Mapping Indigenous Poetry of North America, 1830-1924

"The Cattle Thief" by E. Pauline Johnson


They were coming across the prairie, they were
    galloping hard and fast;
For the eyes of those desperate riders had sighted
    their man at last— 
Sighted him off to Eastward, where the Cree en-
    campment lay,
Where the cotton woods fringed the river, miles and
    miles away.
Mistake him? Never! Mistake him? the famous
    Eagle Chief!
That terror to all the settlers, that desperate Cattle
    Thief— 
That monstrous, fearless Indian, who lorded it over
    the plain, 
Who thieved and raided, and scouted, who rode like 
    a hurricane! 
But they've tracked him across the prairie; they've
    followed him hard and fast;
For those desperate English settlers have sighted
    their man at last. 
    
Up they wheeled to the tepees, all their British
    blood aflame,
 Bent on bullets and bloodshed, bent on bringing
    down their game; 
But they searched in vain for the Cattle Thief: that
    lion had left his lair,
And they cursed like a troop of demons—for the 
    women alone were there.
 "The sneaking Indian coward," they hissed; "he 
     hides while yet he can;
 He'll come in the night for cattle, but he's scared
     to face a man."
"Never!" and up from the cotton woods rang the
    voice of Eagle Chief;
And right out into the open stepped, unarmed, the
    Cattle Thief. 
Was that the game they had coveted? Scarce fifty
    years had rolled 
Over that fleshless, hungry frame, starved to the
    bone and old; 
Over that wrinkled, tawny skin, unfed by the
    warmth of blood. 
Over those hungry, hollow eyes that glared for the 
    sight of food. 
    
He turned, like a hunted lion: "I know not fear,"
    said he; 
And the words outleapt from his shrunken lips in
    the language of the Cree.
"I'll fight you, white-skins, one by one, till I kill
     you all," he said;
But the threat was scarcely uttered, ere a dozen
    balls of lead 
Whizzed through the air about him like a shower 
    of metal rain, 
And the gaunt old Indian Cattle Thief dropped
    dead on the open plain.
And that band of cursing settlers gave one trium-
    phant yell,
And rushed like a pack of demons on the body that
    writhed and fell.
"Cut the fiend up into inches, throw his carcass on
    the plain; 
Let the wolves eat the cursed Indian, he'd have
    treated us the same."
A dozen hands responded, a dozen knives gleamed
    high,
But the first stroke was arrested by a woman's 
    strange, wild cry.
And out into the open, with a courage past be-
    lief,
She dashed, and spread her blanket o'er the corpse
    of the Cattle Thief;
And the words outleapt from her shrunken lips in
    the language of the Cree,
"If you mean to touch that body, you must cut 
    your way through me." 
And that band of cursing settlers dropped back-
    ward 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." 

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