Saltair
an excerpt

Preface
Ancient legends still told by the Native Americans who dwell in the state of Utah, tell of a great Indian tribe calling themselves Puaguampe, which translates loosely as wizards or medicine men. The Puaguampe, who made their home on the shores of the Great Salt Lake located in the heart of what is now called Utah, were indeed a tribe of great magics and mysteries and were often feared and largely left unbothered by the other local tribes.
In spite of their power, the Puaguampe were a simple people who lived in huts of grass and sod, and who respected the land on which they lived as belonging to the Great Spirit who created all things. Thus they took from the land only what was needed for their basic needs.
For as far back as the Puagampe's oral traditions and stories go, or the oral traditions and stories of any of the neighboring tribes for that matter, had been ruled by a chief who was known only as the shaman. So great and terrible were his powers that few dared challenge him, and those who did lived only long enough to regret having such a foolish notion.. It was even said by many that the grim spirit of death himself feared the shaman, and one could not count as many moons as the shaman had seen. . Whether or not that is true, it is an undeniable fact that none of the ancient stories that tell of the times before the white man came and defiled their world speak of a day when the shaman had not been.
The shaman led his people with wisdom and mercy, but to his enemies he was ruthless and savage. The ancient legends also bear record that from the shaman's tremendous thirst for vengeance against his foes, coupled with his great magic, was spawned a monstrous creature, both reptile and mammal, huge of head, long of body, with over a hundred teeth sharper than any knife and having a scorching breath rumored to be as fierce than the very fires of Hell. When awakened, its ravenous hunger was insatiable, and could only be appeased with the blood and flesh of the shaman's enemies. Most terrifying of all, this deadly creature was immortal. It was said that not even the Great Spirit, he who controls all life, could end the life of this dangerous predator.
No one, not even the shaman, dared give this creature a name for to do so would have been to give it great power and controlling it during one of its rampages already taxed the shaman's strength to control. For that reason, the shaman kept the creature in a magical slumber in its lair in the depths of the Great Salt Lake when he had no pressing need for its services.
For similar reasons, few other than his descendants dared speak the shaman's name, for to do so would be to grant the shaman even more power over the one who speaking his name. While while he lived, the mere mention of his name by enemy lips gave him the power to possess them and bend them to do unspeakable things in his name. So the shaman's name was also lost through time, except by his direct decedents, even though his legend and the legend and stories of his terrible creature was not forgotten by those whom the Great Spirit had first given that land too.
The shaman's power was unequaled, until a new enemy invaded the land, men pale of face and bearing weapons more powerful even that the shaman's magic. At first the white men and the shaman lived in an uneasy peace. For the shaman knew it was simply a matter of time until his ancestral lands were invaded by those who cared only for the wealth to be gained from trapping beaver and other animals whose fur was prized in the east for the making of hats and coats, caring little for the meat they left to rot on the ground until only the vultures would touch it.
The shaman's anger was kindled. He and his people believed that all life is valued by the Great Spirit, who was greatly displeased when men killed only more than what was needed for food and the simplest of clothing.
For a time, the shaman kept his anger in check, but he knew it was only a matter of time before these white trappers realized that, largely due to his magic, the finest of all fur bearing animal life, numbering in the thousands, made their home on his ancestral land. And find out they did, forcing him to act against them. Despite seeing an abundance of beaver and mink, the traps and snares they set in the lands of the shaman's tribe remain woefully barren. At first, none of the white trappers had a clue as to why this was happening. although all the native tribes throughout the territory that would one day be known as Utah had tales about this greatest of shamen. Often a trapper would offer such payment for an Indian maiden to wed that their fathers could not refuse. These trappers learned of the shaman and his terrible creature from their new wives and passed on the stories to to others. At first most scoffed at the stories. But as their traps remained empty, the shaman's power could no longer be ignored. Believing that only the shaman's death would remove the curse placed on their traps and snares, a dozen avenging trappers attacked the shaman's tribe, burning their simple grass huts and killing the Puag. A few were allowed to escape in order that they might warn other tribes of the consequences of rousing the white man's terrible anger. The shaman and a handful of others, mostly women and children, were captured alive but faced a worse fate than those killed outright. The trappers bound and gagged the shaman to prevent him from using his magic, built a crude gallows, placed the shaman on it with a noose about his neck and forced him to watch as the others were tortured with knives heated in the flames of their own campfires, defiled, then scalped while still conscious. The shaman was then tortured as well. His captors wanted to hear his screams for mercy, acknowledging the white man's superiority, so removed his gag before torturing him with the heat knives. Rather than beg for mercy, the shaman cursed the shores of the Great Salt Lake for the white man's sake forever, then called forth his monster.
The mountain men plunged a bowie knife into his chest and hung him. So he was dead before the monster had risen from the depths of the lake, but it avenged its master's murder with a terrible carnage. Only the youngest of the murderers escaped, by abandoning his companions, diving into the Great Salt Lake and swimming to the other side. The monster's
attention was on the other trappers, so he failed to give chase. But the young trapper's celebration at having escaped the monster was short lived. Fearing the effect that his stories of a curse would have on their overall trade, they silenced this sole witness to what had happened in a much kinder way than his companions had been dispatched, then tracked and shot a giant grizzly bear and tore at the trapper's corpse with its claws to make it appear as if the bear had done the deed. No one but the local Indians ever doubted the tale they spun of this enraged bear that had killed a dozen men before being brought down itself.
There were some who saw through the lie, who knew that the bear was less of a monster than those it was accused of killing. And far less dangerous than what actually was responsible. They feared that the slaughter was not over, that with the shaman's death, the killing would go on forever and would no longer be restricted to the shaman's enemies. But the killings did stop...for a time at least. Legend says that the shaman had shown passed on to his many sons and daughters the secret for controlling control his creature, in case the day came when he was no longer able to do so. And when the trappers attacked, the shaman had tried to make sure that his living children would be able to escape unharmed, after exacting a promise from each to avenge him and their people if he was dead or otherwise unable to do so.
Only one of his children made it, the shaman's youngest daughter. And although she had a kind and forgiving heart, she was bound by the laws of her people one of which was the responsibility of family to avenge the wrongful death of one of their own. The shaman' youngest daughter was also a very brave young maiden who, upon hearing the screams of agony coming from those of her tribe being tortured by their attackers, the shaman's youngest daughter turned back, hoping to find some way of aiding her people. She returned too late to help her people and just in time to see the knife plunged into her father's chest. And it was actually she who was responsible for for the creature's savagery on the murders. For at least a few moments after the shaman died, his control on the beast died with him. The creature still would have attacked the shaman's killers but would have dispatched them with haste. In her grief and anger over the travesty against her people, the maiden took control over the creature and commanded it to take its time killing them, to make them suffer first as her people had suffered before feeding on them as it desired to do.
But the shaman's youngest daughter lacked both the self-assurance and the physical endurance that had characterized her powerful father in controlling the awakened creature's actions. She began to have doubts about her own ability to continue to indefinitely control the awakened creature and, fearing what such a creature such as that one might do to Indian and whites alike were she to lose control, the shaman's youngest daughter sent the creature back into the depths of the Great Salt Lake, where it slumbered while awaiting for her to call it forth again to destroy her enemies, as the shaman had called it forth many times.
It was a very long wait. The shaman's youngest daughter had never understood why her father created the abomination in the first place and after the creature slept again in its lair in the deepest part of the Great Salt Lake and she surveyed the carnage she had allowed to happen, she finally allowed herself acknowledge what she was feeling. While having to admit that she was not sad that the trappers were dead, the shaman's daughter did not like how she had felt inside when controlling the beast while it obeyed her command to kill the murdering trappers in a most painful manner. Never wanting to feel that way again, nor to allow her children, should she have any, to feel that way, the shaman's daughter determined it was best to just leave the creature in eternal slumber. She traveled for a time, before being adopted into another tribe,eventually marrying a chief and bearing many children. As a safeguard in case the creature was ever reawakened, she passed to her children the incantation that would always return that monster to its slumber should it ever awaken. But she was determined that no one living would make use of her father's hellish abomination ever again, and took the other great knowledge of the creature's control to her grave decades later.
While she lived, her children and particularly her eldest son had listened carefully and committed the incantation to memory, but he had no doubts of his mother's power over the creature, thus had no expectations of it ever rising again either. Until the day his mother died. On her deathbed the shaman's daughter warned him that she had been visited by her father's shade who, she said, had been denied entrance into the kingdom of the Great Spirit as punishment for daring to create such a creature and making it immortal, powers which the Great Spirit intended to be his alone.
The shaman was greatly displeased and angry at her, she told her son, for having not used his hideous creation to completely rid their lands of the hated white man. She had tried to tell explain to the shade that the pioneers who followed the trappers to their lands and had resettled here now were not a bad people. The shaman's shade had refused to listen and cursed the pioneers' ventures on his land as he had cursed the those of the trappers. And swore to walk the earth, gathering power, until he once again could awaken the beast and renew his vengeance on the white race.
The shaman's daughter told her children that a ghost's power is greatly diminished compared to the power they possess while living on the earth.
“However, never relax your vigil over the great lake of salt,” she warned them. “The ghost of your grandfather is determined to become as powerful as he was in life, and is finding ways to do this. His power is slowly returning and I fear that one day he will be able to do what I refuse to do. Raise the creature to once more wreak his undying vengeance amongst the whites.”
A century passed, and both the shaman and his creature became the subject of myth as most of the Indians living in the place that was now called, even those descended from his tribe no longer believed the old stories handed down through so many generations. But those descending from the shaman's daughter knew better than to disavow the old ways. These alone still believed that a terrible creature slept in the depths of the Great
Salt Lake, and it was only a matter of time until its master, the shaman, would regain enough of his magic to bring forth the monster once more.
In the centuries that followed, the shaman's shade succeeded on several occasions to arouse the creature, but only for a short while. In the beginning, he was able to keep the creature awake only long enough to make its presence known to a handful of people, who dubbed it the North Shore monster. The shaman's eldest grandson was able to send the creature back to sleep in its hidden underwater lair before any lives were lost. But the shaman's shade grew in power daily ,
allowing him to awaken his monster longer each time, and finally to concentrate its fury on the closest enterprise of the white man to the shores of the Great Salt Lake, which it's builders had chosen to call Saltair. Three times the whites have raised a structure with that name. Twice the monster quenched its thirst for blood there and caused its total destruction before the one with the special knowledge was able to send it back to its lair. The third time, the monsters was stopped before killing even one and before it could totally destroy the current Saltair. But the damage was great and Saltair was still forced to close its doors for a time.
The official story says that fire destroyed the first two Saltairs. Evidence of the unknown creature wreaking havoc beforehand were hushed for fear of chasing future customers away. The one stopping the monster knew the truth, but was paid well for his silence, a payment he often said later that he should never have accepted. For he knows that the shaman's ravenous creature still slumbers in the depths of the Great Salt Lake and that its appetite is still whetted for the flesh and bones of the whites who would invade its home. And while the creature failed to destroy the third Saltair before being lulled back to sleep, there is one, who believes in and practices many of the old ways, who knows that the the threat to Saltair remains. It was never a trait of the shaman
to let his revenge go uncompleted. One person knows that the creature still slumbers in the darkest depths of the Great Salt Lake, and that the ghost of the shaman, merely weakened by his previous failure, will soon feel strong enough to waken his creature and command it to renew its rampage on the third incarnation of Saltair. He suspects that the shaman's shade has already regained his strength and merely waits for Saltair to once again be filled with the noise of pleased crowds. When that happens, it is only a matter of time before the the shores of the Great Salt Lake run red with the white man's blood.