When the girl and boy came into Carlisle as five-year-olds, the nuns gave them Christian names to replace their heathen ones, scribbling each child’s Christian appellation between the blue lines in the ledger. One from the southwest. The other from Oklahoma. They arrived three days apart. One cried for weeks. The other never shed a tear. One spoke Towa. The other spoke Tsalagi. If they spoke their languages both were whipped on their buttocks—preventing outsiders from seeing the welts—by the nuns in their robes, their heavy silver crosses swinging around their necks. One spoke her language in secret into her pillow at night. The other never spoke his language again. The night the politicians from Harrisburg visited the Indian school, the boy bled to death from the s****l assaults and the g
