1493 AD: Chief Notsuoh heads to Houston with his three four-legged friends and his iron rattler stick.
By the second new moon of the year we know today as 1493 AD, the drums of wary change about the coming of the paleface from the waters of the Pond of the Morning Sun had beaten their way across the face of the land known to every native tribe as the Home of all Family Nations and had then faded quietly into a humming red mist across the Pond of the Evening Stars beyond the Great Rock Mounds of the far west.
Most human beings of that time were content enough to simply let the news be heard as an ominous message from the Great Spirit that further personal purification was essential for them all to one day take up residence in the Perennial Summer Forest of the Great Sky that awaits everyone beyond the Time of Endless Sleep that comes to all.
Not so much did Comanche Chief Notsuoh (pronounced Not*Sue*Oh) hold on to the idea that the drums intended to merely fall silent as an “ominous warning” about the need for reform and personal purification. Oh no. Chief Notsuoh heard the drums as a beckoning to organize and come forward as a tribal gathering of human beings and turn back the threat of invasion from the pale ones, should they soon decide to return to these sacred shores with greater numbers of their kind and an intent to pollute all that was then pure.
From his home region in the valley we know today as the Basin Prairie of the Big Bend, Chief Notsuoh set forth each morning toward the Sky of the Rising Sun in leadership of one thousand Comanche braves who believed in his cause.
Chief Notsuoh had in his possession three horses that had been captured from the first palefaces, but he did not understand their true purpose. He called them “My Four Legged Friends on Four Legs Who Listen Well and Never Talk Back.”
The chief also possessed a loaded late 19th century model Winchester rifle that one day on the journey fell through a time-warp black hole and killed a six-foot long rattler before it could strike the great leader. Again, Notsuoh failed to grasp the utility of the instrument that had befallen him, but he kept it as a friendly weapon, nonetheless, calling it “My Iron Stick for Killing Rattlesnakes in a Wahoo Whack.”
Armed with believers, good intentions, and much misinformation, Chief Notsuoh set forth each morning toward the sky of the rising sun. About sixty sunrises later, the chief and his native land crusaders had traveled a distance roughly equivalent of the space between present day Alpine, Texas and the banks of a muddy slow-moving stream in southeast Texas that back then was heavily populated by a herd of 10,000 bison or buffaloe.
Tired of the morning walks into the sun, and impressed by the abundance of buffaloe to eat. Notsuoh decided to settle the area until further notice. With the help of his one thousand warriors and the hundreds of camp-following squaws who had trailed their men east, Notsuoh established a far-reaching Comanche community in the areas of downtown present day Houston, and stretching southwest to the former site of the Summit, southeast from there to Rice Stadium, further south to Reliant Stadium and the Astrodome, east to the University of Houston and Buff Stadium, and back northwesterly, downtown to the areas covering all current sporting venues.
One day in 1494 AD, when the Notsuoh Braves were rocking along to a prideful lacrosse win over a tribe of barnstorming Apaches, the whole town, including the team, choked on some very bad buffalo meat, snatching the agony of defeat from the jaws of victory, causing a loss of the game, a loss of pride, and, in seven days time, a loss of life for everyone in the community.
Before his own death, Chief Notsuoh blamed himself and the white man.
Blaming the tragic event upon his failure to continue his pursuit of the loathsome paleface menace in favor of mindless and unrewarding sporty pursuits in the area that is now modern Houston, Chief Notsuoh swore out this curse upon all future paleface settlers of this same geographical area:
“To all palefaces and all other non-native invaders of this land, by the power of our holy spirit in the sky, I henceforth place this curse upon you: Should you ever decide to settle this land as your own, building your personal paleface dreams upon the ground that covers our bones, may this special curse be visited upon you:
“May your athletic teams of any sport devised be doomed to inevitably break your hearts in the end. May they sometimes pull your hearts high into the sky and the land of hope, but may they always finish by dropping your dreams flat as a dead eagle, falling splat to earth from the mighty clouds of high aspiration.”
That’s my Chief Notsuoh story – and I’m sticking to it. Especially after today’s Texans game.
Oh, yeah. – Happy New Year!!! Things are about to get better because everything that really is important – already is OK.
Houston, Baseball, & Other Musings.
The Pecan Park Eagle 