Saskia and Alastair exchanged a look across the table, each just verifying that the other had lost the thread of Rufus’s discourse. Rufus got a sheepish, mischievous look. "Now we call ’em Blue States and Red States. But it’s the same. The Cherokees, the Chickasaws, and others—the Five Civilized Tribes—got corn—what you call maize—from Mexico long before white people times and settled down and became farmers. West of, oh, about the meridian where we are right at this moment, corn wouldn’t grow. Just grass. People can’t eat grass. Bison can. So the people would eat the bison. Tough way to make a living until the Spaniards brought horses. Then it was a fine way to live. And that’s where you get your Comanches. Whole different mindset there from the Five Tribes. They never reconciled. What we now call Oklahoma was split in half right down the center. Five Tribes raising crops to the east. Comanches and Kiowas ranging free to the west, raiding the Five Tribes nations for horses and slaves."