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Thanksgiving isn't just about beautifully baked birds and family gatherings. It's about being grateful for everything that we have and for our loved ones near and far. So from all of us at The Louis L'Amour Trading Post, a heartfelt "Thanks".

JUST IN TIME FOR THE HOLIDAYS!

The Story - History is in the Telling!
A Lost Treasures Newsletter EXCLUSIVE
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"In some dim and bygone age, a primitive man came limping back to his camp-fire carrying a great slab of meat. As his people ate that meat he mumbled . . ."

The anecdote is the life-blood of history, it brings reality and the flush of living to the raw facts. I am a writer of stories, and all our knowledge began with a story.

History and geography began with a story told by a camp-fire; the sciences began there, too.

All of man's knowledge began with stories, passed on from parent to child, or through the tales told by hunters or warriors who returned from the field.

In some dim and bygone age a primitive man came limping back to his camp-fire carrying a great slab of meat. As his people ate that meat he mumbled, with his mouth full no doubt, that he had stampeded this great beast with the long nose into the mud, or asphalt, perhaps and he had killed it there. Tomorrow they would return for more meat. He had killed the monster at the foot of the small hill with the three oaks, where the pool was.

There you have the beginnings of history ... and of geography as well.

"If you start when the light is barely here and walk until the sun touches that peak, you will find the pool where the monster lies."

There you have the beginning of navigation.

"I killed him with a thrust behind the left shoulder."

There you have the beginnings of the science of anatomy.

Later, when he told the story again, when his belly was full and people had gathered around him, he said "It was a great beast, the largest I ever saw, and it rushed at me, but I stood my ground and thrust hard with my spear into the meat of the left shoulder, and he fell at my feet."

There you have the beginnings of fiction.

Once I was standing beside a small river in colorado talking to a young indian woman, a jicarilla-apache married to a navajo friend of mine. She said, "If you want to hear the stories come back in the winter when the snow is on the ground, come in the moon of the popping trees, that is when we tell our stories."

... Louis L'Amour