, involves a Phoenix-based firearms trafficking ring headed by Manual Celis-Acosta. Celis-Acosta and [redacted] straw purchasers are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug trafficking cartels. They also have direct ties to the Sinaloa Cartel which is suspected of providing $1 million for the purchase of firearms in the greater Phoenix area.

Besides the race card, Holder’s defense attorney will surely claim that an AG is overwhelmed with dozens of reports each week and these particular reports escaped his attention because of overwork and incompetence. Ordinarily, in the case of parking tickets and run of the mill political corruption, these three defenses warrant acquittal, but this case is a little different. Two federal agents have been murdered with these weapons that the Obama Administration tried beyond measure and common sense to place in the hands of Narcotics traffickers and killers; their sense of accommodation is to be commended, if only they could have placed such efforts on the economy. There have also been hundreds if not thousands of Mexican nationals killed with these same weapons; yet by a simple plea of incompetence and of overwork, Holder will surely try to distance himself from the mayhem and murder brought about by the Obama plan to arm Mexican Drug gangs.

It will be hard to convince a jury that he missed similar reports every week for a number of months, but he may putting too much faith in the color of his hide if he relies on that defense. It is far more likely that he will turn State’s Evidence and give up Napolitano and Obama to avoid a lengthy prison term, but he better move quick, the memos and reports are coming to the surface daily.

They Don't Use Stripes Anymore, It's Stylish Orange Jumpsuits for The Obama Administration

At this point it is conjecture as to whether the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has the power or the cojones to imprison a sitting AG for contempt of congress, surely they will appoint a special prosecutor to prosecute for a much longer prison sentence than the one year sentence they can impose for contempt of congress and thus increase the scope of the investigation. Constitutional issues will surely arise on whether a congressional committee has the power to prosecute a member of the Executive, but it seems to be a more difficult and dubious path than selecting a special prosecutor and bringing down the entire Obama Administration.

A number of the emails that have surfaced involve two Department of Justice officials, Deputy Chief of the National Gand Unit James Trusty and Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division. These two men discuss in detail the details of another gun-walking operation in Tucson (Fast and Furious was based in Phoenix) and a third unnamed gun-walking operation.

Trusty to Weinstein:

Looks like we’ll be able to unseal the tucson case sooner than Fast and Furious (although this may be the difference between Nov and Dec). It’s not clear how much we’re invlvoed in the main F and F case, but we have Tucson and now a new, related case with [redacted] targets. It’s not going to be any big surprise that a bunch of US guns are being used in MX, so I’m not sure how much grief we get for “gun walking.” It may be more like, “Finally, they’re going after people who sent guns down there.”

Recent documents confirm at lest three and possibly four gun walking operations, thus probably implicating Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the State Department, and the White House.

It is time for Holder to sing like a bird or ask for a tailored orange jump suit with matching wingtips.

This is only starting to become interesting, but remember, timing is critical. If Holder takes the fall, Obama can pardon him before leaving office; however, there are too many that are facing possible charges on this one, including the skinny guy in the White House.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Epilogue: Don’t hesitate to email this and other reports around the country; it’s a dead cinch the MSM won’t cover it until Holder and Napolitano are read their Miranda Rights. Put some popcorn on the stove, this will be better than color TV.

Addition: Holder now says he saw the memos, but didn’t read the details. Bill Clinton must have given him that one, since the definition of “Is” has been played out.

Is he running or isn’t he? A NY Post article today suggests he may be leaning towards running:

After months of hedging, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is giving serious thought to jumping into the ring for a GOP presidential run — and could make his decision next week, The Post has learned.

The announcement may come as soon as Monday, said sources familiar with Christie’s thinking.

The renewed consideration about a White House run came after prodding this week from some Republicans he idolizes, including former First Lady Nancy Reagan, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former President George W. Bush, sources said.

“It’s more than just flattering,” a source close to Christie said, adding they helped convince Christie that he not only could win, but that he has what it takes to be president.

…Christie pals said the pol’s “mind-blowing” experience at the Reagan library in California Tuesday changed his thinking.

He has forcefully and bluntly said no many times, but if Nancy Reagan, Kissinger, and Bush tell you to run….maybe you should. I know the rest of the party is waiting for the decision:

“Chris Christie has, essentially, frozen the race. The most important Republican moneymen in the country, Paul Singer and David Koch, are waiting on him, as are any number of donors and elected officials. This makes it much harder for Romney to consolidate his advantage on Perry. It also makes it harder for Perry to expand his circle of support.

