Where the wild things roam

Today I watched as an army, dead but for their feet all stomping to the sound of an intangible dream, proceed. silent warriors of a presumed glory. Today I witnessed the procession of an army not present. Guns are drawn, painting bloodred roses atop fields of rich brown skin. Today natives were murdered, and I was the only one to see them fall.
Here is the difference between a native and a pale skinned conqueror: one wears hand built moccasins with furry leather tails dangling from the top, which I love to watch dance to the rhythm of human movement. The other wears long, brown lace up boots. These specimens of another world resist movement entirely. they are stiff, persistently unchanging, such that each person resembles the next if you were to only see their ankle down, where the dress then covers continuous leather. No individual history was given to those leather boots, or at least none but what the shop owner witnessed. They were magical things which appeared sumptuously presented on wooden shelves, bought with metal coins, then shoved onto hungry feet. But those native moccasins, they were animals in a different form. Creatures sewn together by skill and culture. Those moccasins told a story, that every brown skinned was aware of.
Oh, how I longed to share the joy of that story. How I longed to race with the buffalos, my leather tails dancing with the thump of my feet, how I longed to be free. I was not born for a life of conquest. I did not thirst for the captivation of new territory, and the growing of alien crops in a wild land. I wanted to call this wild thing, this new world my home, not my investment. I wanted to be one with all that pulsed through the quiet trees and the cry of hawks. I wanted to be free.
My name is Mary Ann, and I am not a real pioneer. I'm just a bird in a cage so to speak, a bird waiting to be unveiled. To run and run into deep forest and never come back.