Covid Wasteland
Chapter Six – Birth of a Clan
The start of what became known as the Fertility Moon could hardly be noticed. The Cowlitz Nation was decimated by the Covid Disease, which easily mirrored, maybe surpassed the pandemic caused by the introduction of Smallpox by the first European Colonists. Chief Mak’aa saw these figures every day, and he only had to lose 3 more members of his Tribe to be under two hundred, down from a Pre-Covid population of 1,400. Exactly 110 were women, and of those, just under 50 could bear children. If each generation bore 150 new Cowlitz from the base and the ratio of women remained the same, it would take four generations, or about 120 years, to recover back to the pre-Covid tribal population under the best of conditions, so probably five or six generations. THAT was why Chief Mak’aa decided to front-load those odds by bringing in as many as a thousand whites from the former Oregon. If THAT turned out well, then two or three generations would see successful re-establishment of the Cowlitz Nation.
Chief Mak’aa knew he was tampering with History to call the new Clan across the Great Water the Chinook, because the Chinook HAD been the predominant tribe in the region, NOT the smaller Cowlitz. However, the Chinook had not been re-established like the Cowlitz had been before Covid and the socio-demographic disasters which had been worse than the disease. Already in the History Book, the destruction of the former US of A’s economy had been total, caused not by disease-brought population decline, but by the Political, then Civil War resulting from the American Left’s attempt to use the Covid Pandemic emergency to wrest control of the government from the center-right which had held it. The Civil War hadn’t even ended, because there wasn’t enough Government left intact to either fight it or call it off. The resulting “Balkanization” of the former USA had indeed happened quickly, and couldn’t be denied. This resulted in a curious demographic fact: the Native Tribes/Nations were now just as strong as any of the fractured governments were. There hadn’t been a “Native Congress” convened due to the destroyed logistics and communications, but most surviving Chiefs of Nations knew it was their opportunity to reverse the 300 years of colonization and restore the continent to Indigenous Hegemony. The simple fact was that the Natives still had their Earth-connected religion and living practices, and those HAD survived the 300-year suppression of the Native race by the White race which was now effectively destroyed as a people, and with no more ability to impose THEIR hegemony over the First Peoples.
All over the USA, the tiny percentage of the white race which survived had little time to think about the errors of their ways, though. For everyone between the Coasts of North America, just getting enough to eat, or keeping warm in the winter became their full-time job, so none dared take the time to think of the philosophy involved, and Spirit had to take care of itself. Had these survivors been able to see this Big Picture, it would have been instantly obvious: the closer the small bands were to surviving in ways not used for three hundred years, the closer they were to actual survival.
In their little corner of the continent, the Cowlitz Tribe was surviving well enough to begin thinking about expanding and projecting their hegemony, and they’d taken the first steps, their now-established alliance with the surviving band of Whites across the Great Water which the Whites had ALSO stolen from them and renamed the Columbia River. Two Warriors and their Slave now crossed that River on the White man’s bridge, at night, only a sliver of a moon to guide them, in clear and cold weather. Those two men, Warrior Two Eagles and Warrior Sea Eagle and their condemned Slave Dorothy, not referred to as being from her former Wapiti Clan now, took a good hour to get up the steep slope to the half-way point, then less time to descend the equally steep west part of the Bridge. The single Militia sentry at the west foot of the bridge let them pass, he had been given orders to not restrict the travel of the Cowlitz, but to ask names and record them only. The sentry observed for his report that the woman appeared to be a slave, by the way she was tethered to Two Eagle’s horse while she struggled with a heavy pushcart. While the sentry was using his tiny LED light to scribble in a notebook, that slave came up with some food, and fell to her knees offering it to the sentry, but purposely breaking the flatbread and some fish off for Two Eagles to eat, to show good faith. The sentry ate, gratefully, and when the two men took their leave and called him “Warrior”, he wrote THAT down also. The three people removed themselves from his limited sight-range quickly though, and he had no way of knowing which way they might have gone. They went along the shoreline to the West, but stopped for a meal in the dark. They ate silently, and the silence was complete. They let the Slave relieve her bowels and bladder, insisting that she clean herself in the water afterwards, which she did, then they started back up to the highway, and walked the wide roadway up the steep hill for two miles, taking most of the rest of the night to do that. The men helped the small and weak Slave move her heavy cart uphill. As the winter night began to give way to the day, they came to the top of the hill, rested again, ate again, but resumed their journey. Just another mile and they came to the former Hudson County Park. There was a cluster of old campers and two Ti-pis there, and their occupants, fifteen in all, welcomed Two Eagles like he was a long-lost Brother. Slave was now relieved of her burden, mostly food, and it looked to be just in time: most of those men, 13 of the 15 were men, were seriously gaunt. The women looked a little better, but not much. With hand gestures, Two Eagles instructed Slave to pass out the food, and to give the women more than the men got. Nothing got done while the starving people slowly ate their food. Finally, one of the women came over and sat next to Slave, said nothing for a minute, then asked a question of her outright.
