Greetings! I am Black Shell, of the Chief Clan, of the Hickory Moiety of the Chicaza Nation. I am also akeohoosa, or outcast–a man dead to his relatives. Now, if any of you out there are Chickasaw–as you call yourselves these days–don’t hold that against me. The time I was declared outcast, it wasn’t my fault. Rather it seems that Horned Serpent started meddling with my life many years ago. So now, instead of being a High Minko–which is kind of like a king–I’m just a footloose trader with a pack of dogs and a wealth of copper, shell, medicine plants, buffalo wool, and lesser trinkets that have value when carried to foreign peoples. I shouldn’t be here, but Mike and Kathy are busy doing revisions to PEOPLE OF THE LONGHOUSE, a story about the early Iroquois way up north. Me, I’m a southern trader. I’m not wild about snow. So much so that I make sure that when winter rolls around, I’m down trading among the Pensacola on the Gulf, or even with the Calusa way down south at the tip of the peninsula you now call Florida. By the way, that’s a really rotten name for the place. It was given by Kristianos, whom you call Spaniards. Nasty people, those, as you’ll find out when you pick up a copy of COMING OF THE STORM. See how easily I get distracted? That’s because traders live by means of their glib tongues. Fact is: I escaped! At least for the moment. Mike and Kathy–being preoccupied with the Iroquois–don’t know that I’m loose in the computer. Neither does my wife, Pearl Hand. She’s back at camp taking care of the dogs. We have five of them to carry our trade from Nation to Nation. So, being out on my own, exploring the web site, I found all the email blog comments. Fascinating reading! Yeah, and a lot of junk, too. What’s with the Russians still sending stuff that looks like turkey tracks? Okay, I’ve deleted the junk. Deleted. What a great word. During my day we just threw anything we didn’t like into the firepit and let it burn up. In the background I can hear Kathy arguing with Mike about some witch called Gannajero. Sounds like she’s a real nasty piece of two-legged trouble. Stealing children? Vile. Kathy and Mike are always so busy these days they’ll never get around to dealing with the blog comments. And, well, after all, what good is it to be escaped if you can’t have a little fun? I can’t wait to see how they react when they discover I took care of it on my own. See? That’s what you get when you leave a character untended! And it’s not the first time I escaped into the blog. Many of you wanted to know about the availability of Kindle and ebook editions of various Gear books. As a Chicaza trader, I’m still befuddled by printing, let alone paper books. But here’s what I know given the things I overhear the Gears talking about: Currently there is a mad scramble in the ebook business. Somebody called Amazon wants to get all the ebooks for their special reader. Other folks, like Sony and Barnes & Noble want the same titles for their readers. But what works for one reader doesn’t work for another. The ebook industry is new, working out the bugs, and eventually, when the dust settles over the next couple of years, the Gears’ work will all be available for e-readers. Please be patient. Marlene wanted to know if the Gears had ever done anything with Newfoundland and Vikings. Actually, they have in PEOPLE OF THE MASKS. They also intend to do a novel on what archaeologists call the “Maritime Archaic” or commonly known as the Red Paint people. This is a 4,000 to 7,000 year old blue-water fishing culture. Someday. When they get the time and complete the research. They keep muttering about so little time, so much archaeology. Hey! I had to wait nearly 500 years to have my story told. And Wolf Dreamer? It took him almost 15,000 years! Heather noticed similarities between PEOPLE OF THE RIVER and CHILDREN OF THE DAWNLAND and wanted to know if that was done on purpose. If I ask the Gears, they’ll know I’m loose, so I sneaked into the DAWNLAND file and checked with the characters to find out. According to Twig and Screech Owl the similarities are in fulfillment to a promise to an old and cherished friend. She wanted the symbolic and spiritual teachings in RIVER placed in a format that children and young adults in her class could understand. Howard sent a fascinating note about Champlain and the Oneida in upstate New York. Yep, they’re the same PEOPLE OF THE LONGHOUSE as are being published next summer in July. The actual origins of the word Oneida comes from the “Standing Stone” people. I would have learned more, but Koracoo, Odion, and Gonda are currenty undergoing “revisions.” It’s happened to me and Pearl Hand. We hate going through it, but come out better in the end. I