The chief warns of pale face invasion

TO FOLLOW UP WITH late word on the Buchanan post:

A historian has turned up an old document of turkey skin recording this mid-16th century event in the New World:

Fearful of his tribe's declining fortune, an Indian chief assembled his people with a dire warning about their status as an exceptionalist nation. As they gathered around the fires, the sachem said balefully:

"It is my duty to tell you that we are being threatened on all sides because we have been remiss in dutifully mounting our steeds at the borders of our most honorable Yakohotchee Nation."

"How can that be?" one of the braves, newly arrived from a outpost just west of Atlanta, asked. "We are brave warriors."

"That, we are,." the chief responded approvingly. "We are indeed brave warriors, blessed by the gods that have looked down upon us from our papoose days."

He paused to find the precise words. "This afternoon, however, our exceptional scout, Kemo Sabe, arrived from the distant land of sky blue waters to tell us of many strange things that are happening. Most worrisome, he said, were the visages of the people landing on our shores.

Worrisome?' the braves gasped. 'What could cause such fear in exceptional braves?.

"Their faces," the chief replied. "Their faces were pale, and they spoke in a strange language.

"Pale faces? How can that be. They will mock our exceptional ruddy skin with the deathly pallor that they bring to our hallowed ground!'

"We must act before it is too late,' the chief commanded. "I am asking you, my brave friends, to authorize a moat along the entire valley to prevent them coming any farther".

"A moat? Do you really believe that will stop this invasion of strange pale faces?

" It will," said the chief with self satisfaction, "if we fill it with crocodiles. "We cannot afford to lose a minute, or our noble Yakohotchee nation will perish.

"Why not rattlesnakes, too?"

"Those, too," the chief said. "These are perilous times. We must think of our grandchildren."