Going to see about reworking this old thing a little bit…
Prologue: First Contact
Chapter 1: The Survivor
Kingawa Mk. II: Mystery from the West
Kingawa Mk. II: Mystery from the West
Last edited by Pedant on Fri Jan 13, 2023 8:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.
My name means either "person who trumpets minor points of learning" or "maker of words." That fact that it means the latter in Sindarin is a demonstration of the former. Beware.
Spell Merchant | Patreon
Spell Merchant | Patreon
Re: Kingawa Mk. II: Mystery from the West
Prologue: First Contact
So it was that Bjarne Herjulfson came to Greenland, and Jarl Érik received him well. And Bjarne spoke of lands he had seen, further to the west, but could not tell further stories, and so people gave his words no heed, and he was wroth. But Leif, son of Érik, was struck by his words, and with his father’s blessing took to the sea with thirty-five men, seeking Bjarne’s lands. And Érik would have come with them, but his horse stumbled as they rode to the ship, and he fell, and his foot was broken. Then said Érik, “Other lands there may be, but it is not for me to see more than that which I have claimed as my own.” So Leif, son of Érik, led the expedition.
The first land they saw had no grass, nor trees, but icebergs large as hills surrounded it, and a flat plain of rocks passed between the shore and mountains without pause. Then said Leif, “I will give this land the name Bjarne did not; I call this place Helluland [Baffin Island].” The second land they saw was of white sand and wood, and no hills rose up from the low shore. Then said Leif, “I call this place Markland [Labrador].” The third land they saw was an island to the east of a greater land, which they found after two days’ travel with a northeastern wind. And they sailed up a sound, and ran ashore at a place where a river flowed from a lake; and the water rose about their boat, and they pulled it to shore.
When they came to shore they found people dressed in wool finer than any they had seen, with daggers of bronze twisted like the tooth of a unicorn. The chieftain of these Skrælings, whose name was Glohvey, gave to Leif a blanket of wool as a gift, in exchange for a sword of iron. Then he showed Leif and his men their village, which he called Vantahek [L’Anse aux Medeaux], and their church of stone inscribed with a slanted cross, and the vast fields of roots and grass where their longneck sheep grazed. Then Leif said, “You are most fortunate to live in this land of meadows and calm forests. We seek your permission to remain a little while longer in this Vinland of yours.” And Glohvey agreed.
Leif and his men stayed the winter there, in longhouses they built themselves, and traded meat and metal with the Skrælings for roots and wool and good; and some took wives from among the Skrælings. When spring came, few wished to return to the land of Greenland; but a few Skrælings, whom Leif baptized, wished to see this new place for themselves. So Leif, with his new crew, set off to the north again…
Agnarsbídur, Vinland [L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland]
"And it all would have gone to Hel if it weren't for that chicken."
"Agnarr, please," Mother moans. "Dagrún is eight winters old. And she's a Christian, just like her parents," she adds proudly.
"Fine, fine," says Uncle Agnarr, grinning his special grin with his neice, who is sitting next to him by the fire. "It all would have gone to Norway if it weren't for that chicken."
Dagrún laughs. Mother rolls her eyes, but smiles all the same.
"Your uncle Leif found this place only about a year before. Sets out for Iceland from Grandfather Érik’s compound in Greenland, and the next thing you know, he's managed to confuse east with west and goes completely the wrong way." He raises his voice to where Uncle Leif is dozing on a bench. "Must've been the sun in your eyes, right?"
"Shut up, Agnarr," says Uncle Leif, gruffly but not unkindly.
"Anyway, he gets blown waaay off course, and manages to find a land that's all stone. And he calls it...?"
"Markland!" says Dagrún eagerly. She knows this story off by heart, but honestly it never gets old.
"Right! And then he sailed a little more, and found...?"
"Helluland!"
"Absolutely correct! And finally, he and his party came ashore on a beautiful land, with trees and grass and rolling hills, and he called it...?"
"Nýfundinnland!"
And right on cue, her cousin Ask, who's six and new to the story, asks, "'New-found-land', Uncle Leif?" It's a tradition for someone to ask at this point.
"You going to tell me it doesn't work, boy?" grumbles Uncle Leif.
"Uncle Leif, it had already been found. We lived here, giju' and nemijgami' and nugumi and everyone."
Of course, there was always room for traditions to be broken.
Uncle Leif looks a bit more awake at this point. He frowns, the lines on his brow creasing like perfect rune-stems carved sideways into a rock. Then he shrugs and says, "Good thing I settled on Vinland, then, isn't it?"
"Tell Ask about Drunk Uncle Tyrker and the wine-berries!"
"Why not continue the story?" says Mother, in a voice that means she's thinking about getting her rusty sword out.
"Fine, fine," says Uncle Agnarr, rolling his eyes. "So he gets totally and ridiculously lost—"
"Shut up, Agnarr," says Uncle Leif, back to normal again.
“—and then trundles back next year towing a boatful of berries and loaded with fresh timber. Naturally, we talked about it, and Grandfather Érik said we should give it another go. Greenland was finally, well, becoming green—"
"We've got a weird taste in names in our family," grumbles Mother.
“—so there were likely to be new settlements coming up as more Icelanders and even Norwegians," he jokes, mainly at Father, sitting next to Mother, who rolls his eyes in a manner surprisingly like his wife, "think about expanding outwards from their over-crowded kingdoms. And of course there are barely any trees in Greenland, so we thought, why not go and set up business to the west?
"So we set off, with a few others, and found that nice bit of turf to build Agnarsbídur on—"
"I found the island first, I should have gotten to name the settlement," grumbles Uncle Leif, sitting up now.
"I was the one who spotted this place first," says Mother. Dagrún hasn't heard that bit.
"And I'm the only one who paid attention in runes lessons and carved the stela while you two were arguing over who forgot the mead," says Uncle Agnarr smugly. "Anyway, we'd settled down, got the livestock off the longships and started planting some wheat, and guess who comes out to visit?"
"Nemijgami'!" cries her cousin.
"That's right! Your grandfather, with nine canoes behind him. And they stayed for a while, the Skraelings, and we were just about ready to close a deal or two—”
“Nemijgami’ said you and Uncle Leif were the only ones who were allowed to give us axes,” says Ask. That cousin of hers…
“There was a reason for that,” says Uncle Leif. “We didn’t want everyone to give away their weapons. We thought you might hurt us. So it was better if the leaders traded the extra axes, and that left everyone feeling better.”
“Tell us about the devil-moose!” says Dagrún, eager to get the story back on track.
“Christ’s double-headed…hammer, I do wish you children would let me finish!” says Agnarr gruffly. He’s always doing that, mixing pagan and Christian oaths, with a hint of something else below the surface.
“Alright. It was the morning of the fifth day after the big fleet of canoes had arrived, when we’d agreed on a number of bargain deals, and then the bull we’d brought with us started acting up.”
“Giju’ told me it was like–”
“A demon-moose,” laughs Aunt Kaldr–Aunt Gaqaliteq, she says her “real” name is. She’s holding on to Ask–whom she calls Aqamoq, an unpronounceable word for anyone whose first and only language is Norse–but still welcome at their table. Uncle Hákon is already asleep. “A moose, or maybe a nayoomee, but big and fat and blotchy, and instead of soft antlers it had things as sharp as knives sticking out of its head. Enormous eyes! And it was roaring like nothing I’d ever heard before.” She looks sheepish. “It feels silly now, with every tribe in the area having a bull and cow each.”
