And that band of cursing settlers dropped
    backward one by one,
For they knew that an Indian woman roused, was
    a woman to let alone. 
And then she raved in a frenzy that they scarcely
    understood,
Raved of the wrongs she had suffered since her
    earliest babyhood: 
“Stand back, stand back, you white-skins, touch
    that dead man to your shame;
You have stolen my father’s spirit, but his body I
    only claim. 
You have killed him, but you shall not dare to
    touch him now he’s dead. 
You have cursed, and called him a Cattle Thief,
    though you robbed him first of bread—­
Robbed him and robbed my people—­look there, at
    that shrunken face,
Starved with a hollow hunger, we owe to you and
    your race. 
What have you left to us of land, what have you
    left of game,
What have you brought but evil, and curses since
    you came? 
How have you paid us for our game? how paid us
    for our land? 
By a book, to save our souls from the sins you
    brought in your other hand. 
Go back with your new religion, we never have
    understood
Your robbing an Indian’s body, and mocking his
    soul with food. 
Go back with your new religion, and find—­if find
    you can—­
The honest man you have ever made from out a
    starving man. 
You say your cattle are not ours, your meat is not
    our meat;
When you pay for the land you live in, we’ll pay
    for the meat we eat. 
Give back our land and our country, give back our
    herds of game;
Give back the furs and the forests that were ours
    before you came;
Give back the peace and the plenty.  Then come
    with your new belief,
And blame, if you dare, the hunger that drove him to
    be a thief.”

A CRY FROM AN INDIAN WIFE

My forest brave, my Red-skin love, farewell;
We may not meet to-morrow; who can tell
What mighty ills befall our little band,
Or what you’ll suffer from the white man’s hand? 
Here is your knife!  I thought ’twas sheathed for aye. 
No roaming bison calls for it to-day;
No hide of prairie cattle will it maim;
The plains are bare, it seeks a nobler game: 
’Twill drink the life-blood of a soldier host. 
Go; rise and strike, no matter what the cost. 
Yet stay.  Revolt not at the Union Jack,
Nor raise Thy hand against this stripling pack
Of white-faced warriors, marching West to quell
Our fallen tribe that rises to rebel. 
They all are young and beautiful and good;
Curse to the war that drinks their harmless blood. 
Curse to the fate that brought them from the East
To be our chiefs—­to make our nation least
That breathes the air of this vast continent. 
Still their new rule and council is well meant.