People of the Earth (2 page)

 
          
 
In the novel People of the Wolf we discussed
the retreat of the last
glaciation
around fifteen
thousand years ago and the migration of the first Native Americans into the
virgin continent of
North
America
. Over the
following millennia, the climate grew progressively warmer and dryer. These
increasingly xeric (hot and dry) conditions restricted the range of large game
animals and this, coupled with human predation and environmental stress, drove
many game species such as giant sloth, horse, and camel to extinction. By seven
thousand years ago, the interior of
North America
was locked in a drought known to
prehistorians
as the
Altithermal
. The second novel in the series, People
of the Fire, is set in this period, when bands of human hunters turned
increasingly to the collection of plant resources.

 
          
 
Exploitation of the environment appears to
have become specialized during the
Altithermal
.
Recent archaeological discoveries that have occurred as a result of increased
energy development and federal cultural-resource protection have uncovered a
wealth of new information. Among the more exciting discoveries, researchers
have excavated the remains of earthen structures which indicate that some human
groups may have restricted their range, becoming
seminomadic
and basing their subsistence on intensive utilization of plant and animal
resources in a given locale. The appearance of such structures fifty-five
hundred years ago (four thousand years before their
Southwestern
Basketmaker
counterparts) has reoriented our
understanding of the Early Archaic. Where once we thought that Early Archaic
peoples lived on the ragged edge of starvation, we now know they used their
environment to an extent perhaps unequaled in the archaeological record.

 
          
 
Sometime in the last five thousand years, a
major group of people spread across the western portion of
North America
. Today we know these people by the
similarities of their language: Uto-Aztecan. In People of the Earth, we've placed
the southward migration of Uto-Aztecan peoples at the end of the Early Archaic
period.

 
          
 
Perhaps the most frequently asked question
about our prehistory books is: "Did people really talk like that?"
The general perception that our prehistoric forebears were grunting savages is
widespread. It comes largely from movies that portray Native American tribes as
semihuman
barbarians who speak in half-sentences. The
image is quite simply false. Our best linguistic theories, which search all
modern-day native languages to find "root languages"—the original
language, or languages from which our current-day versions spring-suggest that
prehistoric peoples in
North America
spoke with as much sophistication as we do. The earliest White impressions of
tribal languages further strengthen these theories. In the seventeenth century,
French missionaries among the Huron reported that European languages could not
compare with the complexity and intricacy of the Huron language. The Hopi still
use verb tenses unheard of in English, and the Arapaho communicate in
wo
separate languages, one for common use, the other for
ceremonial purposes, much as Latin was once used by the Catholic church.

 
          
 
Our books' characters speak in coherent,
refined sentences, because the best scientific theories suggest that they did.
And our primary goal in writing this prehistory series is to provide the reader
with the most accurate portrait of prehistoric life-ways in
North America
that we, as archaeologists, can. You will
not find any convenient stereotypes here.

 
          
 
If this series spawns an interest in American
prehistory, your local librarian or bookstore can direct you to books on the
subject. Or contact your State Historic Preservation Office, the Bureau of Land
Management, or the Forest Service, for
ftirther
information. It's your cultural heritage.

           
Township 23 North, Range 96 West,
6th Principal Meridian.

 
          
 
Dust rolled up in a light tan smudge behind
Skip Gillespie's big white four-wheel-drive pickup. The three-quarter-ton Ford
pounded across potholes, puffing gouts of powdery grit out from under the
all-terrain tires. Skip winced and bounced around in the cab as the truck
chattered over washboard and hammered over a ditch where runoff had carved a
gash in the dirt road.

 
          
 
"Damn.
Gotta
get a patrol to smooth this sucker out." He glanced over at the
construction site that appeared as he crested a low, sagebrush-dotted ridge.
The road snaked down into the basin and wound around through the scabby
grease-wood to the plant site. At this early stage it didn't look like much,
just ripped and torn dirt where the heavy equipment had begun to shape the
parched clay and sand into a flat spot. One day it would be a
collection-and-processing center for oil and natural gas—one of the largest,
and most expensive, plants in the country. But now the brightly colored
earth-moving machinery lay idling in the harsh noon-hour sun while the crews
ate lunch. Black smoke rose in dwindling columns from the diesel stacks to fade
into the hot, dry air.

 
          
 
Skip followed the bladed road down the ridge
and raced across the flats ahead of the dust trail that billowed behind the
Ford in a rising white plume.

