Read People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past) Online

Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past) (57 page)

“
A
fter everything we’d done together, everything we’d been through, she cast me aside like a cracked cup. I can’t believe it. I loved her with all my soul.” I force a difficult breath into my lungs.
They have been waiting for me to die. But I continue to fool them. For three moons I’ve been devouring myself from the inside out, until now I feel like a drum; all beating heart, but no insides.
“She had to make a choice: you or the survival of two peoples.You know that. Just as you know that she made the right choice.”
“Perhaps, but I have been betrayed. I feel completely empty.”
The old Soul Keeper’s voice is gruff: “It is emptiness that makes a vessel useful. What would a bowl or cup be without its hollow interior?”
“Well, then, my wife has turned me into something very useful—I have become a yawning black abyss.” Anger tinges the words. My love has turned into a huge burning ache. More than anything, I wish I could have betrayed her in kind. A great many women would have flocked to me, worshipped me.
“Very soon now you must decide whether that abyss will be eternally filled with anger and resentment or love and peace. Which will it be?”
As he rises, the Soul Keeper’s cape flutters then flaps in a gust of wind. He smells spicy, like the leaves of the Spirit plants he’s been using to Heal me.
He doesn’t know it, but I already understand his words—only too well.
It is the empty chamber that makes a drum beautiful, or a flute melodious. Without emptiness there would be no music.
Emptiness is also what makes love possible. If a human being felt full and contented, he would have no need for love.
But at this late date, what does such knowledge bring me? I understand that I am now the perfect vessel. Waiting to be filled … but with what? Perhaps I just need a purpose. Any purpose, beyond simply dying and ridding the world of my presence, would be welcome.
“Do I have a purpose?”
Through hazy eyes, I see him watching me. “If I could Heal you, what is the first thing you would do?”
I wheeze the words, “I would seek her out, and strangle that boy before her eyes.”
He nods cryptically. “Despite what you would have me believe. You are not empty, Chief. Unfortunately you are still full.”
Full? Of what? I wonder as the darkness closes in around me. At first it is soft and gray. The world is fading as I fall toward … what?
T
he small camp was located in the floodplain beside the north bank of the great river. A cool stand of cottonwood trees gave respite from the oppressive heat that came rolling out of the arid uplands. Summer here, in the dry plateau, was brutally hot compared to the cool damp coast where the people had lived. Deer Killer had chosen this spot out of necessity. Not only had Cimmis needed the shade, but Rides-the-Wind suffered under the direct sunlight.
Cimmis’s dead body lay beneath the hides, his eyes staring wide into the distance of death. His shriveled face bore the faint sheen of sweat. Beads of it dotted his lashes.
Since the day Kaska’s small band of warriors had left them and turned back to the mountains, Cimmis and his group had wandered the sagebrush barrens. Making a living had depended on the few strong young warriors who had accompanied them.
But for the gift of the camas roots, they’d have starved in the first few weeks. Deer Killer, despite his Raven People blood, had become their chief. No one had said anything when Kstawl moved her robes to his lodge and began sharing his bed.
Rides-the-Wind thoughtfully studied the dead man before he reached over and pulled Cimmis’s eyelids closed.
“Soul Keeper?” Kstawl called. “How is he?”
Rides-the-Wind replied, “His soul is hovering inside his nostrils.”
She took a breath, head bowing. “Then, my father is finally dead?” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry, but it’s a relief.”
Rides-the-Wind picked up a stick that he’d placed to one side and held the end in the smoke. He kept it over the heat until it began to smolder, then held it under Cimmis’s nose.
Kstawl knelt beside him and saw that it was a lock of gray hair tied to the stick. The smoke came from a smoldering bundle of sweet grass and cedar bark that lay in the ashes.
“You’re smoking Father’s hair?” Kstawl asked in disbelief. Then she realized what he was doing. “You’re
sealing
his soul in his body? For the sake of the gods, let it go!”
A perfectly cut square of buffalohide rested beside Rides-the-Wind’s knee. He tucked the smoked lock into the hide, then folded it up and tied it with a sea-grass cord. When he tossed it into the ashes, it landed with a thump and began to blacken. The first tongues of flame caressed its edges.
