William Masonis | + Follow Poet |
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Sand Creek

Sand Creek

Dawn arises
And a line of good, blue-coated American boys
Sit astride their horses
Just outside the camp.

They wait
Outside the Cheyanne camp:
Those animals they were here to hunt,
For Country, God and Glory:
They took no mind
Of their own flag,

Fluttering in the breeze
Just behind them.
Who now will prove to be the animals?

With one sharp bark,
And a toss of his hair
Their leader charged forth to kill everyone
In their path,
Panting in the crisp winter air;
All howling and baying.
To kill the innocent Indians there.

     They knew not what had happened
     As they heard the guns;
     Running through the snow in rank confusion,
     Men, women and children alike
     Felt the sting of hot lead
     Invade their bodies,
     And fell hard in the grip of merciless death,
     Painting the snow with 
     Great patches of bright red.

And those not so lucky,
Died by the cutlass and the bayonet.

Those who escaped for a time
Were cut by the ice of a frozen creek,
But those cuts were as nothing
To the cut of losing loved ones.

While the bluecoated Goodboys
Robbed the bodies of their clothes
- And limbs -
The hidden still living waited,
And hated,
      hated,
        hated

The bluecoated wolves were heroes,
So it was said,
But not heroes, only wolves
Would do such in things-
At least wolves do so to survive.

They claimed the Cheyanne were savages,
But it seems they were the best of teachers,
In this respect.

What to do with such beasts as these?
Kill them, surely.
After that, the Cheyanne tried,
And many died, but they tried
All the same.

And in that place,
The bluecoat stench
Shall evermore reek.

Shed a tear,
Shed many,
For the victims
Of Sand Creek.

Copyright © William Masonis | Year Posted 2020

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