Chapter 475: Exploration of the Lake Kingdom, First Encounter with North American Tribes!

The mountains rise and fall in the east, extending towards the sea in the west, turning into gradually gentle hills. The meandering Yaqui River comes from the mountains, with its turbulent water, washing out large areas of fertile wilderness. Between the fields and hills, there are many gray-brown hills, densely covered in the yellow-green land, silently telling the story of life from ancient times.

Chihuaco, an old militiaman, climbed up a hill, bent down, and picked up a gray-brown stone. He squeezed it hard, and the hard gray stone hand was neither deformed nor broken.

"Huh? The flint of your Yome tribe seems to be much harder than that of the Yorem tribe?"

"Haha! How can foreigners, the flints of the Yorem tribe, compare with our Yome tribe?"

Hearing this, Mountain Eagle Weihuo laughed loudly and declared with pride.

"We Yaqui people are the people who live under the sacred mountain! Our fire stones can burn for a long time, far better than any other tribe! The reason for this is that our Yaqi ancestors have the most powerful souls and always protect us. The tribe!"

"Uh, that's right."

Chihuaco scratched his head, always feeling that there was something wrong with this logic, but he couldn't explain why. He didn't understand the difference between bituminous coal and lignite. Little did he know that the flint field here is a source of high-quality bituminous coal, and there is even an astonishing amount of anthracite coal. The old militiamen just nodded their heads, following the words of Shan Ying Weihuo, and his old face smiled like a flower.

"Friend, good, good! Yomei tribe, powerful, big tribe!"

"Haha, that's natural! Our Yuemei tribe has three thousand warriors and is the most powerful tribe in this area!"

Weihuo nodded with satisfaction and stretched out his arms to make gestures. He pointed from the field in front of him to the hills in the east.

"From here to there, a person can run a day's distance, all are our flint fields! Farther east, there is a larger flint field. These two best and largest flint fields are from our Yomei tribe. of!"

"Three thousand warriors? The most powerful?"

Two steps away, when Puap heard this, he raised his eyebrows and had an inexplicable smile on his lips. He once controlled the Qincongcan Warrior Camp, with two thousand elite warriors from the royal capital under his command, enough to defeat the so-called large tribe of Yomei! But now the gray earth warrior sighed, his eyes flashed, and when he heard the next sentence again, surprise appeared on his face.

"What, you have to run all day! There are actually two such large open-pit coal mines!"

In front of everyone, they saw gray-brown hills scattered everywhere, and they could not be seen for dozens of miles. The coal mines stored here are many times more than those in the kingdom's Chinganbat mining area, and they may burn the kingdom for hundreds of years. And the coal produced here is far harder than the coal in the Kingdom.

"Hard coal is good coal! The higher the hardness, the stronger the firepower, because it contains more divine power! There are two large coal mines, a large copper mine, and several scattered small gold mines. This land on the northwest coast, It’s really a rich land rich in minerals!”

Puap lowered his eyes to hide the joy in his eyes.

The fleet has stayed at the Yome tribe for two days. Although it has not been received by the chief, it has also gone to the local tribal market to trade with the surrounding tribes. The Yome tribe is a large settled tribe. The tribesmen cultivate the fertile land along the Yaqi River and fish in the offshore and estuary areas.

When food is abundant, the tribe will allocate manpower to dig nearby mineral deposits for daily use of the tribe and even trade with various tribes. What they produced most was flint, followed by copper and stone, and finally some gold and stone.

The Yomei Department is strong enough and has convenient transportation. It is the trading center of various departments. At the market of the Yome tribe, in addition to the Mayo people, the warriors of the kingdom also met the Opata people in the mountains and the Macurawe people on the edge of the wilderness.

The Opata people live in the uppermost valley north of the Yaqui River. They could easily trade with the Yome tribe by taking a canoe and going south along the Yaqui River. In fact, the location of the Northwest Sacred Mountain is approximately between the Opata people and the Yome tribe, forming a broad coal-producing belt. To the east of the coal-producing belt, there are a large number of copper mines with surprisingly high copper content. The techniques of copper smelting in various tribes were learned from the Opata people.

From the mouths of Opata merchants, everyone also learned about a dozen powerful tribes further north, collectively known as the Apache, and the desert people in the northwest who called themselves Tohono Oodham. . Most of these two groups are nomadic, chasing herds and migrating, and they are extremely good at fighting.

