The spirit of Big Crow with Little Feet knew of Katherine (Kat) Jackson’s existence long before she knew of him. The connection was spiritual and by blood. He sought her out because Kat had DNA markers from her mother’s side of the family acquired generations earlier through an unknown Puebloan Indian tribe. Kat was utterly unaware of her involvement in something she knew nothing about until she was exposed to a series of dreams that were, at best, unremarkable and mostly meaningless…until they weren’t…and terrifying dots began to connect.
On November 29, 1864, over 600 U.S. Army cavalry stationed at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, massacred hundreds of women, children, and elderly Cheyanne and Arapaho Indians at Sand Creek in southern Colorado. The massacre violently pulled families apart in an unprovoked attack.
Big Crow with Little Feet, a powerful tribal shaman and medicine man, died in that attack, as did a couple about to be married. The bride, Dew on Flowers, and her groom, Eagle Shadow, soon-to-be tribal chief, were away from Sand Creek when the massacre took place, hunting for rabbits on the mesa above the Puye Ruins for the wedding feast. A roving patrol of cavalry, or blue legs, as they were known to the Indian tribes, ran across the hunting party and murdered them all.
Spiritual powers doomed the couple to remain unmarried and without an heir until they found each other again as they wandered and searched in the spirit world. Their coming back together was at the core of the Puye Prophecy. The murder of the bride and two of her female friends, along with the severed heads of her groom-to-be and his male counterparts, was witnessed by Katherine in a dream orchestrated by Big Crow.
Kat had still not become aware of his presence despite his role as Kat’s protector. When both the bride and groom were murdered, he had to protect Kat because the spirits in the realm tasked him with ensuring the successful completion of the Puye Prophecy. Still unaware of any of the spiritual goings-on in the background, Kat had become the carrier of Dew on Flowers’ spirit courtesy of Big Crow’s powers. Kat remained clueless in a confusing reality spinning her life somewhere between bizarre and terrifying.
Kat had several encounters with Big Crow before ever seeing him manifested as a human. Whether she actually saw him or not, his presence and departure were always accompanied by an unexplained wisp of smoke that smelled like a wood fire. The smoke, as Big Crow explained, was a byproduct of his passing through the ether to and from the realm of his being.
Big Crow was an imposing figure, standing almost seven feet tall, including the crumpled stovepipe hat that crowned a head of heavy gray braids woven with beads, framing a handsome face of thirty or so years with piercing blue eyes that defied the passing of over 161 years. He wore a heavy, long black topcoat that hid a lean and powerful body. A lingering aroma of a wood fire, a scent Kat recognized even before making the connection with his presence, was part of him.
When Kat saw him for the first time, she was more defiant than intimidated, especially when Big Crow kidnapped her and forced her to drive to the Puye Ruins, where she got more than she bargained for in what the Puye Prophecy required of her. With Kat becoming the carrier of Dew on Flowers’ spirit, she became marked in the spirit realm because evil spirits did not want the prophecy to be fulfilled. Big Crow continues to protect Kat and attempts to raise her spiritual awareness and the powers she possesses as a spirit carrier. Close calls and life-saving encounters show signs of a relationship forming — a relationship that should not even be possible…but was.
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VIDEO Trailer – “Puye Prophecy”
Puye Review by Jill Rey – https://bit.ly/4fPqa49
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