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41 " I will ask here and there. Perhaps some other bands have some captives. Samuel was silent when he heard this translated. The silence lay between them like a delicate invisible structure that no one wanted to disturb. And finally Samuel said that he would withhold all rations until they were brought in, and if not, he had the soldiers at his orders.Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (p. 293). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition. "
― Paulette Jiles , The Colour Of Lightning
42 " Samuel looked all about himself on the bare plains and thought what a miracle of endurance it was to live like this solely on God’s bounty, on whatever came to hand, in this sere country. To find their way across it from the Wichita Mountains up to Colorado and even on to Wyoming, and south to the Rio Grande. People of great courage and fortitude, born with an unsatisfied wanderlust so that their greatest joy was to break down the tipis and move on. They traveled alongside the rivers of the plains with their belts of trees and then crossed from one river to another and found things they had left behind in some other camp, or with delight they came upon a garden they had planted last year and was now bearing fruit. They did not live in the same world of time that Samuel did. There were no hours. No birthdays. And he must bring this to an end. That was his job.Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (p. 294). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition. "
43 " Toshana said they had no captives either. That if the agent wanted them to stop taking captives he should tell the army to come to them and they would settle it by force. But that was the only way it would ever be settled. He smiled as he said it.Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (p. 294). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition. "
44 " The two of them also seemed to have developed a light, hidden contempt for all the devices of civilization. For a life that must be maintained by washing things made of textiles and china and wood in water that had to be heated and soap that had to be made, for the elaborate techniques of making bread and fermenting vinegar and protecting chickens from predators when wild eggs lay in nests for the gathering. Contempt for the digging in the ground to make outhouses, for the footings of palisades, furrows, postholes, to extract rock for permanent and immovable walls. They seemed to have forgotten the years of childhood that preceded their life with the Kiowa as if it had only been a time of exile from their true lives in movement across the face of the great high-hearted plains and its sky and its winds. The smell of horse, the spartan lives, the unaccountable gifts of food that fell to the hand from nowhere. The men in a state of war from the moment they were born as if there were no other proper human occupation. Jube would have grown to be an aristocrat on horseback, silent and honed and lethal, and yet he had been returned to the nation of houses with roofs and white men, to the country of devices and printed books. "
45 " Then Eaten Alive came into the tipi with a five-or six-year-old child. The boy’s brown skin was broken with sores and lacerations, he was thin and shivering and dressed in a piece of bed-ticking that nearly enveloped him. You see here, said Toshana. We just got him from the Apache, see how they treat them. If you want to take him with you, you can. I will not ask you to pay. “Where did he come from?” Samuel held his hand out to the boy and felt an anguish in his heart at the sight of the child. The boy ducked his head and shrank away. We don’t know. The Apaches didn’t say where he came from. “I will contact the military in Santa Fe. Maybe they have a report of a missing child.” Toshana was silent for a while, and then he said, But there are thousands. Samuel nodded. Thousands.Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (pp. 294-295). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition. "
46 " Samuel heard Siinti-on Parkar, but he knew who it was. She had starved herself to death in the house of her white relatives. They took her captive and Peta Nocona’s child Topsannah and they both died in the house where they kept them. She was with us for twenty-five years. You take captives too and so it is hard to listen to what you have to say. She was my aunt, the girl my cousin, and now they are dead. “That’s different,” said Samuel. “We only took her back again.” But you did not get back her brother. His taibo name was Chon Parkar, and they took him but he got away and came back to us, his people. “I know.” Samuel nodded politely and made a conciliatory gesture. “Adults who have spent their lives with you will be able to make their choices. It is only fair. But they must be brought in so we can see they are not being held against their will.”Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (p. 296). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition. "
47 " I have come to warn you. The Texans are now Americans. So are the people of New Mexico. They have all become Americans and they are under American law. This is the last time. You will stop raiding and you will bring in the captives. If not I will send the soldiers.” Toshana laughed. But you are Gai-ker. You do not fight. “You will see.”Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (p. 296). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition. "
48 " distant band of Comanche brought in a boy with a thin, sensitive face, a wide mouth, and hooded eyes. He never looked at anyone from the moment he was brought in. He kept his head high and stiff and his eyes half closed and his gaze on the floorboards. He moved slowly and carefully. He seemed to be injured in some obscure way. His adopted father had bargained over his price, holding out for one more pound of coffee, another blanket. The Comanche had been traders for a century or more, and they were skilled at it. The boy listened with his beautiful eyes on the windowsill. Listened as he was sold by the man he had adored and whom he had imitated in everything. Followed across the hot plains, the man who had given him his Comanche name and approved of his aim with a rifle and his torture of a Mexican captive. He stood up like an automaton and followed the Indian agent, expecting to be killed, and when he was not killed, he was flooded by a feeling of contempt. He was crushed into whiteman’s clothing and led to a building.Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (pp. 300-301). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition. "
49 " He tried to get them to sing, but they could not hit the note and had no sense of the musical rhythm of white people, but only the subtle and constantly varying beat of Comanche songs, the floating tenor. Samuel counted out pennies into their hands and sent them to the sutler’s store for hard candy so they could understand the meaning of money but when they came back they put the hard candies beneath their blankets in the army tent and did not eat them. They were afraid of being poisoned.Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (p. 302). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition. "
50 " They are our great mystery. They are America’s great otherwise. People fall back in the face of an impenetrable mystery and refuse it. Yes, they take captives. Sometimes they kill women and old people. But the settlers are people who shouldn’t be where they are in the first place and they know it and they take their chances.” “You are very cavalier about this.” “So are they, my friend. The Texans are cavalier as well. Perhaps we can regard this as a tragedy. Americans are not comfortable with tragedy. Because of its insolubility. Tragedy is not amenable to reason and we are fixers, aren’t we? We can fix everything. "
51 " When the headmen walked out of the gate in front, beyond the delicate and civilized little white fence, they were met and surrounded by soldiers and the soldiers reached out to them in a moving confusion of blue woolen arms and boots. The headmen were disarmed and handcuffed. A man named Big Tree fought for a short while but three soldiers flattened him on the ground and cuffed his hands behind him. A revolver fell from beneath the buffalo robe of Eaten Alive and it went off with a startling bang but nobody was hit. A soldier picked it up delicately by the grip between thumb and forefinger. He said that Agent Hammond might want to make out a receipt for this but the sergeant told him to shut up. The men walked away between the soldiers quietly and stepped into the army transport wagon. It was not dignified to struggle. The women and children had scattered to the horses and within moments they were gone.Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (p. 306). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition. "