They were the best light cavalry in the world." They could shoot seven arrows consecutively, have them all in the air at the same time. "The Plains Indians had women who rode their horses eighteen hours a day. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven All the white hands are waving good-bye and we continue to dance, dance until the ships fall off the horizon, dance until we are so tall and strong that the sun is nearly jealous. We dance in circles growing larger and larger until we are standing on the shore, watching all the ships returning to Europe. The buffalo come to join us and their hooves shake the earth, knock all the white people from their beds, send their plates crashing to the floor. Then they begin to grow, larger than me, larger than the trees around us. At first they are no bigger than children. My blisters heal, my muscles stretch, expand. I dance another and a buffalo crashes down from the sky onto a log cabin in Nebraska. I dance one step and my sister rises from the ash. Can you hear the drums? I can hear them, and it's my grandfather and grandmother singing. I have to take off my clothes, feel the cold air, splash water across my bare skin. I'm the last, the very last, and I'm sick, too. Those blankets they gave us, infected with smallpox, have killed us.
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