Old Town.
(To The Kickapoo Club.)
Behold the trail
Where many moccasinned feet have trod,
And many white mens weary steps
Have led to death untimely, or to long captivity.
Behold the village site,
Where once the Kickapoos
In pole-bark houses lived, and where
Their council-house
Stood from the others, somewhat larger,
And a little way apart.
Here Pemoatam and Masheena met
To choose for war or peace, and choosing war,
Set forth upon that dire ill-fated way
That led to Tippecanoe, and Tecumsehs fall.
Here also came
Frenchman and Spaniard in the early days,
Then our First Settlers in the later times,
To counsel with their distant Indian neighbors.
Black Robes and Couriers des Bois,
Long Knives and Rangers intermingled.
And here came traders from the far Detroit,
To barter white mens wares for Indian peltries.
Behold where once the Dance Ground was
Where many soft-shod feet have stepped
To rhythmic beating of the painted drums,
And rattling of the shaking, stone-filled gourds.
And here the head men lectured and exhorted them
To follow steadfast in their fathers ways,
Which they had practiced ere the white men came,
With hands against the whites eternally.
Behold the graves
Of many Kickapoos who died
Long years before their children
Left Illinois and journeyed westward.
And here the stockade fort
Built up by other hands than theirs,
Of which no mark nor trace remains
Save this the whites erected.
From these few gleanings of the early years,
From these few broken fragments that we find,
Canst realize and picture once anew
The scenes of former days in Katahotan?
Canst conjure mental vision of the times
When priest and white fur-trader may have come
To preach "salvation" and to barter wares
With savage tribesmen who once dwelt herein?
Canst picture Lee and Stark or old Masheena?
Or Pemoatam whose consistent pride
Forbade him live beneath the Long Knives rule
But whom afflictions blow could not withstand?
Where now the corn and grass grows rank,
Where now the white mens cattle come to drink
At spring or stream where once the buffalo
And deer and Indian pony slaked their thirst?
It may be also here Kaanakuk
Once taught his people of those better ways
So well remembered yet, but which
So few still follow faithfully.
If they should choose, his people might come here
To see where once their forbears lived.
Where some who once found humble burial,
And other hands have long years since removed.
I fear that strange tradition which they hold
That 'Some day we shall all go back
To Aneneewa whence our people came'
Shall never never be fulfilled,
Nor moccasinned feet shall tread this soil again
In Times unending course of centuries.
Lest in some unknown shadow-land, perchance
Within that place they call Apamekka,
Of which their "Prophet" taught them--
Celestial Katahotan--
Celestial "Aneneewa."
For now the corn and grass grows rank
And now the white mens cattle come to drink
At spring and stream where once the buffalo
And deer and Indian pony slaked their thirst.