The Human Beings [the Cheyenne Indians] believe that everything is alive: not only men and animals but also water and earth and stones and also the dead things from them like this hair. . . . But white men believe that everything is dead: stones, earth, animals, and people, even their own people. And if, in spite of that, things persist in trying to live, white men will rub them out.

Thomas Berger, Little Big Man