Legend of the Wyakin

By David G. Rasmussen

River boat travel on the upper Missouri river was the best way to access the opportunities desired in the gold rush camps in 1865. Close living for long periods brought out social issues as well as diseases opportunities. Gold fever caused men to become irrational at times. Long-held Europial bigaties showed through in religions.
These and other conditions caused the deaths of a Jewish couple from Spain and the abandonment of their son Cortez in the wilderness known as the Missouri River Breaks. Thirteen-year-old Cortez was grief stricken but his resourcefulness helped him to survive plus his willingness to accept the friendship of an ancient grizzly bear that he named "Modrables El Oso." The chance meeting of a Nez Perce Indian boy who was on a spirit quest and that spoke english created a friendship that helped both boys survive their isolation and created their lives together. El Oso attacked and killed a villain that was trying to kill Cortez, was shot tin the process. The Nez Perce boy was also shot, but survived with the care of Cortez to make it to his fathers hunting camp. El Oso survived the shooting but later became wyakin to Cortez. Cortez was adopted by the Nez Perce hunting band and he learned to become one of them and learn the life of a healer-shaman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781927532041

David G. Rasmussen

David Rasmussen was born in Missoula, Montana. His career as a geological and mining engineer has taken him to many locations and cultures including Chile and New Mexico. Stories based on his observations of unique places has become his avocation.

Book preview

LEGEND

OF THE WYAKIN

Book One of the Wyakin Trilogy

A Historical Novel

David G. Rasmussen

Published in 2013

Copyright © David G. Rasmussen

Authorized Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews, without the prior written consent of the author. For information please contact David G. Rasmussen, 1185 – SE 3rd Street, Cedaredge, CO, 81413, USA, or send an email to [e-mail].

Dedicated in memory of:

David James Rasmussen (July 9, 1974 — September 25, 2002)

His spirit crossed over.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Carol Ann Rasmussen for her many patient read-throughs over a period of years, constructive criticisms and editing.

Thanks also to Randy Morse for his professional editing and advice. He made Legend of The Wyakin a book, and a good read.

PROLOGUE

Look for the meadowlark,

Listen for the meadowlark.

He will sing of the animal spirits,

He will sing of the spirit people,

He will sing of wyakin,

He will sing for what is to come.

Look for the meadowlark,

Listen for the meadowlark

He will sing for the free people,

He will sing joyful songs for you,

He will sing when your trail is good,

He will be silent when your trail is poor.

Look for the meadowlark,

Listen for the meadowlark

Meadowlark is friend of the Ni-mi-pu.

The Real People call our friend Qocqoc.

Culculshensah, Nez Perce shaman, 1865

Free native peoples have long believed in the existence of animal spirits abiding with them in the wild places. Each tribe of free people has its unique traditional beliefs regarding the influence of special animals as spirit guides. These guardian spirits joined with chosen individuals to lend courage and wisdom in times of stress, danger, and indecision. The Nez Perce people (Ni-mi-pu) of the intermountain region of the Pacific Northwest United States called these animal guardian spirits Wyakin in their native Sahaptin language.

Belief in animal spirits along with an active and involved human spirit-world is both understandable and acceptable in the wilderness of the Missouri River Breaks. While this wild gorge offers beauty and solitude, it offers few opportunities for civilized people to earn a living. This, however, was not true during the last half of the 1800’s, when steam-driven riverboats traveled the upper Missouri, supplying gold-rush towns and camps with fresh wealth seekers and goods from the outside world. People of European descent frequented the Breaks as travelers, prospectors, hunters, and suppliers of riverboat services, but left few signs of any lasting presence. Tragedies happened in the rush of events and travel on the river, often leaving in their wake only graves, forgotten by future generations. It is easy to believe that the spirits of those left behind might still occupy the Breaks, waiting patiently through the generations—their presence undiscovered—spirits with tales to tell living people—people who have difficulty accepting their spectral presence.

