I got my griz.

I fell.

One of my lives ended and a new one took its place.

From the first days with Lit'l Fox, things I couldn't have imagined happened to me. The entire experience seemed like a dream. I felt like I lived in the Pawnee village all my life.

Maybe I had.

Maybe my life at the cabin in the valley where the river runs was a dream. Maybe this was my real life. I waited all those years to start living it. Being with my people suited me fine.

Learning what I learned, I knew going on a hunt and bringing back a buck would go over well with the people who would eat from the buck I kilt. While it was too early to think of the hunt, it wasn't too early to prove that I could use a bow as well as anyone, and I just matched the best archer in the village.

I did it in front of the boys who played with me.

I was audacious enough to pass on each distance the line was moved away from the target. I waited for Running Horse to shoot before I took my shot. All the time before, when we shot at the target, Running Horse went last.

Being respected by the rest of the Pawnee boys gave Running Horse the ability to call the shots.

Then, the upstart white boy came to stay.

Running Horse knew what I was doing and he let me get away with it. The other boys watched me doing something more than shooting my arrow at the target. No one accused me of upstaging the boy who would be chief.

That wasn't what it was about.

I needed to prove I belonged with these boys. I couldn't do it by standing in line and waiting my turn. I needed to be one of the best at the things I did if I wanted to qualify to be with them. I spent a lot of time getting better at the things I did.

Chief Lone Wolf and Dark Horse were the only warriors left in the village next to the stream on the far side of the mountain. All the other warriors, including sons of the chief and his brother, died in battles fought long ago.

They paid the proper amount of attention to the boys who were growing into men. They needed to be boys before they became men. With Running Horse and Lit'l Fox standing with the younger boys, I worked at getting stronger, while getting better at what I did.

At first people who came to Medicine Woman's lodge saw me and spoke to me, and then, I was able to get out and about in the village as they watched.

I did what they saw me doing, and I ran and practiced with a bow when no one was watching. I wanted to get stronger and more skilled with the bow before the autumn hunt. When the hunters went to the mountain to hunt, I would go with them, and then, I would truly feel like a Pawnee.

I woke up in a peaceful village with a dozen or more boys close to my own age. As I began walking again, the boys sometimes walked with me, encouraged me, and saw nothing wrong with my being in their midst.

Having Lit'l Fox and Running Horse support didn't hurt how I was able to fit into Chief Lone Wolf's village. It didn't hurt that Medicine Woman was as revered as anyone in the village, and Dark Horse sat at Chief Lone Wolf's right hand.

I was at the center of activities in the village from my first day there. Many people saw Lit'l Fox bring me home. During the time I spent healing in Medicine Woman's lodge, most adults in the village came to her for medicine and advice. They smiled when they looked me over and went on their way. What they knew, I don't know. They knew I was there. No one seemed to mind.

It was the same once I got up and began playing with the Pawnee boys. I never felt like I was a stranger. With Lit'l Fox and Running Horse spending time with me, no one had an objection to that.

No one was disagreeable to me.

Chief Lone Wolf moved the village here, after the massacre that took place years before I was born. Without warriors, he placed what was left of his people in a remote place. This would give the sons of dead warriors a place to grow stronger. Once they grew into men, they village would once again have hunters who could keep the village's pots full, and warriors for protection.

I knew about the massacre. I knew that's when Paw was wounded, and that's how he lost his arm. I didn't know if there were other Pawnee villages with massacres in their history. I thought this could be Paw's village, and these could be his people, but I didn't know what Medicine Woman knew.

Living where we lived meant only trappers might happen by from time to time. Trappers lived lives that weren't so different from the Pawnee. They spent all their time in the wilderness, and they lived off the land.

Trappers treated us like they were the outsiders treading on ground we occupied for a thousand years. They were anxious to pay tribute to the people on the land where they hunted and trapped. It was how they asked permission to stay on the land to make a living.

Paying tribute gave them a place to sit at our firepit, as we talked over things of interest to both Indians and trappers. They spoke a mixture of Pawnee and French, and many spoke English, which meant a way of exchanging ideas.

Trappers had big ears and heard everything going on where they trapped. They made an effort to get along with the Indians and the cavalry, and they learned information they were more than happy to pass on to us. Trappers moved often. They came to us well informed.

