i
- It is winter in South Dakota and Catherine Weldon remembers childhood days in Boston.
- She witnesses the Ghost Dance and sees the hope that comes with it: that peace will come.
- But it does not. The scene of ritual dancing melts into a premonition of slaughter and the loss of an entire people.
ii
- Catherine, like Achille, witnesses the aftermath of an attack. She sees the Sioux taken prisoner, the emptiness of the camp—and the blind poet, Omeros—as she surveys the damage.
- The scene and wording precisely mirror Achille's walk through the settlement in Africa, and Catherine observes that she walks "like a Helen" through the slaughter.
iii
- Omeros speaks of the uniting power of the Ghost Dance, but it is not what we expect—instead he reveals the weariness of the Indian Nation in fighting the relentless onslaught of whiteness.
- The narrator speaks to Catherine across the ages, telling her that the fight is over; they lost.
- He sees her withering in her house after the massacre, learning to hate the snow that reminds her of that winter.
- The all-encompassing whiteness of the snow echoes the whiteness that obliterated the people of color on the plains.
- The narrator attempts to find his way back to his ex-lover's old house, but he can't find it. He's lost the address.