Ancient Shores

Author’s note

Lake Agassiz existed. I’ve taken a liberty or two with the shoreline, but other than that I’ve tried not to assault the facts unduly. Anyone who cares to may fly over the western limits of the valley of the Red River of the North, up near the Canadian border, and the ancient coast will be quite visible.

“Lightnings in the Sky,” in Chapter 2, is quoted from P-38 Lightning in Action, by Larry Davis. Reprinted courtesy of Squadron/Signal Publications.

Native-American poetry epigraphs are from American Poetry Volume Two: Melville to Stickney, American Indian Poetry, Folk Songs and Spirituals (New York: Library of America, 1993); George Copway, Life, History, and Travels of Kah-Ge-Ga-Gah-Bowh (1847) (Chapter 25); John Mason Browne, “Indian Medicine,” Atlantic Monthly (1866) (Chapter 26); Fannie Reed Giffen, Oo-Mah-Ha-Ta-Wa-Tha (1898) (Chapter 29); Don D. Fowler and Catherine S. Fowler, eds., Anthropology of the Numa: John Wesley Powell’s Manuscripts on the Numic Peoples of Western North America, 1868—1880 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971) (Chapter 33).

Excerpt from “Sonnet III,” George Santayana, The Complete Poems of George Santayana (Bucknell University Press, 1979) (Chapter 22). Reprinted by permission.