Introduction

Here, at the outset, I think it is necessary to provide a definition for the story you are about to read. It is a "hand-me-down."

Unlike most of these, however, it is separated from its initial source by more than a year or two. Several generations have had a hand in the molding of this effort.

I must point out that many facts and incidents were certainly lost or distorted during the passage of the years. My own lapses are almost surely no less than those of my father, of Joe Two Trees himself, or of his own parents for that matter. I have tried to strike a good balance between the facts I know to be accurate, and the need to "flesh-out" the story with material from my own experiences.

Ever since my father originally told me the basic events in the life of Joe Two Trees, I have always felt this story was too valuable to lose. I have tried to present all the salient points, as well and as truly as I could, to keep Joe's story alive.

Does this mean the book can be read as a historical document, an accurate biography? Probably not. Is it a work of fiction born of my mind? Definitely not! My late father and his native American mentor would not have stood for any such thing, and my wish is to be as faithful as I can to the story as I received it from them.

I can only hope that my efforts may someday be weighed by them, in a happier hunting ground, and found not wanting.

I hope you, the reader, will also be pleased.

ONCE, not very long ago, a hardy race of people spread across this continent. They extended from the Arctic to the tropics and from sea to sea. This people, for their basic stock was one, achieved high levels of culture and civilization in some parts of North America. In other parts they subsisted as wandering nomads, hunting and gathering as they followed the seasons.

Scientific evidence tells us they came from the West, across a bridge of dry land that once rose from the Bering Sea to join Asia and Alaska. They migrated in search of better hunting grounds, better homes, and probably out of curiosity to know the unknown. They traveled, over many thousands of years, braving glaciers and wild, predatory animals, to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Here, with no place left to go, these early Indians established their homes along the coast. As time passed, they separated themselves into nations and tribes. Those who eventually became the Algonquins of what is now New York City are the ones from whom this story stems.

While these Indians were living in this woodland paradise, another race looked across the broad Atlantic from the East. The two races had never met, and were separated by more than an ocean alone; they were also separated by something we call technology. The Europeans knew how to use gunpowder and iron, and could accomplish things the Indians had never achieved. To such a race, the conquest of a mighty ocean, in search of new lands, was fated.

Inevitably, when the two alien cultures met, the strong soon overpowered the weak, and the tenants of many thousand years were dispossessed by the new landlords. Guns and iron weapons proved strategically superior to stone and bone, and in a frighteningly short time, the once proud Indian nations were decimated by a horde of land-hungry immigrants from across the sea.

By the time these immigrants finally formed a nation for themselves, and put their former homes forever behind them, they had little left here in the form of an "Indian problem." They eliminated that small remnant by killing most survivors outright. Those pockets of Indian survivors that still remained, here and there, across the new nation were herded into areas designated as "reservations," although they have been called harsher names.

That was the situation for many years. Sometimes it was better, but usually worse. Those Indians were never brought into the larger community by any more than token actions of the white man's government. They were deprived of their homelands and way of life, and of their very culture. And then, in 1924, the U.S. government, with a twinge of conscience, ordered that these first Americans be granted American citizenship. Some may have been grateful, others were not, but most didn't even care.

By that time, the issue, here in New York, was academic. Buildings had been built, and commerce was flourishing, the population grew daily, people strolled in wooded parks, but no one had seen a real Indian for a long, long time. In any practical sense, the race, as it had been, was extinct here.

The word "extinct" has such a terrible sound. The dinosaurs are extinct, as are the woolly mammoths, and very nearly even the American eagle. The list could go on to such length that it would begin to seem impossible anything is still left. When I was a small boy, I sometimes countered that concept of extinction in a way that only children can. I would often go to the wooded places, armed with the bright eyes of youth, to search earnestly for a baby dinosaur. I was sure, with young trust, that my belief would bring one to me. Somehow, I never managed to find my small anachronism, but perhaps I grew up too soon. Take heart, though, he's still waiting out there, among the trees and hills, for my children, or yours.

Do you doubt that? I can tell you of a man who accidentally found something seemingly just as extinct, and of how the discovery shaped and changed his life. The man was my father, Dr. Theodore Kazimiroff. This book is not solely about him, however, but rather it is an attempt to chronicle the life and adventures of another man, and tell how their two lives were intertwined for several months in 1924.

The roots of this story lie, long buried, in the prehistoric Indian villages now covered by streets and apartment houses in New York City's Borough of The Bronx. The lost Algonquin people of Keskeskek and Wanaqua, which is now The Bronx, were the seed from which this story grew. The last of these people lived into my father's time.

His name, Joe Two Trees, was a combination of the two cultures. You will understand that name later on.

In 1924, on a day that can only be called fateful, my father met Joe Two Trees in what is now Pelham Bay Park in the northeast Bronx. They became friends, this oddly matched pair, and the man told his story to the young white boy. He also did something more. By his telling and teaching, he instilled in the boy a vibrant interest in the history and lore of their common homeland. The boy had Joe's companionship for only a short while, but it was long enough. His life was affected in such a fashion that the outdoors became his heaven, the preservation of mementoes from the past his sacred duty.