The powerful Apache tribes were accustomed to fighting and controlled a very large area of ​​land. They were in direct contact with the Opata Alliance in the mountains, and small-scale battles continued. The Opata people forged primitive red copper weapons precisely to fight against several southern tribes of Apaches.

The Makuvian people are half hunter-gatherer, half migratory, and live to the east of the Yome tribe. Their tribe is not powerful and the land is rich in gold. It's just that there are too many gold mines in this area, and no one cares about these useless gold stones. The tribe with the most gold is actually from the east of the Makuvi people. There are large numbers of Tarahumaras who hunt erratically and resemble the eight tribes of dogs.

The Tara people's land area is also large, hundreds of miles upstream of the Mayo River, occupying the northwest of the Zacatecas Wilderness. In fact, they were not far from the Yorem tribe, but were blocked by the towering Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains, making any large-scale military operation impossible. Their land was not only rich in gold, but also produced more silver.

Puap suspected that the Yorem tribe's silver probably came from the Tara people's transactions.

"The names of these chaotic tribes are more difficult to pronounce than the last. It's really a headache!"

The gray earth warrior cursed in his heart. Along the way, he tried to memorize these names and classify them simply.

The tribes along the northwest coast, from south to north, are the Totome, Mayo, and Yaqui. All three live in seaside estuaries, settle for planting, and hunt sea fish, and their populations are also relatively large. Further to the northwest along the coast, as the rainfall becomes less and less, there are the Sri people who have not yet made contact, the semi-hunting people, and the desert people who are completely hunting.

"Well, these are the five coastal tribes. To the east is the border of the wasteland, and there are two tribes similar to the Dogborn."

Puap pondered in his heart and glanced at the mountains to the east. He had worked with the Guakili Legion and was impressed by the canine descendants' endurance.

"I heard that the Tara people are better at running and can chase wild turkeys and tire them to death! It sounds like wild wolves!"

On the border of the eastern wasteland, there are two groups, the Makuvi and the Tara, both of whom resemble canines and wander in the arid wasteland. Sometimes they farm, sometimes they hunt, they have no fixed residence, they move around all year round, and they also fight each other. Relatively speaking, the Makuvi people are located on the edge of the wilderness and have a higher degree of settlement. They will send tribesmen here to trade.

"Finally, there are two northern groups, the Opatas and the Apaches. One seems to be more organized, and the other should be more capable of fighting!"

In the northern mountains, the Opata people established small city-states and initially formed an alliance. Their metal craftsmanship has taken initial shape, their cotton cloth and copperware are abundant, and they can send out caravans to trade with surrounding ministries. Further north, there is a rumored fierce hunting tribe called the Apaches. It is said that this name comes from some Pueblo people further north. In their Zuni language, the name means "enemy." The Opata people recognized the name and regarded the Apaches as their enemies.

"What a vast northland!"

Puap took a long breath and sighed in his heart. Without taking such a trip, he would never have imagined that the sea is so vast, the north is so vast, and there are so many ethnic groups in the world! After thinking for a moment, he tilted his ears again and listened to the conversation between Old Man Qi and Shan Ying.

"Ah! Friend, a basket of flints, five spears, or two pieces of cloth? This price is no good, it's too high!"

Chihuaco looked troubled. There is so much coal here that it costs almost nothing to dig it out, but the other party charges such a high price. What's more, coal is a consumable that disappears once burned.

"Ha! Foreigners, these are the flints left by the ancestors of our Yaqi people! Although there are many of them, they are gifts left by our ancestors. They contain the power of the sacred mountain. How can they be easily exchanged? In our Yomeida This is how the tribe trades flint with foreign tribes!”

Mountain Eagle Weihuo's eyes flashed, thinking mentally. He looked at the spear in Chihuaco's hand and said with a smile.

"The Opata people will also sell us similar spears with red copper heads and five flints per basket! In fact, we are not short of weapons. The Yome tribe is the most powerful, and there is nothing nearby that can threaten us. Tribe. We don’t like gold, stone, silver or stone. They are just useless and common stones. But the tribe likes them very much. If they are in large quantities, they can be cheaper for you!”

"Ah! Our spears are different from those of the Opatans. They are strong and sharp!"

Chihuaco explained, but seeing the unmoved look on Shan Ying's face, he said no more. There wasn't a lot of cotton on the ship, but a few more baskets of flint had to be replaced and returned to His Majesty. He hesitated for a while, and with some caution, finally asked again.

"Friends, we come from a distant and rich lake. The tribe in the lake produces lake gems, green, red, blue, and yellow! Gemstones, uh, do you want them?"