Scare Who?

Before then, until now

The land was being taken over by foreigners who came in large ships from overseas.

However, they had arrived late and at a higher latitude than originally planned. They did not follow the nomadic callings of the land to travel south and instead attempted to establish settlements where they had landed. The season changed faster than expected.

Settlers colonized between seasons, facing harsh conditions leading them to desperation.

Betrayals and unspeakable horrors took place.

When they were met by the natives the next season, the settlers were bitter about what happened to them and blamed the native medicine people for not coming to help them sooner. Tensions grew as the settlers' population recovered. More and more land was being occupied by more and more ambitious settlers. Eventually, treaties were established, and lines were drawn, but those agreements kept falling apart, and promises to respect and preserve the land were casually broken at the first sign of an inconvenience.

The native community tribal organizers known as clowns gathered offerings for the Beauty Way Ceremony as they always did every year.

Some clowns decided to bring some offerings to the settlers in a final attempt to establish a treaty that might help meet the needs of both sides, but the settlers just took their offerings, thanked them for giving up more resources and continued expanding their colonies.

One clown had decided to go around between the different tribes and gather all of their fears and concerns about the pending conflicts that awaited them. He told them to give him one piece of hay for each fear or concern that every individual had. 

Some people had so many fears and concerns that they made hand-sized worry dolls out of the hay and gave it to the clown.

The clown filled his game sack up with more hay than he expected to collect. Once he had memorized and recited all of these fears and concerns several times over he decided that he would bring them to the fields of corn that the settlers were growing and release those fears and concerns hoping that these concerns would be addressed by the Great Spirit.

The community organizing clown spent the next three days praying over the sack and dancing around it, talking to his ancestors in the clouds about the fears and concerns everyone had until finally a holy person had overheard him and came to check in on all the commotion.

This holy person was a medicine man who had seen the colonizers expand over the seasons repopulating every winter and occupying more and more land every summer. He understood the fears and concerns that the clown had reiterated and added one fear of his own.

"I fear that you will not accept the things you can not change." The holy person offered him one last straw to add to the sack of hay.

The clown took this fear into consideration and thought about some of his own fears. "I fear that my attempt to change things for the better will be misunderstood." The clown continued to dance and chant and drag the sack of hay from on side of the corn field to the other.

That next evening right around dusk a settler had come to check on cornfield since it had not rained much that month. When he got to the edge of the field where some hills assumed a relaxed position over the prairie he noticed a native wildly dancing and dragging a large lumpy sack across the cornfield. 

The settler had heard stories of wild natives sneaking into villages and stealing children and feeding them the plants in an effort to cut down the settlers growing population and provide more crops for their tribes.

This story got to his head and in a fit of fear he loaded his rifle, crept in little closer and shot the native clown right in the chest. The clown went down clinging to his sack of hay.

The settler ran in to finish off his kill and see if any of the children will still alive, but instead he found a sack of hay and a clown gargling on his own blood. The clown struggled to express himself "I was afraid this would happen." The settler tried to put pressure on the wound but it was a sucking chest wound clearly piercing the clowns lungs.

The holy person heard the gun shot and slowly made his way over to the field already knowing what had happened. As he came to the seen he saw the settler crying over the body of the clown. "I'm so sorry, I thought you were stealing children and sacrificing them in a blood ritual. Please forgive me lord." The settler was taking full responsibility for this murder which was unusual, typically they try to blame their victims and suggest that they shouldn't have been dressed a certain way, or they shouldn't have been in a certain area doing uncertain things.

The holy person acknowledged the innocent mistake and rested his hand gently on the settlers shoulder, tears built up as he looked into the holy persons understanding gaze.

The clown held his hand up with all five fingers spread open and spit out enough blood to form a few words the settler could understand. "pull my finger"... the clown struggled to hold his smile in place.

The settler pulled the clowns index finger.

The clown choked on the blood coming from his lungs as he whispered his final words...

"No, not that finger."

The settler let go of his index finger and the clowns hand fell limp as he passed away.

The holy person spoke. "Do not forget what happened here today. Remember this moment for as long as you live. Ask questions before you pull triggers, or fingers. I will  prepare his body and leave an effigy here on this land. It will be a perch for an image of his likeness to stand on. I will fill it with all these straws of hay which were made to represent the fears and concerns of the tribes he once entertained. I am entrusting you with the task of protecting his effigy and maintaining this land with care and respect. May your sense of duty stand the test of time as you seek forgiveness from the world around you. I will continue to walk the corn pollen path and many generations from now I will return to see what has come of this land. You must walk the red road and maintain a central point of view on the different opinions held by extremists as the fight over this land and violate the treaties that had been set in place."

The settler wiped the tears from his eyes and rested his hand on his heart. "With the lord as my witness I shall honor this land and question extremists spouting propaganda for as long as I live, and I will teach my kids to teach their kids to do the same."

The holy person buried the clown and used his garments to shape the sack of hay with some holy hemp ropes to bind the oddly shaped body to a wooden cross perched along side the corn field. 

The settler kept his word and moved closer to the cornfield protecting it from land developers and bank tycoons. His kids grew up understanding the importance of asking good questions and putting a good days work into the land that we all depended on.

in the early 1900's the land was split up between different families who were told to honor the same agreements as the family before them. The land was bountiful and modern society continued to spread out and grow all around the area while the farmers preserved the land and kept the effigy intact. 

Over the years, modern transportation improved, and a few travelers had come to the town looking for farm fresh goods and visiting festival grounds to celebrate art, music, and poetry from all across the nation, but subsequently several of these out-of-towners had disappeared. Eventually it was noted that many of these travelers were last seen crossing the cornfield. As modern investigations approached the town nothing was ever found and the cases all went cold.