The Lost Tribe Pt. 01

This is the story of an amateur historian and his search for evidence of the existence of a lost tribe; he's not prepared for what he finds.

Part 1

Prologue:

Jason Hawke was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Born into a family of wealth, prestige, and power, he never wanted for anything. He was also a trust fund baby. Due to the very forward thinking of his fourth great grandfather, his financial future was totally secure. Joshua Hawke had fought for the U.S. Army during Mexican-American War between 1847 and 1848. When hostilities ceased, he settled in the town of Bisbee in the territory that would eventually become, first, the Arizona Territory, and finally the State of Arizona. A very ambitious young man, he first tried his hand at prospecting for gold, and after achieving moderate success in this venture, bought another claim that was thought to have been nearly mined out. That claim would eventually yield an enormous amount of high-grade cooper ore. By the early 1880s, he sold his mining operations to a large mining corporation, becoming one of the wealthiest men in the territory. At that time, he divided his wealth into seven parts. Keeping one part for himself and gifting one part to his only son, he set up five trusts for future male heirs; his direct linear descendants. The J.S. Morgan Company, which would later become the J.P Morgan Investment Company was chosen as the investment manager for these five trusts and given free rein to invest the assets as they deemed prudent.

Jason Hawke was the sole beneficiary of the last of those trust funds. However, you would never know it based upon his life style. Always dressed in jeans and a tee shirt, in school he was not considered a prime catch. He was below average height at five feet seven inches tall and weighed no more than one hundred thirty-five pounds. He was a good-looking kid, with fashionably long dark brown hair and a relatively dark complexion that came from his Native American heritage. A very good student, he finished in the top five of his high school graduating class and graduated with highest honors from the University of Arizona with a bachelor's degree and then a master's degree in American History. Jason's passion was the history of Arizona and of its early inhabitants. Although not pursuing a doctorate degree, he was a constant visitor at the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records Department.

For the last several weeks, Jason had been following the correspondence of three historians from the early twentieth century pertaining to the Hohokam Indians, one of the earliest known inhabitants of the Valley of the Sun, dating back to the time of Christ. The Hohokam had settled the land between the Salt and Gila Rivers and had built the most complex system of irrigation in the New World. They were farmers who lived mostly on the food they grew and the meat from small game that they hunted. Based upon the artifacts that they left behind, their civilization thrived for nearly fifteen hundred years and then vanished. The discussion was what had caused them to leave. The most common cause was thought to be the Great Drought from 1276 to 1299 followed by a major flooding event in 1358 that destroyed their irrigation system. Two of the three historians held fast to that belief, but one had a different and extremely controversial belief. He claimed that, according to his great grandfather who lived with the Pima Indians for over a year, there was an oral history of the existence of a fierce tribe of warriors called the Amazonians that had swept down from the Superstition Mountains and had wiped out the Hohokam before the flood.

'What if that were true', Jason thought. 'Wouldn't it be something if I could find actual evidence of a lost tribe; one that has never been heard of before?'

Chapter One: The Search Begins

Jason spent hours every day in the Arizona State Achieves pouring through ancient documents on microfiche pre Arizona statehood. These documents included personal journals, personal first hand historical views of historical events and the daily lives of ordinary people.

After the first month, he was beginning to become discouraged. He recognized the fact that he was becoming sloppy in his research and decided to take a break. A vacation would clear his head and help him to refocus.

For the next week, he spent his days on the beach in Acapulco and his nights in various clubs watching other young adults having a good time. On his last night in Acapulco, he was wandering the streets with no particular destination in mind, when he turned a corner and came face to face with a tall beautiful woman and struck up a conversation with her.

"If you're looking for a unique experience, I suggest you go to the club across the street."

Jason looked at the front of the brightly lit building. The sign over the door read 'Noches Extrañas Club de Caballeros' - Strange Nights Gentlemen's Club. She handed him a card entitling him to a free drink and continued her walk down the street.