The boy went on to become a dentist, and for the rest of his life that was his profession. But his avocation was a far different thing. He became as well a noted archeologist, naturalist, lecturer, writer and finally, official historian of the Borough of The Bronx. His true calling was found as self-appointed preserver of our past. During the years until 1980, when he died, he excavated, collected and catalogued a museum full of artifacts, books, maps, and documents that can only partially be described by the word "vast." The Indian portion of the collection alone comprises over 200,000 articles. In addition, there are innumerable colonial and Revolutionary War artifacts. The entire collection is well over a million pieces.

Many of my father's patients can still recall being virtually left with mouth wide open as, after a phone call, the doctor jumped into coveralls and rubber boots and left. He must have had half the building and highway construction crews in New York City scouting for him. Whenever they dug into anything historically interesting, such as shells, charcoal, bones or old foundations, they'd call Dr. Kazimiroff.

It is quite possible that during his life he dug up more of the city than Consolidated Edison. He accumulated a tremendous number of specimens with historical significance, and preserved them as a means of adding to the store of our knowledge of the past. His accomplishments in the fields of landmark preservation and ecology are endless.

I have often been asked what drove him to such lengths, and I've given that question a good deal of thought. The only real answer that has ever come to me is that all the digging didn't really start with a shovel at all. It started with an encounter. I think he was worried that a very old Algonquin gentleman might otherwise be forever forgotten.

I remember that it was a weekend morning in June of 1950. My father had been doing some work on a small Indian village site which he'd discovered in Riverdale, in the northwest corner of the Bronx alongside the Hudson River. That morning, he asked if I'd like to come along and see the area where he was digging and making his measurements. Naturally, we were off and gone in no time flat.

During most of the morning, we measured and recorded the spots where pottery shards, bone fragments from food remains, and other items were found. Later, as we were digging an exploratory trench, we cut into reddish earth, and then darkened stones and soil. Soon, we had decided it was a probable fire pit, the central point of an old Indian hut. In order to verify this, we started working slowly away from the blackened area, clearing a circular pattern. We were looking, my father said, for evidence of post holes. These remains of the upright members for the dwelling would prove we had found the site of an actual family cooking and heating fire, and not just some camping spot used by a wandering hunter.

I was surprised that we would be able to find wooden posts not rotted after hundreds or thousands of years in the soil, and I asked my father about that. His explanation was probably the most important thing that I ever learned about searching for the past. From it derives much of my personal philosophy of archeology.

"Ted," he said, "the ground under our feet is very much like a time capsule. When men want to save something and send it on to future generations they take great pains to put it in a container that will preserve it and not allow the contents to change down through the years. Then, some day, men who were not even born when the capsule was made open it, and if they have sufficient wisdom, they cherish the contents; use them to learn their heritage and know their ancestors.

"The time capsule under our feet isn't perfect, but every mark that is on the earth, every item that is buried in it, leaves some trace. This may last for months, years, centuries, and even longer. We don't open our capsule with a key as such, we use a shovel, a pointing trowel, a penknife blade, or even a toothpick.

"When the wooden posts deteriorated and the wood was absorbed into the soil, a very specific chain of events took place. The soil, which had been compressed when the posts were driven, would have stayed forced aside and the holes gradually left with only the darkened remains of wood. Silt eventually filtered into the crevices and filled the area up again. So, we must look for a pattern of darkened, round marks surrounding our fire pit. If the soil has never been disturbed, and if we are very lucky, we'll find that evidence today."

Well, we were lucky, and just before it got dark, we had cleared and cleaned enough ground to see a distinct pattern in the soil. The post holes were there, and we both knew we had hit the digger's jackpot.

The fire pit of an Indian dwelling can be one of the best of all possible spots to hunt for artifacts. Broken pottery or tools often found their way into the pit, along with meal remnants and even, on occasion, human remains.

Why would Indian human bones be found in the family fire pit? Have you ever taken a shovel and tried, in January or February, to dig a hole of any consequence in the frozen ground? With modern implements of steel, the job is very difficult. With primitive tools of wood and stone, the same job becomes impossible.

Put yourself in place of an Indian family with a winter death. You must bury your lost one in the only soft ground available, and that is the family fire pit. The fire which burns every day keeps that spot soft. A grave is scraped out and lined with evergreen boughs so that the dead one will not be touching the cold, bare earth. He is bent into a fetal position and placed in the former fire area. Being a frugal family, of a frugal tribe, you bury just a few necessary items with the departing member so he can make his camps, and hunt during his journey to the hereafter, or Happy Hunting Ground. You know that he must make campfires each night because always, you have looked into the evening skies and seen the band of white glow that reaches away from the Earth and into the heavens. The people have said that this is the campfires of the dead on their way to paradise.

After a suitable time has passed, you stop mourning, for now he has passed over the Milky Way and hunts in fields of game where winter never comes. He fishes in streams full of trout and, at last, is with the Great Spirit, Tchi-Manitou.

