WrittenPost: The Trail of the Fox

Sunday, October 8, 2023

The Trail of the Fox - Intro

The Trail of the Fox does not seem to be available on-line at the moment, so if you'd like a copy, send me an e-mail, address below.

Intro - Clovis People

The Clovis People are not necessarily a single people or a tribe. They are rather, a group of peoples who migrated across and lived in North America many years before modern Native Americans. As described in the links below, scientists believe that a group or groups of people traveled into North America from Eastern Asia, long ago, perhaps 20,000 or maybe 30,000 years ago.

The Clovis People get their name from finely-made stone tools, arrow points and spear points first found near Clovis, New Mexico in 1933. Since that time, per the map below, what have become known as “Clovis Points” have been found at many sites, mostly in Western but also Eastern North America. These sites are hard to date, because all that is found are stone and bone tools, but the estimates in the Nova web site indicate that the earliest of the points date from around 13,500 years ago.

The Great Rock Wall

The people, the tools and way of living described in The Trail of the Fox are based on Clovis-type people, living something like 5,000 or 6,000 years ago. The Rock People are not necessarily the first ones to develop fine stone tools, and not the first to enter their area of living. They represent a “middle” age for the Clovis People, a society well developed, but still not nearly as far along as the Native Americans were prior to European people entering North America in large numbers.

Since little is known about the lives, customs, languages, lodging or habits of the Clovis People, my descriptions of the Rock People are based on my best guesses, reasoning, and my limited understanding of other Native American peoples.

This is only a small portion of the entire NOVA map. I am showing this portion, as I am basing the location of the Rock Village somewhere near the center of this map section, in the mountains near Albuquerque, New Mexico.

- Mark

Near the Texas, New Mexico, Mexico borders.

Characters:

Ach	Ach, meaning “throwing stone, the main character
Raiders	Groups of men who come from outside the valley to raid and steal and kill
Rock People	Members of the village at the high rock wall, where Ach lives
Cloud People	Members of nearby village, at the end of the valley, friends and allies of the Rock People
The Old Man	The elder leader of the Rock People
Sinc (“Little Brother”)	Ach’s cousin, son of Schut-Tah, called “Little Brother” by Ach when they were young
Coyotes	Strangers, evil men, coming in small groups of one or two, to steal the women of the valley
Schut	Meaning “Spear”, the father of Ach, brother of Schut-Tah, grandson of Ten-Ha
Schut-Tah	Meaning “Spear Point”, brother of Schut, uncle of Ach, father of Sinc, grandson of Ten-Ha
Sana	First wife of Ach
Ten-Ha	Meaning “grandson”, the grand-father of Schut and Schut-Tah, great-grand-father to Ach and Sinc. Called “grandson” as he was likely raised by his own grand-father.
The Wolf	Not a name, but more like a “position”, the hunting-leader and fight-leader of the Cloud Village
Ayea	First wife of Sinc, daughter of “the Wolf”
Cree	“The Girl”, Second wife of Ach, from a village up river
Crow Woman	Cree’s (unspoken) name for the wife of her uncle