There's no denying that Thomas sees the true beauty and power of music. For a while, he hadn't really found anyone with the same passion for music that he holds. He ends up meeting a woman named "Chess" at a gig. They get to talking and she begins to tell him a story about her younger days. She says, "I used to think her songs drifted across the entire reservation..." (66). She goes into more detail but you get the point. She's referring to the way her mother used to serenade she and her siblings when they were children. it permeated throughout the entire reservation and she even claims it had an effect on the animals. his quote demonstrates the sheer power that music has in Chess's eyes. In this way, she and Thomas are quite similar. There's no doubt in my mind that the power of music is going to directly correlate to a theme which we may find out later in the novel.
     With Native American culture being the focus of the novel, it the degradation of said culture must be included. It's sad but true. I've personally visited a few Indian Reservations, the most memorable being the Navajo Reservation in Arizona/New Mexico. It's literally like a whole new country out there. It's a strange feeling being the minority when you're normally the majority. And you don't even have to leave the country. It's literally like a country within a country. But I digress. The point is, Native American culture is very different from other cultures that it comes in contact with on American soil, and it often suffers at the hands of cultural expansion. When confronted by a white man and his son, Junior is very on edge. The narrator observes: "On a reservation, this white man would have been all alone. In America, this white man was legion" (128). With two very different cultures living side-by-side, it was and is more often than not the Native Americans who suffer. I'm sure the author is trying to get awareness out there because the Native American culture is dying and it needs to be preserved.