It was a warm, late summer day as thirteen-year-old Steve and his teacher/writer/history buff father, John Thompson, explored the bottomlands isolated by the sheer cliffs that define the Missouri River Breaks of central Montana. This now-quiet and wild gorge once witnessed canoes, keelboats, then steamboats, all fighting the river current to access the great prairies and the Rocky Mountains beyond. The layers of shale, sandstone and limestone cliffs had once echoed the sounds of chugging engines, steam whistles, and the coarse shouts and curses of boat crews. Hoofed and pawed creatures must have raised their heads in wary observation of the strange mechanical beasts traveling up and down the river. Hundreds of generations of free nomadic peoples had wintered in the river’s protected gorge, first hunting ice-age beasts, then the bison, elk, deer and antelope that followed, on the prairies above.

On this August day, the stillness was only broken by the occasional caws of circling crows, and the splashes of osprey diving for dinner in the slow flowing Missouri.

John and Steve Thompson were in the Breaks doing research for a freelance article John intended to write—an article focused on the period when river traffic transported gold-fevered passengers and freight through the Breaks to the long-dead river port town of Carroll.

Acutely conscious of the ethereal quiet on this afternoon, father and son avoided speaking, unwilling to disturb this rare experience. Their reverie was broken when they noticed the motion of the oddly splintered top of an ancient telegraph pole, just visible over the second-growth trees populating the Carroll site. The pole seemed to be shaking while emitting a strange, vibrating noise, a noise accentuated by the strange quiet. The young jack pines scattered about the site stood at rigid attention. Not a branch or needle ruffled on this windless day; the dominant stillness seemed to emphasize the strange noise of the shaking pole.

A shale ridge spilled down from the cliff near where father and son stopped to observe. Both saw that it would provide an obvious short way out of the gorge, so with gestures they agreed that walking the ridge would allow them to look down on what once had been a wagon road along the banks of the great river, and hopefully provide a better view of the mysteriously shaking pole.

Now well up the ridge, the two were alerted to the ominous, but distant roll of thunder. Steve, ever-adventurous as only thirteen-year-old boys can be, hopped down from the ridge crest, hoping for a better look at the road and pole. He landed feet-together, ankle-deep in the soft talus, skidding down the steep slope as if on skis. His father stuck with the easier going on the ridge crest. He headed for the point where the ridge met the old telegraph line trace as it angled up and over the rimrock.

John moved casually into a position where he’d be able to watch his son as well as see the full length of the vibrating telegraph pole. Steve was still bushwhacking his way through the jack pine and underbrush.

Climbing a few more steps, John was able to peer down into the little clearing that surrounded the pole. A quick glance froze him in his tracks. There, immediately below him, scratching its great back against the weathered telegraph pole in pure ecstasy, stood a huge silvertip grizzly bear. John realized in a panic that Steve was still pushing pine branches aside, making his way up the gulch toward the vibrating pole—unaware of the terrible danger ahead. John waved his arms in wild desperation, trying to attract Steve’s attention–attempts at shouting a warning failed, fear freezing the words in his throat.

Steve, still concentrating on scrambling through the thick undergrowth, saw and heard nothing. John realized his son wouldn’t discover the enormous bear until he was within a few feet of the danger. Heart thumping, blood pounding in his ears, he watched in horror as his son rounded the last pine separating him from the grizzly. Speechless with fright, John loosened his feet and leaped for the ridge crest, causing a small cascade of shale platelets. This sudden movement caught the bear’s attention enough to stop his scratching. Leaning dumbly against the pole, testing his poor eyesight against the detected movement, the bear’s ears twitched as he searched for the sounds, its great snout jutted forward to better judge the noise of the man’s movement, discerning its nature and meaning.

Steve jolted to a halt as soon as he saw the great bear. To his horror, he found himself no more than 20 feet from over 600 pounds of muscle, fur, teeth, and claw. The boy knew instantly what terrible danger he was in. Then the stone cascade triggered by his father caught his attention as it had the bear’s. Both bear and boy looked up at John. After a moment’s shocked hesitation, Steve screamed, Dad! Dad!"