“You were only twelve at the time, Kaldr, we can cut you a little slack,” says Mother.
Aunt Kaldr, even thirteen years later, isn’t very clear on Norse phrases that aren’t immediately obvious. Dagrún knows this, and it’s why she can guess that her aunt’s shrug is her way of hiding this from her family–one of them, anyway. “In any case, it was…frightening. We’d never seen something like that before. We had nayoomee, of course we did, but nayoomee aren’t built like rocks and they don’t have horns. And they didn’t…bellow…like that. Tata’t was ready to draw back, drive away the strangers from our shores. He wasn’t sure. But he was getting more sure.”
Dagrún sees it in her mind–a sea full of little boats, each with a bowman and dozens of arrows. It wouldn’t damage the longships, not really, but it could have killed all of her family.
“It could have gone to Hel so easily,” says Uncle Agnarr, and for once he says it so seriously that Mother doesn’t rebuke him.
“But then…”
Uncle Agnarr’s face almost splits in half, his grin spreads so far across it. “The chicken happened.”
“We hadn’t thought much of them,” says Aunt Kaldr. “Just very fat rock ptarmigans, tata’t said.”
“But this one rooster, he’s too close to the pen,” Uncle Agnarr goes on, now openly chuckling. “And then he–he–” And he roars with laughter. “He jumps out of his pen and screeches at the bull! Eeeeeeeee!” And he waves his arms like a rooster’s wings.
Dagrún is laughing again, and so is Ask, and so is Aunt Kaldr, and Uncle Leif, and even Mother is cracking a smile. The atmosphere in the turf house is warm, comfortable, alive against the pull of the winter.
“So then…Kaldr, do you want to cover this bit?” says Uncle Agnarr, calming down a little bit.
Aunt Kaldr nods with good grace. “And then the bull jumped backwards, and tried to hide itself at the other end of the pen. And we laughed. Oh, everyone laughed. Here was this terrible demon-moose, scared of a tiny fat bird? What possible harm could it be to anyone at all?”
Everyone chuckles in agreement.
Uncle Agnarr looks around the house, at the smiling family, Norse and Skraeling and—a glance at Ask that Dagrún doesn’t miss, her gaze never leaving her favourite uncle—people that aren’t quite one or the other but a mix of both. And outside the turf house, isolated by the cold weather but there, are dozens of settlements just like theirs, Vinland growing and prosperous.
“You know,” he says, “I think it all worked out rather well, don’t you?”
* * *
Fifth Hatching Moon, 470th Year of the Confluence/July 19th, 1491 CE
Lisboa, Spain [Lisbon, Portugal]
This was not working out very well. But it wasn’t over yet. The thing to do was to focus on what you knew, and the Answers would find you.
Gloqontiej knew about the White Men. The Wila’gewa'l, who called themselves Vinlanders in their harsh tongue, were an honoured part of the Confederacy. Sure, they died much more frequently from plagues, and looked half-plagued themselves, but they had come up with iron and writing all on their own, and they taught the Nnu how to build the longships they were famed for across the known world. The last few who came down from the north had been fleeing the Dog-Men, poor refugees. And they told stories of an island they had come from, cold and miserable—an island as large as the land the Nnu now controlled, but much colder and less hospitable. A place where their strange religion had arisen.
It should have been simple. Granted, it was a long journey, but the wind was in their favour. Gloqontiej would land on the Wila’gewa'l’s old island, along with a team of Reminders to aid him, and by means of simple trinkets—gold, shiny shells, glass statues, and the like—would impress the local chiefs. Then he could set about his three missions: inform the locals of where their brethren had gone, see whether there was anything worth coming back for, and teach them about the Mystery.
That, he thought to himself as he looked around at the massive city, was an utterly stupid idea.
The place was enormous. Nearly as big as the great city of Ishpadinaa [Toronto], which Gloqontiej had visited as a trading captain. Buildings of stone and wood, bright and cheerful, and people dressed in strange but colourful clothes. And the ships! Great hulking things, like floating longhouses, with snow-white forests of sails on their decks.
“Please tell me you recognize the language,” he muttered to Lagnal, as they and two other men discreetly tried to scout out the area closest to their ship.
The Wila’gewa’j Timekeeper [1] held up a clenched fist in frustration. “Not a word of it, yal. And this place doesn’t appear in any of the old sagas.”
[1] Nnu longships use drummers to keep time, as well as to dictate swift changes in course. The position of Timekeeper is thus very similar to a First Officer, or indeed a stand-in captain.
Gloqontiej sighed. “Well, maybe someone else moved in. Someone from the Sea of Wind [Caribbean], the language sounds a little similar. Or maybe we’ve passed around the world and it turns out you came from Nognonee [California] after all.” [2]
[2] Strictly speaking this should be Lokloni, which is the Hichi [Miwok] word for the California Basin. However, the word has been passed through a couple of languages along the way, including Daajig, which has no liquids.
“Maybe so. But more importantly—what‘s the plan?”
“Same as before. Try to figure out whether there’s anything here we can make a profit on.” Gloqontiej grimaced at the site of a beautiful stone building, with glass in many, many colours, some he’d never seen before. “Well, that’s the glass beads out. Maybe we can buy some, though. And then…well, let’s try to find their chief’s house. See whether he’d be amenable to making a few connections.”
“Maybe they’ve got a Keeper instead,” suggested Lagnal. “They don’t look that mobile. Probably keep themselves in one place if they can help it.”
“Perhaps. However it may go, we have Questions we need Answered. And this may just be the place to do it. Get the rest of the delegation, we’d better head along.”
Perhaps they made something of an impression on the locals, with their sturdy trousers, their sea tunics in many-coloured patterns, their bronze-headed harpoons, and the Axe of Negotiation Gloqontiej carried with him. Certainly a lot of people were turning to look at them as they passed. Gloqontiej just kept going, with Lagnal, Migjigj, Gi’gwesu, and Solwal right beside him. And Gi’gwesu carried a precious birch-bark copy of the Investigation, from which he’d chanted to the crew while they were crossing the endless seas. They’d been across the primordial waters to reach this island, and they weren’t planning on just going straight home, huge city or not.
“I wonder if they sell slaves.”
Gloqontiej raised an eyebrow.
Lagnal shrugged. “Hey, they’re Christian. Most likely. It’s an even bet either way.”
“Well, I don’t see anyone with brand marks, so probably not. Ah, here we are…”
How to meet with the Keeper here? Getting to the biggest building in the city was probably an even bet, he’d probably be there along with the local Council. The gates around the hall were stupendously large, though. Not the most open to outside influence, then, these Wila’gewaq.
Now all he had to do was clap his hands and hope they let him in.
* * *
What say you?
So it was that Bjarne Herjulfson came to Greenland, and Jarl Érik received him well. And Bjarne spoke of lands he had seen, further to the west, but could not tell further stories, and so people gave his words no heed, and he was wroth. But Leif, son of Érik, was struck by his words, and with his father’s blessing took to the sea with thirty-five men, seeking Bjarne’s lands. And Érik would have come with them, but his horse stumbled as they rode to the ship, and he fell, and his foot was broken. Then said Érik, “Other lands there may be, but it is not for me to see more than that which I have claimed as my own.” So Leif, son of Érik, led the expedition.
