"What are you trying to do with these?" Straight Tree asked, gesturing to the massive expanse of harvested plants spread out to dry. "Can you even eat them?"
"Why would you eat them?" Ki-woo replied.
"Are you saying you didn't grow them for food?"
"Of course not."
Straight Tree frowned in genuine confusion. He had spent the grueling summer months tending to these strange crops under the blistering sun, assuming they would feed the tribe. "Then why did we farm them?"
Ki-woo smiled and tugged at his own shirt. "To make this."
Straight Tree stared at him. "Are you saying a spirit is born from the plants?"
"What? No." Ki-woo laughed. He didn't need to shatter their spiritual worldview, but he did need them to understand basic manufacturing. "I mean clothes. This fabric."
"Clothes?" Straight Tree's eyes widened as understanding dawned. "Are you saying all these white lumps are cotton?"
"Exactly."
The Creek tribe engaged in minor trade for crude cotton goods, but the plant wasn't cultivated locally. To them, it was an expensive, rare luxury. Straight Tree had never actually seen raw cotton bolls before.
"This will be clothing for everyone in the tribe," Ki-woo explained. "It's difficult and expensive to trade for cotton. Soon, we won't have to."
Straight Tree looked between Ki-woo's sturdy modern shirt and the endless rows of drying cotton fluff. "If all these lumps become clothes...!"
"Within a few years, every person here will be properly dressed."
Ki-woo had hated seeing the tribesmen shiver in inadequate leathers and crude skins. During the harvest, he had divided his time between gathering the new food crops and preparing the infrastructure for textile production.
Straight Tree suddenly recalled the strange wooden contraptions Ki-woo had spent the winter building. "So that's what the wooden machines are for!"
"You catch on quickly. The cotton looks dry enough. Let's begin."
Straight Tree's reverence for the Chief Spirit deepened. He finally understood the purpose behind the months of strange, seemingly useless labor.
***
With the help of several tribesmen, Ki-woo moved the dried cotton to a designated workspace.
Without industrial power, the process had to rely on traditional, manual cottage-industry methods. First, the raw cotton was fed into a hand-cranked cotton gin Ki-woo had designed to separate the seeds from the fibers. Next came 'bowing'—using the vibration of taut bowstrings to further clean and fluff the cotton, removing the final traces of seed husks.
The cleaned fibers were then spun into yarn using rudimentary spinning wheels, and finally, woven into cloth on a manual loom.
It was agonizingly slow work.
Because Ki-woo lacked iron tools, the wooden machinery was crude and imprecise. The resulting cotton fabric was uneven in texture, but it was functional.
'I need water-powered or steam-powered looms,' Ki-woo thought, wiping sweat from his brow. 'But that's decades away.' The mechanization of textiles had triggered the British Industrial Revolution in his original timeline. It was a crucial milestone, which was why he carried detailed blueprints for power looms in his survival pack.
Here, the conditions were even better than in Britain. This region would eventually be known as the global capital of cotton production. Britain had been forced to import raw cotton to fuel its empire; Ki-woo could grow the raw material and manufacture the finished goods all in the exact same location. The economic and developmental potential was staggering.
With the first textile cycle successfully initiated and the food harvest secured, Ki-woo immediately pivoted to his next objective.
***
"Are the preparations complete?" Ki-woo asked as he approached the construction site.
"Yes, Chief Spirit. We have done exactly as you instructed," Wide Leaf replied.
Ki-woo inspected the site carefully. One miscalculation here could result in a lethal explosion.
Before him stood three circular furnaces, each roughly two meters tall, constructed from packed mud, river stones, and reinforced wood. They were, without a doubt, the very first blast furnaces ever built in North America.
Beside the furnaces lay a small, precious pile of scrap metal Ki-woo had painstakingly traded for from neighboring tribes. He needed durable tools to eventually mine actual iron ore; this scrap would serve as the catalyst. Nearby sat large mounds of charcoal and crushed animal bone, which would act as a flux in place of limestone.
"May I ask a question?" Wide Leaf said hesitantly, staring at the towering clay structures.
"Ask anything."
"What are we trying to do with all this?"
Ki-woo chuckled. He had been asked this question constantly over the past few weeks. "We are making iron."
"Iron? Is it like hard copper?"
"If done correctly, copper cannot even compare to it."
Wide Leaf looked skeptical but didn't press further. The concept of a metal harder than bronze or copper was alien to him.
"Alright, let's begin!" Ki-woo shouted.
He directed the workers to load the furnace, layering the scrap metal, charcoal, and crushed bone in precise ratios. Once the mixture was set, he ignited the base.
"Start the bellows!"
Three men immediately grabbed the handles of the large wooden bellows, pumping them back and forth in a synchronized, rowing motion.
To properly smelt iron, the internal temperature needed to reach between 1,300 and 1,500 degrees Celsius. With these primitive tools, achieving that heat was incredibly difficult. Ki-woo knew the resulting metal would be low-carbon wrought iron, soft and full of impurities like vanadium or titanium from the scrap. But imperfect iron was infinitely better than no iron at all.
"The Fire Spirit has descended!"
"Wakan Tanka!"
As the flames roared, shooting fiercely from the top of the furnaces, a crowd of villagers gathered. They dropped to their knees, convinced that Ki-woo was commanding the elemental spirits. Ki-woo ignored the worship, his focus absolute.
"Keep the rhythm steady! Do not break the pace!" he yelled over the roar of the fire. "Add more charcoal! Stop! Keep back from the heat!"
He micromanaged every step, ensuring the inexperienced workers didn't trigger a collapse or a blowout.
Hours bled away. Finally, Ki-woo ordered the clay plug to be broken. Slag poured out, followed by a glowing, molten bloom of metal pooling at the base.
Ki-woo stared at the cooling lump, a fierce smile breaking across his face.
'I've finally dragged us into the Iron Age.' His heart hammered against his ribs. This was the turning point that would end the Neolithic era for this continent. In his original history, the transition to iron had been forced upon the Americas by European conquerors. In this timeline, the revolution was starting from within.
'Wait for me,' Ki-woo thought, looking eastward toward the unseen Old World. 'I will catch up soon.'
Within weeks, the Creek tribe was fundamentally transformed.
At the tribal council, the atmosphere was electric.
"Hunting is effortless!" a young warrior exclaimed, brandishing a newly forged spearhead. "How can any stone be this sharp and durable?"
"And the new clothes!" an elder woman added, touching the rough cotton tunic she wore. "We will not freeze this winter."
"Harvesting the earth's children is faster than ever," another hunter said, gripping an iron-tipped hoe. "This is all the work of the Chief Spirit. Great and wise are the spirits!"
Young, battle-hardened warriors openly wept in awe, their eyes fixed on Ki-woo with absolute devotion.
Even though the early wrought iron was brittle by modern standards, it was a miraculous leap forward from knapped obsidian and bone. It could be sharpened, bent, and reforged when broken.
The cotton fabric, though rough, proved that a future without freezing winters was entirely possible.
The seeds of an empire had been planted, and they were already beginning to bloom.