Throwing caution to the wind Jason crossed the street and entered the club, paying the cover charge to the scantily clad woman at the door. The room was dark. Jason could see about twenty figures sitting at the various tables that occupied the space in front of the stage. Being the kind of person who always gravitated to the back of a crowd, he found a seat at the bar and asked for a Modelo Especial. When the music began, he turned his chair around and watched as a dancer appeared on the stage. Jason was not a prude, nor was he a virgin, but he was not prepared for anything like this. On stage was a dancer, naked from the waist up and wearing what amounted to a loincloth. This, in and of itself, did not shock Jason, it was more or less what he expected; it was the body of the dancer that shook him to the core.

There, on the stage, was a living representation of what he had pictured in his mind that a member of his lost tribe, the Amazonians, would look like. Exceptionally tall for a woman, with an oval shaped face, highlighted with high cheek bones, dark eyes and a dark complexion with luxuriously long straight nearly black hair. Her obviously powerful physique captured his imagination. Her shoulders were wide, capped with well-defined muscles; her chest was well developed, topped with obviously enhanced round globes, which appeared to defy gravity. Her waist was narrow which served to enhance the movement of her generous hips. She displayed a much-defined set of abs and with well-muscled legs she pranced across the stage. As she turned her back to the audience, she wiggled her solid looking and very prominent backside.

Jason wasn't sure that she was a woman until she dropped her loincloth, and then there was no doubt. At the same instant a young man, no more than twenty-one years old to Jason's untrained eye, was brought onto the stage and shoved towards the dancer. The dancer turned towards her completely naked prey and slowly stalked him. It appeared to Jason that he has under some sort of spell, because he just stood perfectly still, as if, by remaining stationary he would be invisible to her.

When she had moved within reach, he finally sensed the danger he was in and turned to run. Too late, she pounced on her prey, dragging him down to floor of the stage, which Jason only now realized was covered in a thin vinyl covered mat. The dancer quickly wrapped her powerful arms around his chest and began to squeeze. Soon Jason could see her prey's face slowly turning a darker shade of red, until it almost appeared to turn purple due to the lack of oxygen. When he appeared to go limp, she released her grip, turned him face down onto the mat, and climbed onto his back with her knees straddling his chest. Grabbing his hair, she yanked his head back as far as it would go and then with a dramatic movement, reached to her nonexistent belt and pulled what everyone in the audience assumed was a knife. The warrior, she was no longer a dancer to Jason, after proudly displaying her weapon to the audience, proceeded to drag it across his exposed neck from ear to ear. With a frightful war cry, she released his head, which dropped face first to the mat, and stood over her vanquished foe.

The warrior stepped back and allowed her prey to recover. As he slowly got to his feet, she stood assessing his condition and to Jason's eye, his slowly deflating erection. She turned briefly to the audience, smiled a wicked smile and pointed to herself. Her jester and attitude was left to the audience to interpret; but to Jason, she was saying I did that, he belongs to me, and this is now for my pleasure. Before he could mount a woefully inadequate defense, she attacked him once again. The warrior quickly grabbed him under an arm and easily tossed him across the stage. She raced to his prone body, lifted him to a standing positon and repeated the maneuver in the opposite direction. This time she slowly and, almost seductively, crossed the stage, confident that her prey was all but defeated. She repositioned his motionless body on to his back, his arms splayed outward as if nailed to a cross in the center of the stage, parallel to the audience.

Jason watched, mesmerized by her combination of beauty and power, as she slowly stood over her prey, with her feet on either side of his head, looking down at his elongated body. She slowly lowered herself to her knees, effectively trapping his arms as she leaned forward and took his now complete deflated member into her deadly grip. With practiced efficiency, she began to stroke him. It didn't take long before his member filled with blood extending several inches beyond her hand. At the same time, she lowered herself over his face and began to gyrate, using his face for her pleasure. Faster and faster, her hand traveled along his erection as she pressed herself harder onto his face. Her face was serene in a state of absolute bliss when he began to desperately try to move her off his face and began to kick his legs indicating that he couldn't breathe. In less than a minute, two events occurred in rapid succession; the first, his essence came shooting forth, like a geyser, and two, all other motion ceased.