The first land they saw had no grass, nor trees, but icebergs large as hills surrounded it, and a flat plain of rocks passed between the shore and mountains without pause. Then said Leif, “I will give this land the name Bjarne did not; I call this place Helluland [Baffin Island].” The second land they saw was of white sand and wood, and no hills rose up from the low shore. Then said Leif, “I call this place Markland [Labrador].” The third land they saw was an island to the east of a greater land, which they found after two days’ travel with a northeastern wind. And they sailed up a sound, and ran ashore at a place where a river flowed from a lake; and the water rose about their boat, and they pulled it to shore.
When they came to shore they found people dressed in wool finer than any they had seen, with daggers of bronze twisted like the tooth of a unicorn. The chieftain of these Skrælings, whose name was Glohvey, gave to Leif a blanket of wool as a gift, in exchange for a sword of iron. Then he showed Leif and his men their village, which he called Vantahek [L’Anse aux Medeaux], and their church of stone inscribed with a slanted cross, and the vast fields of roots and grass where their longneck sheep grazed. Then Leif said, “You are most fortunate to live in this land of meadows and calm forests. We seek your permission to remain a little while longer in this Vinland of yours.” And Glohvey agreed.
Leif and his men stayed the winter there, in longhouses they built themselves, and traded meat and metal with the Skrælings for roots and wool and good; and some took wives from among the Skrælings. When spring came, few wished to return to the land of Greenland; but a few Skrælings, whom Leif baptized, wished to see this new place for themselves. So Leif, with his new crew, set off to the north again…
from The Saga of the Vinlanders—
* * *
12th of Róa in the Thirteenth Year of the Vestrföl/February 20th, 1014 CEAgnarsbídur, Vinland [L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland]
"And it all would have gone to Hel if it weren't for that chicken."
"Agnarr, please," Mother moans. "Dagrún is eight winters old. And she's a Christian, just like her parents," she adds proudly.
"Fine, fine," says Uncle Agnarr, grinning his special grin with his neice, who is sitting next to him by the fire. "It all would have gone to Norway if it weren't for that chicken."
Dagrún laughs. Mother rolls her eyes, but smiles all the same.
"Your uncle Leif found this place only about a year before. Sets out for Iceland from Grandfather Érik’s compound in Greenland, and the next thing you know, he's managed to confuse east with west and goes completely the wrong way." He raises his voice to where Uncle Leif is dozing on a bench. "Must've been the sun in your eyes, right?"
"Shut up, Agnarr," says Uncle Leif, gruffly but not unkindly.
"Anyway, he gets blown waaay off course, and manages to find a land that's all stone. And he calls it...?"
"Markland!" says Dagrún eagerly. She knows this story off by heart, but honestly it never gets old.
"Right! And then he sailed a little more, and found...?"
"Helluland!"
"Absolutely correct! And finally, he and his party came ashore on a beautiful land, with trees and grass and rolling hills, and he called it...?"
"Nýfundinnland!"
And right on cue, her cousin Ask, who's six and new to the story, asks, "'New-found-land', Uncle Leif?" It's a tradition for someone to ask at this point.
"You going to tell me it doesn't work, boy?" grumbles Uncle Leif.
"Uncle Leif, it had already been found. We lived here, giju' and nemijgami' and nugumi and everyone."
Of course, there was always room for traditions to be broken.
Uncle Leif looks a bit more awake at this point. He frowns, the lines on his brow creasing like perfect rune-stems carved sideways into a rock. Then he shrugs and says, "Good thing I settled on Vinland, then, isn't it?"
"Tell Ask about Drunk Uncle Tyrker and the wine-berries!"
"Why not continue the story?" says Mother, in a voice that means she's thinking about getting her rusty sword out.
"Fine, fine," says Uncle Agnarr, rolling his eyes. "So he gets totally and ridiculously lost—"
"Shut up, Agnarr," says Uncle Leif, back to normal again.
“—and then trundles back next year towing a boatful of berries and loaded with fresh timber. Naturally, we talked about it, and Grandfather Érik said we should give it another go. Greenland was finally, well, becoming green—"
"We've got a weird taste in names in our family," grumbles Mother.
“—so there were likely to be new settlements coming up as more Icelanders and even Norwegians," he jokes, mainly at Father, sitting next to Mother, who rolls his eyes in a manner surprisingly like his wife, "think about expanding outwards from their over-crowded kingdoms. And of course there are barely any trees in Greenland, so we thought, why not go and set up business to the west?
"So we set off, with a few others, and found that nice bit of turf to build Agnarsbídur on—"
"I found the island first, I should have gotten to name the settlement," grumbles Uncle Leif, sitting up now.
"I was the one who spotted this place first," says Mother. Dagrún hasn't heard that bit.
"And I'm the only one who paid attention in runes lessons and carved the stela while you two were arguing over who forgot the mead," says Uncle Agnarr smugly. "Anyway, we'd settled down, got the livestock off the longships and started planting some wheat, and guess who comes out to visit?"
"Nemijgami'!" cries her cousin.
"That's right! Your grandfather, with nine canoes behind him. And they stayed for a while, the Skraelings, and we were just about ready to close a deal or two—”
“Nemijgami’ said you and Uncle Leif were the only ones who were allowed to give us axes,” says Ask. That cousin of hers…
“There was a reason for that,” says Uncle Leif. “We didn’t want everyone to give away their weapons. We thought you might hurt us. So it was better if the leaders traded the extra axes, and that left everyone feeling better.”
“Tell us about the devil-moose!” says Dagrún, eager to get the story back on track.
“Christ’s double-headed…hammer, I do wish you children would let me finish!” says Agnarr gruffly. He’s always doing that, mixing pagan and Christian oaths, with a hint of something else below the surface.
“Alright. It was the morning of the fifth day after the big fleet of canoes had arrived, when we’d agreed on a number of bargain deals, and then the bull we’d brought with us started acting up.”
“Giju’ told me it was like–”
“A demon-moose,” laughs Aunt Kaldr–Aunt Gaqaliteq, she says her “real” name is. She’s holding on to Ask–whom she calls Aqamoq, an unpronounceable word for anyone whose first and only language is Norse–but still welcome at their table. Uncle Hákon is already asleep. “A moose, or maybe a nayoomee, but big and fat and blotchy, and instead of soft antlers it had things as sharp as knives sticking out of its head. Enormous eyes! And it was roaring like nothing I’d ever heard before.” She looks sheepish. “It feels silly now, with every tribe in the area having a bull and cow each.”
“You were only twelve at the time, Kaldr, we can cut you a little slack,” says Mother.
Aunt Kaldr, even thirteen years later, isn’t very clear on Norse phrases that aren’t immediately obvious. Dagrún knows this, and it’s why she can guess that her aunt’s shrug is her way of hiding this from her family–one of them, anyway. “In any case, it was…frightening. We’d never seen something like that before. We had nayoomee, of course we did, but nayoomee aren’t built like rocks and they don’t have horns. And they didn’t…bellow…like that. Tata’t was ready to draw back, drive away the strangers from our shores. He wasn’t sure. But he was getting more sure.”
Dagrún sees it in her mind–a sea full of little boats, each with a bowman and dozens of arrows. It wouldn’t damage the longships, not really, but it could have killed all of her family.
“It could have gone to Hel so easily,” says Uncle Agnarr, and for once he says it so seriously that Mother doesn’t rebuke him.
“But then…”
Uncle Agnarr’s face almost splits in half, his grin spreads so far across it. “The chicken happened.”
“We hadn’t thought much of them,” says Aunt Kaldr. “Just very fat rock ptarmigans, tata’t said.”
