It is sometimes enough that one places ones voice on the silence... [S — N. Scott Momaday

"One autumn morning in 1946 I woke up at Jemez Pueblo. ...in the bright morning ...I found the last, best home of my childhood."

"The Kiowas... For a hundred years... they ruled an area... from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico... But by the time Mammedaty was born the Kiowas had been routed in the Indian wars, the great herds of buffalo had been destroyed, and the sun dance prohibited by law."

"...and Abel was running. Against the winter sky and the long, light valley of the landscape at dawn, he seemed almost to be standing still, very little and alone."

"And Mariano fell and was exhausted. Fransisco held his stride all the way... and even then he could have gone on running, for no reason, for only the sake of running on."

"Now and then in winter, great angles of geese fly through the valley, and then the sky and the geese are the same color and the air is hard and damp and smoke rises from the houses of the town."

"There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting."