Sharp County record., 1881-05-12

On land or water.
To have a little traffic with the town.
Once more he chooses
The ancient camping place, and brings his
brown
Squaw and papooses.
No tent was here in yester-evening's hush;
But the day, dawning,
Transtgures with faint, rOseate flush,
His dingy awning.
The camp smoke curling in the misty light,
And canvas slanting
To the green earth, all this is something quite
Fresh and enchanting;
Viewed not too closely, lest the glancing
The iridescent
Soft colOrs of romance, give place to things
Not quite so pleasant.
The gOssamers giisteued on the dewy turf;
The lisp and tinkle
Of flashing fOam-bells, where the placid SURF
Breaks on the shingle;
The shimmering birches by the ripping cove;
A fresh breeze bringing
The fragrance Of the pines, and in the grove
The thTushes singing,
Make the day sweet. But other sight and
Anu OuOIo III IT,
You find, as you approach their camping
ground
Ard reeking skillet.
The ill-fed ours rush out with wolfish bark;
And, staring at you,
A slim young girl leaps up, smoc-h-limbed and
dark
As bronze statue.
A bare papOose about the campfire poles
Toddles at random:
And on the ground there, by the blazing GOALS,
Sits the old grandam.
Wrinkled and lean, her skirt a matted rag,
In plated collar
Of beads and hedgehog quills the smoke-dried
hag
Squats in her squalor,
Dressing a marin OF which the boys have shot:
Which done she seiZeS
With tawny claws, and drops into the pot
The raw, red pieces.
The chief meanwhile has in some mischief
found
bowling urchin.
Who knows too well, alas that he is bound
10 have birching.
The stole of the woods, stern and unmoved
Lays the light lash on,
Tickling the lively ankles in approved
Fatherly fashion.
The boy sinks off. wiser boy, indeed
Wiser and sOrrier,
And is this he, the chief of whom we read,
The Indian warrior:
Where hangs his tomahawk? the scalps of tall
Braves struck in battleg
Why bless you, sir, his band is not at all
That kind of cattle?
In ceasing to be savages, they chose
To put away things
That suit the savage; even those hickory bows
Are merely playthings.
For common use he rather likes, think,
The white mans rifle,
Hatchet and blanket; and of white mans
fear atritie.
With neighbors' scalp+ocks and such baga-
telles,
He never NEEDLES,
Bows, baskets, and | hardly know what else,
He makes and peddles.
Quite civilized you see. Is he aware
or his beatitude!
Does he, for all the white mans love and care,
Feel proper gratitude?
Feathers and war paint he no more enjoys;
But he is prouder
OF long tailed coat, and boots, and corduroys,
Anu Nulle Hdu pOWueF.
And he can trade his mink and musquash
skins,
Baskets of wicker,
For white man trnkets; bows and moccaSins
For white man liquor.
His Manitou is passing, with each strange,
Wild superstition;
He has the Indian agent for a change,
And Indian mission.
He owns his cabin andpotato patch,
And farms little.
IndustriousS Quite, when there are fish to
Orshafts to whittle.
Though all about him, like a rising deep,
Flows the white nation,
He has-and while he pleases us may keep
His Reservation.
Placed with his tribe in such paradise,
'Tis past believing
That they should still be given to petty vice,
Treachery and thlevlng.
Incentives to renOunce their Indian tricks
Are surely ample,
With white mans piety and politics
For their example.
But are they happier now than when, some
night,
The chosen quotas
VI tQIteu Warriors sdllleu IOtIu 10 uguI
The fierce Dakotas?
Still under that sedate, impassive port,
That dull demegnOr,
A spirit waits, demon sleeps-in short,
The same red sinner!
Within those inky pools, his eyes, l see
Revenge and pillage,
The midnight massacre that yet may be,
The blazing village.
When will he mend his wicked ways, indeed,
Kill more humanely-
DepaTt. and LeaXe 10 LIS the Lands -vgle- nead2-
To put it plainly.
Yet in our dealings with his race, in crimes
Of war and ravage,
Who is the Christian, one might ask some
times,
And who the savage?
His traits are ours, seen in a dusky glass,
And but remind us
Of heathenism we hardly yet, alasl
Have left behind us.
Is right for white race wrong for black and
red?
A man or woman.
What hue soever after all that's said,
Is simply human,