“But this one rooster, he’s too close to the pen,” Uncle Agnarr goes on, now openly chuckling. “And then he–he–” And he roars with laughter. “He jumps out of his pen and screeches at the bull! Eeeeeeeee!” And he waves his arms like a rooster’s wings.
Dagrún is laughing again, and so is Ask, and so is Aunt Kaldr, and Uncle Leif, and even Mother is cracking a smile. The atmosphere in the turf house is warm, comfortable, alive against the pull of the winter.
“So then…Kaldr, do you want to cover this bit?” says Uncle Agnarr, calming down a little bit.
Aunt Kaldr nods with good grace. “And then the bull jumped backwards, and tried to hide itself at the other end of the pen. And we laughed. Oh, everyone laughed. Here was this terrible demon-moose, scared of a tiny fat bird? What possible harm could it be to anyone at all?”
Everyone chuckles in agreement.
Uncle Agnarr looks around the house, at the smiling family, Norse and Skraeling and—a glance at Ask that Dagrún doesn’t miss, her gaze never leaving her favourite uncle—people that aren’t quite one or the other but a mix of both. And outside the turf house, isolated by the cold weather but there, are dozens of settlements just like theirs, Vinland growing and prosperous.
“You know,” he says, “I think it all worked out rather well, don’t you?”
* * *
Fifth Hatching Moon, 470th Year of the Confluence/July 19th, 1491 CE
Lisboa, Spain [Lisbon, Portugal]
This was not working out very well. But it wasn’t over yet. The thing to do was to focus on what you knew, and the Answers would find you.
Gloqontiej knew about the White Men. The Wila’gewa'l, who called themselves Vinlanders in their harsh tongue, were an honoured part of the Confederacy. Sure, they died much more frequently from plagues, and looked half-plagued themselves, but they had come up with iron and writing all on their own, and they taught the Nnu how to build the longships they were famed for across the known world. The last few who came down from the north had been fleeing the Dog-Men, poor refugees. And they told stories of an island they had come from, cold and miserable—an island as large as the land the Nnu now controlled, but much colder and less hospitable. A place where their strange religion had arisen.
It should have been simple. Granted, it was a long journey, but the wind was in their favour. Gloqontiej would land on the Wila’gewa'l’s old island, along with a team of Reminders to aid him, and by means of simple trinkets—gold, shiny shells, glass statues, and the like—would impress the local chiefs. Then he could set about his three missions: inform the locals of where their brethren had gone, see whether there was anything worth coming back for, and teach them about the Mystery.
That, he thought to himself as he looked around at the massive city, was an utterly stupid idea.
The place was enormous. Nearly as big as the great city of Ishpadinaa [Toronto], which Gloqontiej had visited as a trading captain. Buildings of stone and wood, bright and cheerful, and people dressed in strange but colourful clothes. And the ships! Great hulking things, like floating longhouses, with snow-white forests of sails on their decks.
“Please tell me you recognize the language,” he muttered to Lagnal, as they and two other men discreetly tried to scout out the area closest to their ship.
The Wila’gewa’j Timekeeper [1] held up a clenched fist in frustration. “Not a word of it, yal. And this place doesn’t appear in any of the old sagas.”
[1] Nnu longships use drummers to keep time, as well as to dictate swift changes in course. The position of Timekeeper is thus very similar to a First Officer, or indeed a stand-in captain.
Gloqontiej sighed. “Well, maybe someone else moved in. Someone from the Sea of Wind [Caribbean], the language sounds a little similar. Or maybe we’ve passed around the world and it turns out you came from Nognonee [California] after all.” [2]
[2] Strictly speaking this should be Lokloni, which is the Hichi [Miwok] word for the California Basin. However, the word has been passed through a couple of languages along the way, including Daajig, which has no liquids.
“Maybe so. But more importantly—what‘s the plan?”
“Same as before. Try to figure out whether there’s anything here we can make a profit on.” Gloqontiej grimaced at the site of a beautiful stone building, with glass in many, many colours, some he’d never seen before. “Well, that’s the glass beads out. Maybe we can buy some, though. And then…well, let’s try to find their chief’s house. See whether he’d be amenable to making a few connections.”
“Maybe they’ve got a Keeper instead,” suggested Lagnal. “They don’t look that mobile. Probably keep themselves in one place if they can help it.”
“Perhaps. However it may go, we have Questions we need Answered. And this may just be the place to do it. Get the rest of the delegation, we’d better head along.”
Perhaps they made something of an impression on the locals, with their sturdy trousers, their sea tunics in many-coloured patterns, their bronze-headed harpoons, and the Axe of Negotiation Gloqontiej carried with him. Certainly a lot of people were turning to look at them as they passed. Gloqontiej just kept going, with Lagnal, Migjigj, Gi’gwesu, and Solwal right beside him. And Gi’gwesu carried a precious birch-bark copy of the Investigation, from which he’d chanted to the crew while they were crossing the endless seas. They’d been across the primordial waters to reach this island, and they weren’t planning on just going straight home, huge city or not.
“I wonder if they sell slaves.”
Gloqontiej raised an eyebrow.
Lagnal shrugged. “Hey, they’re Christian. Most likely. It’s an even bet either way.”
“Well, I don’t see anyone with brand marks, so probably not. Ah, here we are…”
How to meet with the Keeper here? Getting to the biggest building in the city was probably an even bet, he’d probably be there along with the local Council. The gates around the hall were stupendously large, though. Not the most open to outside influence, then, these Wila’gewaq.
Now all he had to do was clap his hands and hope they let him in.
* * *
What say you?
My name means either "person who trumpets minor points of learning" or "maker of words." That fact that it means the latter in Sindarin is a demonstration of the former. Beware.
Spell Merchant | Patreon
Spell Merchant | Patreon
Re: Kingawa Mk. II: Mystery from the West
A very interesting premise. What language are the names in?
Re: Kingawa Mk. II: Mystery from the West
Many thanks! The names are in Norse, then Mi’kmaq, and then Mi’kmaq with Norse origin.
My name means either "person who trumpets minor points of learning" or "maker of words." That fact that it means the latter in Sindarin is a demonstration of the former. Beware.
Spell Merchant | Patreon
Spell Merchant | Patreon
Re: Kingawa Mk. II: Mystery from the West
The continent that these stories take place on is the third-largest continent on the planet, coming behind Asia and Africa (still accorded their own place in this history). Connected to South America—here simply Pacifica—by the Isthmus of Panama, and to Asia intermittently via the Bering Strait, and to the other continents only by proxy. It is an old, old continent; some of the land in the north has been at the surface since the Cambrian, and the Appalachian mountains clock in at 480 million years old by modern estimates. But it is not inactive. Nor is it barren, despite a substantial chunk of the north being taken up by taiga, tundra, and icecaps.
There are two broad naming conventions practiced across the continent, depending on where you start. Ask anywhere in the east, and the name will likely be some variation of "Turtle Island", carried on the back (aptly) of a giant turtle. This is what the Nnu call Migjigj Mnigu, the Bii’weg Mikinaakominis, Ichhé Khéya Wita, and the like. On the other hand, should you ask along the west coast of the continent, past the Rockies, and the name you will get is much closer to "The Central World", in forms like Kochachi Kawiini or Tautitut Unnununa. The continent has also been called Tortucia (and Miguísnio), Duscland (and Hesperia), Vinland, Fusan, and France. For the sake of time, we will refer to it as a whole by the name given by the first Japanese explorer—Kingawa-no Tochi, the "Land of the Golden River", usually shortened to Kingawa. An appropriate name, perhaps, despite being applied initially only to a small area, for the land is rich in gold and rivers alike. (Besides, Aurifluminia just doesn't have the same ring to it.)
