The Chief Essay for The Heartland Album
On the evening of July 6, 1483, a tribe of Ohio Indians planned to celebrate the naming of a new 30 year old chief of war strategy. The men of the village returned early from their hunt. Game was plentiful and they had taken a good sized deer.
A young boy in the party was limping in with a skinned knee. The men were scolding him. He had tripped while trying to grab a bounding rabbit with his bare hands. They told him that they must not be wasteful. They knew that from their village to places further away than they could see in all directions there were more rabbits than they would ever be able to eat in their lifetime.
There were plenty of berries and a nice pile of corn to go with the beans they picked yesterday. The squash was still a few days away from harvest. They didn't need the squash. This summer feast would be a good one. The woman who was dressing the deer noticed her flint scraper was getting dull. She called to the stone knapper. He had a new scraper with him when he answered her call. She accused him of being a mind reader and shooed away a dog that sniffed around her work.
The new chief worked on his headgear, weaving bone tubes, copper and shell disks into designs that suited both tradition and his own whims. On that day Richard III was crowned king of England. The hunters returned to London with a wild boar they had speared. One of the hunters was carried in by two other hunters. The cornered boar had gored him in the leg. The man demanded that the women who prepared the beast for dinner should save for him the tusk that had inflicted the wound.
The women in the kitchen prepared more food than they knew would be needed for the banquet. They decided the king would be more impatient with them if there was not enough than if there was too much. One woman involved in spitting the boar for roasting drew a quiet laugh and fearful glances when she held a turnip next to the boar's head and compared it with the new king. That night during the revelry the guests Threw great hunks of meat to the dogs in the keep.
Richard spotted his armourer and shouted for the man to come to him. Briefly, while his back was to the king, the man heaved a sigh, rolled his eyes to the ceiling and guessed that his Royal Highness was going to complain about the temper of his sword blade. King Richard was pondering his trip through the kingdom the next day. He fussed a bit with his crown, grumbling that it did not fit right.
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