“And so we’re all pretty much waiting for Chris Christie’s inner guidance.”

The speech was fantastic though. It was uplifting, appealed to the true American spirit (not the Socialist dream that Obama and company try to sell), while at the same time calling out Jimmy Carter…uh, Barack Obama, for the way he has divided this nation into the haves and have-nots:

“Telling those who are scared and struggling that the only way their lives can get better is to diminish the success of others . . . trying to cynically convince those who are suffering that the American economic pie is no longer a growing one . . . insisting that we must tax and take and demonize those who have already achieved the American dream . . . is a demoralizing message for America.”

It was a perfect speech for the Reagan library and I would love for the guy to get in…but would I vote for him? Hmmmmm:

New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor told a Latino group it’s a civil offense – not a crime – for immigrants to live in the country without proper documentation, a comment that a spokesman later said was aimed at a narrowly worded question.

…”Don’t let people make you believe that that’s a crime that the U.S. attorney’s office should be doing something about,” Christie was quoted as saying in The Star-Ledger of Newark for Monday editions. “It is not.”

Then there is his view of man-made global warming, on gun control.

He’s not perfect, but no one candidate is to all people. But a major plus in my book is the fact that appears to be a straight shooter who is not afraid to upset the applecart, which is one reason I like Palin so much. So I guess the question is would I support him over Obama? Uh, I would support my neighbor’s dog over Barack Obama.

Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Greece are all vulnerable to default

Europeans are underwhelmed with the latest Obama Drama. With the sanctimonious attitude of a faux professor, Obama lectured Europeans on the importance of restoring fiscal responsibility to the European Union.

As humorous as it sounds, the Europeans found nothing to laugh about; in fact, they are insulted and indignant over the presumption of a profligate wastrel like Obama lecturing anyone concerning fiscal responsibility.

In California on Monday the 26th Obama warned the Europeans about their debt, stating that the European inaction was:

scaring the world. (That they)…have not fully healed from the crisis back in 2007 and never fully dealt with all the challenges that their banking system faced. It’s now being compounded by what’s happening in Greece. They’re going through a financial crisis that is scaring the world, and they’re trying to take responsible actions, but those actions haven’t been quite as quick as they need to be.

The Europeans feel he is merely searching for another scapegoat to pin his own failures upon for the Americans to whom he was pandering for donations for his reelection campaign.

Geitner added to his own cartoonish caricature at the annual meeting of the International Money Fund and the World Bank by warning that the European debt crisis is:

the most serious risk now confronting the world economy. He said Europeans needed to do more to create a “firewall” against further contagion and talked of the threat of “cascading default” and runs on banks. “Decisions as to how to conclusively address the region’s problems cannot wait until the crisis gets more severe.”

Germans reacted angrily to Geitner’s arcane remarks by replying that the US is in no position to offer advice with its $14 trillion national debt.

Unfortunately, European leaders urged Obama to find a solution during the debt ceiling crisis earlier this year, but by Wednesday the German press was ridiculing Obama and Geitner. The mass-circulation Bild wrote:

“Obama’s lecture on the euro crisis … is overbearing, arrogant and absurd. … In a nutshell, he is claiming that Europe is to blame for the current financial crisis, which is ‘scaring the world.’ Excuse me?”

“The American president seems to have forgotten a few details. The most important trigger of the financial and economic crisis was US banks and their insane real-estate dealings. The US is still piling up debt … The American congress is crippled by a battle between the right and the left. The banks are gambling just as recklessly as they did before the crisis. The president’s scolding is a pathetic attempt to distract attention from his own failures. How embarrassing.”

From the center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung:

“One needs to remember the context within which Obama’s scolding of the Europeans took place. It was an event where the president was raising money for the Democrats and where he wanted to explain to voters why the US economy is much worse off than he and his economic experts had believed until recently. Hence his criticism of the EU was simple electioneering.”

“The problem, however, is that the US president is absolutely right. For far too long, the Europeans — including the Germans — treated the financial crisis as a purely American problem. They have still found no solution for their own debt crisis. Now Europe’s problems are having a negative impact on growth and jobs around the world, including in the US. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Europe is threatening Obama’s already precarious chances of reelection in 2012. That is something that surely does not leave Obama cold. In that respect, it doesn’t help much to point out that, once the Europeans have got their house in order, the financial markets will return their attention to America’s debt crisis and its ailing political system. Financially, Europe is currently the most dangerous place in the world.”