 
          
 
Despite the intrusive construction, the
eternal presence of the pale, sun-washed land couldn't be ignored. From the
infinite enamel-blue sky to the erosion-scarred buttes that hemmed the
distance, the land dominated. It waited—sere, windswept, populated only by
sagebrush, greasewood, salt-bush, and endless patches of glaring white clay. Here
and there the desert-tan humps of sand dunes stood out, their scraggly
vegetation a little greener where it robbed the sand traps of moisture. Distant
blue-green mountains rose to the north and seemed to float on the
polished-silver sheen of the hot basin mirage.

 
          
 
Skip took a deep breath and inhaled the
pungent odor of dust and sagebrush, and with it, the soul of the barren earth.
He squinted irritably over the flat desolation as he drummed his fingertips on
the steering wheel and muttered, "Hell of a country. Why'd I ever leave
Louisiana
?"

 
          
 
He turned onto the construction site and wove
past two belly dumps and around the gray-green prefab building that housed the
temporary offices. He pulled up and slipped the transmission into park as the
dust settled over the pickup. The big Ford idled roughly—probably because the
damn air filter was plugged up again. Gas mileage had been like shit for the
last week. What the hell, it was company gas.

 
          
 
Red Swenson stepped out of the dust-streaked
office door and nodded as he started for Skip's truck. Swenson wore faded
Levi's and a sun-bleached checked shirt that had been red once. The sleeves had
been ripped off, and dust had caked under the man's armpits. A yellow hard-hat
rested at a jaunty angle over the burly
catskinner's
sunburned face.

 
          
 
"Hear you wanted to see me," Skip
called out the pickup window as he leaned his arm on the sill.

 
          
 
Swenson nodded, swirling a toothpick from one
side of his mouth to the other. Sun and desert air had left his lips chapped and
peeling. "Got a minute? It's over by the compressor pad. I'm doing the
dirt work for the foundation."

 
          
 
Skip checked his watch. "I got a
minute—but that's about all. There's a meeting with the engineers in half an
hour." He glanced up. "This important?"

 
          
 
Swenson nodded before he glanced out at the
construction site; a dust devil ravaged the torn soil. "Yeah. First off I
thought I'd just cover it up, but I know them archaeologist guys have been
poking around. Didn't want my tit in a ringer, so I thought I'd better talk to
you. You're the one that's in charge of this shindig."

 
          
 
Gillespie's gut soured as he squinted up
irritably at the sun. Archaeology? That's all we need right now. We're two
months behind schedule and a half million bucks over budget, and the damned
arkys
could shut this whole project down for months while
they screw around with a bunch of dead Indians.

 
          
 
He sighed and slapped the steering wheel in
resignation. “Hop in, Red. Let's see what you got."

 
          
 
He moved his briefcase and thermos to the side
as Swenson opened the far door and slid in. Jesus, the guy smells like rotten
hot dogs.

 
          
 
Skip slipped the automatic into drive and
bounced off across the complex. Dust rose in a cloud that swirled into the cab
to coat the dash with a fine layer. Well, better dust than mud. Otherwise, he'd
be slithering around in four-wheel drive like a dirt-track ace—and cussing
every minute of it.

 
          
 
Skip shot Swenson a narrow glance. "What
did you find?"

 
          
 
"Beats me. A lot of that charcoal come up
under the blade. That's what them archaeologists was looking for. That, and
them chips of rock."

 
          
 
"Shit. We've already paid them bastards a
couple hundred grand to walk around and dig their little holes every time they
find an arrowhead." Skip shook his head. "Hell of a country we live
in. We got a multimillion-dollar plant to build, and instead, we
gotta
screw around with dead Indians. What kind of country
is this getting to be anyway?"

 
          
 
Swenson grunted as he stared out at the dry
land.

 
          
 
Skip headed south on a bouncy two-track that
had been beaten into the sage. A yellow Caterpillar, sitting beside a pile of
dirt, marked the compressor site. He pulled up and set the brake as he looked
the situation over. The alleged topsoil had been piled on the downwind side,
the way the Feds wanted. Now several feet of soil had been moved off the ground
surface, and half the dune that lay on the western half of the site had been
torn away.

 
          
 
Swenson pointed with a crooked finger.
"Over there."

 
          
 
Skip opened the door and stepped down into the
disturbed sandy soil. He followed Swenson, irritated at the feel of sand
scraping on his five-hundred-dollar ostrich-hide boots.

