The people who fled Palo Duro Canyon in September 1874 did not carry their lodges or their food stores.

They carried what they could grab in the minutes the warriors on the canyon walls bought for them.

What they carried was less tangible than hides or dried meat: the knowledge of how to survive on the Plains, the languages that organized their social worlds, the ceremonial practices that gave meaning to their lives, the kinship networks that connected them to each other, the oral traditions that preserved their histories.

The material destruction at Palo Duro Canyon was comprehensive.