A couple of years ago, while doing research for Leopard’s Kin, I stumbled across an author well known in some circles for stories of the frontier explorers named James Alexander Thom. He’s also written numerous novels about Native Americans (his wife is Shawnee) and wrote a profoundly influential novel for me about Tecumseh called Panther in the Sky. (Read it, if you haven’t yet.)
I’m currently reading The Children of First Man by Thom, an astounding history of the Mandan tribe, who are rumoured to be descended from a Welsh prince (Madoc) who apparently sailed the Atlantic with a hundred of his community in 1169-1171 (yes, 300 years before Columbus) in an attempt to found a realm in unchartered territory. They didn’t fare well: through the centuries, they lost their identity, lost their history, and became so interbred with the native populations that aside from a few words that sound remarkably like their Welsh equivalents, the explorers that came later assumed they were just another of the “Indians.” The novel spans those centuries, reminiscent of Rutherford’s style in Sarum or London where an artifact carries the reader through time.
It culminates with the story of Four Bears and his friendship with “Red Hair” Clark (of Lewis & Clark fame) and the “Shadow Catcher,” painter George Catlin. The story is so engaging that it’s prompted me to do a little investigating on Catlin and what his artwork was like.
Here is one of the actual portraits of Four Bears described in the novel:
And here is another stunning portrait of Shon-ka, “the Dog,” from the Lakota (Western Sioux):
I get chills just imagining sitting in the same room with a person like this - like being in the presence of a wild animal. Beautiful.
This moment’s music:
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