“What Clan are you?” Sea Eagle interrupted.
“She is a Slave. I was told to send her to her Next Life, but I also had a use for her, to bring this food to you from your new Chief.”
“What Chief, my Warrior?”
“Chief John of the Forest and River Chinook.” Next followed sagas of the past two days’ events, ending with the fifteen realizing that they would now be fed, and that was good. Sea Eagle then told them of the Old Code coming back, and most of the group smiled and nodded affirmatively at that news. Two Eagles got them out an FRS radio, showed them how to use it, although one of them seemed familiar already. Next, he gave them a little backpacker’s solar panel to keep it charged, and told them that they should turn it on at first light and at dusk, and listen, and they would be “Hilltop Camp”. Next, Two Eagles asked them if they had weapons. None of them did, save for a few small knives, they had traded their weapons for food several moons ago. Those would have to be gotten from the Whites.
Two Eagles had saved the best for last, though.
“As part of the newly restored Chinook clan, you will be supported by our White allies, except that we have decided to eliminate the race-names. Those people are all Chinook now, and they have a good group of Warriors, what they used to call the St Helens Militia. As you men get stronger, you will be able to consort with their women and bring half-blood babies. One of their Warriors will be assigned to be the Ambassador to your Camp, and you will see to it that man mates with this Slave so her belly swells. That is a priority of the Chiefs now, bringing as many Cowlitz and Chinook babies as possible. Know that this Slave may resist being required to mate. Her refusals, if any, will be overcome. She may become part of the House of Gathering that First Cowlitz Gatherer Constance Otter is now teaching, but for now, she is your slave. Slave, remove your garment!” She does, and they see the whip-tracks. “Dress again, slave.” She covers up quickly against the morning chill. The woman near her asks a question next.
“Where is her Love-box hair? Is that a new thing for Slaves?” Sea Eagle answered.
“No, but it IS the reason she is a Slave today. She was given to your new Chinook Chief as a wife, and she removed her hair, but injured herself and could not act as a wife should. The Chief’s Second Wife thrashed her, and her reaction was bad. Instead of being corrected by the thrashing, it made her Spirit worse, and she rapidly added more strokes, to the point she could not accept them all. That means degradation, and she was degraded. Her next baby-moon will be in just under a Moon. She must be mated to become with child. That is a Chief’s Order. If you aren’t contacted by the Warrior-Ambassador, she still must be taken and given seed. At that point, it will not matter whose seed makes her baby. Who is leader of this Band?” The woman acknowledges that. “Then she is your Slave now. What is your name and Clan so I may report to the Chiefs?”
“I am Amanda Bear, my Warrior. My father was River Bear and my mother was Mountain Bear. I am a Gatherer, my Warrior.”
