Algonquin Legacy by Rick Revelle

Author:Rick Revelle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BISAC
Publisher: Crossfield Publishing
Published: 2021-10-20T13:40:30+00:00

Winds of Change

Anokì:

After returning from the rescue of Crazy Crow, our group of warriors stood on the knoll overlooking the village. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I studied the devastation laid out before us.

Mashkawizì Mahingan turned to me and said,“Uncle, this is how we found our home. We did not go down and disturb anything, we just sat here and looked and prayed to Kije-Manidò. Did we do the right thing?”

“Yes, you and your cousin did the right thing,” I answered.

Turning to the others I said, “Let us go down and see what we can do.”

Slowly, we walked down the hill. From our vantage point, it looked as if animal carcasses had been strung up throughout the village and surrounding area. Scavenging wolves, crows, ravens and vultures were devouring as much carrion as they could gulp down, so we tossed rocks and yelled at them to scare them off. Upon closer inspection, we realized that they had been eating the same chunks of buffalo and antelope meat meant for our winter stores.

Clearly the women had very little time to section the meat up for the drying racks or process it into pemmican. What little they managed to do now hung from broken trees, rocky outcrops and the tassels of the long prairie grasses. Worse still, the people of our community had to abandon the larger pieces, as they were now scattered throughout the grounds and the grasslands beyond the village.

Although the Wese´an (we-say-an: Tornado) had demolished just about everything, many of the skins from our lodges had been snagged in the roots of a few upturned trees. Looking out over the land, I could see a trail of articles from the village scattered along the path of this great wind after it tore through the community and spit out what remained of our lives.

The two women among us roused the men from our dazed trance, shouting orders to retrieve the lodge skins from the roots and collect as many robes, cooking items, food and other useful things as we could. The three students of Mitigomij gathered up as many lodge poles as possible to make travois for the dogs, while others crafted simple leather harnesses cut from the large skin of a destroyed tipi. Whatever we could salvage from the devastated village would be loaded onto the pole sleds to move with us.

While another group of warriors went back to the river to fill up all of our water skins, others started searching the surrounding area to see which direction our people had gone.

Jilte’g, Crazy Crow and the Cheyenne came back just before nightfall and said they found the trail our people had travelled. It led off to the north, away from where the big wind was headed when it tore through the village.

“We know where they will be going,” said Kinepik, the younger of the two Cree warriors.

“In the spring, around this time of year, our people camp near three lakes that host many waterfowl. We call the

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