One hundred and eighty-three United States infantrymen crouched in the darkness and waited. The sleeping village was but a few hundred yards away, the embers of its fires still glowing, while the army shivered on the sloping meadow above, their discipline holding in the bleak, thin night — no cigarettes lit, no rifles dropped, not a sound. Hours passed. The dew soaked easily through the troopers’ threadbare uniforms, tightening the vice of cold. One man struck a match, and was slapped and shushed back into darkness by the soldiers around him.
The sounds of dogs barking and babies crying drifted over the willows and rushes from the dozing village. Just before dawn, a few women emerged from their tepees to refuel the campfires, enjoy a brief gossip and head back to their warm beds. And still the soldiers watched and waited.
At the very first greying of the sky, the troops began to move through the scrubland that lay between the high meadow and the riverbank, crawling and crouching forward, hiding behind the shallow rolls in the earth. A single line of men crept over the sodden ground — then stopped dead. Across the creek, an elderly man had emerged yawning from his lodge, cheerfully accepting that his sleep was complete. Mounting his waiting horse, the elder set off slowly towards the sloping meadow, to check on the village’s grazing herd. His eyes were beginning to wear with time, and he peered into the half-light as his horse forded the creek and strolled through the morning mist — heading straight towards the waiting army.
Fear coursed through the troops as the lone rider wandered closer to their ranks, a hundred yards distance shading to fifty, then thirty, twenty — and still the old man, blessed with a morning to himself, saw no sign of the long, thin line of rifles trained upon him. Ahead, lost in the mist, hearts raced and nerves strained. A cluster of untrained men, callow volunteers, were wound tightest of all — the old man was riding straight for the cleft in the earth where the five lay. He was just ten yards away now. Still he rode on, humming into the lifting gloom. Huddled against the soil, the volunteers heard each footstep approach, battling to summon their courage and keep their senses. The gap closed, and closed, barely five yards now.
The young men, breathless with panic, snapped. Leaping to their feet, they raised their rifles. Across the glistening valley, the deer and the antelope, the buffalo and the coyotes scattered into the distance, away from the echoing crack of gunfire.
MAPS
CHAPTER ONE
HOMELAND
‘These persons inculcate a sanctimonious reverence for the customs of their ancestors; that whatsoever they did, must be done through all time; that reason is a false guide’
THOMAS JEFFERSON, third President of the United States
‘I belong to the earth out of which I came’
TOOHOOLHOOLZOTE, Nez Perce leader
THIS IS HOW the people came to be.
Coyote was helping the salmon swim up the Columbia River, to ensure everyone would have plenty of fish to eat, when he first heard the shouts:
‘Why are you bothering with that? Everyone’s gone, the monster has them.’
The meadowlark told Coyote that everyone had been swallowed by the giant monster, to which he replied, ‘That is where I must go, too.’ He bathed his fur, to ensure he was as tasty as possible, and tied himself to three mountains with long ropes. On his back he put a pack containing five stone knives, some pitch and a fire-making kit. He then walked over the ridge to see the vast body of the monster stretching into the distance, and shouted his challenge: ‘Oh Monster, we are going to inhale each other!’
‘You go first,’ replied the monster, and Coyote breathed in with all his power, trying to swallow the monster, but could only make the beast quiver and shake a little. Next came the monster’s turn, and he breathed in like a roaring wind, lifting Coyote through the air towards him. As he flew, Coyote left camas roots and serviceberry bushes in the ground, saying, ‘We are near the time when the human beings will come, and they will be glad of these.’
Coyote flew into the monster’s mouth, and began walking through its body, past the bones of fallen friends, asking the living for directions to the fiend’s heart. From the shadows, Bear rushed at him, but Coyote shouted, ‘So! You’re only aggressive to me?’ and kicked him on the nose. Then, as he went deeper, Rattlesnake bristled at him: ‘So you are only vicious to me?’ said Coyote, stamping on the snake’s head, flattening it for good.
When he reached the heart, he started a fire with his flint, and smoke began to pour from all the monster’s orifices. ‘Coyote, let me cast you out!’ begged the agonized monster, but the tricky Coyote reminded the fiend that he’d just swallowed a pillar of the local community, with serious responsibilities, who couldn’t be seen to be covered in vomit or phlegm: ‘Oh yes, and let it be said that he who was cast out is officiating in the distribution of salmon!’
‘Well, then leave through my nose.’
‘And will they not say the same?’
‘My ears?’
‘Ha! “Here is earwax officiating in the distribution of food!”’
‘By the back door?’
‘Not a chance.’
By now the monster was writhing in pain. Coyote began to cut away at his heart, breaking first one stone knife on the flesh, then another, then three, four, five. Finally he leapt on the heart and tore it away with his bare hands, killing the beast. In its death throes, the monster opened all its orifices, and everyone ran out, kicking the bones of their dead neighbours ahead of them. The muskrat, unwisely, chose to use the rear exit, and it closed tight on his tail, stripping it of hair forever.
Once everyone was out, Coyote sprinkled the blood of the monster on the bones of the dead, bringing them back to life, then he began to carve up the monster’s flesh, spreading it across the distant lands, towards the sunrise and sunset, the warmth and cold. And wherever the flesh came to rest, there arose the destiny of a people -the Coeur d’Alêne to the north, Cayuse to the west, Crow to the east, the Pend d’Oreille, Salish, Blackfoot, Sioux, until people were destined to cover the wide lands, and nothing more remained of the monster.
Then Coyote’s oldest friend, Fox, pointed out the beautiful, bountiful land where they were standing, and said: ‘But you have given nothing to this place!’
‘Why did you not tell me earlier?’ snorted Coyote. ‘Bring me some water.’
He washed his hands, and sprinkled the bloody water around where he was standing, sealing the destined arrival of one last people: ‘You may be small, because I neglected you, but you will be powerful. Now, only a short time away, will be the coming of the human race.’
It seems we’ll never know the precise moment when man first reached North America. The most mainstream pre-historical consensus, though, is that the first arrivals poured over the Bering land bridge from northern Asia around 13,000 years ago, chasing the mammoths, mastodons and giant bison to extinction as they went.
The local archaeological evidence, of arrowheads, rock art and cooked animal bones, points to the earliest population of the Columbia Plateau, the inland mountain and forest watershed of the great Pacific-bound river, as dating