Moving from the Pacific to the Atlantic, we can divide the continent into five broad regions. The Cordillera is a Cretaceous-Era complex of mountains and basins stretching from Alaska to the Yucatán. The Shield comprises most of the northern half of the continent, including Greenland; where it's not covered in ice, bogs, or marshes, it's blanketed in thick coniferous forests. The Interior Lowlands include the Great Plains and Interior Plains alike, and are largely grassland. The Eastern Region borders the Atlantic coastline, holding the Mississippi River Basin as well as (technically) the Great Lakes, with the Appalachian Mountains and Florida Peninsula forming adjacent areas. And the Caribbean Islands, a plate all of its own, is marked by large swathes of jungle islands on a stormy sea, bridging the gap between Kingawa and Pacifica.
* * *
It will be said in other histories that there was simply not enough in the way of surviving plants and animals after the initial human migrations onto the continent, the larger animals mainly hunted to extinction and the plants small and not at all easy to grow. It is a reasonable enough explanation as to why Kingawa took so long to develop "civilizations" of its own, this largely referring to tangible evidence that people were killing each other in novel ways and writing about it at dinner parties. It is also, for the most part, wrong.
There are literally tens of thousands of plants and animals used for food by the hundreds of nations and ethnicities who lived in these lands before the arrival of any European; there are plants which were on the verge of "domestication", which again mainly refers to labour-intensive agriculture. Even without the arrival of maize, beans, and (to some degree) various cucurbits, the "Three Sisters" of other histories, there were plenty of plants that could have formed the backbone of a new agricultural complex.
The matter of animals is trickier. But therein, at least, there is some scope for imagination.
Kingawa had its own species of large quadruped herbivores long before the introduction of the horse and cow. Creatures like Hypohippus, Megahippus, even equus ferus represented the genus that would provide humans elsewhere with domesticated horses. Camels, meanwhile, likewise had their origins in Kingawa; the species Paracamelus crossed the Bering Land Bridge into Eurasia a mere 7.5-6.5 million years ago, about as long as hominids have walked the Earth. Of the genera that stayed behind, camelops remained the longest, before its last representative, camelops hesternus, was wiped out around 11,000 years before the present day.
This timeline sees some changes in that respect, and it begins with the unlikely presence of one forgotten species.
In our own timeline, camelops celeris is hardly particularly well-represented. This is because, for all intents and purposes, it does not exist. Camelops celeris is a relative of the more common camelops species, like c. kansanus, c. minidokae, and c. hesternus. It has managed to survive while its gazelle-like and giraffe-like cousins died out, in large part because of its adaptability to new climates and diets. Like its relatives, c. celeris does not have a hump; this seems to have been an adaptation from paracamelus, one that provided the two-hump and one-hump camels we are familiar with today. Instead, it has a relatively smooth back, although in colder climates it does make the concession of a thick coat of dun-coloured wool. Unlike its relatives, c. celeris is surprisingly small. C. hesternus averaged about 2.3m at the shoulder, the same size as the larger species of male dromedary in the modern day. C. celeris at best reaches only 1.8m at the shoulder, and is usually smaller than that by a few decimetres. What it loses in size, however, it makes up for in speed; c. celeris can break 40kmph easily if need be, even on rough terrain, and its smaller size allows it greater maneuverability.
C. celeriter has a few unique challenges for the budding domesticator. They are very social animals, and will respond well to training early in life, but they also are occasionally prone to pulling their way up the local hierarchy through small play-fights, wrestling matches, or spitting contests. (The last are a sight to see.) They do not have an estrus period; females of the species use induced ovulation, only releasing eggs upon the act of mating, which generally takes some time (15-30 minutes). Their gestation period is relatively slow, one kid being born roughly 350 days after mating, but the young are able to walk soon afterwards. They are perfectly at home with eating rough foliage; indeed, there are some desert plants in the south of *California which seem almost tailor-made for them. And they are incredibly loyal creatures, if you train them right.
It is the presence of c. celeris that makes the entrance of humanity to this continent different. Not as meaty as a mammoth or a giant beaver, faster than their camelops cousins, no threat like smilodon, nowhere near as bizarre as glyptodonts, they survived largely by being too quick for early hunters to catch. The Proto-Kingawans seem to have hunted them, as seen in cave paintings and archaeological sites, but never to the point of extinction. It would take some time for their potential as companions (as well as livestock) to catch on, but by about 2000 BCE c. celeris had been brought into play as a porter and meat-source for a group of pastoral peoples around the Great Salt Lake. The creature would come to be known by many names, but the one most commonly used in the study of Kingawa is nayoomee (singular and plural), from the Bii’wemowin word for "carrier-on-back".
Of course, there had been other developments by this point in time.
* * *
Agricultural developments in other areas of the world have tended to rely on the presence of founder crops, plants that for some reason or another produce an increased yield in terms of both energy and mass. In the Old World—so to speak—this was largely down to the eight Middle Eastern crops (emmer and einkorn wheats, barley, lentils, peas, chickpeas, bitter vetch, and flax), in addition to the sorghum of Sub-Saharan Africa and the rice of the Yangtze River Basin. In the New World—if one may call it that—our own history knows of peanuts, squash, and cassava, all of which come from Central or South America. They are essential—but they are also somewhat removed from the continent of Kingawa.
In terms of likely areas for agriculture to evolve, two places spring to mind. The first is the Mississippi River Basin, with a catchment area of 3.22 million square kilometres, about 13% of the continent, with very rich soils. And indeed it has developed agriculture of its own accord in our own world; by the 4th Millennium BCE, locals had domesticated (among other things) sunflowers, goosefoots, and a native squash of their own. This, in our timeline, would eventually lead to the Woodland Period, including the construction of circular mounds, pottery, and horticulture. There was also much in the way of gathering berries, which given a little more time could have produced domesticated varieties in the same way that "forest gathering" in Europe led to the domestication of plants like strawberries past the Middle Ages. And, of course, proximity to the Great Lakes, with its own connection to the Atlantic via the St. Lawrence River, to the Appalachian Mountains to the east, and for that matter to the channels of the Mississippi itself, meant that there was always plenty of room to move. The back-door out onto the Plains was helpful in some respects and quite a danger in others—but more on that later.
The second is the California Central Valley, on the opposite end of the continent. Relatively mild if somewhat dry, this stretch of land is about 47,000 square kilometres and is bordered by no fewer than six mountain ranges plus the San Francisco Bay. Agriculture developed here as well—forest agriculture and permaculture, intended to keep the land as functional as possible for everyone (and everything) living upon it. But there were a few crops which could stand further development. Chenopodium berlandieri, for example, also called pitseed goosefoot, had great potential as a food crop prior to the introduction of maize. Schoenoplectus acutus, also called tule, has amazing potential both as a food-stock and as a textile—similar to papyrus but much more easily edible, its rhizomes and young shoots may both be consumed for nourishment. Hesperoyucca whipplei, the chaparral yucca, is more common in the southern part of the region, and along with opuntia littoralis (the coastal pricklypear, related to the nopal cactus) has a "heart" and flowers that can be consumed for fibre. Yerba santa, alias eriodyctum californicum, has potential as both food and a sweetener (not to mention its medicinal qualities). Acorns, of course, can be gathered, albeit not domesticated per se. And, of course, ovis canadensis, the bighorn sheep, has potential as livestock alongside nayoomee, to say nothing of the aquaculture that was not only possible but practiced.
