6 Staking My Claim

Living alone in Upstate New York for the past two years, that is prior to my time travel, has greatly helped with my survival abilities. I know summer can not stay forever. Leaves will turn and fall and winter will come. And I really don't want to migrate to anywhere and then come back like the birds. I'm here to stay. For Aylen and Oota I'm their man, the pillar of their lives. Their blinding faith in me is enough motivation for me to get up in the morning and getting closer each day to live the life as an Algonquian Indian, not.

To satisfy Aylen's forever curiosity, I have to tell her and Oota stories each night. It was first just Aylen and Oota. Soon other kids joined then their parents. Pretty soon I have the whole clan sitting around me and the bonfire listening to me telling stories of the world and their world as I know.

I tell them stories about the continents and the oceans surrounding them, about the geography of North America, about Asians arriving here across the Bering Sea and about the more than 500 tribes living on it.

Has the Aztec Empire already fallen to the Spanish conquest? I still would not know. Let's leave it out.

"Yao, how would you know about these?" Aylen asked, about the stories I have told. "The Great Kun picked me up and I rode with him and saw it myself. The Great Kun has also told me many of the stories. " I can't say I have traveled back in time but want to put the question to rest once for all. This is as closest as I could to convince Aylen of where I came from. I did not want to freak her out by telling her I came from the 21st Century. And believe me, it wasn't too far fetched.

The Ojibwe or Chippewa legend has it that two sisters once wished upon the starts and ended up in heaven. Through an old lady's help in finding a tunnel they were able to come down on a rope they made. Upon landing and being stuck in an eagle's nest they called out for help and promised to marry anyone who could save them. An wolverine rescued them and they became his young wives. When the two sisters eventually decided to leave him because of his ugly looks they sought help from the trees. The legend goes that every time the wolverine howls the wind would cause the trees to whistle back to hide the sisters' whereabouts.

Without a saw or knife or anything metal, the quickest way I could think of in setting up a winter shelter was building a mud hut, the most primitive dwelling I could think of and build. As the thick and squarely mud blocks lay drying under the Sun, my fellow citizens looked on with ever increasing awe and respect. Through trial and error the bricks also came out ok from the mud kiln I built. They would serve nicely as the brick floor for me. I wasn't about to have arthritis when I got older. I figured the average life span then should be no more than 35 years of age. Anything I could do within my own control would help and improve the situation.

Our neighboring Iroquois are known as the people of the long house, wood framed and pelt covered, my squarely house looked much more solid and stately. Check out the stove and fire place I built in the middle of the room with an open floor plan. It was standard 6 inch clay chimney and kiln fired. To save time and materials I only built the side walls about 6 feet high, but with the gable roof on top of it, it doesn't feel low at all once one goes inside. For the exterior wall, I had it plastered with a thick layer of mud mixed with straw and cow dung, or bison dung I should say. Once tried, I sculptured on the front side a giant Kun and colored it with lime for the body and his eyes dark red with dried animal blood.

When all finished and done, it looked more and more like a tobacco hut than a house. I was still impressed. My friends and neighbors looked with envy. My exampled served its purpose. So I spent the next month helping and directing them in building their own mud houses. For a moment I thought I have joined the Peace Corp. But Peace Corp. couldn't get better than this. In half a year's time I have helped everyone transformed out of the Stone Age. As I fine tuned my kiln and adjusted the firing temperature and its duration, I was able to have ceramics produced out of my kilns. As the words got out I was also quickly getting a lots of customers, customers of different tribes coming from farther and farther away. And the quantities they ordered were also getting bigger and bigger. Soon I was having over a 100 people working for me. The trade was still using the barter system then, with winter coming soon, I have already acquired enough food and fur for my workers to survive the winter. It was good there was no minimum wage standard, no employee withholding taxes or 401Ks required of me. They would come later. I do however have Sunday off for everyone. To be able to feed and house my workers was the single most important objective for me at the moment.

I separated my men from the women with men working at the kilns and women in charge of a communal kitchen I set up and the warehouse of materials we have acquired and accumulating. To defend possible looting and attacks that might come any moment from other tribes I had to come up with a way quickly to defend us. So I had ceramic arrow heads and short swards fired and produced and armed all my men with them. Twice a week they'd train with me, long distance running for endurance, formation and marching for discipline, archery and stone throwing for attack, and close combat for survival. They were to become my first and alpha company. I wanted to make a flag for my company but we had only stick but no silk. It would have to wait until next year. Training them was essential but still not enough. My men needed indoctrination, an ideal they could work for and even die for. I needed this too. I could teach them to fight for freedom, but they were free to begin with. So I would have to think hard on this.

Aylen wanted to join the training too I told her no. I wasn't about to let a 15 year old girl to join a bloody fight. But it is time to start a classroom as the saying goes the mind is a terrible thing to waste. So I told Aylen to round up all the kids anywhere between ten to twenty and we were about to starch a school and anyone else who'd be interested would also be welcome. Everything would have to start from scratch. Without any paper the birch bark would have to do. As blackboard and chalk would also take much time to make and of little commercial value I decided to go with a sand box. I could teach them either English or Chinese or both. Chinese derived from pictograph hence close in concept to the Indian symbols and thinking and they appear foreign hence secretive to the Europeans. But I needed to see a society of assimilation and peaceful co-existence. America is a vast land. With only about 50 million people tops, the population size even more that Wyoming, it surely can accommodate people of all races and countries of origin. As the Statute of Liberty would read, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" It sounds great plus English is much easier to teach and learn. So I decided to teach my students English.

The fist class started with more than 60 people. I would teach them about one hour in the morning and one hour after dinner each day. Most of my men also joined in the attendance. Without knowing what year I was in I have to do everything I could to get them ready for the very first "contact." So aside from English, I have also started a class called "ten thousand whys." Starting with teaching them numbers and simple math as I know, I wanted to focus on increasing their knowledge from learning about the basics of the human body, personal hygiene, to the world I know of. To teach them to learn about reasoning and thinking, I would always start the class with a student to volunteer a question why and the class would go from there.

Winter finally came with the season's first snow fall. The mountains may be blanketed in white, the blood from the coming siege has dyed my compound dark red and became rude awakening for me.