From the center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:

“Dark clouds have gathered over the American president. The gloomy state of the economy is putting a dampener on Obama’s future prospects. The optimism of the past is gone, replaced by a cheap search for a scapegoat.”

“Obama thinks he has found one. He blames the Europeans for reacting too late to the debt crisis. We Europeans are apparently taking on too little new debt to get out of the crisis. But we are already feeling the wonderful effects of borrowing too much money.”

The Obama Myth has crashed and burned in Europe. They have seen through the hope and hype, while realizing the inane ineptness of our Narcissistic Socialist Ideologue who is to dense to realize that none of his plans or policies have worked. The only ones who still believe the empty phrases and platitudes are Leftist Ideologues and the feeble minded, but even the Socialist ideologues of Europe realize the incompetence of Obama.

European leaders realize the gravity of the situation without help from an economic illiterate

Three Island Crossing

The Oregon Trail: August 1, 1860, South Side of the Snake

My name is Sable, my husband and I left Saint Louis on the 30th of March, 1843 on a riverboat, there was a cold North wind with snow flurries. We traveled 500 miles upstream from the mouth of the Missouri to Westport, Kansas.

The Great Trek Begins

Westport was considered to be the beginning of the frontier; there were thousands of emigrants gathering up in groups to head West. Some were headed for Santa Fe, others were bound for California, and some like us were headed to Oregon.

Westport was a busy hive of activity. There were many Negroes working at various jobs and many Mexicans working for the Santa Fe traders. It was also a gathering place for many Indians and their shaggy ponies.

There were Sacs and Foxes who shaved their heads and painted their faces. The Shawnee and Delaware wore calico frocks and turbans. The Delaware are the same ones that had been allies of William Penn, but had now become the scourge of the plains. They raided from Canada to Mexico and lived solely to wage war and plunder. They adopted the culture of the horse very quickly and were excellent buffalo hunters. The Wyandot were also there; they dressed in the style of white men and worked at jobs on the docks. There were also mountain men in town. They are surely the wildest White men that ever lived. The Canadians were everywhere and were mainly of French and Indian extraction and called themselves Metis.

My husband and I drove over to the town of Independence, while waiting to join up with a good group of emigrants. There were many shops open to service the Santa Fe traders and emigrants with the necessaries for the trip west. There was a continual ring of blacksmith hammers as they were shoeing mules, horses, and oxen. The cost was three dollars a hoof; an outrageous price, but they were the only ones that could shoe your stock until you arrived at your destination. There were also shops that repaired the wagons and their wheels. Many of these wagons had already traveled from Conestoga road near Philadelphia and many people wanted their wooden wheels with their iron tires tuned up by the only wheelwrights between here and the West Coast.

My husband and I didn’t like the look of most of the emigrants, they had the nare-do-well look of ruffians, gamblers, and adventurers, among them were even more vile outcasts. My husband said such people would cause problems on the trail; especially, when things started to go wrong.

He husband insisted we wait for the right group, a solid group that could be counted on to have character and integrity, thus we would avoid many potential problems.

We eventually found a solid group that was led by Colonel Fallon, a retired cavalry officer and former plantation owner from Virginia.

Colonel Fallon was waiting for a guide when we were lucky enough to join his group. He told my husband that he doubted the character of many of the mountain men; they were often drunk and prone to fighting and gambling. Eventually he chose a Mr. Tomlin, a bona fide mountain man. He had an Indian wife and could speak the language of many of the Indian tribes, if he was unfamiliar with a particular language, he reverted to a universal sign language that seemed to work just as well as a spoken language.

Mr. Tomlin is a rough coarse man, but he doesn’t swear unless he is angry and he frets over everyone’s safety and welfare when he is in camp. He seems to have a kind heart and I feel safe with Mr. Tomlin as our guide.

He insisted on leaving right away, despite the cold winds and snow that made for miserable travel. Mr. Tomlin laughed at the complainers and told them it is better to shiver on the prairie than to freeze and starve in the mountains this winter.

The Colonel said we had to trust the judgment of our guide in such matters relating to the trail. He had selected several Captains in charge of a group of wagons, he told them to prepare to leave in the morning. He delegated responsibility among his Captains and insisted on discipline; otherwise, an act of insubordination could result in being banished from the group.

