Benjamin on Kafka on ... Native Americans

Kafka's collection of stories, Contemplation (in German, Betrachtung) includes one called The Wish to be a Red Indian (Wunsch, Indianer zu werden). Benjamin quotes it in the essay we've been looking at. He has just been talking about a childhood photograph of Kafka in which he has '[i]mmensely sad eyes':

The ardent 'wish to become a Red Indian' may have consumed this great sadness at some point. 'If one were only an Indian, instantly alert, and on a racing horse, leaning against the wind, kept on quivering briefly over the quivering ground, until one shed one's spurs, for there were no spurs, threw away the reins, for there were no reins, and barely saw the land before one as a smoothly mown heath, with the horse's neck and head already gone.' A great deal is contained in this wish. Its fulfilment, which he finds in America, yields up its secret.