found lots of requests for a photo of Jake, the new sheltie, to be placed on the website. If you think a Chicaza trader like me has trouble with printed books, cameras are something else. I still draw on hide with a piece of charcoal and call it good! I think, however, that they’ll get around to it. Maybe when the revisions for PEOPLE OF THE LONGHOUSE are finished. That is, assuming they can figure out how to get the picture from the camera to the computer to the website. Sometimes they can be as slow as moss in a backswamp. Rocio, in Spain, and Tirso in Holland were both interested in Spanish and Dutch translations. Gotta tell ya, I was pretty worried about Rocio, being Spanish and all. At least until I talked to Dusty and Maureen in the ANASAZI MYSTERIES and found out that Spain today is nothing like the 1500s when Hernando de Soto was alive. Maureen reminded me that people do change over time, and modern Spanish folks are really wonderful. When I started to bring up de Soto, she reminded me that modern Chickasaw don’t hang people in wooden squares these days. I’m sensative to wooden squares; my uncle wanted to hang me in one while I was slowly burned and cut to pieces. It makes being declared akeohoosa look pretty good in comparison. But getting back to Rocio: The Gears’ Spanish publishers didn’t buy the entire PEOPLE series, just the titles listed in the “books” section of the website. The same applies to you, Tirso. All the Dutch editions published by Meulenhoff and De Boekerij are listed. As much as the Gears would like all of their titles translated, different editors and changing markets have their influence. It’s sort of like stingray spines. Sometimes the Cherokee will trade for them, and sometimes they won’t. Pearl Hand just poked her head in and told me that Squirm–one of my pack dogs–had a tangle with a porcupine. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go. Squirm is always trouble. Try keeping a pack on his back from dawn to dusk, and you’ll see what I mean. Oh, and if you think porcupines and dogs are trouble in your day and age? In my time we don’t have scissors and pliers! A’ ho!

We recently received a letter from a reader in North Carolina. She asked some very profound questions about evolution, and we wanted to share our answers with you: January 4, 2010 　 　 Dear Natalie, You asked, “Why are there so many pre-human variations from a spiritual point of view? Why was this necessary?” and “When did something change on a spiritual level on the evolutionary timeline?” Those are very provocative questions, Natalie. Obviously you’re interested in more than a scientific lesson on the whys and hows of evolution. It sounds to us as though you’re interested in hearing our speculations on the whys of the spiritual evolution of human consciousness. So, here goes… First, why was it spiritually necessary for human beings to go through a variety of physical forms? We’re going ramble for a while. Please bear with us. Are you familiar with Siouan mythology? The Lakota people believe that every creature on earth has a perfect form in the Above World. So, for example, all the buffalo in this world descend from the perfect Ta Tanka (buffalo bull) who is a special friend to the Sun. Buffalo Above sits in council with the Sun every night to discuss the happenings here in the world. And all buffalo, and other creatures, strive for the perfection of their “Above form.” In his sacred vision, Black Elk was told by the Grandfather to: “Behold the earth!” So he looked down and saw it “lying yonder like a hoop of peoples, and in the center bloomed the holy stick that was a tree, and where it stood there crossed two roads, a red one and a black. From where the giant lives (north) to where you always face (south) the red road goes, the road of good,” the Grandfather said. “And on it your nation shall walk. The black road goes from where the thunder beings live (west) to where the Sun continually shines (east), a fearful road, a road of troubles and of war. On this you shall also walk…” After Wounded Knee, Wallace Black Elk prophesied that, “Real soon, now this is a turning point. The hoop, the sacred hoop…will come back again. The stake here that represents the tree of life, the tree will bloom, it will flower again, and all the people will rejoin and come back to the sacred road, the red road.” We suspect that humanity, and all other creatures, go through a variety of forms as they veer back and forth from the red road to the black road in their struggles to attain the perfection of those “Above.” Why is it necessary? Each form probably teaches us something fundamentally important for the next evolutionary stage of consciousness. From a scientific point