The Colonel retired from the military and gave manumission to all his slaves on a family plantation in Virginia and then sold the plantation. He could see a Civil War in the nation’s future over the issue of slavery. He didn’t want to take up arms against his own country nor his friends and family of Virginia. His life long friend and personal valet was Jim. He was given freedom, but insisted on staying on with the Colonel as an employee, so that they would always be together. Now he helped with the wagon train duties and driving the Colonel’s wagon. They were great friends and had a deep emotional bond between them.

Everyone had to agree to the terms of Colonel Fallon, the terms were foreign to many of the members, but the Colonel said they would need a new wagon master if they couldn’t accept his rules. He was used to discipline and he would have leadership with discipline or they could find another leader.

My husband stood up and said if we were to reach Oregon, we would need a strong leader; a leader who knew how to set up a defense and lead a military campaign was the best kind of leader to have and we were lucky to have the Colonel. The others agreed and swore an oath of allegiance to the Colonel.

The Trail

Since I am half Cherokee, I have a keen interest in the Indians we see on the plains. My mother was a Cherokee maiden, she escaped a raid by White men and traveled to Tennessee. My father found her in a state of starvation and nursed her back to health. I was born a year later and raised in a log house as a White girl. I grew up wearing dresses, learned to read, write, and cipher. My dad was a horseman and taught me to ride and train horses.

My father taught to me read with the bible and my mother taught me about the native spirits. I considered myself much more educated than most because of having two cultures and a loving family.

The first group of nomadic Indians we encountered on the trail were the Delaware returning from a buffalo hunting trip. Both men and women were riding horses, they had many pack mules loaded with buffalo meat, hides, cooking kettles, and all the necessaries for life on the trail.

An old man rode up to my husband and asked who our chief was and what tribe I was from. He made a motion like he was smoking a pipe and my husband gave him a small pouch of tobacco and pointed to the Colonel. He told the old man I was a Cherokee.

A Cowboy Tries To Trade A Nice Horse For An Indian Maiden

The old man grunted his approval and gave my husband a casing of pemmican. His pony had a mane and tail full of burrs. His saddle was a wooden Spanish type covered with a blanket. The stirrups were carved from wood. He then asked if my husband would trade me for some horses or mules. My husband told him we had too many horses for the trip. The old man shrugged and rode away.

My husband and I are professional breeders and trainers. We have thirty head of horses, all breeding stock. I am much more aware of horse types and equipment than most people and I have a good eye for horseflesh..

The most colorful Indians were the Kickapoo. They were lounging at the trader’s store near Fort Leavenworth. The men painted their faces red, green, black, and white, with a variety of patterns and designs. They wore bright calico shirts and wrapped themselves in red and blue blankets. The men also wore large brass earrings and wampum necklaces; they rode the most wretched ponies of the prairie.

One of the most remarkable scenes of Indian life we saw was near the Platte, a band of Dakota were breaking camp to hunt buffalo. The women began by pulling the sewed buffalo hides from the poles that formed the foundation of the teepees and lashing the poles to the sides of horses by using a packsaddle to support the rails of the travois that would carry their earthly belongings.

In just a few minutes, a peaceful village of lodges turned into mass confusion and chaos. The lodges were spread on the ground and all possessions were spread alongside. There were piles of buffalo robes and wooden frames with painted leather sides that contained dried meat. There were copper kettles, stone mallets and ladles of horn all waiting to be stowed.

The women bustled about the business of loading up the camp in a stoic attitude while the old women screamed at one another at the top of their lungs.

The tops of the lodge poles were lashed to the sides of the horses and the butt end of the rails trailed out behind the horses to form a travois. These were braced with cross rails lashed tightly to the frame and all their worldly possessions were stuffed in baskets and then lashed to the frame.

Goods were then stacked on the packsaddle to an unbelievable height.

During this period of breaking down the camp and preparing to depart, the men sat around campfires in stoic silence and holding onto the reins of their favorite saddle horse.

In twenty minutes the camp was moving the warriors broke from their meditation and joined the procession. A group of old men who were smoking a pipe while watching, mounted their ponies and rode down to join the melee. There were smiling young girls, with all sorts of gaudy decorations, riding mules and horses, they feigned bashfulness when the White men gazed at them. Boys with miniature bows and arrows wandered over the plains shooting birds and small animals. There were groups of young braves with paint and feathers racing around in groups of three or four on fleet ponies to prove their horsemanship and the speed of their ponies. Scattered amongst the throng were solemn old men with white Buffalo Robes, these were the old warriors whose age demanded a certain amount of dignity. Each packhorse had two or three small children clinging to the load, thus increasing the remarkable burden the packhorse was expected to carry.

