Samuel Brathwaite has not had an easy life. He was kidnapped as a young boy and raised by Paiute Indians. Taken away from his home at a young age, and raised in a completely different environment changed and shaped the young boy to be something else. His original name was dropped and the Paiutes called him Shandunka, giving him a completely new life and identity from what he might have had.

Shandunka has never felt welcome with either the white settlers of his origin, or with the Paiutes who abducted and raised him. The former view him as a unique oddity, a white man trying to be a savage, and the Paiutes view him as an outsider that was never really part of their tribe.

This sense of disconnect, of being a man apart haunts Shandunka for the rest of his life.