Wednesday, September 23, 2015

SAND and SAGE and the Wild Horse Herd



Wild horse herd along the Powder Rim in Wyoming. John Bradford Branney Photo.  

My newly released novel SAND and SAGE is a historical adventure based on the introduction of horses to the Plains Indians in the latter years of the 17th Century. Even though most of the characters originated in my mind through my own knowledge and experience, the storyline is based on historically documented accounts from Native Americans who claimed to have been there when the first encounter with horses happened.




This red roan colt was the inspiration for SAND and SAGE - 
I photographed this wild horse in 2002.  

I wrote SAND and SAGE using separate storylines for three different characters. As the plots developed in the book, the paths of these characters start to intertwine. One of the three main characters in the book was a young Spaniard named Santiago who was embarking on a journey to find his brother Luis who the Comanche Indians captured. Santiago held a deep grudge against the Indians for destroying his family and his life. He was not sure whether his brother was alive or dead, but he vowed to find Luis. 

The second character in the book was a young Indian named Ouray, an outcast within his own tribe called the Snakes. He also had an unfulfilled quest. His quest was to find Haiwee, the girl he loved, A hostile tribe of Indians captured Haiwee, and Ouray committed to finding Haiwee and exacting his revenge on the Indian tribe who stole her and also killed Ouray's mother. During his quest, Ouray discovered something so remarkable that it would change his life forever. 

The third character in SAND and SAGE was a red roan colt in a wild horse herd. The red roan colt, once domesticated, was surviving day-to-day in the wild world he found himself. I won't spoil the book by telling you how these three characters fared on their different quests. The short passage from SAND and SAGE below describes two main roles in the red roan colt's wild horse herd.

The big sorrel mare led the mustang herd up the slope of a rocky ridge. Horse hooves clattered against cobbles of broken sandstone. The big sorrel mare was the matriarch of the herd which meant the day-to-day decisions for the herd were hers. She decided where the horses drank and where they grazed and whether they stayed in one place or moved on. She was also the disciplinarian of the herd, at least this matriarch was. She did not tolerate any nonsense from the other horses and meted out her justice like a hanging judge. One might wonder why the herd followed this mare. One reason was fear. The other horses were afraid of the ill-tempered matriarch. The main reason that the herd followed her was she kept them out of trouble.   

Bringing up the tail end of the herd was a tall bay stallion. He was the monarch of the herd or the breeding stallion. His role was different than the matriarch’s. His role was to protect the herd and to procreate. The bay stallion spent most of his time off by himself, grazing at the outside fringes of the herd. He became more interested in the herd when a mare came into season. At other times, there was little for him to do, especially with the  feisty sorrel mare controlling the herd. The bay stallion and sorrel mare would hold their positions in the herd until younger and stronger horses challenged them. When the day came when a younger stallion overthrew the monarch, the bay stallion would leave the herd and live out his days alone. A lone horse on the high plains was in a bad way with less than a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. Hungry wolf packs roamed the countryside in search of their next meal.   



Wild horse herd along the painted claystone formation in the
Washakie Basin of Wyoming. John Bradford Branney Photo.

















Why do horses live in herds? Horses live in herds because one, they are social animals and  two, the herd provides each member protection from predators. Within each wild horse herd, there is a social pecking order. Each horse in the herd plays a role. The stallion in the herd serves the purpose of procreating and protecting the herd against predators, but it is the matriarch, the dominant mare, that officially leads the herd. The matriarch picks where the herd waters and grazes. The matriarch leads the herd and makes most of the day-to-day decisions. She is the disciplinarian of the herd and usually has a way of dealing with any anti-social behavior within the members of the herd. Her punishment can include driving the offender out of the herd and she decides when the offender can return to the herd. Since the horse herd in SAND and SAGE was in continous danger from predators, banishment from the herd could be fatal for any offender. The red roan colt finds out about this firsthand. 

Read SAND and SAGE for the rest of the story.

         

Monday, September 14, 2015

SAND and SAGE - An Adventure in Grasshoppers



Figure One - CLICK for SAND and SAGE 
My new historical fiction novel SAND and SAGE takes place in the latter part of the 17th Century in the Rocky Mountain states of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Just as some people fare better than others in today's society, some northern Plains Indian tribes fared better than others in the 17th Century. While some Plains Indian tribes feasted on bison, elk, and deer, a few tribes survived on 'less appealing' cuisine. The short passage below provides an example of one of these less fortunate tribes called Snake from my book SAND and SAGE. The Snake tribe is not trapping bison or deer or antelope in this passage from the book, they are trapping grasshoppers. You read it right, grasshoppers. Our young hero in the book named Ouray is helping his tribe gather these teeny beasts. I will meet you on the other side of my book passage.


Figure Two - Native American Grasshopper Trap
(Courtesy of ancestralarts.net).
A loud call imitating a yipping coyote signaled everyone to start walking toward the trap. The people marched forward, flailing away at the tall grass with tree branches and sticks. The people yipped and howled and barked like coyotes. The Snake People were making an awful racket. Winged insects by the hundreds burst out of the tall grass. Snapping wings crackled through the air. Ouray advanced, beating the grass with a bushy branch from a juniper tree. Bugs darkened the sky as they flew ahead of the people. A few insects landed on Ouray, hanging onto him with their sticklike legs. Ouray jerked the bugs off as fast as he found them, throwing them in the direction of the trap.