Kstawl gasped in horror, backing away. Her disbelieving eyes went from the fire, to Cimmis, to Rides-the-Wind.
“It isn’t time for his soul to be set free,” the Soul Keeper said. “It must stay here, with his bones.”
“Why, Elder?”
Rides-the-Wind stood, and his gray hair and beard whipped around his face. One by one he looked into the sober eyes of Deer Killer’s small band. “Everyone deserves the chance to stand before Gutginsa and explain his actions. Even Cimmis. Though it may be a long time before Cimmis understands what he did and Gutginsa allows him to go free.”
“How long?” Kstawl demanded.
“Who knows? That is up to Cimmis’s soul. It may be for a people long removed from us to finally send him to judgment.”
As he walked across the grassy silt, he looked out at the wide river, at the bluffs wavering in the midsummer sun beyond. Terrible sadness had settled upon his aged shoulders. “I will leave tonight. I have no more business here.”
In the haze, far to the west, Thunderbirds played over the distant mountain peaks; lightning leaped through the clouds.
“Do you think that’s true?” Kstawl asked Deer Killer as she studied her dead father. “That everyone deserves the chance to explain?”
Deer Killer shrugged. “Who are we to judge, my wife? For the moment, I am more concerned with making a grave for your father. As to his soul, well, that’s up to Gutginsa’s spear.”
S
o, who were the first people to arrive in North America?
The question has tantalized archaeologists for over a century, but we are only now just beginning to piece together the answer.
When we wrote
People of the Wolf
in 1988, it was generally accepted that the earliest peoples to arrive in North America were Mongoloids, American Indians, and that they came down an ice-free corridor between the massive Cordilleran Ice Sheet and the Laurentide Glacier around 12,000 years ago. In the past fifteen years, new information derived from archaeological excavations and technological advances has altered that view.
We now know that the Indian peoples were not alone in the Americas—not in North America and not in South America. Kennewick Man and Stick Man in the Pacific Northwest, as well as the Spirit Cave Mummy in Nevada and Horn Shelter Number Two Man in Texas, prove there were Caucasoids—traditionally described as light-skinned people—in North America between 9,000 and 11,000 years ago. “Luzia” and many other specimens in Brazil prove there were Australoids—a dark-skinned people common to the southern hemisphere—in South America over 12,000 years ago.
Surprised? We all were.
The simple fact is that less than 5 percent of the land in the Americas has been surveyed for archaeology. We do the best we can with
the information we have, but there
must
be many more dramatic surprises waiting for us.
The earliest reliable dates for human entry into the New World now come from a variety of geographic regions: Dry Creek I in Alaska, the Manis Mastodon Kill site in Washington, Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania, and Monte Verde in Chile all reliably date to between 14,000 and 14,500 years ago. The Cactus Hill site in southern Virginia dates to around 15,000 years before present, and many other dates from sites across the Americas suggest human beings may have arrived here as early as 20,000 years ago. These are pre-Clovis cultures. Clovis sites, left by the famed big-game hunters who used a very distinctive “fluted” spear point, date no earlier than 13,500 years ago. But by 13,000 years ago, Clovis hunters had colonized much of the North American continent. They moved rapidly, and they took their remarkable culture with them wherever they went. Human occupation of the Queen Charlotte Islands in Canada, and Prince of Wales Island in Alaska, dates to around 12,000 years ago.
We are also fairly certain now that the first peoples did not strictly come by land down the ice-free corridor along the face of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. We suspect they also had boats and paddled down the coastlines, fishing, hunting, and gathering as they traveled.
It is likely that the earliest inhabitants of North America lived along the Pacific coast of Canada and the northwestern United States. We say that for two reasons. First, the greatest diversity of Native American languages is found along the Pacific coast. It takes time for languages to diverge. They are most different in areas where people have lived longest. Second, though much of the northern Pacific coast was covered by the Cordilleran Ice Sheet 16,000 years ago, parts of the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia and Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska appear to have been ice-free. As well, recent geological evidence indicates that the continental shelf, which was exposed by lowered sea levels 13,000 to 14,000 years ago, was also free of ice. The ice had, in fact, retreated from British Columbia’s coastal mountains by about 13,000 years ago. By 10,600 years ago, lowered sea levels had exposed large areas of the Hecate Plain east of the Queen Charlotte Islands, the bottom of Queen Charlotte Sound, and the areas adjacent to the north and west coasts of Vancouver Island.
