Tlingit

Jerome V. Lofgren

Description

A gripping tale of Charlie Frankson's vision of the near future as seen through the eyes of The Medicine Wheel.
Tlingit is the third volume of The Medicine Wheel Saga. It finds Charlie Frankson traveling north into the Tlingit country of Southwest Alaska. He is responding to a call for help from an old Tlingit Elder. There he discovers a land where a time warp has occurred, where the past, the present, and the future exist side by side. It is a gripping adventure with modern day implications for the earth’s future after the great asteroid strikes. It is a future where only the meek survive.

To solve the mystery of dying village Charlie must go deep into the Mountains. Before beginning his journey he goes beneath the over-hanging bows of a great grandfather cedar where he sets his medicine wheel and waits for guidance. In the morning a deathly silence hangs over the valley, no birds are flying; no animals are creeping about. The stink of death hangs over all the land. Then the shuffling feet of the hunters brake the silence as they lead their captives up the trail past Charlie’s secret place. Thus begins Charlie’s strange adventure wherein he encounters the future world.

Upon his return to the present world he discovers that he has brought back another stone for his medicine wheel—Amoz’s stone.

Sujets

• Native American
• Chamán
• Future World
• Bigfoot (disambiguation)
• Native Americans
• Atavism
• Slavery
• Shamanism
• Rocky Mountains
• Tlingit
• Big Foot
• Shaman
• Montagnes Rocheuses
• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2002
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781469790596
• Langue: English

Extrait

Other Books by the author
NARY A NOSE NOR TAIL—Novella Grandfather—Grandson adventure story.
NOT ALL SPIRITS ARE OF GOD—Arctic adventure novel Charlie Frankson, Inupiat Shaman Vol 1 of the medicine wheel stones series.
SUQUAMISH —Native American adventure Vol 2 of the medicine wheel stones series
TLINGIT —Native American adventure Vol 3 of the medicine wheel stones series
KRISTINA —Historical novel (Civil War) A female Johnny Reb
MONTSEGUR: Love in the time of the inquisition The massacre at Montsegur, France in 1244 AD.
A TOWN CALLED ISLE—collection of short stories from the 30s, 40s and 50s.
THE SEARCH FOR JACK LONDON —Biography Winner of the EPPIE 2000 award for the best non-fiction book.
 
TLINGIT
Volume Three of The Medicine Wheel Saga
 
 
 
 
Jerome V. Lofgren
 
 
 
 
Writers Club Press
San Jose New York Lincoln Shanghai
 
 
 
 
 
Tlingit
Volume Three of The Medicine Wheel Saga
All Rights Reserved © 2002 by JVL Alaska, Inc.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
Writers Club Press an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.
For information address: iUniverse, Inc. 5220 S. 16th St., Suite 200 Lincoln, NE 68512 www.iuniverse.com
ISBN: 0-595-25401-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 0-595-65149-6 (cloth)
ISBN: 978-1-4697-9059-6 (ebook)
Printed in the United States of America
 
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS  
CHAPTER 1  
CHAPTER 2  
CHAPTER 3  
CHAPTER 4  
CHAPTER 5  
CHAPTER 6  
CHAPTER 7  
CHAPTER 8  
CHAPTER 9  
CHAPTER 10  
CHAPTER 11  
CHAPTER 12  
CHAPTER 13  
CHAPTER 14  
CHAPTER 15  
CHAPTER 16  
CHAPTER 17  
CHAPTER 18  
CHAPTER 19  
CHAPTER 20  
 
 
 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS  
The author wishes to acknowledge the extensive assistance of Dr. Galina Baygozina, Ph.D., Institute of Biochemical Physics, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, Russia in Copy Editing and the translation of his writings into Russian.
 
