“Houses are like sentinels in the plain”
The full context of this metaphor continues with the observation that houses on the plain are “old keepers of the weather watch.” The author is attributing a metaphorical historical record to homes standing unguarded on the Great Plains by virtue of a literal record of weathering climate. Coats of paint fade in the sun and are torn away by the wind while nail rust, wood warps, shingles are torn away and the long, long history of pioneer life is written in the damage.
“Loneliness is an aspect of the land.”
The author does not reference it, probably because it is a condition associated with white settlers rather than the indigenous populations, known as “prairie madness.” The name indicates the symptoms and it was engendered among some settlers as a result of the isolation of living on the prairie combined with its topographical features. Look off into a horizon seeming to stretch toward infinity and, as the author does observe, "there is no confusion of objects in the eye, but one hill or one tree or one man.”
The Devil’s Tower
Perhaps no geological feature so defines the land that the author discusses as the formation known as the Devil’s Tower, made famous to everyone not already familiar with it through the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The Devil’s Tower. Its very majesty is overpowering and terrifying, suggestive of an origin that may not be entirely scientific and rational:
“At the top of a ridge I caught sight of Devil's Tower upthrust against the gray sky as if in the birth of time the core of the earth had broken through its crust and the motion of the world was begun.”
Kiowa Culture
The culture and legacy of the Kiowa presence on the plains is inextricably linked to the presence of buffalo. As long as the buffalo population was momentous, the fact that the plains itself was simply grass presented no limitations. Thus, grass becomes endowed with both literal and metaphorical meaning:
“The young Plains culture of the Kiowas withered and died like grass that is burned in the prairie wind.”
“The religion of the Plains”
Unlike in Europe where millions of people speaking different languages and with different histories were all united as a culture based upon a common spiritual belief, there was no unifying religious belief that united all tribes. What did eventually unite them was a metaphorical religion in the literal form of the introduction of the horse. The introduction of the horse becomes a liberating event that forever alters the fundamental lifestyle of tribes:
“Along the way they acquired horses, the religion of the Plains, a love and possession of the open land.”