We never asked a packhorse to carry over 160 pounds, but each of these horses was carrying at least two or three times that much.

There were countless dogs running through the exodus, they kept up a continuous howling rather than barking. I told my husband they sounded like their cousin the wolf. He thought they were nervous about moving and the confusion of the migration. My husband has a way with animals and can often tell you what they are thinking.

It was mass confusion; yet, the Indian camp was moving within twenty minutes. How different from our slow, orderly, and precise movement that seems so boring in comparison. The Indians left nothing along the trail, but along our trail are shattered wrecks of claw footed oak tables and large maple bureaus that were worth a small fortune at one time. Now that survival is in question, cherished family heirlooms from England or Europe are tossed out of wagons to scorch and crack in the sun.

The Dakota tribe traveled along side for about a half day, when we were treated to the sight of a young boy chasing a buffalo bull along the length of the wagon train. The shaggy bull came bounding out of a hollow with the boy whipping his pony closer and closer to the gigantic running bull.

The bull ran with his tail erect and his foaming tongue hanging out a foot or more while he strained his strength and endurance to the maximum to stay in front of the boy and his pony.

A moment later, the boy pulled along side the bull. He dropped the reins over the withers and jerked an arrow out of the quiver on his back at lightening speed. He let the arrow fly at the lungs and it sank deep in the chest cavity. The first arrow was followed by a second that landed next to the first arrow.

Suddenly the bull leaped at the pony to gore it with his horns. The pony leaped to the side with the boy clinging to the bear hide that served as a saddle as if he were part of the horse. The boy turned to look me straight in the eye and laughed with bravado at the danger, just before he sent another arrow into the bull’s heart.

The bull stopped and glared through a shaggy mane with red eyes at the boy on his pony. The blood was flowing from his nostrils and mouth with air bubbles indicating mortal wounds. The bull stood to collect his strength and would charge the boy.

The boy and his avoided these charges with seeming effortless movements.

After several charges, the bull stopped and struggled to get his breath with his chin resting on the ground. Finally, the bull gurgled a death rattle deep in his chest and let out a groan when he fell to the earth and died.

Several warriors rode up and within minutes, their knives reduced the huge carcass to several piles of meat stacked upon the hide. The men cracked open the leg bones and ate the marrow on the spot along with the heart, liver, and lungs.

The boy rode over on his pony and offered me a leg bone with the rich marrow exposed. I accepted gracefully and pulled a blue ribbon from my hair as a return gift. The boy was ecstatic and rode over to a young girl and gave her the ribbon. She shrieked with joy and promptly tied the ribbon in her hair as she rode her pony. She waved to me and I realized how different I was from these people who are so close to my heritage. I looked like them, but I was from another culture and I could never go back. I placed the bone under the wagon seat. My dog would enjoy it later on in the day.

We have lived a lifetime worth of experiences on this journey and we have been through some harrowing experiences that turned out well because of the foresight of Mr. Tomlin and the cool nerve of Colonel Fallon.

Mr. Tomlin keeps preparing everyone for dangers of the Snake River crossing. He is not a man who exaggerates and is not the type to make a tempest in a teapot; everyone is thinking about the crossing and the possibility of losing everything..

We have buried twenty-four emigrants since we left Independence and I fear my sweet loving husband will be number twenty-five. The Colonel insisted we camp upstream of all the previously used campsites to avoid the fever and cholera that seemed to plague the old campsites, but occasionally someone would catch the fever or chamblains. They usually lasted two or three days before they died. My husband is on his second day and he has lost all his muscles and is little more than a rack of bones. I don’t expect him to live through tomorrow. We have no children, but I am driving a huge wagon with starving oxen and I have thirty head of horses I am bring with me to Oregon. I can’t stop and I can’t turn around. My situation is becoming desperate.

The Colonel and Mr. Tomlin check in on me several times a day to ask about my husband, but he will be lucky to survive the night. He is so sick it would be a blessing if he would just pass away.

We have seen countless graves from the wagon trains ahead of us and it is terrible. The graves are seldom dug deep enough to keep the wolves and bears from digging them up and eating the bodies. We pass ten or twelve half eaten bodies a day. My husband asked that I make sure he is buried deep enough that the animals wont eat his flesh.