But what were the food resources?
Paleobotany, the study of pollens, seeds, and phytoliths—the silicate skeletons of plant cells—tells us that those ice-free areas were
vegetated. By 14,000 years ago, southern British Columbia supported heath, a variety of grasses, sedges, and herbs. There were also conifers present. By about 12,000 years ago, lodgepole pine and poplar grew on the Queen Charlotte Islands and had spread to southeast Alaska. Close behind were sitka spruce and hemlock.
In addition, from 8,000 to 12,000 years ago, Prince of Wales Island supported brown bear, black bear, red fox, otter and ermine, and other small mammals, as well as fish resources.
People of the Raven
is set at about 9,300 years ago in what is now Washington and southern British Columbia. This was a period of extreme stress for the two distinct cultural traditions that inhabited the region: the Pebble Tool Tradition and the Stemmed Point Tradition. At the same time that sea levels were rising rapidly, the land itself was “springing back.” This is called “isostatic rebound.” Imagine putting a block of ice on a piece of foam. As the ice melts, the foam “springs back.” Continents do the same thing. As the massive weight of the glaciers vanished, the land rose. But it seems to have happened at different rates in different places. For example, the sea level on Prince of Wales Island between 9,000 and 9,500 years ago was about twenty feet higher than today. Farther south, 9,300 years ago, the sea level on the Queen Charlotte Islands was approximately 475 feet higher than modern sea level (Josenhans et al., 1995, 1997)!
Sediment cores taken off the Oregon coast show that wind patterns also reversed at this time, weakening the coastal upwelling and reducing marine productivity (Sanchetta et al., 1992).
Adding to this problem, as the Cordilleran Ice Sheet continued to melt it flooded the rivers, streams, and finally the ocean with silt-laden fresh water. This decimated shellfish beds and lowered salmon runs, affecting the food chain and reducing the numbers of sea mammals, birds, and human beings who could survive.
Of the thirty-nine individuals found in North America who date to more than 9,000 years ago, only two are fairly complete: Spirit Cave Mummy from Nevada and Kennewick Man from Washington. Even with these limited data we can glean critical details about who they were and what happened to them.
Keep in mind this is a period of rapid transition from the Pleistocene Ice Age to the warmer Holocene period that we now enjoy. Most of North America’s earliest inhabitants endured periods of starvation. Malnutrition temporarily interrupts bone growth and leaves mineral deposits that we call “Harris lines” in the limb bones; it also appears as ripples in the teeth called dental hypoplasias. We see changes in the skull as well. The girl from the Spirit Cave site in
Nevada showed multiple growth interruptions in her teeth, indicating a life of repeated nutritional privation. The Spirit Cave Mummy (10,700 years old) had a number of Harris lines in his limb bones, as did the Buhl Woman from Idaho (12,800 years old). The lines on the Buhl Woman’s femur, or thigh bone, were so regularly spaced that hunger seems to have been a yearly occurrence. The bones of the man from Horn Shelter Number Two in Texas (11,200 years ago) also show he suffered extreme hunger in his life.
But what did they look like? How long did they live? What did they die from?
The Spirit Cave Man who lived in Nevada almost 11,000 years ago died in his middle forties, and he had wavy black hair. We know because he still had patches clinging to his mummified head. His physical features most closely resemble those of the medieval Norse and the Ainu, the aboriginal people of Japan. Both populations have long been characterized as Caucasoids—light-skinned people. Kennewick Man (9,300 years old) may have lived into his fifties, and his features, too, most closely resemble those of the Ainu. The man from Horn Shelter Number Two in Texas (11,200 years old) falls into this same category and is the least “Indianlike” of all. He has a long narrow skull, massive overhanging brow and close-set eyes. He died at around age forty.
