Red Hawk: The Story of My Tribe
Chapter 7

Copyright© 2015 by Red Tempest

The story is now being told by my great-great-grandson Grey Wolf, as this story now jumps ahead 100 years.

Hi, my name is Grey Wolf, and I am the chief of chiefs of many tribes. I have only seen thirty summers, but our bloodline has been chief of chiefs since Thunder Bird was the first.

Every three years the tribes meet at the great meeting grounds. At this meeting we then call ourselves the nation. The tribes have all thrived, growing crops, medical knowledge, and herbs. Our weapons have improved. We have domesticated horses, camels, and other animals. We are in a time period of tranquility. My main job now is ruling on disputes between tribes. We have an army that every tribe contributes hunters to. The army is more of a peace keeping force, keeping the peace between tribes.

My two wives' Song Bird and Morning Dove have produced seven children; four boys and three girls. We name the first boy Red Hawk, after our tribe founder. He is being groomed to take my place, when I am ready to step down as chief. My second boy Running Elk, is being trained to command our army. My last two sons are being trained as hunters. Training the girls is women's work.

Even though we have had peace for many years, our story tellers still remind us of our past history. They tell tales of the violent raiders, and what they did to some of our tribes. We have outposts in strategic places. Patrols guard our borders between the outposts. A couple of times a year, I lead a group of hunters North into the mountains to check out the old raiders camp located in a valley within the mountains. So far the camp has been empty and showed no signs of anyone having been there. We never went any further than the valley in the mountains.

We are beginning to enter the Stone Age, with our weapon masters starting to make stone weapons. They started by making stone pointed clubs that were similar to a mace. They would put holes in the club with sharp pointed stones being struck by stone hammers. They would then tar sharp stone points into the club. Later on we discovered a plant that produced a sticky substance, which worked better than tar.

Second was a stone axe, which did considerably more damage than a club would do. Also, they worked well in chopping down trees. Over time we made some stone bowls, but the work to do this was extremely painstaking process. They were shallow bowls. Once made, we could heat water and food in them.

To the north and west of our boundaries, about a 5-day ride on our horses, are a couple of large tribes that we trade with. They traded us some black wood (charcoal) for some of the items that we had for trade. We never trade our weapons. You never know when they might be used against us. Our weapon masters found out that by crushing pieces of the black wood, the pieces would burn hotter than our wood fires. But we had no idea on what to do with this discovery yet.

Far to the south of our territories, we traded with a couple of large tribes that had some rock nuggets. One day a weapon master took some of the smaller nugget pieces and put it into a stone bowl. He heated the bowl over a wood fire, and nothing happens. When he put some of the black wood pieces in the fire, the extra heat started the nuggets to melt. He notices that stirring the liquid, it would coat the end of his wooden stick. When cooled it left a metal coating on the stick, which was very hard to remove.

We went through a trial and error period. Using this process we found that we could make two different types of arrows. The first is a flint head that was coated with this liquid metal. The other is a sharpened shaft end that was heated to a hardened state, and then coated with the liquid metal. We also could coat the axes and knives, and with a type of whetstone we could sharpen them. This whole process probably took us over a year to get right. We spent a lot of time just going back and trading for the raw materials that we needed.

Up toward the north east almost against the mountains are a couple of tribes we trade with. They traded us some crystal looking nuggets. They told us to, "Crush the nuggets, and put the powder over our crops to help them grow."

To the south east a tribe traded us some yellow looking nuggets. They said, "Crush it up and use the powder with our medicines." The crushed nuggets burned fairly easily, putting out strange smelling smoke. The crushed nuggets when mixed with healing herbs into a paste product seem to work as salve for rashes, and cuts.

After some trial and error, we combined the yellow powder and white powder together and used it on our crops. The results were simply amazing. The corn and wheat crops grew taller and fuller. Our crops and medicine took some major leaps forward with these two products.

One of our weapon masters crushed together some of the white, yellow and black nuggets, in a stone bowl. After a series of tests, he touched the mixture with a lighted stick. The resulting explosion killed him, and hurt two other people. We had no idea on what just happen, or what he did to the mixture. I started an investigation into this accident. I was intent on finding out just what had happen and why.

We recreated the accident and then I heated a stone red hot. Using a throw stick, I pitched the stone into the stone pot. The explosion threw the stone tree high into the air. Now we knew just what the explosion did. How do we use this find? I turned to a couple of weapon masters.

"Figure out away on how to best use this exploding powder," I told them

It has been a couple of years since all these discoveries. All of our tribes have flourished with the advancements that have been made. Once every couple of years, when summer ends and fall starts, the tribes gather to meet at the great meeting ground. It was soon time for us to pack up and head out to the great meeting ground.

We were getting close to the great meeting grounds. We started to encounter other tribes. They were heading in the same direction. They all said hello to us as they knew that I was the chief of chiefs. As always there is an unspoken universal peace between tribes as they head toward the meeting grounds.

We camped for the night and spent the next day hunting to resupply our food. We set up a smoke tent to cure the meat. There was a nice spring near by to fill our water containers. Once we had enough provisions to last for a couple of weeks. We headed out. We were only a day or so away.

We came through a small set of hills and a there in front of us spread out in a huge valley is the great meeting ground. We could see many of the tribes were already there. We cleared the hills, and headed for the spot that is reserved for the chief of chief's tribe to set up camp.

The army is out in full force protecting the perimeter of the great meeting grounds to prevent any type of unexpected attack. Although there has been no sign of any of the raiders, we were going to be prepared just in case.

There are all kinds of events to test the strength of your tribe's best warrior. This is also the time when young men go from tribe to tribe looking to take a mate. I thought that I might find a wife for me if the opportunity presented itself. In the last 18 months both of my wives died. Song Bird to a poison snake bite, and Morning Dove to an illness. I figured now was a good time to look for a new mate.

Our tribe has eighteen children between the ages of sixteen to eighteen. There were eight boys and ten girls. The boys each took a mate, and we lost nine of the girls to other tribes. This helps to keep the inbreeding in check. My two oldest boys tried to talk me into letting them take wives, but I told them not yet they were to young.

Our weapon master meets with other tribe's masters to show what we have done with the new powders. There was a lot of talk with both the masters and in the chief meetings on what and how to use the exploding powder. We already have shared with the army weapons master, the liquid metal that coats the arrow heads.

 
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