With his gun on his back and a branch in his hand, the turtledove shouted at the group of sixty or so half-immortal Indians as they walked along the banks of the river toward a place far from the valley.

When he got to the turn, he looked back and the beaver stood on the hillside and waved at him.

So the turtledove waved at him as well.

He didn't expect the beaver to come to his aid, but the fact that the beaver didn't come to help him at all still made him feel a little depressed.

Where is the road ahead?

He had absolutely no idea.

He just knew that he still couldn't leave this group of sick and disabled people behind after all, and let them fend for themselves.

Until it was almost dark, they camped under a cliff.

The group of Indians could not even raise a fire, and finally relied on the turtledoves to be ruthless, and wasted two bullets to raise the fire.

What made him even more speechless was that among the sixty or so Indians, there were five or six mixed languages, and they could not communicate well with each other at all.

The turtledove originally appointed three captains, but the three captains ate all the food distributed by the turtledove. And their team members actually looked like they should be.

The turtledove wanted to tell them what it meant to be 'fair', but they still couldn't understand when they broke a thumb-thick stick.

The idea of a slave society was deeply rooted in their hearts, and without the existence of slave owners, it was as if the sky had fallen.

Only then did the turtledove understand that the reason why these people were so desperate before was that they understood that they were on the verge of death, but the bigger reason was that they mourned more than they died.

The sorrow of being abandoned by their masters is what makes them truly desperate.

It's like a five or six-year-old child watching himself abandoned by his parents.

This heart-rending despair is more terrible than death.

Before the arrival of the colonists, the Indian civilization on this continent was generally still in the stage of alternation between primitive society and slave society. The arrival of the colonists was like a torrent rushing into a clear pond.

Chen Zhen is surging!

Primitive society, slave society, feudalism, capitalism...... What should have been precipitated over thousands of years came together in an instant.

Indian civilization at this time was a hodgepodge!

In the southeastern part of the continent, Seminoan chiefs dressed in suits, with colorful feathers on their heads and muskets in their hands, believe in Catholicism, and direct the tribe's slaves to drill wood for fire on the large estates on the reservation.

In the middle of the continent, the Cherokees or Choctaw are struggling to move from the east to the west, all the way to the death, but this does not prevent them from calling the president of the United States "the great father."

In the northern regions of Oregon or Wyoming, the warlike Sioux did not hesitate to stab the neighboring Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Crow while vowing a decisive battle against the whites.

The whites saw the Indians as rats and cockroaches that had to be cleaned up in the house, and the Indians had not even developed a national idea. The occasional spark of rebellion was extinguished by a single spit of the white man.

Until this time, when the turtledove crossed over, in 1841, there was still a terrible legend among some Indian tribes in the Sierra Madre - there was a monster outside the mountain, with four legs and two hands!

They actually say cavalry.

These are the Indians!

Lag! Split! Ignorance!

But it was the same Indians who, when the white people first landed on the continent, brought them herbs and food, and helped them survive the most difficult existential crisis.

It was such an Indian who was willing to believe in the covenant and oath with the white man even when the white man had killed them. They didn't hesitate to lend a helping hand to the white people in distress on the Great Plains, including Sam Houston, who is now the president of the Republic of Texas.

Whether it was the Seminole War, or the Temkusai War, or even the Battle of the Wounded Knee decades later, the Indians never once aimed at massacre, and their greatest ambition was to ask the whites not to attack the people on the reservation.

They left their homeland at the behest of the whites, and left their homes at the mercy of the whites who drew a circle on the map as their 'reservations', and the promises made to them were never fulfilled.

This is also the Indians.

Good Indians, kind to the point of stupidity!

Weak Indians, so weak that you can't help but want to sin against them!

……

At dawn, the turtledove woke up.

The crowd made a cacophony of noise.

A guy named 'Parrot' came over. The parrot is extremely gifted with languages, and he can speak almost all Indian languages.

"What, parrot?" The turtledove tied her belt to relieve her hunger.

"Look, sir!" The parrot pointed to the cliff where everyone had camped last night.

When the turtledove looked up, he saw more than a dozen blackened corpses hanging from the cliff wall. Judging by their twisted shapes, they were all hanged alive.

Blood flowed down their ankles and down the white cliffs, staining a large patch black.

"What else seems to be written on it?" Turtledove asked.

"I'll see—" the parrot struggled to make out for a moment, "it's Apache, and it's Victorio's accomplices!" ”

Oh.

Turtledove understands that this is the rebel he has been looking for.

"Parrots, they're our people too!" Turtledove couldn't help but say.

"How can they be our people?" The parrot replied, "They're Navajo!" The one on the far side is an Apache, the one with one leg is a Comanche, and I'm a Kiowa! ”

The turtledove fell silent.

"What about you, sir? What tribe are you from? The parrot asked.

Ikadove recalled his experience, and he seemed to have forgotten something. Eventually, though, he recalled.

"I'm a Chenuk!"

"Chenuks?!" The parrot opened its mouth wide in surprise, "Oh my God! How did the Chenuks get here? ”

The Chenuks are to the north, far from here. Around the time of present-day Oregon and California.

The turtledove smiled bitterly.

"From now on, parrots, remember, you have to tell them that we are Indians, no matter where we come from! We are people of the same race! ”

The parrot hesitated, "Yes, sir! ”

Someone in the team caught fish from the river, and the crowd rushed to catch it.

"After breakfast, let's go over there!" The turtledove pointed in the other direction.

"Yes, sir!" The parrot has no opinion.

The direction pointed by the turtledove was getting farther and farther away from the riverbank.

There is no other reason, he is also black-eyed now, and wherever he goes, it counts.

He simply didn't want to walk under the cliff where the corpses of the Indians hung from it.

Such an unconscious move at the time later saved their lives.