Chief Lone Wolf only came to the firepit to meet with trappers if there was some important business to be done. Dark Horse likewise did not sit at the firepit with outsiders. This was Running Horse's place by the time I arrived.

Running Horse knew what to say, and if he heard anything he was sure Chief Lone Wolf needed to know, he would make sure the trappers came back for a meeting Lone Wolf would attend. Usually, visitors took a meal or two with us and traded for pelts and items that were useful. They brought items they knew would be useful to us.

They could go into any general store and buy whatever they liked, and smart trappers bought things they knew Indians might like.

Since Running Horse lived in Chief Lone Wolf's lodge, he knew what Lone Wolf wanted and expected. He did hear everything the trappers told Running Horse, and if he had a message for trappers, Running Horse told them what the chief had to say.

Lit'l Fox told me that Chief Lone Wolf was preparing the village for his departure. He might be around for years, before he made his journey to the happy hunting ground, but you never knew for sure, and Running Horse would be chief from the moment of Lone Wolf's death. Lone Wolf wanted him ready, and so Running Horse met with visitors, getting some idea of who they might be.

Mostly they were French, Dutch, and German. Mostly they were polite. They offered to bring goods to the village the next time they came. They could get what the Pawnee wanted while getting the goods they needed in their camp.

The Pawnee couldn't go into town and shop.

That meant being friendly to trappers was a smart thing to do. Besides, trappers were more like us than anyone else. Their lives were full of adventure.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

It was up to Running Horse to lead the next warriors who lived in the village. He would lead them on the autumn hunt, and, when the time came, he would lead them into battle. Lit'l Fox told me this early on, and I hadn't forgotten it, but Running Horse didn't act like he was waiting to become chief.

He took seriously the things he did, and I took him seriously, even when I did things other Pawnee didn't do. I was still learning, but I had my own ideas about how I wanted to be Pawnee, once I was living with the Pawnee.

It made me cautious around the boy who would be chief. He never mentioned what his future was. I never mentioned it because I wanted to know what the present was. There was no point getting too far out ahead of myself during my second autumn in the village.

Why did Running Horse watch me?

What did he see when he watched me?

If he had questions about me, I had questions about the beautiful Indian called Running Horse. How did I deserve so much of his attention, this boy who would be chief? What did he see when he looked at me?

I was told that Lone Wolf was no longer well enough to see to it that warriors knew how to fight and hunt for the village. That didn't mean he wouldn't be in the middle of any fight his Pawnee fought. Since Running Horse learned his lessons from the chief, he would know what was expected when he was chief.

Lone Wolf was a warrior. There was no fight he wouldn't fight. With untested warriors, he needed to be there when they went into battle. They needed to know that he and Dark Horse weren't so old they wouldn't do all they could to defend the village. He would offer his counsel to Running Horse. He spent years making sure that Running Horse was ready when the time came.

This band of Pawnee wasn't going into the prison camp the cavalry had waiting for them. They lived as a free people. They would die free, and when all the warriors were dead, the woman and children would pick up their rifles and fight on until they were no more.

It was the ending Chief Lone Wolf saw, and it was the ending the village knew was coming. While they lived, they would live as Pawnee lived for a thousand years. When they died, they'd die together as free Pawnee.

In the 1850s, a great Civil War seemed inevitable. The country had begun to split in half, half slave, half free. The world watched the storm clouds churning. For the south it was a way of life lived by wealthy plantation owners threatened by the north's desire for all people to live free, except it didn't include Indians.

Indians were savages. Savages had no rights. Some of the old chiefs might try to take their people in to live on reservations, but there were warriors who would never go in. They would die the way they lived. They would die free.

You didn't cage a warrior and believe he would stay caged.

I could appreciate being free for the first time in my life. I was no longer prisoner to someone else's life. There were no pigs to slop or chickens to feed. I went to school every day, but it was the school of life according to my people.

Indians were in the way of progress and the Manifest Destiny sold to settlers who kept on coming with the promise of land for the taking.

For the time being, the United States would remain half slave, half free. Dred Scott during Buchanan's administration had the winds of war blowing with the idea slaves would be sent to the western territories.

Forts built along the Oregon Trail and the Santa Fe Trail, the way west for settlers, were not manned to full capacity as the army of the Potomac began to recruit with the hopes of discouraging the idea of war, but no one could stop it as abolitionists attacked the Federal Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. The attack wasn't successful as far as John Brown's reasoning was concerned, but it fanned the flames that of war fever between the North and the South.

