The grassy Great Plains shake with thunder and deadly tornadoes whirl down from storm clouds as the First Americans begin the battle the will determine which peoples--the savage or the gentle--will shape the future or humankind.  On one side is the young shaman Cha-kwena, who has led his tiny band along the trail made by a magnificent white mammoth, the totem he believes will lead the People to a land of safety and abundance.  But they are pursued by enemies, a race of vicious and relentless hunters who want to steal Cha-kwena's magic, kill his sacred mammoth, and possess his passionate woman. The grassy Great Plains shake with thunder and deadly tornadoes whirl down from storm clouds as the First Americans begin the battle the will determine which peoples--the savage or the gentle--will shape the future or humankind. On one side is the young shaman Cha-kwena, who has led his tiny band along the trail made by a magnificent white mammoth, the totem he believes will lead the People to a land of safety and abundance. But they are pursued by enemies, a race of vicious and relentless hunters who want to steal Cha-kwena's magic, kill his sacred mammoth, and possess his passionate woman. The grassy Great Plains shake with thunder and deadly tornadoes whirl down from storm clouds as the First Americans begin the battle the will determine which peoples--the savage or the gentle--will shape the future or humankind. On one side is the young shaman Cha-kwena, who has led his tiny band along the trail made by a magnificent white mammoth, the totem he believes will lead the People to a land of safety and abundance. But they are pursued by enemies, a race of vicious and relentless hunters who want to steal Cha-kwena's magic, kill his sacred mammoth, and possess his passionate woman. The grassy Great Plains shake with thunder and deadly tornadoes whirl down from storm clouds as the First Americans begin the battle the will determine which peoples--the savage or the gentle--will shape the future or humankind. On one side is the young shaman Cha-kwena, who has led his tiny band along the trail made by a magnificent white mammoth, the totem he believes will lead the People to a land of safety and abundance. But they are pursued by enemies, a race of vicious and relentless hunters who want to steal Cha-kwena's magic, kill his sacred mammoth, and possess his passionate woman. Joan Hamilton Cline is the real name of William Sarabande, author of the internationally bestselling First Americans series. She was born in Hollywood, California, and started writing when she was seventeen. First published in 1979, Joan has been writing as William Sarabande for eleven years. She lives with her husband in Fawnskin, California. Chapter 1 He was afraid. Deep within the marrow of his spirit, terror clawed like the talons of a hunting eagle. It savaged the back of his throat with words that he dared not speak: Run! Flee across the Land of Grass! Save yourself! Spirit Sucker rides the Four Winds! Death is coming for you out of the yellow sky! In thong-laced, calf-high moccasins and loincloth cut from the spotted belly skin of a saber-toothed cat, Dakan-eh, Bold Man of the Red World, fought to keep himself from screaming as he stood with his fellow bison hunters and their dogs at the edge of a deep, mile-long ravine under the ominous shadow of an approaching storm. Never--not even in the sun-scorched mesa country of his faraway homeland, where summer thunderstorms had once been a common occurrence--had Dakan-eh seen such a sky or such towering, tumultuous squall lines. And never had he seen so many bison. The herd was about a mile away, directly between the ravine and the oncoming storm. The animals were no longer moving steadily forward across the wide, rolling, autumn-reddened plains; they were milling restlessly within strategically positioned ranks of spear-carrying men clad in robes of bison hide. With their summer-tanned skin lathered with bison dung and urine to mask their human scent, these drivers and callers had spent the last four days and nights skillfully manipulating the herd toward the bison jump, where Dakan-eh and his fellow hunters were now waiting for the final phase of the hunt to begin. Squinting into the rising wind, Bold Man scanned the open grassland between him and the herd. It was a wide expanse. To close the distance, a man would need as much time as it took a woman to flay and butcher an antelope. If the bison broke and ran now, they would have the distance necessary to build a momentum that would make the speed and direction of their run completely uncontrollable. Dakan-eh felt sick. It was the month of the Dry Grass Moon, and the bison were fat after a full season of summer grazing. The bulls were still with the cows and calves. The shaggy humps of the largest males crested some eight feet above their hooves, and their massive heads were weighted by a good six-foot spread of laterally aligned horns. If the her