When the time is right, the family gathers outside the wigwam on a clear night, and chooses a star to become the visible embodiment of the spirit lost. Although he is now a part of the firmament, he is not quite gone. Sometimes, when the creatures of the night cry, or wind sighs in the pines, the voice of the departed is to be heard. One can never be completely sure that the wolf is really a wolf, or that the bear is not trying to talk to you.

Long ago an Iroquois war party from the North took a young Algonquin boy. His family, somehow, managed to recover his body. His was the skeleton which I helped my father unearth during many trips in that June of 1950. He never reached the Iroquois lands to the North, to become a slave. Was he killed because he resisted and attempted to escape?

His family performed the rituals and they buried him in the fire pit. They moved the dwelling to another spot. When they buried him, his body held three triangular arrow tips, of the type that were meant never to be withdrawn from the victim. His legs had both been broken above and below each knee. He had four broken ribs, both hands had been crushed and his skull was smashed in.

We wondered many times, over the years, what he might have done to cause his captors to treat him in such savage fashion. The time capsule had given us a grisly tale, a story made up of parts. Some we have; some we never can. We can't detail the heroic efforts that must have been required for his family to reclaim their dead son. We did, however, find a pattern as we excavated sites and classified them chronologically. We found that more and more Iroquois influence came into the Algonquin culture as the years passed on toward the arrival of the white man. Our time capsule showed us a tribe in serious trouble, preyed upon by a stronger, more warlike people. The makers of triangular arrowheads seemed bent upon dominating or destroying the more peaceful Algonquins.

Among the Indian bands that traded and took items for tribute from lesser tribes, a high esteem was universally placed upon Sewan, also called wampum. This material, made from beads of shell, was prized by the Iroquois who had no easy access to the raw materials. The problem was solved by making the Algonquins pay annual tribute in wampum and other valued commodities.

Far inland, in what was once Iroquois territory, excavations generally uncover hundreds of these beads. In New York City and Long Island, where the wampum was made, very few beads have been discovered.

One can easily see the Algonquin predicament. Pressed to find food enough for their own use, unable to spend sufficient time to prepare for their needs, they must now further weaken their tribe by paying tribute to the ones who called themselves "wolf people."

But even deadlier enemies were climbing into ships that would soon bring them here to build a nation. By the time the Liberty Bell was tolling the intentions of these new colonists, the Indians along the northern Atlantic coast could already find no place left to call their own. Broken and weakened, they retreated further and further from the white invasion, until a last few were all that remained of a mighty, ancient culture. The beaver left, the last bear was killed, the deer died, and the last Algonquins were gone from Manhattan Island. By the end of the 18th century, they had moved toward the north, perhaps to New York's Westchester County or Connecticut, via the Bronx, to escape these people who could kill with a noise from a long stick.

It was against a backdrop of information such as this that I grew up. It was only natural that such sagas would fire my imagination and make me clamor to be included in the digging. My requests didn't fall on deaf ears, and during the years of my childhood I helped my father in his work of seeking out Indian sites and relics with increasing frequency. We dug so much earth out of so many places that I often thought we should have been miners. In retrospect, I suppose we were miners of a sort. The act of mining is generally thought of as removing some precious resource from the covering earth or stone. This was certainly our goal. Each pottery shard, each arrowhead, stone tool, and especially each burial pit, gave us a little better insight into the New York of long ago. It was our goal to save these relics from loss or destruction.

We explored all the sites of native habitation that have become classics in the existing literature. But we also found unknown prehistoric villages and campsites on our own. Soon, we were specializing in undisturbed habitations. The apparent ease with which we found them puzzled me.

It was in this way that we "discovered" ancient camping sites and villages in Riverdale, along the Bronx River in the New York Botanical Gardens, at many spots along the shore of Long Island Sound and even on some of its larger islands such as Hart, High, and Glen. But gradually our area of specialization narrowed down to Hunter Island and Pelham Bay Park. There my father's guesses were infallible, and many finely made stone tools and implements joined our collection. We uncovered eathenware cooking pots, bone fishing utensils and even the obvious weapons of Indian warfare. Often, we also uncovered the victims of those early Indian wars. For thousands of years, and even into the era of early white settlers, vicious battles had been fought in our digging area.

Sometimes I had the distinct idea that my father knew, before we found it, exactly what we were looking for. Something seemed to direct him to a particular large oak tree, or glacial boulder. He would then look in a given direction, pace off what seemed a predetermined number of steps and put down his knapsack and gear. There we would dig, usually with success.

This seeming magic was simply too much for a young boy to overlook, and although he carried it out with an air of humor, my father never gave me any real explanation of his uncanny foreknowledge until one day during the summer of 1952.1 can still clearly remember sitting upon a big rock and listening, fascinated, as my father started to tell me the story of Joe Two Trees, last known member of the Weckquaesgek tribe of the Algonquin Nation, a man my father had met in the then wilderness of Pelham Bay Park when he was a young boy.