The Trail of the Fox - Introduction

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The Trail of the Fox
                                                   by Mark W. Laughlin

Welcome !

The Trail of the Fox is actually three short-stories, each consisting of several "chapters" or episodes.  The Trail of the Fox - I  began to be posted in mid-2011.  Trail "II" was posted starting about October 2011, and "- III" began in the springtime of 2012.  The three pieces actually fit together back-to-back, to form a novel-length work.  It's been a fun effort to construct and write it, I hope you find it enjoyable to read.

Clovis Points                                      - Mark W. Laughlin

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 even 30,000 years ago. 

The Clovis People get their name from finely-made stone tools, arrow points and spear points (see photo above) 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 people, the tools and way of living described in The Trail of the Fox are based on Clovis-type people, living something like 2,000 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 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 Sante Fe, New Mexico.

                                                                                                                    - ML

Near the Texas, New Mexico, Mexico borders.

The Setting:

On the weekend of September 23-25, 2011, my wife and I traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico and were able to locate and photograph a valley that works well as a setting for The Trail of the Fox.

It may seem strange, but rather than picking a setting before I began to write, I first conceived the idea and started the story.  I based it on my travels through New Mexico in the past, sometimes hunting, sometimes skiing, sometimes just driving through. 

But after writing the first 2/3 of the book, I thought about the need to pick a certain location, to see if it would be a practical, workable setting.  In particular question was the ability of, the likelihood of, the Rock and Cloud people walking down out of their valley with The Trader, in search of The Walking Men (which happens in Part II of the book).

So, I began with www.maps.google.com, and searched an area which I thought might provide mountainous terrain, with flowing streams and a river to follow down onto The Flat.   In particular, the location had to be close enough to the edge of the Great Plains to make a meeting of plains dwelling Walking Men and the mountain dwelling Rock and Cloud people a plausible occurrence.

With a short search, starting with the Santa Fe National Forest in north-central New Mexico, just east of the city of Santa Fe, I found an interesting valley.  If you look at Highway 63, going north from Pecos, New Mexico, you see that it runs north into the National Forest, until it ends there.  It is this main valley, and the side valleys that feed into it, that I feel makes an excellent candidate for the valley of the Rock and Cloud people.

The streams in the valley form the headwaters of the Pecos River, and the river flows out at the town of Pecos, turning east for a bit toward the flat, the Great Plains.  The Pecos continues south and east, finally joining the Rio Grande in western Texas.  Since the wintering area that I propose for the Walking Men (Seminole Canyon State Park, Texas) is very near where the Pecos River joins the Rio Grande, near the town of Del Rio, Texas, I think this makes it also plausible that the Walking might follow the Pecos north in the spring time as the grass begins to grow, and the buffalo head north to graze.

My wife, and I flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico and drove the 60 miles or so up to Santa Fe.  We stayed in Santa Fe for a couple of days while looking at both Highway 63 and at Highway 475 which heads northeast from Santa Fe into and also ending in, the Santa Fe National Forest.  We also drove along Interstate 25 East from Santa Fe, towards Las Vegas, New Mexico, on the edge of the plains.  

We noted several points along the way which looked like plausible way-points for the Rock and Cloud people on their trading mission.  We ended at the Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge, an 8700 acre migratory bird sanctuary, which provided some nice photos of the plains, uninterrupted by (modern) human activity.

We would definitely recommend a stay in Santa Fe to anyone interested in traveling to New Mexico.  There is an active, long standing arts community there, ranging from formal galleries, informal outdoor exhibitions to street vendors.  The town is beautiful with most architecture following guidelines for the use of adobe and stucco construction with Mexican roof tile.  Late September is an excellent time to see the turning fall colors in a beautiful and very interesting part of the American West.

-       Mark W. Laughlin

All photos by Mark W. Laughlin

Characters:

Ach (“Little Fox”)	Ach, meaning “throwing stone, the main character (called “Little Fox” by his father, Schut, when he was a boy)
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 a 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	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 “title”, the hunt-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
The Place of Waiting	A place behind the edge of the Great Rock Wall where the dead of the Rock Village are placed as they wait to cross into the next life.
Spirit Woman	A spirit guide, seen at first only by “The Old Man” and later by Ach, then by Ash-Ká
The Trader	A man who travels the main valley organizing trading events, and organizes the trip to trade with the “Walking Men”
Lake Village Men	Men of the village by the lake, encountered by the Rock men on their way to “The Flat”
The Walking Men	A tribe of people who followed the buffalo up and down the Great Plains each year as the buffalo followed the grass
White Hair	Leader of the Walking Men
Strong Hand	“Right-hand-man” of White Hair. An important man among the Walking Men
Ash-Ká	A young girl in the Rock Village, who would one day be a leader of the Rock People, named after a cute bug.
Zhe-Te	Meaning “Ghost”, one of the two surviving Walking Men, skilled at sneaking up on the grazing Buffalo.
A-jee	Meaning “Tall grass”, the second of the surviving Walking Men.
Na-Hé-ne	Grandfather of Ash-Ká, leader of the village Ash-Ká’s mother had come from.
Red Bird	An older woman in the Rock Village, appointed by the Old Man as “the counter of days”.

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