In this timeline, both managed to make their mark, one after the other.
By about 5500 BCE, shap'a [tule] had been domesticated in the San Francisco Bay Area, and by 4500 BCE had spread alongside passalle [yerba santa], haka [soaproot—specifically chlorogalum pomeridianum], and various berries across the whole north of the Valley. Hunting nayoomee provided a much more prominent source of meat, even if domestication was still some way away, and the associated increase in population led to increased efforts to maintain a reasonable foot supply in other ways. In the California of our timeline, 500 "sub-tribes" of about 50 to 500 people were scattered across the land. In the California of this timeline—Kochani, from the Kochachi word for "great house", in reference to the valley—individual tribes started to grow much larger and much more quickly, causing an increase in integration. People still managed the land in ways that kept the local ecosystems more or less intact, but the key point was that the introduction of these three plants caused a major stir, and in more ways than one.
Kochani passed into the Archaic Period, dated from 4500 BCE to around 1500 BCE, and saw the construction of semi-permanent settlements along the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers. Houses went from rounded constructions of reeds and wood to wattle-and-daub roundhouses; pit houses became underground complexes with chimney-like skylights. Blankets and clothes were woven from tule reeds or else made from the skins of nearby animals; the most prized of these appears to have been deer, although nayoomee, tule elk, squirrel, and rabbit skins were all used to one degree or another. The Proto-Kochanians never stopped crafting exquisite baskets and bowls from reeds and other plants, but now their work was supplemented by clay pots, likewise painted with geometric (usually triangular) figures and various animals. The evocative minimalism that would characterize the art of the Valley began during this period, and never quite went away.
One particular feature that evolved around this time was the concept of the oklapna. Although individual villages might have been absorbed at this time, beliefs from descendant cultures seem to suggest the beginnings of ancestor worship around this time, heavily tied to the land the Proto-Kochanian families lived on. In a sense, the ancestors became the land. Ceremonial body paint during important occasions may have marked particular lineages; frescos from the Ewu Pit House [Terra Linda, San Rafael] show men marked with overlapping lines of white paint from the chin down to the navel, although none of the symbols are recognizable today. Under this system, although there were technically rulers in the sense of one place gaining prominence over others, there was always the sense of being "first among equals"; the patriarch of a particular oklapna had no direct right to any other oklapna's land or people, and needed to maintain prominence through the exchange of gifts or services. Early Kochani civilization is marked by a spirit of reciprocity, one that mitigated the effects agriculture might otherwise bring to a region in many ways. Although the languages spoken in the area were far fewer—the Proto-Penutian language maintained a presence, and so did the Pomoan and Patwin language families, but many others faded away—individual communities were still fundamentally tied to the land.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, pastoral practices involving the chasing of nayoomee, but more significantly involved the domestication of a small subspecies of the American bison, in this case bison bison riparianus. Small, of course, is relative; heights at withers only reaches about 175cm for the riverbank bison, but that's still considerably shorter than even the plains bison. Prone to congregating around rivers and much slower-moving than their larger cousins after the grasslands of earlier millennia dried up, the riverbank bison became an integral part of the lives of the early inhabitants of the area. Once again, a focus on easy food encouraged the adoption of much more intensive farming much earlier, usually in fields along the migration paths of the riverbank bison. And just as before, the sunflower, goosefoot, amaranth, and squash all made their appearances, and the construction of mounds for ceremonial purposes began in earnest—around 4000 BCE, seemingly completely independently of Kochani. But not independent of the Great Lakes; the Early Copper Complex seems to have involved a certain amount of trade with the newly-emerging cities to the south, although this was not to have much effect for quite a while beyond the sharing of certain basic concepts.
The Xosau Culture (4000-1600 BCE) was known for three things in particular, at least in the local legends of the time. The first was its mounds, which served a great many purposes, from centres of government to charnel houses to festival pavilions to simple villages. These are perhaps the element best-known today; the local people still call themselves Wãšige Ohé, "Mound-Builders". While there was trade up and down the river in woven ships and hollow-log canoes, the primary means of governance was centred on the mound. Positions of social prominence—the origin of many noble families and bloodlines—were marked by how deep within the mound one was allowed to be buried in death, dried and then interred with goods to be offered to the gods of the underworld. The second was the shell-tempered pottery, a fine upgrade from the earlier fibre-tempered pottery of the earlier Wanderer Complex and often incised with specific symbols that maintained their meaning (at least in theory) for thousands of years. Both of these would have an effect on the local cultures around them, but the third element—what the Wãšige Ohé call wíngtke—would transform society in a different way.
To be a wíngtke was to be born a man, but to choose to act as a woman. For the Xosau Culture this seems to have been very important—as someone who bestrode two worlds, a wíngtke (and there were never very many) were perhaps the ultimate in priestly devotees; they could attend to religious ceremonies without the burdens of being distracted by their lineage. This meant that they could not inherit, but often played key roles as court advisors to mound-lords or soothsayers and oracles for the general public. The institution started with the Xosau Culture, and while things have changed every so often some remnant of this remains by the time of Gloqontiej's expedition to the Sunrise Lands.
Where Kochani was relatively egalitarian from the start, the Xosau Culture was quite hierarchical, creating a chain of command from the city-king down to the mound-king (the lord of a particular mount) to various bureaucrats to subjects to slaves—the last usually captured from other cities, but interestingly enough owned by the city-king or at best the mound-king, not by individuals. Of course, given some of the potential jobs for a slave, including (after around 2000 BCE) the forging of arsenic bronze, this may not have been an advantage. But the city-states all accorded one another as equals; equals far-removed, and equals liable to being conquered if they couldn't make a show for themselves, but equals. And, of course, out on the grasslands beyond the river, anything could go. Very often, in fact, people did; by the time the riverbank bison and nayoomee were domesticated, around 2000 BCE, there was a thriving community of "exiles" who chose to follow the wild beasts instead of live within the mounds of their forefathers. And so a parallel culture of sorts formed—hierarchical versus egalitarian, order against freedom, tradition against…well, different traditions, by this time. But the point stands.
By the year 1800, the centres of government in both places—such as it was—had begun expanding their reach across the continent, along ancient footpaths trekked by generations of people from one end of Kingawa to the other. We begin to see soapstone and copper in Kochani, fine gold-working on the breasts of human sacrifices in the region that would become known as Hvshi Anowa in later centuries. We see the beginnings of trade tokens, carved into clay tablets using a stylus of tule reed. We may notice certain cultural concepts from lands in-between—the regions that would become known as Tuuwaqatsi, Máyan, Akiiwan, even Huitztlacemanahuatl to the far south—passing along the Ancient Way.
And all it would take was one group of Californians with a penchant for troublemaking and a love of nayoomee to irrevocably change the landscape forever.
* * *
Thoughts?