The country could no longer remain half slave and half free, and so a country lawyer from Illinois was elected the president in order to make an effort to hold the Union together, but his election led to the attack on Fort Sumter. And the fighting had begun.

Perhaps we hoped a war would give the cavalry less time to work on ridding the territories of hostiles. It wouldn't change our lives as we had to hunt and live whether or not the North and South fought each other. The thing we couldn't see, the gathering of armies to fight a war would create massive numbers of troops that would need to go somewhere once the war ended.

The war may have slowed western expansion for a while, but Europeans kept coming, and the east was already overcrowded as far as we could see.

We were a little further west than villages in Kansas to the east. While we weren't attacked after the massacre from before when I was born, there was always a chance the cavalry would come to make their presence felt. The cavalry wanted all Indian encampments to be aware they were able to reach out and touch anyone they decided to touch.

Our turn hadn't arrived yet, but one day they would get around to us. Lone Wolf chose well when he relocated his battered village to our peaceful location. The army hadn't come, but I had arrived in the meantime, and after I got over my broke leg, I went about becoming Pawnee.

I was Pawnee, but not so much that anyone noticed, and before I made the announcement, 'I am Pawnee,' I wanted to be ensconced in their midst. There weren't enough hunters and warriors that my village didn't need one more.

I was too busy working on being Pawnee to worry about how it looked to the villagers who lived there. There was also the fact that no one objected to me being there, except Tall Elk objected, but I was told he was so entirely objectionable that no one paid him any attention, and I was too busy to mind.

With the help of Lit'l Fox and Running Horse, I was secure in what I did. If I didn't do something well, and I needed to do it well, they were sure to teach me.

That's where the Pawnee lived when I decided to go get me a griz. That's where I stayed as I healed, grew strong, and learned the ways of the Pawnee.

At a council called by Chief Lone Wolf a few years after I came to the village to say, he replaced himself with Running Horse in a time of war. An official ceremony with Chief Lone Wolf and Running Horse standing together as the torch was being passed to the next generation of Pawnee.

Lit'l Fox explained the simple ceremony to me, and he made it clear that it changed nothing. Chief Lone Wolf was healthy and in charge. Everyone knew Running Horse would be chief. The ceremony served to remind the people, once Lone Wolf went on his final journey, Running Horse was in charge.

It didn't come as a surprise that Chief Lone Wolf would never again lead his warriors into battle. The warriors were young and energetic, and they needed a young energetic chief to lead them. Running Horse was that chief.

Lone Wolf appeared to be healthy. He appeared to be old. He got old the way we all do it, but he knew his time had passed. He wanted to recognize Running Horse as chief before the subject came up. Chief Lone Wolf still had the final say on anything done that concerned the entire village. He would take counsel from Running Horse and give counsel to him, this was the message being sent, according to Lit'l Fox.

Chief Lone Wolf spoke too fast for me to follow his Pawnee. I caught most of it and Lit'l Fox told me line by line what he said. I found this fascinating. He was chief. His time was passing. He yielded to the man he trained to be chief, once he was gone, and no one really know when their time is up, until their time is up.

As I watched Running Horse being readied to be chief once Lone Wolf died, there was a truth everyone in the village knew, but I couldn't know. Running Horse's father was Fleet Horse, son of Medicine Woman and Dark Horse, Fleet Horse would be chief when Lone Wolf died, but Fleet Horse died the year of the massacre. Instead of a forty-year-old man becoming chief, his son, approaching twenty, would be chief.

Chief Lone Wolf wanted no misunderstandings, especially when a disagreeable Indian, Tall Elk, passed the word, "I should be next chief."

Of course, because he thought that way, no one paid him any mind. I didn't mind one way or another, because I had too much work to do to do, but Chief Lone Wolf regarded Tall Elk as trouble he headed off before he died.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

I had no knowledge of who the chief was or what he was doing. We hadn't spoken. I was led to believe he didn't talk to white people. He didn't trust them, and he knew they intended to be sure the Pawnee were out of their way.

I was not afraid.

I would be with my people forever. I would stand with them in good times and bad. I had found the life I wanted to live for as long as it was possible. Each day represented a better life than the days in my first life.

