Chapter 11: The Others

The Others were different from every other tribe.

While skin tones, statures, features etc varied from one tribe to another, the Others were more different than any other tribe.

Having known and interracted with the Others, the Wolf People tended to ignore the much slighter differences between themselves and other tribes.

The Others tended to be shorter and wider than all other tribes. Their heads were longer from front to back, but lower from crown to brow. Their brows overhung their eyes. They were much stronger than all other people.

The Wolf People had traded smoked fish, all manner of wooden tools and carvings, woven baskets, materials for weaving, etc for bone-carved tools, flammable oils, and thicker, warmer hides than they could find elsewere.

One campfire story said that the Others and the Tribe's anscestors had fought at first, and that the Others had won, but that the Chief at that time had sent a brave warrior forth unarmed, bearing gifts, and signalling peace to the Others, despite the the deaths both sides had suffered, and the lust for vengeance the families of the slain must have felt.

The Others didn't kill the legendary envoy, and sent one of their own back with him, bearing gifts of his own.

Whether this story was true or not, the Tribe later called the Wolf People and the Others had become good freinds.

The Tribe generally found the Others unattractive, but there were a few Other males who had joined the Tribe, and a few tribal females who had joined the Others, and children were born of these unions.

Spinners' own grandfather was an Other.

It was a shock to the Wolf People when there were no Others to be found at the annual meeting place.

Scouts were dispatched to find them--or at least what had happened to them.

Some mostly skeletal corpses were found, and these had been killed by human weapons.

The Others believed in an afterlife, and buried their dead ceremonially. They had been driven from this place. They would never have left their dead to rot otherwise.

I Hear declared that the gods had willed this, for the Others were not among the chosen.

Medicine Woman, Discovers Things, Log Pusher, Finds Tracks and others in the Council denounced this vehememently, but found that perhaps one third of the Tribe either agreed with I Hear, or couldn't decide who was right.

I Say surprised I Hear: He declared that if the Wolf People ever found those who had murdered the Others, they would meet the same fate as the slavers.

I Hear retreated once again...but continued preaching, and gathering power.

I Say was a fine Chief, but was misguided by the Elders, who were stubborn unbelievers who clung to the "old ways", and refused to accept the truth.

The Elders always wanted war against their own kind, to preserve their own personal power, and this was just another excuse.

It was good that the Others were finally gone! Wasn't this obvious? The gods had no place in their family for these soulless beings!

...and so the cancer grew.


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