Untitled
By Nina Miller
An Indian stood on a treeless plain,
And shaded his eyes with his hand,
And looked with his savage heart filled with pain,
An Indian stood on a treeless plain,
And shaded his eyes with his hand,
And looked with his savage heart filled with pain,
O’er a rich and fertile land.
He thought of his tribe,
His fighting braves,
His women and children too.
And it seemed that he stood on their unmarked graves,
For he knew that his people were through.
From afar to the east,
As he looked that way,
Lay a ribbon of shining rails,
Where it crossed in the light of the closing day,
The buffaloes’ deep worn trails.
And he heard the roar of a monster of steel,
And the wind in the treetops hums,
And the sound of hammer and wrench and reel,
Like the beat of a thousand drums.
He saw his people in shackles bound,
Ruled by the white man’s hand,
Their tepees pitched on allotted ground,
Barred from this wild free land.
He saw his warriors brave and free,
Bound in a limited space,
And slow but sure the passing of
The Redman’s sturdy race.
And the pain in his savage heart turned to wrath,
As he thought of his people’s plight,
And he resolved to remove from the Redman’s path,
This weakling whose face was white.
And to conquer this monster of iron and steam,
He knew no way but to fight.
So his war cry split with its piercing scream,
The peace of the prairie night,
And history brands him a savage beast,
With a lust to pillage and kill,
As he roamed the land from the west to the east,
To burn and destroy at his will.
And though scores went down in an unfair fight,
Laid low by his cruel hand,
As he caught them at dawn,
Or the deep of the night,
With his roving, vengeful band.
To me he seemed just a desperate man,
With his family, his home and his pride,
Who used the methods he had at hand,
To keep them all by his side.
And to stop this horde of invading men,
He must show them his strength and his might,
So he fought just as we have always done,
For what he was sure was right.
