Some years ago the prayer tree at Rainy Mountain was struck by lightning. It burned and turned black, but it did not fall. There had not been time to… - N. Scott Momaday

La tierra del Encanto

Clouds build on the northern ridge
Where the shades of night grow pale
And there comes a rain like smoke.
The mountains loom and recede. And
Below, the umber plain is a pitted hide.
There the distance of time runs out.
And the mind extends beyond itself.

I have seen in the twist of wind
The landscape severed and heard
The edged cries of streaming hawks
First light is a tapestry on canyon walls,
And shadows are pools of illusions.
I am a man of the ancient earth
For I have know the desert at dawn

The people of the town have little need. They do not hanker after progress and have never changed their essential way of life. Their invaders were a long time in conquering them; and now, after four centuries of Christianity, they still pray in Tanoan to the old deities of the earth and sky and make their living from the things that are and have always been within their reach; while in the discrimination of pride they acquire from their conquerors only the luxury of example. They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting.

She was ten when the Kiowas came together for the last time as a living Culture. They could find no buffalo... a company of soldiers rode out from ... to disperse the tribe. Forbidden without cause the essential act of their faith, having seen the wild herds slaughtered and left to rot upon the ground, the Kiowas backed away forever from the medicine tree. ...My grandmother was there. Without bitterness, and for as long as she lived, she bore a vision of deicide.