INDIANS

Oklahoma. Indian territory. My birthplace. Where proximity has created a melting pot,a co-mingling of races, of breeds,of people thrust into a life undetermined by a single bloodline or common cause. A place where cultures fuse into a stew whose flavor is affected by ingredients that include cowboys, Cochise and crude oil. A place where,as noted by Rogers and Hammerstein, the wind comes sweepin' down the plain. But what that wind blew in was a people whose world would forever change once they became placed in the boundries of a prison without walls. Driven here likes herds of reluctant cattle. Forced at gunpoint, to trudge hundreds of miles, men,women and children. An entire continent overtaken, defeated and humiliated. History books that spin a collective tragedy into an American victory.