The Madisonian. [volume] (Washington City [i.e. Washington, D.C.]) 1837-1845, 1840-12-22
From the New Orleans Picayune.
INDIANS HUNTING THE BUFFALO

INDIANS HUNTING THE BUFFALO
Silence beneath the noon day sun is keeping
Watch DER the untired praires of the West,
Where myriads Of Buffalo are sleeping,
Or grazing eaiths green and fowery breast;
And their low believing doth the stiffness break,
As zephyr moves the lake.
Like the low surging of the distant sea,
Or like the murmuring of a storm retiring
The sound the Creatures utter seems to be
Nor roar, nor believing, but short respiring,
Which, made by millions, low yet awful seems
Like thunder heard in dreams
Count in the milky way each little star
Then number the wild monarchs of the scene;
Around the land to the horizon star
The wilderness is black instead ofgrcen
Millions and myriads, unseen and unknown,
Rove the wild waste they own.
But hearken! listen Other sounds are near;
See far away commoton speed along,
Like darkling waves some wild and sudden fear
Moves like storm-lashed sea, the mighty throng
And lazy bulls, rising in sudden fright,
Stretch their huge limbs in flight
All that still and peaceful only now
Becomes a scene of terror wild and strange;
The solid earth Is moving, trembling-how
Appalling, how bewildcring the change,
One vast, black living mass in hcadlong speed
Flying across the mead
See there the dust rising in sudden clouds
Hear there the red mans piercing scream of war;
Mark the wild stced mixed with flying crowds;
See the swift arrows, flashing on the sight,
Like truant stars of night
A thousand hunters on their fre-eyed steeds
With barbed arrows and with Bonded bow
Shrieking as each victim falls and bleeds
Are dealing death among the Buffalo,
See the wild herds swift crossing they fly,
The verge of land and sky.
On on Now hther, thither wildly spreading,
r lhelr startling eyes in phrenzy glaring round
Bends the vast throng some staggering and bleeding,
Goarng the air and tearing up the ground
crossed turned, cut of and maddened by the foe
Inflated Buffalo
See the Cumanches, with fend-like ease
Flying on half wild steeds the plain;
Their long, dark scalp locks streaming the breeze
Red AS the sun beam with vermion stain
Now distant far, then instant flashing higher,
Like mounted flames Of fire
And see the phrenzied Buffalo at bay,
After his savage hunter madly rushing;
VMnly he fights or seeks to 'scape away,
With the red stream from his wide nosrils gushing!
lie pauses, staggers, pants and glares around,
Then headlong seeks the ground
Gearing the earth, grasping feeble breath,
And spouting blood, he falls upon his side;
And soon the quvering agony of death
Leaves his limbs stiff aud eyebalIs staring wide;
But ere he yields his parting breath of life,
He feels the butchers knife
Now mark the magic changing ofthe scene;
Gone are the hunted myriads from the plain;
The earth again displays its carpet green,
And some poor hunted Buffalo remain
Some fighting still, some staggering gaspng dying,
Around the prairie lying
Around them the red Cumanches crowd,
To the huge victims horns their wild steeds tied;
With flashing knives and yells Of triumph loud,
Tearing the warm skin from his reeking side,
See the red devils with the brutcs own hoof,
Knocking his hump ribs of
Thus fall the untamed monarchs Of the waste
But centuries shall seek eternal rest,
Ere the last lonely Buffalo is chased
From the wild grassy gardens Of the West,
Then, like the Mastadon, ripped up bone
Shall be his funeral stone, PHASNA,