of view, we know that environmental stress spurs evolutionary development, and this relates to your second question: “When did something change on a spiritual level on the evolutionary timeline?” If possible, that’s an even more difficult question to answer. We can tell you the approximate moments in time where evolution took giant leaps toward making us who we are today. For example, between two million and five million years ago the second and third pongid chromosomes merged, giving us twenty-three pairs (or 46 chromosomes), rather twenty-four pairs like chimpanzees. Second, some time around 1.8 to 2 million years ago, at the point where homo habilis shifts to homo ergaster, the brain becomes substantially larger. Then around 200-250 thousand years ago “mitochondrial Eve” and Y-chromosome “Adam,” the first anatomically modern human beings, were born. Lastly, around 78,000 years ago, art first appears at Klasies River Mouth site and the Blombos Cave in South Africa. It’s simple: stones engraved with lines, and the creation of beads for decoration—but it’s artwork nonetheless. It is probably no coincidence that the sudden appearance of artwork occurs simultaneously with the explosion of the supervolcano, Toba, in Indonesia. The best scientific guess is that after centuries of “volcanic winter” the number of human beings alive in the world got down to a few hundred–meaning we almost ceased to exist. Was artistic creativity spiritually necessary for the survival of humanity? Maybe. Art suggests abstract thought, or imagination. In the dire circumstances in which they found themselves, perhaps that creativity gave them the ability to dream of a hopeful future. It may even have allowed them to develop a storytelling tradition. They certainly would have needed to pass on information to their descendants, even if it was only where to find food, water, and shelter, as they traveled through the utter devastation left by Toba. For just a moment, let’s talk about mythology, about stories. We think storytelling was a singular moment in the spiritual evolution of human beings. Why? Because stories act as vehicles for self-transcendence. They allow listeners to move beyond themselves into a timeless realm where they can touch the sacred—however they conceive it. We live at the corner of the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, home to the Shoshoni and Arapahoe nations. When we’re sitting around a fire listening to a Shoshoni elder recite the story about the struggle between Wolf and Coyote in the beginning time, we are always forced to come face to face with our own doubts, or confusion about what constitutes evil. In the stories, Wolf represents the forces of good, order, and tranquility. Coyote, on the other hand, represents evil and chaos. It is Coyote who, against Wolf’s wishes, insists that death be final. Up until that time people died but then came back to life after two days. Coyote wanted people to die forever–until his own son, Magpie, died. Then he went to Wolf and said “Raise my son after two days.” Wolf didn’t answer for a long time. Finally he said, “You, Coyote, said that people should die forever. If it weren’t for you there would be too many people now.” Coyote caught a crow, one that belonged to Wolf, and tore it to pieces in agony, then he buried his son, and sang all night. The struggle over the necessity of death is perhaps one of the greatest spiritual puzzles. The story of Wolf and Coyote allows the listener walk in Wolf’s shoes, then in Coyote’s, and back and forth…until it makes some kind of sense. We know that at some point along the evolutionary path human beings became “religious.” Interestingly, religiosity seems to be hard-wired in the species. We are religious beings, whether we want to be or not. Some of the studies that have been done on atheists who insist on wearing the same pair of socks to play baseball because they’re lucky, are fascinating. Apparently even atheists have a built-in supernatural perspective on life. When did that happen? We suspect it occurred in the very beginning. Perhaps when the second and third chromosomes merged. So. Back to your question. Did something change on a spiritual level to cause these grand physical evolutionary leaps? Or did the leaps cause grand spiritual awakenings? It could be both. The only thing relatively certain is that the leaps helped humanity to survive and, perhaps, to continue the search for perfection that guides us toward fulfilling our spiritual destiny. We hope that Wallace Black Elk is right and human beings choose to follow the sacred road, the Red Road, that leads us in that direction. Best Regards, 　 　 Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear