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Stephen Glantz
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| LIKE A HERO GOING HOME, SAT OKH |
A novel based on the true story of Sat Okh, the Shawnee of Black River
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When it comes your time to die,
be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home." -Chief Tecumseh, Shawnee Nation
Sat Okh was born in 1922 in the great Northwest Territories of Canada and like generations of Shawnee men before him, was raised by the Society of Wolves, the warrior/shaman cast of his tribe. For over two hundred years, his people had been chased from their lands by the white man. But instead of being imprisoned within reservations, Sat Okh’s tribe had moved further and further north to the undesirable wild lands of the Northwest Territories.
His mother, the daughter of Polish nobility, came from the other side of the world, where her family too had been exiled from their home to the forbidding wasteland of Siberia. Just 18, Stansislawa walked across thousands of miles of forest and tundra, crossed the Bering Sea in a small boat, and walked another thousand miles to reach freedom in Canada. She was found half dead in the snow by Tall Eagle, her future husband and future chief of the tribe.
The winter of 1937 was one of the harshest in the tribe's communal memory. Seasoned hunters stayed behind in their lodges for fear of the blizzards. The tribe of 750 was starving. Sat Okh, now 15, made the ultimate sacrifice for a Shawnee warrior. He slaughtered his beloved horse to feed his tribe.
When the gift of the horse was exhausted, Sat Okh went out to hunt, knowing he might not survive. On his way back to the village with two caribou in tow, Sat Okh came across two men, nearly frozen to death, much like his mother had been 20 years earlier. The decision Sat Okh then made, irrevocably changed the course of his life. For the men he saved were Polish and would lead Sat Okh and his mother from the beloved wild lands of his youth to the unknown world of culture and sophistication, and a country on the brink of war and chaos.
Sat Okh brought with him the gifts of the Shawnee which would become his greatest weapon against the Nazis as he stood by the Polish partisans in their fight for freedom. Above his talents as a warrior, his horsemanship, his ability to track.
Sat Okh lived his life as a legend, yet he lived it with humility. the enemy, heal the wounded and to kill as silently as a breath, it was Sat Okh’s character that his comrades most cherished. To this very day there is an awe and reverence and love that shine in the eyes of his fellow partisans when they tell the stories of the man they knew as Kozzak and how he led them in those days of death and glory in the forests of a land far from his home.
Embedded in the heart of this story is another story. A story of great love. The love of a boy for his people, his family and a way of life. A young man's love for his mother and the pain of seeing her lose her way. And the love of a warrior for his fellow soldiers who become his friends and brothers; for the ideals they share; for his adopted country and for a lovely woman who fights by his side.
Stephen Glantz first heard the story of Sat Okh over a campfire on a bluff overlooking the Berezina River just north of the town of Borisov in western Belarus, 80 km east of Minsk and 400 km east of Moscow over 10 years ago. Sat Okh’s story has haunted him ever since.
Although Sat Okh passed away in 2003, Stephen has conducted extensive interviews with Sat's comrades including his best friend Ryszard Whychovsky and the courier and partisan, Barbara Zeltt. He will also be working with Shawnee historical archivists, the Archives of the Armia Krajowa, the AK partisan army historical society and others. The author is also a scholar in residence at the Hadassah Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University. The author has just co-written CLARA'S WAR, as well as five WWII and Holocaust films all set in Poland and Eastern Europe
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