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The Lost Tribe
THIS IS SOMTHING I CAME ACROSS THIS AND THOUGHT I WOULD SHARE IT...
THE LOST TRIBE
I look to the Carolina coast and rivers, which once gave food to eat...
And to forests now almost bare of game, which also gave us meat.
Where have you all gone, the ancestors of my mother?
I cannot find your red skin amidst a sea of some white other.
My own red skin is even tainted with the white man’s blood-line trace...
But the features of my mother’s tribe still stand out in my face.
I wear the clothes of white men, but within the essence of my soul...
The warrior spirit of the red man still maintains its strong control.
Hear the story of my tribe and listen to it well...
Of how the white man used my people, and then sent them off to Hell.
As friends, we met the white man as he landed on our shores...
But he lied to us and tricked us, and turned us into whores.
We killed our own red brothers to get trinkets from the white man...
But now our fathers’ spirits call out, for he’s taken all our land.
Our homes he filled with his sickness and our hearts he filled with greed...
He wiped our people from the earth as he spread his white man’s seed.
He weeded out our people, and the seeds he sowed have spread...
He calls our homeland his own today and our people are all dead.
© 1997 Poems of Ganohilidasd' Ugu'ku"
("Hunting Owl")
THE LOST TRIBE
I look to the Carolina coast and rivers, which once gave food to eat...
And to forests now almost bare of game, which also gave us meat.
Where have you all gone, the ancestors of my mother?
I cannot find your red skin amidst a sea of some white other.
My own red skin is even tainted with the white man’s blood-line trace...
But the features of my mother’s tribe still stand out in my face.
I wear the clothes of white men, but within the essence of my soul...
The warrior spirit of the red man still maintains its strong control.
Hear the story of my tribe and listen to it well...
Of how the white man used my people, and then sent them off to Hell.
As friends, we met the white man as he landed on our shores...
But he lied to us and tricked us, and turned us into whores.
We killed our own red brothers to get trinkets from the white man...
But now our fathers’ spirits call out, for he’s taken all our land.
Our homes he filled with his sickness and our hearts he filled with greed...
He wiped our people from the earth as he spread his white man’s seed.
He weeded out our people, and the seeds he sowed have spread...
He calls our homeland his own today and our people are all dead.
© 1997 Poems of Ganohilidasd' Ugu'ku"
("Hunting Owl")
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