Twice the other two cannons roared, then silence. I’ve asked myself since then, and I have asked others why the U.S. Army didn’t dispatch us all that night. A few years ago, I even asked General Miles, the man who was the author of our misery. “My dear Mrs. Stuart, we wanted surrender, not annihilation,” he told me.

Oh, thank you, sir. How kind of you to see that we were…that The People were not all killed that night, but sent to a humid hell in Indian Territory to ponder the sin of being Indian and repent somehow. Why didn’t I think of that myself?

I can tell you why I had to ask him, and it forms the worst part of this narrative, because I knew when those shells exploded with the bright stars of death, that my name could not possibly be Bright Star. That was no vision I had; it was a hoax. I was fooling myself. Bright Star was a fraud. Maybe she was even an angel of death. Vision? My wyakim was no wyakim at all.

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-two

If you are reading this for accuracy as to what happened on what date, don’t coming crying to me. I had no idea of time or day. All I knew was that we were cold, and all the birds had flown south; winter was coming. I had bigger worries, and they concerned me, glorious me. After a life of privilege, I knew I was a fraud. That’s hard to swallow when you are eighteen, white and invincible.

Luckily, Hawk was the only person who knew my other name was Bright Star, and he was in a rifle pit. Imagine my relief. If these dear ones in the camps under the bluffs had an inkling that it was Bright Star who had rained fire and death on them, they would have killed me. Or so I imagined, as I dug in silence. To say that my thinking was muddled is correct. I doubt any of us were in a normal frame of mind, not with all this confusion and misery. That was my reasoning, however; I am not proud of it.

I’ve wondered about that sudden display of cannon and howitzer and can arrive at no opinion. Is it worse to be regularly fired upon, or worse to expect to be fired upon at any moment? Personally, I think it is the expectation that terrorizes. Every little sound might be the sound, every creak the creak that means a deadly blast to follow. Even though this century is young, I suppose someday a physician of the mind will consider the matter. There will probably be other wars in this twentieth century of ours, still almost brand spanking new, to test all sorts of theories.