I was happy here, and nothing was going to make me give up my second life as Pawnee. I was learning to be Pawnee. I intended to stay in the village that accepted me. It didn't matter there were risks. I was Pawnee. Being Pawnee was risky. Being a plains Indian was risky as the 1850s ticked their way into history.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

I didn't expect the chief to come and have a chat with me. I was an outsider. If he had something to say to me, I was led to believe he would say it.

I lived in the lodge with the second most respected person in the village, Medicine Woman. I lived in a lodge with Lone Wolf's brother, who sat at Lone Wolf's right hand. They told the chief anything they thought he should know. He was told stories about me that I didn't know about.

By telling Medicine Woman, "I come from the cabin in the valley where the river runs," I told her more than I thought. I didn't know what Medicine Woman knew when I was first taken to her lodge to heal.

Medicine Woman knew a truth about that cabin that few others knew, but I didn't know it. One simple sentence opened the Pawnee village to my eager ears. By telling her where I was from, I told her all she needed to know about who I was.

Medicine Woman had no knowledge of me, but she knew me.

Medicine Woman treated me no differently than she treated Lit'l Fox. There was a reason she treated me that way, but then, I didn't know what she knew.

I felt closer to Running Horse than to the other boys, except Lit'l Fox.

Because the man who would be chief kept his eyes on me, he knew I spent much of each day practicing with the bow. I was up at first light, and before coming back to the lodge to eat, I shot many arrows into the air, and I always knew where they went, because they went where I aimed them.

Since he saw me use the bow often. He knew my skill wasn't that far from his own. He could do what he did with his arrow every time. Mine was a lucky shot. Yes, I had become good with the bow. I wasn't as sharp or as consistent as Running Horse. He saw what I was doing, and he let me do it. He allowed me to appear to be better with a bow than I was.

When you only take one shot, you hit the target or you don't.

I was full of piss and vinegar as the boys at school would say. I needed to impress Running Horse. It wasn't clear to me why, but I would go out of my way to do something that impressed Running Horse. I knew the one skill I had that might impress him was my skill with a bow. I was working on getting better.

I turned seventeen just before the summer began. As summer came to an end, practicing with the bow was an everyday affair. When the autumn hunt came, we would all be expected to bring back enough game to last the winter.

We sharpened our skill with a bow, and we even got the attention of our elders while we were doing it. While I don't know how many of them saw me scattering arrows all over the place when I first got the bow, they might not have seen the few times I challenged Running Horse's supremacy with a bow. I didn't remember anyone watching us, and it was never mentioned, but no one went around discussing the skills of our generation of warriors.

We were the warriors, and that was that.

As with most of the things I did, I copied Running Horse's style, because he was the best. If his style made him better than any of the other boys, who was I to think some other style might work. It might not work too.

My new marksmanship might come as a surprise to some folks. It wasn't a surprise to me, because I spent so much time learning with a bow in my hands. As we approached my second autumn hunt, I came to realize I had reached the capacity of my bow for hitting the targets with the chicken feathers.

The last time out, I had used every ounce of strength and every bit the bow Lit'l Fox made for me was capable of doing. Yes, I could go make me a bow, and try to make the bow string strong enough to keep adding distance to my shots, but making my first bow would not win me any prizes. Like everything else, it took time to learn to do things properly, and I needed a proper bow to compete.

I watched Running Horse the day he walked into the forest and brought back a branch from a sturdy tree. I watched him shave, reshape, and work that branch into a bow. It was another thing Running Horse did better than anyone else I saw make a bow.

I knew I could do it, and it might have been a nice bow, but I lacked the experience Running Horse had with making a bow. That's when another thought came to me. "Running Horse uses Fleet Horse's bow. He thinks it gives him extra power to use his father's bow. "

When he handed me the bow he made, I had been expecting it. I watched him adding tension to the deer tendon. I watched him testing it and tightening it some more before he gave it to me.

"Thank you," was all I could say. "I will keep this bow forever."

If I knew my bow wasn't good enough to get off the kind of shot needed to match Running Horse, he knew it too, but instead of realizing he now had the upper hand, he made me a stronger bow. We were equally matched now.

The competition between boys at the school I went to was fierce at times. Many boys sought to prove they were better than anyone else at different things. I couldn't imagine one of them helping another boy to compete more fairly. It's what made me like where I was. Pawnee boys did not value the same things. I valued my hunting skills, and I kept working to get better. The two people who watched me doing this most, Lit'l Fox and Running Horse.

I had been using the bow for a year by then. It was time for a new bow.

Once I realized that aiming at a target wasn't much different with a bow, once you learned its action. You sighted your target and shot the arrow.

I didn't miss the target often.

The day after Running Horse handed me the new bow at the evening meal, we gathered for bow practice early. It's what we did on Wednesday morning.

All my wonderful thoughts about how nice Running Horse was came into question. He was going to move the line to shoot at the target further away than ever today, and me with a bow I haven't used.

Running Horse might have been more clever than I calculated.

I might embarrass myself, but at least I got a new bow out of the deal. I already shot my arrows further than anyone but Running Horse. Hitting the center of the target, not so much.

Running Horse didn't need to show off. By showing up, he was the best of us, and if he decided to take a turn, he took it. If he decided not to take a turn, he watched us. He didn't criticize us. He complimented our successes, as a good chief would. Failure represented a learning opportunity we used.

He could have made me look foolish by drawing the line further back when it was what the other boys thought he would do. My arrow would fall short, because I wasn't as strong or as good as Running Horse.

He left it in a place that made me look better than I was.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

One generation of hunters and warriors was lost during Chief Lone Wolf's era. Deciding the best course to give his clan a chance to survive this disaster was one he pondered on for weeks and months. If he didn't find a way for his village to grow stronger, his clan would die, as many clans died in his times.

I would join the new generation of warriors that would grow into men soon. I was a hunter. Most of our play each day involved the skills of a warrior. No one stood watch, telling us, do this, do that. Our skill came out of our play. Built into our games was a sharp eye and steady hand. We needed to think to outmaneuver the boys we played with to gain the high ground or to win the prize at the end of the day. Pride was a simple reward for outdoing the other boys on this day.

Tomorrow will be another day.

The other essential thing was to become a hunter. We furnished the meat that fed the village and kept us healthy and strong. I was a hunter in my first life.

It took no talent to feed chickens, or slop pigs, or even go to school. It was all a routine that taught you little except how to do the same thing over and over again. To hunt was to be free. Hunting was never the same way twice.

Before I regained my strength, Lit'l Fox knew what I needed. He furnished me with the bow. It was essential if I planned to stay in the village. My leg didn't need to be strong while I used my hunter's eye and a steady hand to learn the bow. I always knew how to hunt, but the bow and a rifle had no similarities. It was the hunter that made the bow or rifle effective. It took a long time to learn to hunt.

Many tribes, pushed about as far as they could be pushed, began to adapt to using rifles. The killing was made easy from a distance. We had no way to make rifles. The rifle was the tool of the Europeans to clear the land of pests.

Killing wasn't as hard as it should be for white men. They had many enemies. You don't need to make peace with them. You can kill them, and Indians died by the thousands.

There was another thing Europeans excelled at, commerce.

Where there was a need, there was a man to sell you what you needed. To survive indigenous people would need guns. Where did they get them?

Enterprising Europeans sold the guns to anyone who fancied one. Big guns, small guns, guns that fit in your pocket. If you can afford a gun, you can buy one.

I knew about rifles and guns. I used a rifle almost every day. I brought back supper on many days. Now, learning the bow was essential if I hoped to be a productive Pawnee who fed his village.

What we did each day involved skills a warrior needed. I became one of them without much effort. With Lit'l Fox and Running Horse beside me, they showed me what I needed to know to be a warrior.

There was no time, no schedule, no demands on the boys in the village. The games, horseback riding, firing arrows, running, jumping, and climbing were the things warriors did well, because they spent years doing it while being boys.

Hunting was the job of the warriors. We hunted for smaller critters that scurried around the village, and we went to the mountain twice a year to get venison and antelope that would fill the pots in the village for months to come.

There was no time in the village. Maybe it was time for the spring or autumn hunt, but we never were expected to do something at a certain time. We did what Indian boys had done for a thousand years, maybe ten thousand.

When we got up at the start of a new day, we ate. We were off and running, and the boys stayed together for most of each day. When the sun was high, and our stomachs felt empty, we went in for the noon meal and to rest, and then, we would be off and running again until we wore ourselves out and returned to our lodges with the sun hanging low in the western sky.