Though afterlife traditions can only be guessed at, the treatment of the dead gives us clues to what they might have believed, and given the diversity of burial styles, their religious traditions appear to have been many. Ten of the thirty-nine were cremated. Thirteen were buried. Two were “bundle” burials, that is bundles of cleaned bones wrapped in beautiful blankets and deposited in caves or rock shelters. We call these “secondary” burials. We occasionally find grave goods. The Buhl Woman in Idaho and the woman from Colorado’s Gordon Creek site were buried with stone knives. The Horn Shelter Girl, Marmes I, and Buhl Woman all had needles as grave offerings. Buhl Woman also had a badger’s baculum—penis bone—with her. A beautiful group of spear points accompanied the man from Browns Valley. The man at Horn Shelter Number Two in Texas had more than one hundred grave offerings, including a large chert knife, two antler wrenches for straightening spear shafts, sandstone slabs for working bone or shell, and a necklace of four canid teeth surrounded by more than eighty snail-shell beads from the Gulf of Mexico. Red ocher is the most common offering; it was used to coat the bodies of the people found at the Gordon Creek site; the Anzick site in Montana; Browns Valley; the woman from Arch Lake, New Mexico; and
probably Stick Man from Washington. We also find raw lumps of the pigment included with the dead—as though they would need it in the afterworld, just as they would need knives, needles, and spear points.
Eight of the earliest skeletons are children. The Anzick child (12,000 years old) was about eighteen months old. The Horn Shelter girl lived to be around twelve.
Interestingly, only the men show dramatic injuries, which tells us a great deal about how they lived and died.
Spirit Cave Mummy had fractures to his skull, spine, and hand. Stick Man and the Marmes III Man also had skull fractures, as did Kennewick Man. The Grimes Burial Shelter teenager tells a similar story. One cut on his rib contains obsidian fragments—residue left from the weapon used to inflict the wound—and there are two cuts present, indicating that the youth’s assailant stabbed him at least twice. Since no healing is apparent, it’s probable that the teenager died from this assault.
Kennewick Man shows, by far, the most traumatic injuries—all of which he survived. Several months, or even a few years, before his death, his chest was crushed, breaking several ribs. He also had an infected wound in his skull, on his left temple. He was relatively tall for the time period, five feet nine inches, and was around fifty years old when he died. In addition, Kennewick Man had a “Cascade” spear point embedded in his hip.
In our current collection, 67 percent of the males from this time period demonstrate serious injuries. This is a very high rate, especially when compared to European burials. Mary Brennan, who was working on her doctorate at New York University, studied 209 skeletons from southern France dating to between 10,000 and 100,000 years ago, and found only
five
fractures, or a little over 2 percent. As another example, Thomas Berger and Eric Trinkaus studied over 1,200 skeletons from modern humans and Neandertals and found less than one hundred injuries, or around 8 percent.
The high rate we see among Paleo-American males could be sampling error—we don’t have many examples to learn from—but it probably represents interpersonal violence. We only find skull fractures on males, and most of those occur on the left side of the head, toward the front, as if caused by a blow delivered by a right-handed opponent.
Women, on the other hand, show few such injuries. Only the Minnesota girl had a fractured rib. But women also had a much shorter life span than men. While men often lived into their forties or fifties, or even older, Paleo-American women generally died between the
ages of eighteen and twenty-three. We don’t know why this disparity exists, though the physical and nutritional stresses associated with childbearing almost certainly played a role.
Lastly, in a recent study Dr. Richard Jantz and Dr. Doug Owsley showed that the most ancient skeletons in North America fall into two distinct groups: one group that has features similar to the Ainu or Polynesians and a second group that appears very Indianlike. These groups are so different from each other that Owsley and Jantz propose they are from two distinct populations of people who migrated separately into North America.
What’s surprising about this is that it surprises anyone. After all, we know that Europe and Asia were “melting pots” long before humans arrived in North America. At least some of the ancestors of ancient Americans surely traveled across Europe, into Asia, and finally into North America—and they undoubtedly mixed with other peoples as they traveled.
The remarkable thing is that it has taken us this long to find the evidence, but that’s archaeology. The research is never finished. We do not know enough to reconstruct the past completely. We never will. All we can do is take the best information we have … and try.

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