I don't know who this Indian is,
A bow within his hand,
But he is hiding by a tree
And watching white men land.
They may be gods-they may be fiends-
They certainly look rum.
He wonders who on earth they are
And why on earth they've come.
He knows his streams are full of fish,
His forests full of deer,
And his tribe is the mighty tribe
That all the others fear.
-And, when the French or English land,
The Spanish or the Dutch,
They'll tell him they're the mighty tribe
And no one else is much.
They'll kill his deer and net his fish
And clear away his wood
And frequently remark to him
They do it for his good.
Then he will scalp and he will shoot
And he will burn and slay
And break the treaties he has made
-And, children, so will they.
We won't go into all of that
For it's too long a story,
And some is brave and some is sad
And nearly all is gory.
But just remember this about
Our ancestors so dear:
They didn't find an empty land,
The Indians were here.
-Stephen Vincent Benet
from the book...A History of U.S. Making Thirteen Colonies
From the same book:
Quoting Luther Standing Bear, a Dakota Indian:
"While the white people had much to teach us, we had much to teach them,
and what a school could have been established upon that idea!
...Only the white man saw nature as a "wilderness", and only to
him was the land "infested" with "wild" animals and savage people.
To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded
with the blessings of the Great Mystery".