The problem is the time and manpower it takes to dig a grave. The ground is very hard and often must be chopped with a pick or an ax to dig just a few inches.

Morning

My husband died during the night. He was a brave man and passed on without remorse by saying that he was ready and for me to find another man who will take care of me.

Mr. Tomlin and the Colonel helped me bury my husband. They dug the grave at least four foot deep and wrapped my husband in a sheet. Mr. Tomlin built a fire over the grave with grass and brush. He assured me that the scent would be burned away and the animals wouldn’t know there was a body buried beneath. Mr. Tomlin knows a lot of wondrous things about the country; I trust his judgment and feel my husband’s body will be secure.

Mr. Levin

There is a kind older gentleman, Mr. Levin, who helps me with my wagon at night so that I have time to check on the horses. Unfortunately, there have been many horses stolen and my horse band is only half of what it was in the beginning.

I have now lost my husband and most of the horses I own and wonder if I should go on or just give up.

Mr. Levin is an Irish Jew who has spent his life sailing around the world in search of the Sperm Whale. He started as an orphan by stowing away and worked his way up until he was a captain.

He is a learned man who would read the bible or philosophy every night.

He reads passages from the bible and the Greek philosophers to me in the evening when chores are finished and I find the strength to face the morrow. He also tells me about the wondrous places of the world that few people ever see except for men of the sea like him. He is a kindly man that is strong of character and body. Although, he is of advanced years, he works harder and longer than most young men.

The Breakdown

I am so lucky to have three men Mr. Tomlin, The Colonel, and Mr. Levin to help me hitch up my wagon and check in on me to make sure I am safe. I don’t know what might happen without my “Three Gentlemen” as I call them.

We were three days from the Snake River Crossing when the iron tire from a rear wheel on the wagon rolled off and continued on its’ own, passing me and the front of the wagon before coming to rest against a large sage bush.

I stopped the oxen and Mr. Levin came over and looked at the wooden wheel. “It’s beyond repair,” he said.

An Ox Shoe From The Oregon Trail

I asked What I should do.

“Throw away everything but your most important gear and put that in the front half of your wagon. I will saw your wagon in half and make a cart.”

I looked at the oak wheel, it had disintegrated and couldn’t be repaired. Without a wheelwright, it was hopeless.

I threw away our few pieces of furniture and my husband’s belongings. No one else wanted them because of the extra weight.

Mr. Tomlin cut away the back half of the wagon, made the front wheels so that they wouldn’t turn to the side, and fashioned a back end that was ingenious with a drop down gate.

I was moving within an hour.

The oxen seemed to appreciate the lighter load. My heart hurts for their willingness to toil so hard to pull these wagons.

The Proposal

In the evening, Colonel Fallon came to inspect my new transportation. He congratulated Mr. Levin on an excellent job and asked if he could talk to me a few minutes.

We walked out in the high desert in the cool night air and he told me that I was in a desperate situation.

I agreed, but there was no other choice but to continue on with the trip. He told me I could become his wife before the crossing and that we could make a life together in Oregon.

I was in a state of shock. The Colonel was an officer and a gentleman, and I was a half-Indian widow; I didn’t think that any other men would take me for a wife.

I told him, “Yes, a thousand times yes. I will be a very good wife and work very hard to make your life better.”

He took me in his arms and said that it was unusual to propose so close to a widow’s husband’s funeral, but these were extraordinary times.

I agreed and he kissed me. My knees buckled and I swooned. I was in love, once again.

I was breathless after that kiss, like never before. The Colonel walked me back to my wagon and told Mr. Levin the news. Mr. Levin congratulated the Colonel and brought out a bottle of Irish Whisky. He poured out a very small amount in two glasses and the two of them drank a toast to our new life and the new country.

The Colonel asked Mr. Levin if he would conduct the service on the night before we crossed the Snake and help him with some other unrelated legal papers before the wedding.

Mr. Levin said he would be honored to help in any capacity.

I couldn’t sleep that night, because of dreaming of the future.

The Ceremony

We arrived at the Three Island Crossing and we planned to rest up for a day before attempting to cross the fast treacherous waters of the Snake.

The Colonel held a meeting and asked everyone to write a last will and testament, so that he could disperse people’s goods in case there was an accident crossing the river. He said he didn’t like dividing the goods of deceased people and he needed some direction.

Suddenly people began to realize the danger of crossing the Snake.