“Good, Amanda Bear. You now have someone to carry your gatherings. She has not been trained to Gather yet, but she is a good beast of burden. If I may advise, tie her to you when you sleep, unless you have her assigned to one of your men. Know also, she must have the feel of a whip on her body often to keep her thinking of how to do things properly. We must go now, we are meeting the White Warriors in Deer Island tomorrow.” Amanda offers them back some food, but the Warriors decline and set a fast pace trotting out of camp. They kept up fast pace until they got down past the Warm Ground of the ancient Nuclear power plant there. The former Trojan plant reservation had been guarded , but the governmental collapse meant that now it wasn’t. As a reservation, it had become home to plentiful wildlife, most good to eat. On instructions of Chief Mak’aa, the two now prepared to hunt deer, and within an hour, they each had one of the small Black-tail wapiti, field-dressed, and fixed to their ponies. They continued the last five miles to Deer Island, a small White village, but there was an important military asset there, a small Chemical Refinery, which still had valuable stocks of chemical fertilizers and some fuel, so it was being guarded by the Militia.
Captain Borcher and his go-to NCOIC, SSgt Al Steward, and Cpl Mickey Ryan greeted Two Eagles and Sea Eagle, and the warriors cared for their horses while the NCOs relieved them of the meat. Next, the two Warriors were introduced to the pair of chemical plant caretakers, who gave them a quick run-down of what the former Dyno Nobel Powder company used to make – Explosives. They couldn’t make them now, complex reactions had to be critically maintained, and no one knew how to do that, but the two things involved, diesel fuel and nitrogen compounds, WERE highly useful. The fuel would power various engines, and there was a LOT of it, over fifty thousand gallons on the property, and the nitrogen compounds, good for fertilizer, were stored in the dozens of tons. The plant was situated on good bottom-land, used to have extensive lawns, but those had been plowed up and there was a fine fifteen-acre truck farm there now, the main source of vegetables for the Militia, and of course, the plant care-takers. The plant had emergency generators which still ran, and Captain Borcher had cobbled up a huge battery bank composed of every car and boat battery he could lay his hands on, hundreds of them, plus boat and RV battery chargers and inverters. The old Powder Plant was probably the most self-sufficient place within 200 miles in any direction, and Captain Borcher knew it also had to be a target. He briefed all this to the two Warriors, also briefing their roles: they were to be the leaders of a Scouting Unit, which he wanted to eventually number about twenty. The Scouts would operate in three-Warrior teams, so the Captain wanted seven teams. To fit the native Warrior class as well as the Military classification, the Scouts would be given Warrant Officer Rank vis-a-vis other Militias, but they would be Warriors, still high-Caste, in the River and Forest Chinook Tribe.
The two Caretakers also functioned as cooks and farmers, so the next thing on the agenda was a good meal, venison and fish, and Winter Squash. The caretakers had found an old but serviceable wood-fired cook-stove, and the heat it gave off warmed the huge utility room well. They all ate, and then Two Eagles briefed the situation at Hudson (Hilltop) Park Camp. He reported that the men seemed to be in good spirits, but couldn’t do much because they were essentially starving, AND they were unarmed, couldn’t hunt anything but the smallest game with traps and snares. The Captain excused himself, then conferred with his two NCOs at hand, giving them instructions to load up a Dyno Nobel Company diesel crew-cab pickup and take all the gear those people could use up to their camp. The truck ran into the Armory in St Helens, picked up six rifles, all decent for deer and elk, enough ammo so that practice could be done, and two handguns. They loaded a barrel of fuel in the truck, and hooked up a trailer with a diesel tractor on loan to till up some plots for hand-farming. Al would drive the truck, leave it there, and ride his bicycle back. In St Helens, the Armory stored several dozen bicycles, so Al put two of them in the truck in addition to his. As he was getting ready to leave, Deer Island passed a message that he needed to stop at the Bridge and pick up his old fishing-buddy, John Stamford, CHIEF John now, and he would be traveling with his TWO wives, Katherine Otter and Medicine Chief Ruth, who wanted to make the trip to check on the health of the outpost at Hudson’s Camp, and Katherine would check on the status of defensive training. That made a truckload, because Captain Borcher had just transferred Katherine’s war-Slave Raccoon to the Camp, the small band there had a lot of work to do to move the place from just bare existence to a working Chinook outpost. Two Slaves would give them adequate farming labor.
The Forest and River Chinook Clan was getting off to a solid and organized start, as Chief Mak’aa knew it would when he’d put the right people in place to lead it.
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