At this same moment, the weak shale outcrop again crumbled under John’s feet. He lunged desperately to catch himself, twisting to face the slope as he dug his toes and hands into the loose rock, instinctively knowing if he fell, he would be of no help to Steve. Breathing raggedly, John scrambled back up to the crest, sat down with heels dug into the loose shale below him, and gestured frantically for his son to come uphill toward him.

Steve’s eyes were dilated with fear as he looked frantically, first at the beast, then at his father, recognizing the mortal danger he was in. After a quick look over his shoulder at the silvertip, Steve bolted across the strip of level ground separating him from the foot of the shale slope. The boy’s sudden movement alerted the bear to Steve’s location. He rocked forward, away from the pole. Balancing on his stubby hind legs, swaying slightly, the grizzly took a step from the old telegraph pole, massive head jutting forward, long silver hairs bristling from its humped shoulders like quills on an angry porcupine. The bear’s lips were curled, exposing cruelly jagged teeth. Strange popping sounds emerged from the enormous mouth, and saliva dripped from his jowls.

Steve, terrified, began scrambling up the steep talus slope toward his father, but each panicked step he took in the loose shale flakes caused him to slip back the same distance. It was as if the slope was more liquid than solid. He dropped to all fours, clawing madly for any purchase. He managed to crawl only a few feet up the slope, gaining no more than a body length in elevation, leaving him within an easily outreached paw of the huge grizzly.

Panicked, Steve looked up toward his father, who stretched his arms as far as he could, reaching out and down as he screamed for his son to climb for his life. Fully fifty feet of steeply shifting shale separated them. Terror and hopelessness swept over the boy as he took a frantic glance over his shoulder to gauge the bear’s location.

Still erect on his hind legs, the grizzly waddled slowly but deliberately toward Steve, his great belly swaying with each stiff-legged step.

John was horror stricken as he watched the eight-foot-tall bear shuffle toward his son, who once again scrambled and clawed for footing on the shale slope in desperate futility. Beside himself with fear for Steve’s safety, John ripped off his backpack, and searched his pockets for some sort of weapon. He found nothing. The rocks that surrounded him provided no weapon capable of thwarting a grizzly of this size. Not knowing what else to do, John threw himself to the ground and again stretched his arms out, grasping for a son who was hopelessly out of reach.

Terrified, Steve rose unsteadily to his feet a couple of yards above the foot of the slope, trying desperately to stand and climb up the unstable slope, but the slick-sided gray chips simply slid away again, burying his feet with each hurried step.

Still erect, the great bear waddled closer, until he reached the toe of the slope immediately below Steve. One sweep of its scimitar-like claws from here would catch the boy’s legs.

Time froze. No sounds of bird, animal, or insect intruded on this horrific scene. At that same moment—just as John was sure his son was about to meet a horrible fate—a strangely dressed boy, about Steve’s age, appeared at the base of the hill.

John was again shocked. There was no indication of where the boy had come from, but suddenly, there he was. He immediately began to climb diagonally, with no apparent effort, up the shale slide, from the father’s right to the left. As he passed just above John’s son, the strange boy looked down on Steve and said, Walk this way. He then tuned uphill and continuing his diagonal climbing course up the slope, easily and quickly gaining elevation.

Steve, his legs shaking violently, filled with fear and desperate to escape the grizzly, crawled up to the tracks made by the boy. Once he gained the trail, he was able to follow on up the talus slope. Both boys ascended without difficulty, zigzagging their way upward, climbing rapidly up and away from the terrible claws and crushing jaws of the grizzly below.

The old bear did not attempt to challenge the shale slope; he simply followed the boys with his eyes.

Clearly, the stranger had saved Steve.

Clambering back to his feet, John ran over to intercept his son, reaching the boys just as they crested the top of the hill. Steve’s rescuer turned slightly toward John while continuing to walk away along the ridge. Although the elder Thompson wasn’t able to see the boy’s face, he clearly heard these words: "Es Modrables, El Oso."

John felt as though he had snapped out of a nightmare. Grabbing his panting son, he held the boy close. Steve was still trembling.

