My son's birthday party went really well, despite the fact that my husband and I were running behind. He got plently of clothes and toys, but punked out halfway through the party. Turning two is tough. I can't help but think about the people of the past, the little boys, toddlers, who lived off the land, who wandered from place to place, who played with rocks, sticks, leaves, and bones. Over 10,000 years ago people lived in America and hunted mammoths. I think of these Paleoindians often: did they celebrate birthdays? Did the women hunt? Did men cook and sew? Did the little boys throw stones, like my son throws miniature metal tractors? A prose poem, then, to these ancient peoples known as Clovis, based on an archaeological site in New Mexico.
Blackwater Draw, 8,900 B.C.
I
In the grasslands of the Llano Estacado he crouched, hearing more acute than a mother dire wolf suckling her sons. Lemon quartz tinsel slumbered beneath the smooth tops of the short pines and dotting of spruce lining the open plains, almost ready to cast warmth onto the cricket crawling across his toe, noiseless body reflecting a hawk nose and a thin, tight-lipped face.
His eyes rose toward the sky, strange points of still lightning glinting like a baby girl's newly cut eyeteeth. Cold light, but he did not shiver from the chilled dampness that clung to his long stringy hair hanging behind his ears. Muscles tensed and flexed beneath a mist of sweat, thick eyelashes unblinking.
He hefted his throwing stick, tracing the dried sinew and blood stuck to the wooden handle, felt the weight of it and the comfort of the spear hooked to the end, several feet in length, the rough, crude looking flint point flaked into shape with precision. Robust and deadly. A whistle shot into the air. His dark eyes lowered and his bark brown feet dug into the ground, ready to spring.
II
A rumbling snort shook the water of the shallow pond, reeds bending with snapping protest against the weight of the mammoth as it collapsed. A wail escaped the adult bull, already injured from a recent fight, fatal to man, as spears flung from atlatl's rang through the opening horizon to stick into hide and lung, an eye and skull, dying the blue clay red.
Wading into the water the band ripped into the carcass, skinning and cutting flesh and bringing it to shore, blades and sharp knives shaving ribs and husking legs. Some men stood watch on the bank,
spears raised in a gesture of warning to other hungry animals, cat and bear. A young boy ran to tell the women.
The useful parts taken, the Columbian mammoth was left in its place, virtually nothing left but a mass of bones that lay partially submerged in the black water. New shelters made, strips of drying meat hung from branches, he stood and watched, fingering a piece of chert, his daughter asleep against his leg.
