"The legend in these parts," old Hoots Monmouth said, lighting a
worn
meershaum pipe, "is that a First Nations fella by the name of
Standing Nine founded
the United States of America. First Nations –
what you'd call an Indian, I suppose.
Standing Nine was called
Standing Nine because he stood nine feet tall, and that's tall
even
for an Indian. And it was this Standng Nine that
discovered the new world. Columbus was just a
helper of his –
read the maps and did a bit of cooking, that sort of thing.
Standing
Nine had no trouble finding the new world because
he came
from the new world. He sailed east across the Atlantic
in a big birch barque he built himself
and discovered the old world
for the new, then turned around, sailed back, and revealed the
new
world to the old. Mind you, by the time Staning Nine got
back to the new world, it was full
of Vikings. Viking huts, Viking
pubs, Viking quangoes, Viking bodegas – you couldn't toss
a
hammer without knocking a horned helmet to the ground.
It looked
at first like war between the Vikings and Standing
Nine's seafarers was inevitable, but then Standing
Nine
proposed what's known today as the Elysian Compact, agreeing
that
the rights to the new world would be ceded to the winners
of a baseball game. The compact was
named after the
Elysian Fields, a stretch of land in New Jersey high above
the
Hudson River where the game was played. The Vikings
were mighty good batsmen, but, seeing as how
Standing Nine
had invented the game of baseball,
it's no surprise that he
excelled at the sport like no man before or since, and his
inside-the-park
home run in the bottom of the ninth sealed the
victory for the Big Indian and his friends.
And that tells you
everything you need to know about Indians, Vikings, baseball
and
history. Or so," the old man finished, puffing contemplatively
at his pipe, "folks say
'round here."