Looking up and over Steve’s head for the mysterious boy, the father saw no one. The boy was gone. Even through tear-filled eyes, John would not have lost sight of Steve’s savior that quickly. The strange boy had vanished from the barren ridge as suddenly as he had appeared at its base.

Holding Steve at arm’s length, his dad looked again for the boy. Father and son stared at the same empty ridge. Reality returned on a light breeze, again carrying the cawing of crows.

"Es Modrables, El Oso, the boy had said. The word oso" was Spanish for bear, John knew. The boy had apparently wanted father and son to know: that is Modrables, the bear.

The boy spoke Spanish. His hair was jet black, his skin very fair. He had kept his eyes averted. Tight curls of hair poked out from under his brimless, cylindrical cap, forming almost girlish sideburns in front of his ears. The cap was made of a white, linen-like fabric, with intricate embroidery in bright colors around the sides. A shawl with similarly bright embroidery had draped his shoulders. The boy’s shirt was long, loose, and worn like a tunic, with a sash tied around the waist. This was certainly no local young cowboy.

Both father and son remembered the great beast at the same time—turning as one, they looked down slope to where they had last seen the giant grizzly.

Like the boy, the bear was gone.

From their vantage point on the open ridge, father and son could easily see the length of the draw, punctuated by its string of old telegraph poles. There was not a bear to be seen. There was nowhere for an animal of that size to hide, and no way it could have wandered off without the two seeing or hearing him. Like the Spanish-speaking boy, the great old silvertip had simply vanished.

Shivering with the drying sweat of exertion—still trembling from fear—Steve and his father studied one another’s faces. Both registered remnants of fear, excitement, surprise, and confusion. They realized without saying so, that they had experienced a phenomenon far beyond their immediate understanding.

Safe from danger, the floodgates opened and the questions began to pour out. First, where on earth had the grizzly come from? While Ursus horribilis once dominated the Missouri River Breaks, as they did the whole of the Great Plains, they had retreated to the Rocky Mountains over a century before. Grizzlies still lived in the headwaters of the Teton and Sun Rivers, tributaries of the Missouri, but the last of the great bears had disappeared from the Breaks by the 1870’s.

What of the boy and where had he gone? People no longer lived anywhere near this part of the Missouri River Breaks. His obviously odd and old-fashioned clothing was exotically foreign to 21st century Montana. There could be only one conclusion, and it certainly was not one a person would feel comfortable openly sharing with others.

Somehow, father and son had experienced some sort of bizarre time shift, to a moment that could only have occurred more than a century before. To call what they had experienced illusory, or a dream, flew in the face of their shared experience. What they had seen and felt was intense, blood-racing, heart-pounding, and real. Normalcy and logic had become irrelevant, leaving them with a lingering sense of having shared something supernatural and intensely frightening.

John and son Steve held one another as they paced up and down the ridge to study the scene several more times. No tracks extended beyond where Steve had climbed the shale slope behind the strange youngster. No bear tracks were evident around the old telegraph pole, and there were none leading away.

Working their way back down the shale slope on the same diagonal zigzag course that Steve and the boy had taken, they followed a single set of footprints to the point where Steve had started up. Examining the weathered, now listing telegraph pole, they found no evidence that a six-hundred-pound bear had just been rubbing his back against it; in fact, the pole was so rotted at its base that anything more than a gentle push would cause it to crash to the ground.

John and Steve saw that the thunderstorm that had hovered in the Highwood Mountains to the west was moving closer, flashes occasionally lighting the underside of a dark bank of clouds. The strange quiet had moved on, and quick gusts of wind disturbed the prairie grasses and sagebrush. Dust devils had begun dancing as spirals off to the south in the direction they needed to travel in their old SUV.

It was time to leave the Breaks, but Steve and John were reluctant to go—as if the surreal experience was not complete.

Meadowlarks normally know of storms and seek shelter early, but one was braving the elements, singing a tune as if he had an urgent message. Steve fell behind his dad as he stopped to listen. It felt as though the sweet song was directed to him, in a language he could readily understand. Transfixed, Steve heard:

There is more,

There is more.