For a minute, they both lay perfectly still and then the warrior rolled off her prey and slowly stood over him, nudging him with her foot until he too began to stir. Offering him her hand, she hauled him onto his very unstable legs and held him as they both turned to the audience and preceded to bow. Money was thrown on the stage by appreciative spectators, which he dutifully picked up. With one final bow, both performers left the stage.

Jason was suddenly aware of someone standing next to him. He turned back towards the bar, coming face to face with a pair of very enticing breasts. When his glance moved upwards, he recognized the woman from the street.

"You were so enthralled with the performance, that I didn't want to disturb you until it was finished. Do you mind if I sit here, I'm not scheduled to perform for another half an hour? Buy me a drink?"

Without hesitation, he signaled for the bartender.

"Carlos, my usual," she said.

Moments later Carlos brought her a Modelo.

The expression on his face must have given away his surprise as to what she was drinking.

"Don't be so surprised. First of all, this is my normal drink. I was checking you out, to me you look like a fellow college student and I'm sure you're not made of money. With a high roller, I'm expected to order a glass of some ridiculously expensive Champagne, which I really don't even like."

Before she sat, he checked out her costume and her body. In both cases, she was the equal or a step above the previous performer.

"I see you really like my body," she said indicating the sizable lump running down his thigh.

Jason could feel his face turning bright red from embarrassment as she smiled at him.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you. I take it as a compliment. You seem to really like athletic women, women with muscles, powerful dominating women. Are you going to stay for my act?"

"I wasn't really planning to stay here this long but..."

"Please, I would really like for you to see me."

"Alright, how can I refuse a beautiful warrior like you?"

"What did you like most about the other girl's performance?"

"Well, as I was watching the part where she kills her opponent, I couldn't help thinking that she is exactly how I pictured the ancient female warriors of the lost tribe of Amazonians that I'm researching; I'm hoping to prove that they actually existed."

Suddenly he watched the smile fade from her face, replaced by an expression of concern.

"Really, that's the topic I plan to do my thesis on. I believe that they existed somewhere in the area near Mesa. My name is Maria, give me your address and maybe we can exchange notes."

She took one long last pull on her beer and after placing the bottle back on the bar said to Jason, "come, I think you'd better leave now. Individuals sometimes find themselves becoming part of the act. I wouldn't want that for you. Come, I'll walk you to the door."

She placed her arm over his shoulder and practically dragged his body off his chair and ushered him towards the door.

"I'll be in touch."

Chapter Two: The Hunt Continues

Jason returned to the archives and continued his search with a renewed enthusiasm. It was going well, but as each day passed with no word from Maria, he began to slip back into a state of despair. Two weeks later, as he was sorting through his mail, he spotted it.

The ordinary business envelope addressed to him with no return address postmarked three days earlier from Tuscan. Tearing it open, he quickly scanned the single sheet of paper.

'Jason, still on the hunt? Look for the journal of Samuel Strong. Good Luck, Maria'

Jason was both elated and frustrated. He had hoped for more of a personal interaction with her. Apparently, she did not wish to converse with him, that any correspondence between the two would be one way only.

After a long sleepless night, he returned to the archives and started his search for Samuel Strong and his journal. Two hours later, he was given access to a file room, which held old documents recorded on film that were still awaiting funding to allow them to be digitized. He carefully scrolled through the several films, scrutinizing each document; approximately half way through the file box, he hit pay dirt - 'The Journal of Samuel Strong.'

June 6, 1892

'My name is Samuel Strong, I am fifty-three years old, still in relatively good health, but I want to get these experiences out of my head and onto paper, because on paper they exist.'

