The Red Man
I stood upon an eminence, that wide
O’erlooked a length of land, where spread
The sounding shores of Lake Superior;
And at my side there lay a vale
Replete with little glens, where oft
The Indian wigwam rose, and little fields
Of waving corn displayed their tasselled heads.
A stream ran through the vale, and on its marge
There grew wild rice, and bending alders dipped
Into the tide, and on the rising heights
The ever-verdant pine laughed in the breeze.
I turned around, to gaze upon the scenes
More perfectly, and there beheld a man
Tall and erect, with feathers on his head,
And air and step majestic; in his hands
Held he a bow and arrows, and he would have passed,
Intent on other scene, but that I spake to him:
“Pray, whither comest thou? and whither goest?”
“My coming,” he replied, “is from the Master of Life,
The Lord of all things, and I go at his commands.”
“Then why,” I further parleyed, “since thou art
So much the friend of Him, whom white men seek
By prayer and rite so fervently to obey—why, tell,
Art thou so oft in want of e’en a meal
To satisfy the cravings of a man? Why cast abroad
To live in wilds, where oft the scantiest shapes
Of foot and wing must fill thy board, while pallid hunger strays
With hideous shouts, by mountain, vale, and stream?”
“The Great Spirit,” he replied, “hath not alike
Made all men; or, if once alike, the force of climes,
And wants and wanderings have estranged them quite.
To me, and to my kind, forest, and lake, and wood,
The rising mountain, and the drawn-out stream
That sweeps, meandering, through wild ranges vast,
Possess a charm no marble halls can give.
We rove, as winds escaped the Master’s fists—
Now, sweeping over beds of prairie flowers—
Now, dallying on the tops of leafy trees,
Or murmuring in the corn-fields, and, when tired
With roving, we lie down on beds where springs
The simple wild flower, and some shreds of bark,
Plucked from the white, white birch, defends our heads,
And hides us from the blue ethereal skies,
Where, in his sovereign majesty, this Spirit rules;
Now, casting lightning from his glowing eyes—
Now, uttering thunder with his mighty voice.
“To you, engendered in another clime
Of which our fathers knew not, he hath given
Arts, arms, and skill we know not, or if ever knew,
Have quite forgot. Your hands are thickened up
With toils of field and shop, where whirring wheels resound,
And hammers clink. The anvil and the plough
Belong to you; the very ox construes your speech,
And turns him to obey you. All this toil
We deem a slavery too heavy to be borne,
And which our tribes revolt at. Oft we stand
To view the reeking smith, who pounds his iron
With blow on blow, to fit it for the beast
That drags your ploughshares through the rooty soil.
The very streams—bright ribbons of the woods!—are yoked,
And made to turn your mills, and grind your corn;
And yet this progress stays not in its toils
To alter nature and pervert her plans.
Steam drags your vessels now, that once
Leapt in their beauty by the winds of heaven.
Some subtle principle ye find in fire,
And with a cunning art fit rattling cars
To run on strips of iron, with scream and clang
That seem symbolic of an angry power
Which dwells below, and is infernal called.
The war-crowned lightning skips from pole to pole
On strings of iron, to haste with quick intelligence.
“Once, nature could be hid, and fondly think
She had some jewels in the earth, but now ye dig
Into her very bowels, to recover morsels sweet
She erst with deglutition had drawn in. The rocks
Your toils dissolve, to find perchance some treasure
Lying there. Is yonder land of gold alone
Your care? Observe along these shores
The wheezing engine clank—the stamper ring.
Once, hawks and eagles here pursued their prey,
But now the white man ravens more than they.
No! give me but my water and God’s meats,
And take your cares, your riches, and your thrones.
What the Great Spirit gives, I take with joy,
And scorn those gains which nothing can content.
“Drudge ye, and grind ye, white man! make your pence,
And store your purses with the shining poison.
It was not Manito who made this trash
To curse the human race, but Vatipa the black,
Who rules below—he changed the blood of innocence
And tears of pity into gold, and strewed it wide
O’er lands where still the murderer digs
And the deceptious delve, to find the cockle out
And pick it up, but laughs the while to see
What fools they are, and how himself has foiled
The Spirit of Good, that made mankind
Erst friends and brothers. Scanty is my food,
But that sweet bird, chileelee, blue of wing,
Sings songs of peace within the wild-wood dell
And round the enchanted shores of these blue seas—
Not long, perhaps, our own—which tell me of a rest
In far-off lands—the islands of the blest!”