TO A CHILD’S MOCCASIN
Looted from the body of an Indian child killed at Wounded Knee.
’Twas complained that Indian women—some were slain—fought with the braves; which, indeed, they did.
I
A wild mother’s patterned fancy—white beads, green and blue,
With here, like heart-stained arrows, scarlet zigzagged through,
Thy lining furry rabbit, little shoe!
How joyously she wrought thee, the long blue sunny day,
On the wind-stroked grass of the prairie, ’neath the willows’ shady sway,
Singing the old song mothers sing alway:
Chaske, my little Chaske, Chaske my brave to be!
Fleet shall he run as the stallion, stand tall as the tall pine tree,
As the storm be mighty and valiant—Chaske, my chief to be!
Stringing the beads in patterns, zigzag red and blue;
Sewing with thread of tendon the furry edges true;
Singing the song of mothers the blue day through.
II
A hill-slope, a desolation; yonder the cordoned crest
Of glinting gun and sabre—here, like mole in nest,
Trapped in the hill-crest’s hollow, the huntsmen’s quest.
A solitude of heaven, high and sunny still
Above a breadth of desert—sudden the locust shrill
Of bullets, then death, and sudden the war-whoop’s thrill.
And here a wild squaw-mother—something dead at the breast,
Something live at the shoulder, spitting lead with the best——
Singing a song of wild-heart’s cradle-rest:
Death, you have taught me to mother! Death, I will mother well!
With red, red blood I will nourish, I will lull with the rifle’s spell!
For O you have taught me to suckle and I will suckle them well!
Only a wild squaw-mother, bullet-stung at the start,
Quiet out there in the desert, something dead nigh the heart.
See! her quaint fancy’s beading, zigzag art.