image via wikipedia

The native who: approached me, Jacob, as it turned out, was the only one in the camp who spoke any English at all.  He advised me he had not spent all his childhood in the encampment but had little recollection of his whereabouts.  What he described suggested some manner of metropolitan area and he recalled a building in which there was a room with a black wall that he could “…make marks on with a white stick.”  A school house, I surmised.  He said he fled and made his way back to his family while still young “…not yet of breeding age.”
image via wikipedia

The camp consisted mainly of large living quarters with thatched roofs made from palm fronds with mostly open walls.  It appeared to be a communal arrangement with no evidence of family units.  All the males watched me from one side of the compound, the children played together randomly as though it was a perpetual recess and the women went about their business, many of them tending to the gardens in the large fields surrounding the camp.  A community cooking area highlighted the central area where a large caldron of water was kept over an open flame.  The fall harvest was underway; corn having already been picked and cabbages and other cool weather crops were ripening.  It was obvious the tribe did not fertilize the land and production was very poor.  Cabbage heads were no larger that grapefruit although there were many of them.  Jacob told me much of the camp’s food source came from the surrounding tundra and nearby lake–alligator, snake, squirrel, turkey, crane, turtle, fish, cabbage palm, mushrooms and citrus.

The tribe had neither calendar nor clock.  Age was calculated only by the number of full moons one had survived.  There was no obesity noted but the females were of thick-bodied structure while the males tended to be ultra-slender in stature.   Males showed no indication of facial hair but no one cut their hair.   Men used cattail leaves to tie their unkempt hair while the women allow their well-groomed tresses to flow freely, some ankle length–a few dragging the ground.

Most of the elderly had goiters of various sizes suggesting a lack of iodine in the diet.  The tribe kept no cattle or goats so the only milk came from the mother’s breast.  I saw children as old as nine or ten continuing to nurse.  This could account for a calcium deficiency resulting in most of the older tribal members being toothless or nearly so.  Even adolescents’ smiles showed teeth badly in need of attention.

Soon Jacob nervously nudged me away from the compound.  “The elder want you go,” he whispered.  I was going as the hour was getting late and I had nothing with me except the tools of a reporter–a pen and a notebook.  Tomorrow, things will be different.  I’ll be quite a bit more prepared to document the miracle I have found in this place of hundreds of years ago.  I told Jacob I would return.  He shook his head vigorously, his scraggly hair flying about his frightened face.  This was too big…it was going to set me free.  I had to return.  I absently removed another mushroom from my pocket and began gnawing as I departed.

(To be continued)

See:  http://authspot.com/novels/I Found The Lost Tribe of Lake Reedy: Part One