Itza-chu was born to a small family who lived in a village in the northern mountains of what is now Texas. The family grew up separated from their tribe and they lived a mostly quiet life. His father was a hunter by trade and he traded pelts and meat and hand-made weapons to the tribes who resided in the mountains. His people were mostly left alone as he grew up. He was given his name 'Great Hawk' when he was saved as a young boy from a wolf attack by a massive hawk which lived in the mountains. The hawk was so large it fought off the wolf and maimed the beast, sparing the boy it looked upon him with a certain wisdom and seemed to nod to him and then was gone. His grandfather had witnessed the attack and bestowed the name upon him, claiming the hawk had wanted him to live.
He set out from his village one summer at the age of 19 to attempt to make a life for himself rather than spend his days there. He rode down south into the open country and he lived off the land mostly alone for the next few years, finding very little trace of any tribes in the area. He was found one day in the adobe hut he called home by a small sect of Chiricahua. They claimed they were fighting the Lakota and the Mexicans and they needed new warriors and so he was recruited to join them. He knew already how to hunt and to read tracks and he acted as a scout for the tribe. He led them into battles against the Lakota on the plains where they brought down their enemy in great numbers, crippling the tribe's defenses. They pushed the Lakota up into the mountains, into the forest of Tall Trees, leaving them the plains as they were informed of the Mexicans encroaching on their land to the west.
They found the Spanish attempting to find holes in the border, making efforts to cross the river at blind spots and to sneak men into their lands to determine weaknesses. The Apache fought back the Spanish, battling them constantly for weeks along the Rio Grande until the Mexican forces finally relented and retreated. But one of the chiefs of the tribe would not be content with that. He ordered an attack on the borders themselves, sent bands of warriors across the river to continue to fight the Mexicans. This continued for the next several years, the Apache pressing the Spanish farther and farther back into their own land, as they had done with the Lakota.
But the Mexican military began to fight back. They developed new and strange weapons which the Apache were unfamiliar with. The Chiricahua began losing. They began watching as their men who guarded the border were slain and Itza-chu was a part of one of the main border camps, being wounded gravely in an attack on his group. He was left for dead as the Apache recalled their forces out of Mexico and back into their land across the river. He was left alone in that country, near death and unsure of whether he would live to see home again.
He was found dying by a small river by a woman with light skin and fair hair. She tended his wounds and treated him with great care and the two became good friends. The woman had been apart of an expedition which had crash landed in Lakota/Apache land. The new white people hovered along the native borders for some time before the Lakota allowed them into Apache land where they began to set up villages and farms and began to populate the area. The woman who had found Itza-chu, calling herself Ronnie, had been apart of the voyage. When the two returned to Apache lands Itza-chu was furious. He was enraged that his land had been snatched from under him by these people, ignorant of the foolishness of his own leaders who had allowed such a thing to take place by needlessly trying to take Mexican land.
Ronnie helped to calm him, helped to ease his anger and his frustration. She told him of the civil uprising between her own people and how things were not as they had seemed. As he began to forgive the white people his attention turned to the Lakota and he staged attacks against them in their own territory. Wondering why these people would give the white people Apache land when it was not theirs to give. He spent a long time fighting the Lakota before he met a man who made him change his mind about the people. The Lakota man told him of how his chief had little choice but to surrender Apache land to the white people and told him of the great number which the white people had brought. Itza-chu understood this and ceased his attacks against the Lakota, allowing the tribesman named Chu-aa who had helped hm to join himself and Ronnie as they began robbing and looting from the white people, attacking their new establishments which held money and other valuables.
The three were hunted across the lands, driven into Mexico where they continued their thefts upon the Spanish, robbing more banks along the way as they finally decided that if they kept on, they would eventually be captured or killed and so they decided they would slow down their attacks, lay low and live peacefully. They began to search for a place to make permanent camp along the plains of Mexico.