"I was asked if the lamp was a jar of fireflies."

"The light does flicker. Not a bad observation. The Indians seem to be captivated with every move we make. They would make pretty good students. Why not take advantage of their curiosity? See if you can steer the conversation to find out everything they can remember about other outside visitors?"

So, for the next hour, working through Artillio translating into Choco´, the pair listened with interest to the narration of things past. Without movies, books, or television to entertain themselves, the Indians were good storytellers. Jed's favorite was a tale about the first portable radio they had seen. The bravest hunter in the village had been selected to break it open so the person trapped inside the box could escape.

The Choco´ enjoyed a huge laugh when they learned that Jed was an anthropologist. It seemed that a few years previous, a female anthropologist had invaded the village. The first thing this hippie-type had done was take off her blouse, and decorate her body with the vegetable dye the women used for decoration, and as an insecticide. That was acceptable. What wasn't appreciated was that the woman had then acted like a man. She wasn't interested in drying plantain. Instead of luring a man out into the bushes, she chased him instead!

Jed was aware that anthropology seemed to attract bleeding heart liberals who tended to measure another's culture against that of Hartford, Connecticut, or West Palm Beach, Florida. Among subject groups —Indians, Eskimo, or horsepacker— this type of researcher had become a joke. Professionally their papers were a useless collection of invalid conclusions that only supported the observer's preformed pet theories as to natural childbirth, free love, or man's relationship with nature.

Jed tried to explain this, and that gave him a funny idea to share. He had Jenny tell about his colleagues who were always looking for a relationship between distant tribes. He instructed the Choco´ to answer the next anthropologist that came along in Chinook, the lingua franca of the Cascade Mountains. Jed could imagine the excitement that a report of a new found link of Indian migration would arouse in an academic publication, and the embarrassment when 'Hayas pelton mika,' was translated into 'you are very silly'."

Describing the Bering Sea migration from Mongolia, Jed caught the gist of Jenny's answers to one of the older Indians.

"What did he say?"

"He asked if those were the people that ate with sticks."

"Chopsticks! Ask him if he saw this happening."

"He said, 'yes'."