Listen and see,

Listen and see.

There is more.

The little bird, perched precariously on a dead branch of sagebrush, stopped his song to study Steve.

"What is more? What are you trying to tell me, little lark?"

Listen and see,

Listen and see.

There is more,

There is more.

John had stopped when he realized that his son was a distance behind, becoming somewhat irritated that Steve was not keeping up with a storm fast approaching. Looking back, he watched as his son appeared to be talking with a bird. Steve had always been sensitive to animals. However, talking with a bird? Shaking his head, John turned back toward the SUV, parked a hundred yards away. A strange dust devil suddenly swirled around the vehicle as John watched. Then a damp breeze swept the dust away, leaving a group of people scattered around the automobile, apparently studying it, in the dust devil’s wake.

Steve rejoined his dad who seemed rooted to the spot as he looked toward the vehicle.

Do you see those people? John asked.

What people? It was the son’s turn to be perplexed.

At the old Scout. They are gone now, but I saw people studying the car as if they did not know what it was. They seemed to want me to see them.

The meadowlark was right. Steve responded.

John studied his son.

What do you mean, the meadowlark was right?

That meadowlark back there had a message for me, Dad, Steve answered excitedly. I could actually understand it. The lark seemed to be saying, There is more, there is more."

Big wet raindrops pelted father and son as they unlocked and climbed into the Scout. We need to hurry. This country turns to gumbo when it’s wet.

John and Steve went on to learn more—more of a story that started in the Missouri River Breaks. They learned more of these surreal apparitions, of the strange boy and the great grizzly he named Modrables, El Oso. Their remarkable experience that afternoon in the Breaks compelled them to know more—to know more of the world of animal-spirit guides, to know more of the circumstances that would place a young boy and a ferocious grizzly in the same place and time—to know more, through research and discovery. Their compulsion to discover the truth about what they experienced had yielded logbooks, diaries, and journals telling of the lives and fates of truly remarkable people—some historical characters.

Ultimately, though, John went beyond the descriptions of isolated events and the often-dry accounts uncovered in the yellowed pages of riverboat logbooks. He turned to his own imagination to fill in the inevitable blanks; creating a story out of isolated events and recorded notes requires the author to let his imagination fill in where the research left off. But then, was it really John’s imagination at work, or were the spirits of Cortez Modrables, Captain Phillip La Mar, Samuel, and the other characters you are about to encounter providing the knowledge, actions and images?

CHAPTER 1

It was 1865. Old Culculshensah chanted over and over to his great stag wyakin, Yamish, as he stood alone on a knoll overlooking the Musselshell River and the Nez Perce hunting camp. The shaman had been troubled by visions of a strange boy—a boy whom he was destined to teach to become his successor healer/shaman and that boy was on his way, and that boy was in danger.

Yamish, Yamish, Yamish,

Kaka’mini, kaka’mini

Yamish, Yamish, Yamish,

Come near, come near,

Yamish, Yamish, Yamish,

Kiye te’ne’ wit ten’ewi,

Yamish, Yamish, Yamish,

I call to you

Yamish, Yamish, Yamish,

I call to you.

Yamish, Yamish, Yamish,

You are my wyakin.

Yamish, Yamish, Yamish,

I need somesh.

I need your guidance and help.

Yamish, Yamish, Yamish,

The boy who will be shaman is coming,

The boy who will be shaman is in danger.

Spirits tell me the boy needs a wyakin.

Yamish, Yamish, Yamish,

The boy needs a wyakin,

The boy needs a wyakin to lead him here.

Yamish, Yamish, Yamish,

Talk with the animal spirits,

Tell the animal spirits the boy needs a guardian spirit.

Yamish, Yamish, Yamish,

The boy needs a wyakin.

Captain Phillip La Mar sat in the wheelhouse of the stern-wheel riverboat, Jupiter, the evening of July 20, 1865, as he did most every day, completing the notes in his logbook. Most of this day’s entry focused on navigation, and the day’s travel up the Missouri River in central Montana Territory. Jupiter was headed for Fort Benton, the outpost