There are two broad naming conventions practiced across the continent, depending on where you start. Ask anywhere in the east, and the name will likely be some variation of "Turtle Island", carried on the back (aptly) of a giant turtle. This is what the Nnu call Migjigj Mnigu, the Bii’weg Mikinaakominis, Ichhé Khéya Wita, and the like. On the other hand, should you ask along the west coast of the continent, past the Rockies, and the name you will get is much closer to "The Central World", in forms like Kochachi Kawiini or Tautitut Unnununa. The continent has also been called Tortucia (and Miguísnio), Duscland (and Hesperia), Vinland, Fusan, and France. For the sake of time, we will refer to it as a whole by the name given by the first Japanese explorer—Kingawa-no Tochi, the "Land of the Golden River", usually shortened to Kingawa. An appropriate name, perhaps, despite being applied initially only to a small area, for the land is rich in gold and rivers alike. (Besides, Aurifluminia just doesn't have the same ring to it.)
Moving from the Pacific to the Atlantic, we can divide the continent into five broad regions. The Cordillera is a Cretaceous-Era complex of mountains and basins stretching from Alaska to the Yucatán. The Shield comprises most of the northern half of the continent, including Greenland; where it's not covered in ice, bogs, or marshes, it's blanketed in thick coniferous forests. The Interior Lowlands include the Great Plains and Interior Plains alike, and are largely grassland. The Eastern Region borders the Atlantic coastline, holding the Mississippi River Basin as well as (technically) the Great Lakes, with the Appalachian Mountains and Florida Peninsula forming adjacent areas. And the Caribbean Islands, a plate all of its own, is marked by large swathes of jungle islands on a stormy sea, bridging the gap between Kingawa and Pacifica.
* * *
It will be said in other histories that there was simply not enough in the way of surviving plants and animals after the initial human migrations onto the continent, the larger animals mainly hunted to extinction and the plants small and not at all easy to grow. It is a reasonable enough explanation as to why Kingawa took so long to develop "civilizations" of its own, this largely referring to tangible evidence that people were killing each other in novel ways and writing about it at dinner parties. It is also, for the most part, wrong.
There are literally tens of thousands of plants and animals used for food by the hundreds of nations and ethnicities who lived in these lands before the arrival of any European; there are plants which were on the verge of "domestication", which again mainly refers to labour-intensive agriculture. Even without the arrival of maize, beans, and (to some degree) various cucurbits, the "Three Sisters" of other histories, there were plenty of plants that could have formed the backbone of a new agricultural complex.
The matter of animals is trickier. But therein, at least, there is some scope for imagination.
Kingawa had its own species of large quadruped herbivores long before the introduction of the horse and cow. Creatures like Hypohippus, Megahippus, even equus ferus represented the genus that would provide humans elsewhere with domesticated horses. Camels, meanwhile, likewise had their origins in Kingawa; the species Paracamelus crossed the Bering Land Bridge into Eurasia a mere 7.5-6.5 million years ago, about as long as hominids have walked the Earth. Of the genera that stayed behind, camelops remained the longest, before its last representative, camelops hesternus, was wiped out around 11,000 years before the present day.
This timeline sees some changes in that respect, and it begins with the unlikely presence of one forgotten species.
In our own timeline, camelops celeris is hardly particularly well-represented. This is because, for all intents and purposes, it does not exist. Camelops celeris is a relative of the more common camelops species, like c. kansanus, c. minidokae, and c. hesternus. It has managed to survive while its gazelle-like and giraffe-like cousins died out, in large part because of its adaptability to new climates and diets. Like its relatives, c. celeris does not have a hump; this seems to have been an adaptation from paracamelus, one that provided the two-hump and one-hump camels we are familiar with today. Instead, it has a relatively smooth back, although in colder climates it does make the concession of a thick coat of dun-coloured wool. Unlike its relatives, c. celeris is surprisingly small. C. hesternus averaged about 2.3m at the shoulder, the same size as the larger species of male dromedary in the modern day. C. celeris at best reaches only 1.8m at the shoulder, and is usually smaller than that by a few decimetres. What it loses in size, however, it makes up for in speed; c. celeris can break 40kmph easily if need be, even on rough terrain, and its smaller size allows it greater maneuverability.
C. celeriter has a few unique challenges for the budding domesticator. They are very social animals, and will respond well to training early in life, but they also are occasionally prone to pulling their way up the local hierarchy through small play-fights, wrestling matches, or spitting contests. (The last are a sight to see.) They do not have an estrus period; females of the species use induced ovulation, only releasing eggs upon the act of mating, which generally takes some time (15-30 minutes). Their gestation period is relatively slow, one kid being born roughly 350 days after mating, but the young are able to walk soon afterwards. They are perfectly at home with eating rough foliage; indeed, there are some desert plants in the south of *California which seem almost tailor-made for them. And they are incredibly loyal creatures, if you train them right.
It is the presence of c. celeris that makes the entrance of humanity to this continent different. Not as meaty as a mammoth or a giant beaver, faster than their camelops cousins, no threat like smilodon, nowhere near as bizarre as glyptodonts, they survived largely by being too quick for early hunters to catch. The Proto-Kingawans seem to have hunted them, as seen in cave paintings and archaeological sites, but never to the point of extinction. It would take some time for their potential as companions (as well as livestock) to catch on, but by about 2000 BCE c. celeris had been brought into play as a porter and meat-source for a group of pastoral peoples around the Great Salt Lake. The creature would come to be known by many names, but the one most commonly used in the study of Kingawa is nayoomee (singular and plural), from the Bii’wemowin word for "carrier-on-back".
Of course, there had been other developments by this point in time.
* * *
Agricultural developments in other areas of the world have tended to rely on the presence of founder crops, plants that for some reason or another produce an increased yield in terms of both energy and mass. In the Old World—so to speak—this was largely down to the eight Middle Eastern crops (emmer and einkorn wheats, barley, lentils, peas, chickpeas, bitter vetch, and flax), in addition to the sorghum of Sub-Saharan Africa and the rice of the Yangtze River Basin. In the New World—if one may call it that—our own history knows of peanuts, squash, and cassava, all of which come from Central or South America. They are essential—but they are also somewhat removed from the continent of Kingawa.
In terms of likely areas for agriculture to evolve, two places spring to mind. The first is the Mississippi River Basin, with a catchment area of 3.22 million square kilometres, about 13% of the continent, with very rich soils. And indeed it has developed agriculture of its own accord in our own world; by the 4th Millennium BCE, locals had domesticated (among other things) sunflowers, goosefoots, and a native squash of their own. This, in our timeline, would eventually lead to the Woodland Period, including the construction of circular mounds, pottery, and horticulture. There was also much in the way of gathering berries, which given a little more time could have produced domesticated varieties in the same way that "forest gathering" in Europe led to the domestication of plants like strawberries past the Middle Ages. And, of course, proximity to the Great Lakes, with its own connection to the Atlantic via the St. Lawrence River, to the Appalachian Mountains to the east, and for that matter to the channels of the Mississippi itself, meant that there was always plenty of room to move. The back-door out onto the Plains was helpful in some respects and quite a danger in others—but more on that later.
The second is the California Central Valley, on the opposite end of the continent. Relatively mild if somewhat dry, this stretch of land is about 47,000 square kilometres and is bordered by no fewer than six mountain ranges plus the San Francisco Bay. Agriculture developed here as well—forest agriculture and permaculture, intended to keep the land as functional as possible for everyone (and everything) living upon it. But there were a few crops which could stand further development. Chenopodium berlandieri, for example, also called pitseed goosefoot, had great potential as a food crop prior to the introduction of maize. Schoenoplectus acutus, also called tule, has amazing potential both as a food-stock and as a textile—similar to papyrus but much more easily edible, its rhizomes and young shoots may both be consumed for nourishment. Hesperoyucca whipplei, the chaparral yucca, is more common in the southern part of the region, and along with opuntia littoralis (the coastal pricklypear, related to the nopal cactus) has a "heart" and flowers that can be consumed for fibre. Yerba santa, alias eriodyctum californicum, has potential as both food and a sweetener (not to mention its medicinal qualities). Acorns, of course, can be gathered, albeit not domesticated per se. And, of course, ovis canadensis, the bighorn sheep, has potential as livestock alongside nayoomee, to say nothing of the aquaculture that was not only possible but practiced.
