The Story of Walks with Bear and Bro'Ken

“A man’s heart devises his way, but God directs his steps.” Those words are from Proverbs, chapter 16. A lot of good advice there. For you the reader, years ago my “heart’s desire” was to follow the Lewis and Clark Trail in my Beaver Patriot motorhome during the period of “re-enactment”. Aided by “The Journals of Lewis and Clark”, the works of Stephen Ambrose and Bernard DeVoto, I traveled the Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, and Columbia Rivers; from Pittsburg to Fort Clatsop, I looked for relevant untold stories, factual or fiction. Stumbling across stories I met several Ogala Sioux at a Black Hills Pow Wow, saw events, gathered family stories, and began writing. This is a work of fiction, meant to entertain and not detract from the monumental achievements of Captains Lewis and Clark on their journey to the Pacific. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research, and so goes the Paraprosdokian I use in describing Bro-Ken. Paraprosdokians (a Greek term) are figures of speech where the last part of a sentence (or phrase) “...is surprising or unexpected and is frequently humorous.” The stories are from many heard in my travels and were not plagiarized, but rather researched. The storyteller is my fictional friend, Brother Ken, although there was a real “Brother Ken”. The story of Walks-With-Bear is the antithesis to what most believe about the American Indian, and about some White captives that were repatriated.