Apache Indians--Wars

Before the captivity narrative about a Mexican woman abducted by the Apache in the mid-1800s; before the storyline about Geronimo's surrender; before the torrent of details about the life and peoples on the borderlands between present-day Mexico and the U.S.; there's this first sentence:

In the beginning, things appear. Writing is a defiant gesture we’ve long since gotten used to: where there was nothing, somebody put something, and now everybody sees it. For example, the prairie.