At four this morning I was thinking of the weeks after Roosevelt died. We crossed the Columbia River to Vancouver, Washington to see Cousin Preble, who was mainly Choctaw and Cherokee. She had someone staying with her, a cousin of her husband's who had been shipped back from Europe. A full blooded Kiowa, he had been captured by the Germans. They treated him as a prize and sent him fast to a concentration camp where the doctors could experiment on him. A Red Indian! He was clearly not of the Master Race, but was he human? They did not starve him, from what I remember, but tried physical manipulations and chemical tests on him. He was lethargic, almost immobile, but what I remember most was that he was grossly round and SOFT. This was before the image of the Pillsbury Doughboy, I suppose, but he looked as if you could sink a finger deep into him, or even as if he would pop if you stuck a needle into his stomach. After what they had done to him, he no longer looked quite human. After a while I got up and made coffee.
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