Member-only story
What Have We Lost?
“My little son grew up in the white man’s school….He is kind to me. We no longer live in an earth lodge, but in a house with chimneys, and my son’s wife cooks by a stove.
But for me, I cannot forget our old ways.
Often in summer I rise at daybreak and steal out to the corn fields, and as I hoe the corn I sing to it, as we did when I was young. No one cares for our corn songs now.
Sometimes in the evening I sit, looking out on the big Missouri. The sun sets, and dusk steals over the water. In the shadows I see again our Indian village, with smoke curling upward from the earth lodges, and in the river’s roar I hear the yells of the warriors, and the laughter of little children of old.
It is but an old woman’s dream. Then I see but shadows and hear only the roar of the river, and tears come into my eyes. Our Indian life, I know, is gone forever.”
— Waheenee — Hidatsa (North Dakota)
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“Once, men and women were able to turn themselves into eagles and fly immense distances. They communed with rivers and mountains and received wisdom from them. They felt the turning of the stars inside their own minds.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi
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