Wreckage' Had my bones, like the sun, been splintered on this canyon wall and burned among these buckled plates, this bright debris; had it been so, … - N. Scott Momaday

A Witness to Creation

If you could have that one day back, the one that
you have kept a secret in your soul, what day would it be?
What? One among the many? Well, let me make you this offering:

It would be the day on which I stood on the rim of Monument Valley and beheld
those ineffable monoliths for the first time. I was young, you see, like a fledgling
who leaves the nest and flies out over the earth. I saw beyond time, into
timelessness. It was the first and holiest of all days. On such a day — on that original day — did the First Man behold the First World. It filled
him with wonder and humility. Then and there, looking for one enchanted
moment into eternity, I was the First Man. I was present at Creationl

Just before Mammedaty's time the s had been brought to their knees in the infamous winter campaigns of the Seventh Cavalry, and their Plains culture... virtually destroyed.

Nous avons vu la mer'
We have been lovers,
you and I.
We have been alive
in the clear mornings of Genesis;
in the afternoons,
among the prisms of the air,
our hands have shaped perfect silences.
We have seen the sea;
wonder is well known to us.