CHAPTER 1  
“ T own—was long—in the middle of it—was lived—chief—his daughter—berries liked to pick—for berries—with them she went—her father’s slaves with—on it she stepped—grizzly bear’s shit way up in the woods—while berrying—so she said to—grizzly bear’s shit—‘Always feet down to—they went—asses wide.”
“I don’t understand,” said Zachery.
Charlie explained. “This was how the Tlingit instructed their children. They told them stories.”
“What does this one mean?”
“In English, ‘A chief lived in the middle of a very long town. His daughter was fond of picking berries. Once she went for berries with her father’s slaves. While picking far up in the forest she stepped upon some grizzly bear’s dung. ‘They always leave things under people’s feet, those wide asses,’ she said.”
Charlie explained that most native people if they have anything to tell, they tell it. It is not their nature to beat around the bush or imply or suggest. Their native language permits only direct speech. For that reason there is no modesty or immodesty about their speech and some of their plain talk to a nurse, for instance, would make a sensitive white woman’s skin creep.
Silently Charlie sat cross-legged beside the fire patiently waiting for the question that he knew the boy would eventually ask. It was Charlie’s custom to wait for the question before speaking. Zach was a young lad of ten and very close to Charlie like a grandson to a grandfather. But in recent years Zach had developed other interests, baseball and basketball and girls so he didn’t come to Charlie’s lodge as often now. But he came that day after school and Charlie suspected a burden.
Zach sat cross-legged on the opposite side of the fire and poked at the coals with a short stick.
“What troubles you tonight?” Charlie finally asked. He was always quick to catch Zach’s condition or read his aura, as Charlie called it. “What’s the matter?”
“Did the Tlingit people have slaves?”
“Yes.”
“Where did they get them?”
“Most were captured in raids or battles. Once captured the slaves were traded among the chiefs.”
“Did they ever get to go home again, back to their people?”
“Sometimes a good slave was given his or her freedom. Some were able to save up money and buy their freedom. Raids of other tribes captured some. But usually that only changed masters. Most never returned to their home.”
Zach fell silent again.
“Is something else bothering you?”
“I’ve been seeing strange things at night.”
Charlie listened as Zach shared the experiences that were haunting his days and troubling his sleep.
“Let us go again to the medicine wheel,” Charlie said. “Perhaps the Elders can tell us what these things mean.”
Charlie unrolled his olive army blanket and laid it on the dirt floor. Within the blanket was another a smaller red woolen blanket and with in that was a small wolf ’s skin. He took out a leather pouch and the stones to be used in the ceremony. He set the stones around the edge of the wolf ’s skin in a sacred manner. First, he spread the stones on the outer blanket then placed his hand on one stone after another.
“The stones tell me where they are to be placed.”
When all the stones were in position Charlie walked around the wolf ’s skin three times in the counter-clockwise fashion then entered the ring of stones from the East. He sat in the middle with his legs crossed. A piece of hollow cedar wood was held ready in his left hand and an alder stick in his right. Just before Charlie began the medicine wheel ceremony Zach reached over and picked up a stone and studied it very carefully.
“Wet you thumb and wipe the surface of the stone,” instructed Charlie.
Zach did as he was told.
“What do you see?”
“I see the face of a monkey.”
“That’s not a monkey, it’s Amoz. That is Amoz’s stone.”
Zach knew that each stone in Charlie’s medicine wheel was very special. For most of his fifty-five years Charlie had been wandering over the earth until each stone had found him, usually in conjunction with some adventure.
“Will you tell me the story of how Amoz’s stone found you?”
Charlie smiled and nodded his head. To the steady tapping on the cedar wood Charlie slowly began the account of how he came to be found by Amoz’s stone.
Tap…Tap…Tap…Tap.
1
An old blind woman lived with her son and his wife and a time came when there was no food. The son was a fisherman and every day he hunted and fished but without success, so he, his wife and his mother lived on the roots and berries he was able to find. Each day they grew poorer and weaker, but his young wife kept fat and sleek, though no one could understand why that was so. They grew so hungry the old woman would wake up and ask, “What have you to eat?”
“Nothing,” the daughter would say, “I have nothing.”
“But I smell fish and I hear oil dripping on the fire,” the blind old mother insisted.
“No, you are so hungry you think you smell fish, but there is nothing here.” And the poor old woman would fall asleep.
“What are you eating?” She would ask again, because her hunger would not allow her to sleep long. “You have fish. I hear you eating.”
“I have no fish. I am chewing the gum of the spruce because I am hungry too,” answered the daughter.
Now the young man’s wife was a witch and when midnight came she would go to the rocks at the edge of the sea and wave two branches before her and young herring would leap from the water and fall at her feet. She would fill a basket with them and take them back to her home where she strung them on a stick stuck in the ground before the fire and roasted and ate them all. And every time the old blind mother would smell the fish and hear the oil sputtering on the fire. Then she would ask the daughter what she was eating, until one day the girl grew angry at the old woman’s questions and grabbing a roasting fish from before the fire, she told the mother to hold out her hand and she should have some. The old woman did as she was bid and the girl tore the insides from the hot fish and dropped them in the old woman’s outstretched hand and burned her badly.
When the son came home he asked his mother why she cried. She said nothing, and the wife told him she didn’t know but he knew his mother wouldn’t cry for nothing, so he resolved to find out the reason. He told his wife to go to the woods and get some bark lining to fasten the heads on his arrows because he was going hunting. Where she was gone his mother told him what had happened. On the wife’s return, he took his bow and arrows and went away in his canoe. But when he got around a point of land and out of sight he landed and hid in the bushes till night; then he went back towards the village until he could see the beach and waited. At midnight he saw his wife approach the beach, wave the branches and puck up the herring that leaped from the water. He followed her back and saw her cook and eat the fish and refuse to give his mother any. He went back to his canoe. The next day was so fortunate as to kill a hair seal, which he took home. He made his wife eat so much of the fat that she fell into a deep sleep—so deep that she did not wake up at midnight. So he went to the beach and did as he had seen her do and filled his canoe with the fish that fell on the ground at his feet. Then he wakened his wife and told her to go get the fish in his canoe. She went and when she saw the canoe full of fish, she called