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| GLOOMY and dark art thou, O chief of the mighty Omahas; | |
| Gloomy and dark as the driving cloud, whose name thou hast taken! | |
| Wrapped in thy scarlet blanket, I see thee stalk through the city’s | |
| Narrow and populous streets, as once by the margin of rivers | |
| Stalked those birds unknown, that have left us only their footprints. | 5 |
| What, in a few short years, will remain of thy race but the footprints? | |
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| How canst thou walk these streets, who hast trod the green turf of the prairies? | |
| How canst thou breathe this air, who hast breathed the sweet air of the mountains? | |
| Ah! ’t is in vain that with lordly looks of disdain thou dost challenge | |
| Looks of disdain in return, and question these walls and these pavements, | 10 |
| Claiming the soil for thy hunting-grounds, while down-trodden millions | |
| Starve in the garrets of Europe, and cry from its caverns that they, too, | |
| Have been created heirs of the earth, and claim its division! | |
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| Back, then, back to thy woods in the regions west of the Wabash! | |
| There as a monarch thou reignest. In autumn the leaves of the maple | 15 |
| Pave the floors of thy palace-halls with gold, and in summer | |
| Pine-trees waft through its chambers the odorous breath of their branches. | |
| There thou art strong and great, a hero, a tamer of horses! | |
| There thou chasest the stately stag on the banks of the Elkhorn, | |
| Or by the roar of the Running-Water, or where the Omaha | 20 |
| Calls thee, and leaps through the wild ravine like a brave of the Blackfeet! | |
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| Hark! what murmurs arise from the heart of those mountainous deserts? | |
| Is it the cry of the Foxes and Crows, or the mighty Behemoth, | |
| Who, unharmed, on his tusks once caught the bolts of the thunder, | |
| And now lurks in his lair to destroy the race of the red man? | 25 |
| Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the Crows and the Foxes, | |
| Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the tread of Behemoth, | |
| Lo! the big thunder-canoe, that steadily breasts the Missouri’s | |
| Merciless current! and yonder, afar on the prairies, the camp-fires | |
| Gleam through the night; and the cloud of dust in the gray of the daybreak | 30 |
| Marks not the buffalo’s track, nor the Mandan’s dexterous horse-race; | |
| It is a caravan, whitening the desert where dwell the Camanches! | |
| Ha! how the breath of these Saxons and Celts, like the blast of the east-wind, | |
| Drifts evermore to the west the scanty smokes of thy wigwams! | |
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