next page


of white feathers about his naked neck, because they had once been told to wear these above the eyebrows, so that long after the terror, they might recognize one another. This bird had a dolorous cry, as if weeping for the lost land, and it flew through the lightnings. They carried he memory of a sacred calendar and a reverence for the twin stars of night and morning or summer and winter. All these things were carried in the chants of the tall, powerful redskinned people who were coming up from the south in the year 700 A.D. They drove the Algonkins with their guttural language, farther north (Not that Decoodah remembered all these cultural details about the invaders they themelves have helped me out with these memories.) Decoodah tells how the great mound of the serpent being led by the oval symbol of the vulture was built along the banks of the Mississippi, the father of waters", to commemorate this invasion. The Algonkins simply moved further north and established another capitol city while the black tortoise emperor took over their old capitol at St. Louis, Missouri. The Algonkins closed their mounds and the tortoise began their own from this point. The black tortoise had a very beautiful court and the people dressed in great elegance. (Why as he called "black"? Because that is one of the colors of the fire god. It is the shade of very ancient lava.) The emperor then divided his kingdom into four parts. The Mississippi was the dividing line. Two parts were north and two parts the south. These he put into the hands of his four sons, and about their necks was hung the badge of royalty" which made of them one of the "great suns". All went well then until in the southern court was born a grandson who was much like the black Tortoise himself. As he grew up, another wave of southerners was welling up the Mississippi in their long boats. The youth saw these people being peacefully absorbed by the other kingdoms d realized that they were of his own people. listened to their stories of their troubles in the southland. He also listened to scouts coming from the west where small islands of very cient people were being surrounded and over by invaders coming down the sunset ocean from the north, aided in their marching by fierce own dogs with bushy outstanding fur and black mouths (Curiously enough, some of the Atlantic tribes still have some wild descendents of these mongrelized chows, whom they call "dog soldiers" since their ancestors were captives of battle. They are sometimes ceremonially eaten to thus gain the courage of their ancient enemies). The young man then tried to overthrow the kingdom by conspiring with these new refugees. He did not succeed, but threw the kingdom into a turmoil because the four sons were faithful to the old emperor. However, there was in the court of the aged black tortoise, a brilliant captain of the armies, named Dacotah. He had a much better idea than the youth from the south. He took a leave of absence and went to the Algonkins. His idea was to weld them into an army, capture the old kingdom and then turn his entire attention upon the west, making one powerful kingdom from sea to sea. This happened about the year 900 to 1000 A.D. Dacotah was able to weld the Algonkins into a fighting force and by the brilliance of his military strategy to take the black tortoise capitol. However, the sub kings began to rally their troops and the most fierce type of civil war broke out. It finally went into complete anarchy, and in order to exist, the people had to abandon their cities and join the guerrilla bands who were sacrificing captives to the old fire god. When the white man came, this had been going on for several hundred years. When I closed this most enlightening book, I wrote a long letter to Dr. Wissler. He had been ill, but his letter was full of the old enthusiasm. "That is the find of the century!" he wrote. "Don't send it to me as you said that you wished to do. I will come to Los Angeles and pick it up. I want to republish it, of course. Suddenly the language map of North America begins to make sense. The Algonkins obviously once held the land and there were obviously some invasions from Asia down the Pacific bringing in the Atha paskan speakers. But these Atlantic tribes were a great mystery. There is a very old similarity in tongues, but it is of tremendous antiquity so old that they must communicate by hand signs. Dr. Hrdlicka has spent his life insisting that they all came down from Asia broke through thou sands of miles of enemy tongues without leaving any islanded groups like the Asiatics. did to trace them back to their source. Besides where did the Chickasaws get their South American plum? And where do they all get their worship of what evi dently is a South American bird the condor sometimes seen as far north as New Orleans, although there are some smaller descendants in California? How much more obvious to say that they came up from the south, than to try to insist that they broke through thousands of miles of Athapaskan and Algonkin speakers without leav ing a single clue behind?"

103

next page