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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?"
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