In this timeline, both managed to make their mark, one after the other.
By about 5500 BCE, shap'a [tule] had been domesticated in the San Francisco Bay Area, and by 4500 BCE had spread alongside passalle [yerba santa], haka [soaproot—specifically chlorogalum pomeridianum], and various berries across the whole north of the Valley. Hunting nayoomee provided a much more prominent source of meat, even if domestication was still some way away, and the associated increase in population led to increased efforts to maintain a reasonable foot supply in other ways. In the California of our timeline, 500 "sub-tribes" of about 50 to 500 people were scattered across the land. In the California of this timeline—Kochani, from the Kochachi word for "great house", in reference to the valley—individual tribes started to grow much larger and much more quickly, causing an increase in integration. People still managed the land in ways that kept the local ecosystems more or less intact, but the key point was that the introduction of these three plants caused a major stir, and in more ways than one.
Kochani passed into the Archaic Period, dated from 4500 BCE to around 1500 BCE, and saw the construction of semi-permanent settlements along the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers. Houses went from rounded constructions of reeds and wood to wattle-and-daub roundhouses; pit houses became underground complexes with chimney-like skylights. Blankets and clothes were woven from tule reeds or else made from the skins of nearby animals; the most prized of these appears to have been deer, although nayoomee, tule elk, squirrel, and rabbit skins were all used to one degree or another. The Proto-Kochanians never stopped crafting exquisite baskets and bowls from reeds and other plants, but now their work was supplemented by clay pots, likewise painted with geometric (usually triangular) figures and various animals. The evocative minimalism that would characterize the art of the Valley began during this period, and never quite went away.
One particular feature that evolved around this time was the concept of the oklapna. Although individual villages might have been absorbed at this time, beliefs from descendant cultures seem to suggest the beginnings of ancestor worship around this time, heavily tied to the land the Proto-Kochanian families lived on. In a sense, the ancestors became the land. Ceremonial body paint during important occasions may have marked particular lineages; frescos from the Ewu Pit House [Terra Linda, San Rafael] show men marked with overlapping lines of white paint from the chin down to the navel, although none of the symbols are recognizable today. Under this system, although there were technically rulers in the sense of one place gaining prominence over others, there was always the sense of being "first among equals"; the patriarch of a particular oklapna had no direct right to any other oklapna's land or people, and needed to maintain prominence through the exchange of gifts or services. Early Kochani civilization is marked by a spirit of reciprocity, one that mitigated the effects agriculture might otherwise bring to a region in many ways. Although the languages spoken in the area were far fewer—the Proto-Penutian language maintained a presence, and so did the Pomoan and Patwin language families, but many others faded away—individual communities were still fundamentally tied to the land.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, pastoral practices involving the chasing of nayoomee, but more significantly involved the domestication of a small subspecies of the American bison, in this case bison bison riparianus. Small, of course, is relative; heights at withers only reaches about 175cm for the riverbank bison, but that's still considerably shorter than even the plains bison. Prone to congregating around rivers and much slower-moving than their larger cousins after the grasslands of earlier millennia dried up, the riverbank bison became an integral part of the lives of the early inhabitants of the area. Once again, a focus on easy food encouraged the adoption of much more intensive farming much earlier, usually in fields along the migration paths of the riverbank bison. And just as before, the sunflower, goosefoot, amaranth, and squash all made their appearances, and the construction of mounds for ceremonial purposes began in earnest—around 4000 BCE, seemingly completely independently of Kochani. But not independent of the Great Lakes; the Early Copper Complex seems to have involved a certain amount of trade with the newly-emerging cities to the south, although this was not to have much effect for quite a while beyond the sharing of certain basic concepts.
The Xosau Culture (4000-1600 BCE) was known for three things in particular, at least in the local legends of the time. The first was its mounds, which served a great many purposes, from centres of government to charnel houses to festival pavilions to simple villages. These are perhaps the element best-known today; the local people still call themselves Wãšige Ohé, "Mound-Builders". While there was trade up and down the river in woven ships and hollow-log canoes, the primary means of governance was centred on the mound. Positions of social prominence—the origin of many noble families and bloodlines—were marked by how deep within the mound one was allowed to be buried in death, dried and then interred with goods to be offered to the gods of the underworld. The second was the shell-tempered pottery, a fine upgrade from the earlier fibre-tempered pottery of the earlier Wanderer Complex and often incised with specific symbols that maintained their meaning (at least in theory) for thousands of years. Both of these would have an effect on the local cultures around them, but the third element—what the Wãšige Ohé call wíngtke—would transform society in a different way.
To be a wíngtke was to be born a man, but to choose to act as a woman. For the Xosau Culture this seems to have been very important—as someone who bestrode two worlds, a wíngtke (and there were never very many) were perhaps the ultimate in priestly devotees; they could attend to religious ceremonies without the burdens of being distracted by their lineage. This meant that they could not inherit, but often played key roles as court advisors to mound-lords or soothsayers and oracles for the general public. The institution started with the Xosau Culture, and while things have changed every so often some remnant of this remains by the time of Gloqontiej's expedition to the Sunrise Lands.
Where Kochani was relatively egalitarian from the start, the Xosau Culture was quite hierarchical, creating a chain of command from the city-king down to the mound-king (the lord of a particular mount) to various bureaucrats to subjects to slaves—the last usually captured from other cities, but interestingly enough owned by the city-king or at best the mound-king, not by individuals. Of course, given some of the potential jobs for a slave, including (after around 2000 BCE) the forging of arsenic bronze, this may not have been an advantage. But the city-states all accorded one another as equals; equals far-removed, and equals liable to being conquered if they couldn't make a show for themselves, but equals. And, of course, out on the grasslands beyond the river, anything could go. Very often, in fact, people did; by the time the riverbank bison and nayoomee were domesticated, around 2000 BCE, there was a thriving community of "exiles" who chose to follow the wild beasts instead of live within the mounds of their forefathers. And so a parallel culture of sorts formed—hierarchical versus egalitarian, order against freedom, tradition against…well, different traditions, by this time. But the point stands.
By the year 1800, the centres of government in both places—such as it was—had begun expanding their reach across the continent, along ancient footpaths trekked by generations of people from one end of Kingawa to the other. We begin to see soapstone and copper in Kochani, fine gold-working on the breasts of human sacrifices in the region that would become known as Hvshi Anowa in later centuries. We see the beginnings of trade tokens, carved into clay tablets using a stylus of tule reed. We may notice certain cultural concepts from lands in-between—the regions that would become known as Tuuwaqatsi, Máyan, Akiiwan, even Huitztlacemanahuatl to the far south—passing along the Ancient Way.
And all it would take was one group of Californians with a penchant for troublemaking and a love of nayoomee to irrevocably change the landscape forever.
* * *
Thoughts?
My name means either "person who trumpets minor points of learning" or "maker of words." That fact that it means the latter in Sindarin is a demonstration of the former. Beware.
Spell Merchant | Patreon
Spell Merchant | Patreon