“Hi my name is Joe and I will be your guide today so, if you will get your party together we’ll get going – we need to make the pass before 1pm to be back by nightfall.”

“Sorry Joe, its only me – I think. Well, there’s no one else in my party anyway.”

“You’re it huh. Well, what’s your name?”

“I’m Lisa.”

“Lisa you want to bow out because it’s only going to be me and you on this thing – might be a little boring – I point out some cool things but I’m not much of a conversationalist?”

“Nah, I got nothing else to do anyway. Pretty bored up here by myself; it will be nice to actually be around someone.”

“Great…well, I guess let’s go. So….Lisa where are, uh, are you from?”

“Around. Why?”

“Just tryin’ to make conversation – told you I was bad.”

“That’s ok – at least you’re tryin’. Basically, I am from everywhere and nowhere. Lived in just about every state in the union and a couple of foreign countries to boot. Don’t know my parents so I don’t really know where I’m from – so there you go – Joe.”

“Um…well, ok, that’s nice, I guess. Hey see that river bend over there?”

“Yeah”

“That’s one of the places the Apache camped before ambushin’ Fort Sumpter.”

“Fort Sumpter? I thought that was in South Carolina.”

“No, no…I mean yes. I mean, I was talkin’ about Fort Sumpter. You’re confusin’ it with Fort Sumter – completely different. Fort Sumpter was actually just a collection of about 3 families livin’ in a walled-in compound about a mile that way. They settled there in 1849 during the gold rush. ‘Bout a year later the Apache went on the war path. Killed about 100 whites in the area before the Army came in and put them down. Fort Sumpter was part of that 100. Apaches killed everyone and everything – women, horses, livestock, children….it was a mess. Legend has it that they posed on the women nude, spread eagle, tied to steaks, cut from their vaginas to their necks. They also hacked off one breast. Pretty gruesome stuff from what I hear.”

‘Wh….why would they do such a thing? Had the whites done anything to them?”

“Well…yes and no. The whites passin’ thru on their way to California did a lot of rapin’ and pilagin’ type stuff. But the settlers got along pretty well with the Natives or so it’s said anyway.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“Honestly, somethin’ had to happen to make those Indians go so bat shit crazy. I mean those Sumpter murders show they were afraid of somethin’ or tryin’ to send a message to somebody.”

“Really, how so?”

“Well, the Natives really didn't do that sort of thing unless they were sending a message against a mortal enemy that they had no respect for. A kinda “see this, this is what is going to happen to you if you don’t leave us alone” type stuff. Normally though Indians didn’t defile bodies – at most a scalpin’. Mostly they just left the bodies where they fell to rot. So this rampage was very odd. Some say it was whites just tryin’ to get the Natives out of the area and take their land to mine.”

“What do you think?”

“Me? I think it was the whites. Indians just didn’t behave like that.”

“Ummm….I think so too. But what do I know?”

“Hey, let’s go over there you can get a really good view of the valley from there.”

“Over there? I don’t think so. It doesn’t look too stable to me.”

“I’ve been out here plenty of times and nothin’ has ever happened. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

“I guess.”

“C’mon right up here you’re not going to fall.”

“No, but you are.”

“Wha…..no! Hey! Don’t do that! I’m going to fffffaaaaalllllllllll….”

“See ya, Joe.”

_____________________________________________________________

“Ben, they found Joe. Same place as the others. I think we better stop doing the tours for awhile.”

“That’s the thing. He didn’t have a tour that morning – just like the others.”

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