The march continued with people pummeling the ground and howling up a storm. The clacks and buzzes from hundreds of airborne insects joined the chorus of shouting. Hoppers took flight, staying in front of swatting switches and coyote calls. As the swatters neared the trap, the distance between each person decreased, reducing the avenues of escape for the grasshoppers. Ouray glanced to his right and noticed that the buhagant was way too close to him. The buhagant was flinging his tree branch around with no regard for Ouray’s safety. Ouray moved to his left, holding his right arm up alongside his face, just in case Sani got too wild with his switch.

“You are letting them get past you!” Sani screamed at Ouray. “Come my way!” 

Figure Three - Yummy 



Grasshoppers are supposedly tasty. I write 'supposedly' because I wouldn't know how they taste, and don't plan on finding out. Take a look at the photograph in figure three and tell me you could eat one. I remember swallowing a grasshopper whole once when I was riding my motorcycle. It went down my throat before I knew what happened. That's the closest I will ever come to dining on another grasshopper. Our German Shepherd Maggie May just loves eating them. She will pluck them right out of the air and crunch them right there on the spot. She would eat them all day long if she could. Maggie May needs to be careful because the average grasshopper has 82 calories each. Maggie May is not a good judge of cuisine. She eats a lot of things that I wouldn't touch. Let me leave it at that.  

Grasshoppers are healthy food. They are high in protein and fiber. A United Nations report promotes the eating of grasshoppers and "maintains that these critters are simple to cook, and especially tasty when roasted and seasoned with onion, garlic, chili or soy sauce. Their nutritional content makes them a hearty snack or addition to most meals". I don't think so. The United Nations report further contends that "the protein content in grasshoppers comes pretty close to that of a similar-sized serving of chicken breast, but with a bit more fat". I am not convinced yet, nor shall I ever be. I would have to be pretty hungry, i.e. starving to death, to partake in these crunchy insects. 

In my book, SAND and SAGE, the Snake tribe did not have a choice but to eat grasshoppers and grubs. The people were surviving from day-to-day. Most of the Snake people felt blessed to have the occasional grasshopper to eat. In my book SAND and SAGE, something came along that changed the fortunes of the Snake people forever!!  

Read SAND and SAGE to find out what that 'something' was. It is not what you expect. In the meantime, here's looking at you and bottoms up.  

Friday, September 4, 2015

SAND and SAGE - An Adventure About Horses

The Victors, a painting by Howard Terpning 

When I wrote SAND and SAGE, I had to imagine what it would have been like for the Plains Indians to first lay eyes on horses. To do this, I had to put myself in their shoes, I mean their moccasins. If I saw a horse for the very first time without any previous knowledge about horses, what would I think? Would I think it an elk? Or a 'big dog'? You can read SAND and SAGE to see how I handled the introduction of horses to at least one Indian tribe. In the meantime, here are some stories about horses coming to America. 

The Spaniards arrived on the southern plains of North America in the early 1500s and brought horses with them. Prior to that, there were no horses in North America! It was around 1531 when Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca roamed the plains of Texas and northern Mexico on horseback and it was around 1541 when another horse-riding explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, reached the great bend of the Arkansas River in central Kansas. Over the next century, the seed stock from these first Spanish horses grew and expanded geographically. 

So, how did the Plains Indians come to possess horses? The first few horses and mules may have been obtained from the Spaniards around 1600 by settlement Indians near Santa Fe, New Mexico who then traded horses to the various tribes in the area, including Ute, Apache, Kiowa, and Comanche. Horses gradually spread north onto the high plains of Wyoming and Montana. I am sure each tribe that came in contact with horses for the first time had a different impression. Please read on.  

Most documented folklore from Plains Indians does not specify where and when they first obtained horses. Interviews by historians with tribe members in the early 1900s does not help much either. Many of the tribe members interviewed had a belief that horses had always been a part of their culture! Fortunately, for history's sake, there are a few documented accounts by Plains Indians that help to unravel the where and when of their first horse acquisitions.

According to Shimkin (reference available upon request), the first horses reached the Wind River and Big Horn Basins of Wyoming sometime between the years 1700 and 1740. It appears that the Shoshone Indians first obtained horses from their southern allies and relatives, the Utes and Comanche, and by the 1720s the Shoshone had become full-fledged, horse-mounted warriors. The Shoshones then traded some of their horses to the Crow and other northern plains Indian tribes and that's how horses spread (Secoy: reference available upon request). 

Decades later, the Plains Indians had become some of the greatest horse people the world has ever known. Horses changed the lives of the Plains Indians forever. Their entire lifestyles changed with horses. They could hunt bison on horseback and they could now move a greater amount of possessions from camp to camp. Previously, dogs were their only beasts of burden. READ SAND and SAGE for an adventure into the introduction of horses to the Plains Indians and how it changed their lives.   


Horse of a Different Color, a painting by Howard Terpning