* New art - This pencil art was done on 110 pound Acid free smooth Vellum paper and scanned in with my new Epson Expression 12000 XL. ( It is the first piece of artwork that was scanned in with the new scanner!)
* June 2022 - A larger version of this artwork has been uploaded so that those with larger monitor sizes/resolutions can see the detail better.

It was grandpa wolf's turn to watch over the little ones today and he had an interesting plan all set up. He didn't tell the grandpups about what they were going to be doing. Instead he waited for their parents to drop them off and then told them that they needed to have a big lunch because they were going out in the boat. They set off from the home island towards the south. Going along the west side of the island chain the swells from the open ocean made their small boat rise up and down.

Grandpa wolf told the young ones about how often his ancestors paddled up and down this coast for thousands of years in huge dugout canoes. Sometimes they would travel to the other tribes for trade, sometimes they traveled in large groups to make war. They had several substantial villages on the island group near the south end of the chain. Fortunately today is a calm day because this place is a very dangerous location to caught in a storm. As they go by the end of a huge island with cliffs and rocky beaches they see the rusted bow secition of a freighter. He tells them that the ship was wrecked when he was a pup, that out of 60 crew aboard only half a dozen survived. Most of those aboard were lost when the stern broke away and sank in 30 foot seas during a big wind storm that fall.

They finally get to a flat island in behind a larger one with tall mountains and pull into a natural bay. There they tie up and start walking up towards a clearing with tall wooden things that they had seen when they were approaching the island. Grandpa tells the young ones that this is the place where his grandfather was born, a large fishing village that has long since been abandoned. One of the pups runs ahead and points at one of the poles and he makes a "settle down" gesture with his hand. He tells the story behind the pole as well as the others nearby it. But at the last one he says to the young ones that the flat faced creatures above wolf's head are the first encounters with man.

He says that far in the old days the chief was alerted by a klootchman that a large white winged bird was coming up out of the sea. The chief had heard some excited chatter outside his longhouse and went to see for himself. A short meeting with the sub chiefs and they all got dressed in their finest clothing and went out to meet this approaching thunderbird. They were quite convinced that they were proceeding on a one way trip as Thunderbirds were known to be dangerous creatures. They soon saw the rest of the bird as they neared it, but it wasn't a bird, it was a giant canoe with large trees growing out of it and some clouds hanging from the branches. This was shocking in of itself but then they saw dozens of creatures on board that had no fur, no faces and wore the oddest clothing they had ever seen.

The chief and sub chiefs were invited aboard by the captain and they got their first good look at each other. Not only did the crew of the ship have no fur but their skin was white, they were ghosts! The chief had felt that this great canoe would be taking them to the next world and that he had died. However, as time went on this didn't make sense, there was trade between them. The men aboard the ship talked like they did...only the language was unintelligable. After a while the captian invited the chief to the ship's wheel and showed him how the sails worked. The wolf tribe then came aboard, their canoes were bounght on deck where the men looked at them, a couple of them made drawings of the carvings on them. Then the chief was made an honorary captain and showed the white men where to go through the islands so that they would not be wrecked.

After the wolf tribe members had been dropped off at their village the chief called a meeting of all tribe members to discuss the events of the day. At the end of the meeting he then declared a new addition to his name which translated in english "Big ship chief."