Winter had been very hard on the people of
Kodiak town. It always was. Snow had fallen every single day in copious amounts
and wind had blown from the mountains towards the ocean with a constant force,
never going faster or slower. Everyone there was used to that and they knew
exactly how to deal with what nature had to offer to every creature in that
corner of the world. Kodiak was very remote and it could only be reached from
the outside world if people dared to do a three-day trip to through the frozen
desert and the dark forests.
That was the reason why people in Kodiak were
self-sufficient. They went fishing into the ocean every single day, In order to
have their three meals a day without exception. They had learn to plant some
vegetables thanks to the help of two scientists who had come from the outside
world fairly recently. They had taught the people that they didn’t need to
plant in the ground but they could do it practically in the air with only the
help of water and compost made with the feces of the dogs everyone had. It had
been a really revolutionary thing for all of them.
The scientists had done the trip because they
were very interested in the culture of the people in Kodiak. They wanted to
document every single thing they could find, including the way they fished, the
way they hunted for creatures in the forest, how they built their homes and
other traditions that hadn’t changed in many years. Stella and Norman Ruiz had
always wanted to have a big adventure and be in the forefront of discoveries in
the world and now they really were. So much so that they had decided to stay
for a longer time than predicted in Kodiak.
At first, people didn’t trust them at all. It
was a normal reaction as outsiders were very rarely seen in the region. Normally,
they would only come to take the riches of the land for themselves and steal
the people from what was theirs. So the moment the couple arrived to Kodiak,
everyone agreed they should be watched every single moment of the day no matter
what they were doing or where. They would always have an escort. The only
moment they were left alone was when they slept in their assigned house.
However, someone was always waiting for them in the mornings.
The couple found that fear understandable and
had nothing to say about it. They thought it was best not to antagonize with
anyone and just do what they had come to do. That was how they gained the trust
of the people: through wanting to know more about their culture and traditions.
At first, they were all very reserved and only talked with short sentences. But
after a few weeks, men and women opened up to them and realized that Norman and
Stella were not bad people at all. They were genuinely interested in them.
However, that didn’t mean they instantly
trusted every other outsider. Just a month after the arrival of the scientists,
there was a problem with a group of men that had come out of nowhere. They
never revealed their names or if they worked by themselves or for someone else.
The point was that they had established a camp in the river running close to
Kodiak town and were using chemicals to clean whatever small stones of gold
they could find in the muddy bed of the river.
The inhabitants of Kodiak noticed the
chemicals when two of their children got sick one day. The local doctor, who
was more of a shaman than anything else, noticed they had ingested something
and the Kodiak almost instantly thought of the fish they had caught that day.
Some thought it was a punishment from the gods because of their acceptance of
the scientist but it was precisely them who found the real source of the
problem. Stella and Norman were certain it was not the fish but the water who
had some polluting agent in it.
The people of Kodiak didn’t know whether to
believe or not what the scientists were saying. But a couple of them decided it
was best to check their version out and it was then when they discovered the
miner’s camp and the use of chemicals to clean gold. It was a very tense
situation, as the people of Kodiak asked the miners to please leave but they
wouldn’t budge, claimed that river and all the land around it was theirs.
Norman went there to help and the miners showed him a paper signed by a federal
authority giving them rights over the land.
It was very hard for the scientist to tell the
people of the town that the paper said exactly what the man claimed. No one
understood how that was possible, as the government had never came into contact
with Kodiak, even though they perfectly knew that it existed. It was then when everyone
trusted the scientists so much that they told them the origin of the town and
showed them other documents they possessed, stating that outsiders had created
Kodiak. It was the best-kept secret in town as it was always thought natives
had founded the town.
The elders explained that, although many
native tribes inhabited the region in years past, the reality was that they
were all nomads, going from one end of the country to the other. It was only
when the whalers came and founded the town that a settlement came to exist.
However, the whalers were not well equipped to survive the harsh conditions, so
they abandoned the town. Not a long time after, one of the tribes took
possession of the houses, restores them and built more. Kodiak was reborn. The
outsiders had left everything behind, including those papers.
So it was easy for Norman to conclude that the
miners had a false document, as the one the people in Kodiak had predated it by
many years. He decided to tell this to the local authorities and let them deal
with it. It was the best as the miners saw him as a traitor to his own people.
Even if they were clearly not the same, they were all outsiders and that united
them in the mind of the miners. They ignored whatever the people of Kodiak had
to say and told them that they wouldn’t move until they had found every single
piece of gold the river possessed.
Tensions kept rising as the days went by. The
children were getting worse and people were now forbidden to drink water from
the river. The two scientists decided to do something: they decided to send a
letter to the authorities with a local resident who was going to look for
medicine for the children in the outside world. In the last minute, Norman
decided to go with him, leaving his wife to help the people and try to avoid
any time of conflict with the miners.
But it was too late for that. The residents of
Kodiak were not going to put up with it so, each night; they decided to
sabotage the machines and everything the miners used to process the gold. They
stole some of the chemicals and buried them in the forest and tried several
times to destroy everything but the men were many and they would rebuild every
day. It seemed as if they had unlimited resources of some kind. That went on
for some nights until the miners had enough of the interruptions and decided to
do something: they killed one of the intruders.
No one had murdered in that region in many,
many years. Not since the tribes had united into one a long time ago. People
decided they would not take it lightly and they didn’t: that day, almost every
single Kodiak man walked the side of the river in order to reach the miner’s
camp by nightfall. Once they arrived, they started shooting their arrows, some
of them with fire in order to burn every single tent to the ground. The miner’s
attempted to defend themselves with more modern weapons and they were successful.
The scene was bloody and chaotic.
It fortunately ended very soon, as a regiment
of the federal army arrived with Norman and the Kodiak man he had left with.
They had brought medicine and were there because they had seen the fire. The
government recognized that Kodiak was a native city and miner’s had no
permission to be there, at least not yet. The government was cleat that
anything could change going forward. But at least that threat was no more. The miner’s
left and the people of Kodiak were left to their own devices, for the time
being. The scientists never felt, feeling that was their real home.