The papers were written and collected by Mr. Levin. He helped people who were at a loss of what to do and wrote for those who couldn’t read or write. Mr. Levin gave the documents to the Colonel and the Colonel said he would give the documents back to their owners at the conclusion of the journey.

The Indians came to trade with dried fish and pemmican. The wagon trail people were glad to have something new to their diets.

Later that night, we had the wedding ceremony. It was a beautiful ceremony. Mr. Levin read scripture from the bible, but I didn’t hear anything. I had a new dress that I had never worn and flowers from the desert woven into my hair. Everyone was happy and forgot about the dangers of the morrow.

The Crossing

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hint: (From a man who has crossed a lot of different extremely wild and dangerous rivers, when the horses are swimming, get out of the saddle, hold on to the mane and the reins, and let them swim. They aren’t designed to swim with a lard ass on their back. When you stay in the saddle, you are essentially trying to drown your horse.

The driving horses and oxen fare much better, even though they are pulling a wagon, because they don’t have all that weight on their back.)

That night seemed to float by as if I was in a dream world. I had faith in the future and no longer felt the fear of being alone.

The colonel gave the remnants of my wagon to Jim, his former slave and lifelong friend. He seemed to be proud of his new possession and drove the oxen to the river with pride.

I moved my belongings into the Colonel’s wagon and felt like I had a home.

Ours was the first wagon to cross. The Colonel told me to jump downstream if we tipped over and to hold on to a small barrel with a rope tied around it. He said the water is fast enough to roll the wagon over and over, so I must swim away and stay clear of the oxen.

Crossing the Snake in a Covered Wagon

(Dale is a lifelong friend of mine)

He wasn’t smiling when he gave me my instructions and I realized how dangerous the colonel considered the crossing.

The pull of the river was frightening. The oxen struggled desperately against the current and barely kept the wagon from being swept away.

Once the other wagons saw how desperate our team fought to keep the wagon from being lost, some decided not to cross the river and headed South West to California, others began throwing away their precious valuables after hauling them so far.

One by one the wagons crossed the river. Mr. Levin’s wagon was swept away and he was drowned in the swift current. His body came to rest on the bank of the second island. One of the Indian boys swam over and put a rope around his chest and pulled him over to the North side of the river.

There was another family that was swept away, but their bodies went under water and were never seen again.

The river crossing has been one of the most dangerous parts of the long trip.

Jim the former slave made it across effortlessly in my old wagon that had been sawed in half by kind old Mr. Levin. He was so relieved, he was laughing out loud as the oxen pulled his new cart up on the bank of the river.

The Funeral

Several men began digging Mr. Levin’s grave on the upper bank of the river, above the high water marks.

He was laid in his grave and the Colonel read from the bible. It was sad, but we have seen so much tragedy on the trip, we are almost with out feeling for the loss of another. Although, Mr. Levin showed me kindness and offered encouragement; I will surely remember him for the rest of my days.

We listened to my new husband read the bible with tenderness, it was obvious that he respected and liked Mr. Levin.

He read the will after some ladies sang a church hymn.

Colonel Fallon, if you are reading this will, it probably means that I was drowned in the river. It is ironic that the one man who has sailed all the oceans and seas of the world, should drown in this wee bit of fresh water, but I accept my fate with dignity and offer no complaints.

I am a wealthy man. I arranged to have an agricultural implement and hardware store in Oregon. There will be the stock for the store and papers of remittance on the coast. I have contracted to build a store on the mouth of the Columbia.

These earthly goods and funds, I am leaving with Jim the former slave and Sable my dear friend, who has recently married. Jim is a former slave and has traveled from bondage into the wilderness, like my people so long ago, when they traveled out of bondage in Egypt to wander in the wilderness with Moses, much like we have traveled with Colonel Fallon. Sable was faced with the loss of her husband and was desperate. I was too old to offer her my hand in matrimony, but thankfully, the Colonel stepped forward to take care of her.

Do not grieve for me; I have lived a full life and have traveled the world. I accept my destiny. God speed and help all of you, David Levin.

Both of these people are honest and good people and I am sure they can run this business together, with a little help from the Colonel now and then.

Captain, David Levin

A dear friend is driving the oxen in the above photo.

Epilogue: This is a synopsis of a book I am writing. It is based on reading many journals from the Oregon Trail and of the Three Mile Crossing. It is intended to offer a different perspective to race in America and help those who are looking for alternative, an example of what might or could be if we tried a little harder.