Jason began to skim through the first twenty pages, about how he came to the 'New Mexico' Territory and how, along with about 120 Confederate Cavalrymen, road into the small settlement of Tucson and declared it the capital of the western district of the Confederate Arizona Territory. Samuel was among a squad of confederate soldiers scouting the extreme western area of the district when a group of Union Calvary soldiers attacked them at Picacho Pass. A fierce battle took place in the thick mesquite and arroyos lasting over ninety minutes. As nightfall settled over the area, the confederates, fearing Union reinforcements, retreated back to Tucson, thus ending the only skirmish in the Arizona Territory. Soon after, the Confederate troops retreated from the territory altogether and re-grouped in Texas. All that is, but one.

'I was dam sure that the Confederacy was doomed and I pledged to myself that I was not going to go down with it. Anyway, it wasn't my fight. They chose me, not me them. I headed north from Tucson, finding work on a small farm near the Salt River. I worked there for basically room and board for the next twenty-five years, then the lure of riches became too strong and I joined up with a mining company that was prospecting for gold in the nearby Superstition Mountains.'

Jason's attention was suddenly refocused fully on the next entry in the journal.

'For the next year, myself and six other men toiled in the mountains during the extreme weather, digging a hole about two hundred feet into the side of one of the peaks. It was backbreaking work. Especially for me since at the age of forty-nine I was nearly twice as old as the others.

'One morning, before starting our day in the mine, our foreman, Zeke, told me to take the wagon into town and pick up our weekly supplies. I was always the one who would have to pick up the supplies. I thought it was because Zeke liked me, but my best friend Willie told me that the real reason Zeke sent me rather than one of the others was because he got twice the amount of work out the other guys, so losing me for the entire day was no great loss. That didn't bother me too much; I knew it was true; therefore, I couldn't blame him.

"I hitched up the horses and got ready to go. The last thing that Zeke said to me was, 'and don't stop at the saloon before you come back.'

"Little did I know that those words would be the last words that Zeke would ever say to me. I started out at a leisurely pace and had just made the turn out of our camp, just around a small outcropping of rock, when I heard a great deal of shouting and gun shots. The trail was too narrow for me to turn around so I stopped, jumped off the wagon, and ran back to the outcropping. Peering around the side, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There must have been about twenty of them. They were on foot and swarming over the hopelessly out numbered miners. Most of the miners were unarmed, their pistols were still in their tents, only Zeke appeared to have his gun but he quickly ran out of bullets, having never hit any of them. They were Indian warriors for sure. Each was naked from the waist up, only wearing a loincloth and moccasins. Most had their knives drawn and were ganging up on the individual miners. I watched helplessly as one of the warriors wrestled my best friend Willie down to the ground, his face pushed hard into the dirt as his attacker sat on his back. With one hand the warrior removed his knife from its sheath and with the other took a fist full of Willie's hair and cut his throat from ear to ear."

Jason sat back in his chair, awe struck at the similarities to the performance he had witnessed only a few weeks before in Mexico. Could they be related?

"One by one each of the miners was killed the same way, all that is, except Zeke. He was subdued by at least three of the warriors and held on the ground until the killing was over. Then the apparent leader of the warriors walked up to where he was lying and commanded that he be stood up. Now Zeke was a big man, I had to look up to him when we spoke, so he had to be about six feet tall. When he stood, coming face to face with the leader, they were eye to eye. But that was where the similarities ended. Zeke was a thick man, broad shouldered, with a thick middle. The warrior leader was lean and hard, with thickly muscled arms, long muscular legs, and, I swear to God, the nicest set of teats that I ever saw. She was not a man as I had assumed at first, but a beautiful, vicious woman and so were the rest of them.

"She stood in front of him, looking him up and down, apparently trying to decide what to do with him. With a slight nod of her head, the two warriors on either side of Zeke seized his arms. Zeke was momentarily distracted and never saw the leader's fist crushing the side of his jaw. Before Zeke could fall to the ground, the leader put her shoulder into his belly and hoisted him onto her shoulder with little effort. A war-like shout came from the rest of her warriors as they celebrated their complete victory and the claiming of their prize. Then as the leader and several of her warriors turned and disappeared deeper into the surrounding hills, the rest of their group scavenged the area for anything of value to them.