Soul Stance River - 16

Now that December has descended with it's roots of ice and skies of snow our timber fortress is a sanctuary of ethnographic enlightenment and embassy that entreats the exchange of craftsmanship, lately I have been preoccupied with my etymological research, it is important to President Jefferson, an anthropologist that we discover the origin of the natives through their languages, he is obsessed with understanding the diversity of the human race a bone collector of civilizations and shaman of scholarship, Private Sheilds, through his blacksmithing expertise has allowed us to barter iron for corn without which the Corps of Discovery would either lose vital quantity of provisions, be reduced to malnourished paupers, or even engage in unscrupulous raiding, there are still a thousand arduous miles to go from all estimations, before reaching the Pacific, as is, the Elders, especially from the Hidatsas are suspicious of our motives because of the 18 foot high pallisaded fort we have built adjacent to the Mandans, so mistrust is suppressed well with an open door policy and liberal trade of battle axes, knives, weapon and tool sharpening, kettles, needles and so on, January 1805, the new year has introduced 40 below zero weather, syphilis and fists fights, to stave the ills of boredom we routinely go on hunting expeditions through the gruelling grip of winter's madness, another activity that warms the soul are the spectacular jamborees that conjure the whiles of instincts and reminds us all how the heart seeks it's deepest expressions, Cruzzatte plays the fiddle like a tempter of lunatic love while Silas Goodrich thumbs a mandolin into the dreams of romantic heroism, the squaws often coo with eyes of diamonds arms outstretched with fingers swaying like wind blown wheat, York is a sensation with the Indians they have never seen a Black Man before describing him as the black clay of chaos, they believe there is magic in his skin touching and rubbing him constantly like a healing stone, J.A.B.