           
 
Swenson jumped up on one of the windrows left
by the cat's Wade and jerked his head. "Check that out."

 
          
 
Skip climbed up beside him and looked down to
where the cat had made its last cut. Charcoal had smeared in a black stain as
the blade scraped the surface, but he could make out the large, round
discolorations in the soil. Charcoal and dark, organically rich soil contrasted
with the tan sand, where large pits had been dug into the dune. Each of the
discolorations measured three paces in diameter.

 
          
 
Skip stepped down, kicking at the charcoal.
Flakes of colorful stone littered the ground. "Yeah, these are some of
those house pits the archaeologists wanted to find. I saw some of them when I
worked down in
New Mexico
."

 
          
 
He stared around at the sage flats. On the
remains of the dune,
ricegrass
and wild rye waved in
the afternoon breeze. The star-burst flowers of wild onion bobbed along the
margins of the disturbed area. In the distance, a herd of antelope watched from
one of the taller dunes. Skip shook his head, squinting in the bright sunlight.
"Lord knows what those idiot Indians saw in this goddamned country.''

 
          
 
Swenson came down to kick around in the dirt.
"So, what do we do? I was at that meeting with that asshole BLM compliance
guy. He said if we uncovered anything, to shut down. Now what?"

 
          
 
Skip chewed on his thumb as he studied the
ground. The archaeologists would love to get their hands on this. And if they
found out just how good this site appeared to be . . .

 
          
 
"Look, we can't have those archaeologists
back here. They'd fool around for another couple of months, maybe even a year
for all I know. That's bucks . . . and delays. Time's money, Red. We're an
industry, not the National Geographic Society. Those guys had their chance. We
did our part, followed the law, and let the
arkys
snoop around. We've got a schedule to keep."

 
          
 
Swenson stuck his fingers in his back pockets,
staring at the big circles. "Who'd dig a hole that size? What for?"

 
          
 
"Go get the shovel
outta
my truck. Let's see what this is."

 
          
 
When Swenson returned with the shovel, Skip
peeled back the dirt, the blade clunking hollowly on rock. He levered up a
piece of sandstone. "Grinding slab," he said. "See where they
wore out the top like a trough? That's from grinding seeds and stuff into
flour.''

 
          
 
"What's under it?" Swenson got down
on his hands and knees to look. He brushed away the sand and scooped up a
handful of charred seeds.

 
          
 
"Storage pit. Just like the Injuns left
it. Been waiting there like that for thousands of years." Skip chuckled.
"I read that damn report the archaeologists turned in."

 
          
 
Swenson squinted skeptically. "Better
them blanket-ass Indians out here than me. I'm in this country only long enough
to make enough to get back to civilization."

 
          
 
"Yeah, well, get back to work. We're
paying you by the hour."

 
          
 
Swenson gave him a crooked grin. "And
pile the
backdirt
so the charcoal don't show,
right?"

 
          
 
Skip grinned. "You got it. I want this
place to look nice and clean—just in case the BLM shows up. Hell, we don't want
them to hold up a thirty-million-dollar project—and for what? The damn Indians
aren't coming back. What the hell could we learn from a bunch of savages who'd
live in a country like this?"

 
          
 
Skip stooped to pick up a black rock. He
rubbed sand off the smooth surface and held it up. For a moment he couldn't
believe what he held. The polished stone couldn't be mistaken—a fossilized
shark's tooth. And a hole had been neatly drilled in the center, as if the
tooth had once been a pendant or an ornament.

 
          
 
"Well, how about that? Guess I got
something for my fireplace mantel." He paused thoughtfully. "But where
in hell would they have picked up a shark's tooth?" Fool, this whole
country was ocean bottom a hundred and fifty million years ago. Where in hell
did the hydrocarbons we 're drilling for come from, anyway?

 
          
 
Swenson kicked around in the loose sand, trying
to find another shark's tooth. He turned up a bone, leached brown from
millennia spent in the soil. He reached for Skip's shovel, uncovering another
and another of the sand-encrusted bones until he unearthed a human skull,
surrounded by more of the polished black shark's teeth.

 
          
 
"Holy shit!" Swenson cried, backing
away.

 
          
 
Looking closely, Skip could see where the body
had been laid in a carefully dug hole. The sand changed color at the side of
the grave, marking the edge of the intrusion.