For more than a hundred years they had controlled the open range from the Smoky Hill River to the Red, from the headwaters of the Canadian to the fork of the Arkansas and Cimarron. In alliance with the Comanches, they had ruled the whole of the southern Plains. War was their sacred business, and they were among the finest horsemen the world has ever known. But warfare for the Kiowas was preeminently a matter of disposition rather than of survival, and they never understood the grim, unrelenting advance of the U.S. Cavalry. When at last, divided and ill-provisioned, they were driven onto the Staked Plains in the cold rains of autumn, they fell into panic. In Palo Duro Canyon they abandoned their crucial stores to pillage and had nothing then but their lives. In order to save themselves, they surrendered to the soldiers at Fort Sill and were imprisoned in the old stone corral that now stands as a military museum. My grandmother was spared the humiliation of those high gray walls by eight or ten years, but she must have known from birth the affliction of defeat, the dark brooding of old warriors.
他们控制着从斯莫克山河到红河，从加拿大河上游到阿肯色河和西马隆河支流之间的那片开阔的山脉长达一百多年。通过与科曼斯人的联盟，他们统治了整个南部平原。发动战争是他们神圣的事业，他们位居世人皆知的最优秀的骑手之列。但是对于克尔瓦人来说斗争主要是由他们的习惯决定的，而并非是为了生存。他们永远都无法理解美国骑兵那种残酷无情的进攻。当他们最终四分五裂、弹尽粮绝，在秋季的凄风冷雨中被驱赶到斯代克特平原的时候，他们陷入了恐慌。在帕罗多罗大峡谷，他们在遭遇的洗劫中丢弃了赖以生存的补给，除了自己的生命一无所有。为了自救，他们向驻扎在福特西尔的士兵投降，被关押在一个废旧的石头牲畜棚里。如今这里已经是一个军事博物馆了。我的祖母由于是在那儿以后八到十年才出生的，因此免遭那高高的灰墙里的羞辱。但自出生起，她一定就已经懂得那种失败所带来的磨难，这是那些老战士们的噩梦。
Her name was Aho, and she belonged to the last culture to evolve in North America. Her forebears came down from the high country in western Montana nearly three centuries ago. They were a mountain people, a mysterious tribe of hunters whose language has never been positively classified in any major group. In the late 17th century they began a long migration to the south and east. It was a long journey toward the dawn, and it led to a golden age. Along the way the Kiowas were befriended by the Crows, who gave them the culture and religion of the Plains.
她的名字叫阿荷，是北美大地上繁衍的最后的文明。大约三个世纪前，她的祖先从蒙大拿西部海拔很髙的家乡来到这里。他们是一支山地民族，一个神秘的连语言也从未被明确地划归任何一个语系的猎人部落。17世纪末期，他们开始了向南和向东方向的漫长迁移。这是个通向黎明的漫长旅程，给他们带来了全盛时期。在途中克罗人把克尔瓦人待之如友，并教给他们平原上的文化和宗教。