I did have a schedule at the cabin in the valley where the river runs. It was time to get up and feed the chickens and pigs. It was time to eat breakfast. It was time to go to school. It was time to go home from school, and then, it was time to feed the pigs and once you had, it was time to hunt for supper.

"Time for you to be in bed," Maw would say.

"Time to hitch Dobbin for our trip to town," Paw would say.

I no longer knew what time it was.

School was out. I lived in a village where things do not run on a schedule. We are free as birds to get done whatever we decide to do.

The village was a school where I learned to play and to listen. I did mighty little playing in my first life. I knew by the people around me, life was serious business, and you didn't want to get caught short at the wrong time. You always needed to be ready to lay claim to the things you want, and to stand your ground.

I listened to Medicine Woman talk history and use English for Lit'l Fox and Running Horse to learn from me and with me. After an English lesson ended, Medicine Woman said the same thing in Pawnee. It's how I became more familiar with the words that didn't always fit my mouth.

Even with Dark Horse sitting in his place across from us, he neither commented or had anything to say about what Medicine Woman did.

Pawnee was spoken in the lodge more than English, but they were both present there. It was part of our village, as we were part of it. I never felt completely comfortable being white, because the Pawnee needed to get out.

I wasn't white. I looked white. It served me well for a long time, but I wasn't becoming Pawnee.

I was Pawnee. I always had been Pawnee.

When you have two forces inside of you pulling in different directions, you need to pick one to follow. I more followed my nose to the mountain, and the Pawnee inside of me waited for me there. Is this where I was always going?

I passed as white. If you can pass, just don't tell anyone that you are passing. I passed out of Mrs. Taylor's class and school with no one any the wiser.

I was wiser. If people were passing, and I passed, what is the big deal? If people have something other than white blood in them, you can't be considered white, even if you are white, but what if you are passing?

If you have blood other than that which came from white people, but your skin is white, how do you find out that someone isn't white when they look white?

I had my father's blood in me, but I looked like my mother. I went to a white school. No one accused me of being my father's son, because Maw and the Prophet said I was white. That's all it took. Who didn't believe a preacher.

"Oh, he's okay. As you can plainly see, he's white."

In Medicine Woman's lodge, I sleep where Lit'l Fox sleeps. We eat around the fire, I have loin cloth, leggings, a deerskin shirt. I have a bedroll with my winter coat rolled up in it, and the Hawkin that leans next to two Sharps rifles that no one will ever fire again.

I can see how we might threaten the order of things in a European's mind. Chief Lone Wolf up and relocated his village into a wilderness. He wanted his people out of the way. Once there, his people built lodges and were comfortable using what was right there for them to use. You carried little from the old village.

The hunt, being a hunter, was the great equalizer for me in the village. If I could be a successful hunter, feed my people, they don't care if I'm blue with pink polka dots. In the village your value comes with how you contribute to making life good for everyone, no matter if your skin is dark, not so dark, or even white.

No one has said to me, "You ain't Pawnee because you're white."

From the beginning, no one mentioned my color, until I changed my color and Medicine Woman advised me to spend less time in the sun. She wanted me to keep my skin healthy. I was always outside during the day.

I knew the bow as well as I knew the Hawkin, but I had been firing rifles for years. I had only used a bow for a year. As soon as I was able to walk, I was handed a bow. Only by using it would I learn to hunt with it.

Lit'l Fox knew I was a hunter. I needed to know the bow. There were no general stores about to buy shot and powder. I had to know the bow if I was to continue being a hunter. My value came from the meat I supplied for the village.

I was at home in my new home and for the first time I liked my life. I had gone to the mountain to prove that I was a man. I had come to a Pawnee village to learn how to be a boy.

It's funny how you get what you want without knowing you are doing it.

Mrs. Taylor let me out of the white school. I went to school every day in my new home. There was a lot to learn. My teachers were the boys I played with and the activities we played at. At first it was slow, but my leg grew stronger.

I was never at home with the white boys at school. I was as comfortable with Lit'l Fox and Running Horse as I had ever been with anyone. They had become the brothers I never had. I felt close to both of them. They helped me learn what I needed to know. I watched them to learn.

I felt more like them, than I felt around white boys, although I was left with the same problem. I didn't dare let the boys at school know that I was Pawnee.

Now, I hesitated in telling anyone in the village, "I am Pawnee."