The Crawl is the most detailed account of physical suffering and
endurance extant in poetry. Note the large number of words that make
direct appeal to the sensations of thirst, weariness, chronic pain,
fever, delirium. Again the sense of loneliness, of betrayal, of a
conspiracy to destroy him appears everywhere in Hugh’s experience. The
monotony of the journey appears in its slowness, which is indicated in
many ways.
Before describing the Crawl, Neihardt first found out what vegetable
growths would be found on the trail, the character of the soil, how the
streams would erode, etc. The poet is true to all nature, even natural
science.
=3.= And through it ran the short trail to the goal.
What was the “goal”? Ree villages lay nearly directly east.
=4.= Thereon a grim turnpikeman waited toll:
Who is the “grim turnpikeman”?
=7.= Should make their foe the haunter of a tale.
Hugh was killed on the Yellowstone by the Rees in 1832.
=9.= The scoriac region of a hell burned black
The bad lands of the Little Missouri, so made to appear by
spontaneous combustion of lignite deposits.
=13.= Should bid for pity at the Big Horn’s mouth.
Locate the Big Horn’s mouth, where Henry and his men spent the
winter of 1823–1824.