Summary

The speaker asserts that they took the empty casket to the Catholic cemetery because "we Coeur d'Alene Indians are the best Catholics you're ever going to meet. When we eat the bread and drink the wine we're eating and drinking Jesus, Mary, and all twelve of the Apostles, even that traitor Judas" (3). He explains that they lowered his uncle's empty casket into the ground and everyone took turns throwing a handful of dirt on it before departing. When it was just his mother and himself left, his mother sang a funeral song that the speaker did not know. The speaker reflected on his uncle's life, and "wondered it was possible for an Indian to die peacefully" (3).

The speaker remembers a photograph he has of Hector as a baby with his grandmother, Agnes. He explains that Agnes was born before the Civil War, "so, yes...