Joaquin Miller's Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The hills were brown, the heavens were blue,
A woodpecker pounded a pine-top shell,
While a partridge whistled the whole day through
For a rabbit to dance in the chaparral,
And a grey grouse drumm'd, “All's well, all's well.”

I

Wrinkled and brown as a bag of leather,
A squaw sits moaning long and low.
Yesterday she was a wife and mother,
Today she is rocking her to and fro,
A childless widow, in weeds and woe.

An Indian sits in a rocky cavern
Chipping a flint in an arrow head;
His children are moving as still as shadows,
His squaw is moulding some balls of lead,
With round face painted a battle-red.

An Indian sits in a black-jack jungle,
Where a grizzly bear has rear'd her young,
Whetting a flint on a granite boulder.
His quiver is over his brown back hung—
His face is streak'd and his bow is strung.

An Indian hangs from a cliff of granite,
Like an eagle's nest built in the air,
Looking away to the east, and watching
The smoke of the cabins curling there,
And eagle's feathers are in his hair.

109

In belt of wampum, in battle fashion
An Indian watches with wild desire.
He is red with paint, he is black with passion;
And grand as a god in his savage ire,
He leans and listens till stars are a-fire.

All somber and sullen and sad, a chieftain
Now looks from the mountain far into the sea.
Just before him beat in the white billows,
Just behind him the toppled tall tree
And woodmen chopping, knee buckled to knee.

II

All together, all in council,
In a cañon wall'd so high
That no thing could ever reach them
Save some stars dropp'd from the sky.
And the brown bats sweeping by:

Tawny chieftains thin and wiry,
Wise as brief, and brief as bold;
Chieftains young and fierce and fiery,
Chieftains stately, stern and old,
Bronzed and battered—battered gold.

Flamed the council-fire brighter,
Flash'd black eyes like diamond beads,
When a woman told her sorrows,
While a warrior told his deeds,
And a widow tore her weeds.

Then was lit the pipe of council
That their fathers smoked of old,

110

With its stem of manzanita,
And its bowl of quartz and gold,
And traditions manifold.

How from lip to lip in silence
Burn'd it round the circle red,
Like an evil star slow passing
(Sign of battles and bloodshed)
Round the heavens overhead.

Then the silence deep was broken
By the thunder rolling far,
As gods muttering in anger,
Or the bloody battle-car
Of some Christian king at war.

“'Tis the spirits of my Fathers
Mutt'ring vengeance in the skies;
And the flashing of the lightning
Is the anger of their eyes,
Bidding us in battle rise,”

Cried the war-chief, now uprising,
Naked all above the waist,
While a belt of shells and silver
Held his tamoos to its place,
And the war-paint streaked his face.

Women molted from the council,
Boys crept backward out of sight,
Till alone a wall of warriors
In their paint and battle-plight
Sat reflecting back the light.

111

“O my Fathers in the storm-cloud!”
(Red arms tossing to the skies,
While the massive walls of granite
Seem'd to shrink to half their size,
And to mutter strange replies)—

“Soon we come, O angry Fathers,
Down the darkness you have cross'd:
Speak for hunting-grounds there for us;
Those you left us we have lost—
Gone like blossoms in a frost.

“Warriors!” (and his arms fell folded
On his tawny swelling breast,
While his voice, now low and plaintive
As the waves in their unrest,
Touching tenderness confess'd).

“Where is Wrotto, wise of counsel,
Yesterday here in his place?
A brave lies dead down in the valley,
Last brave of his line and race,
And a Ghost sits on his face.

“Where his boy the tender-hearted,
With his mother yestermorn?
Lo! a wigwam door is darken'd,
And a mother mourns forlorn,
With her long locks toss'd and torn.

“Lo! our daughters have been gather'd
From among us by the foe,
Like the lilies they once gather'd
In the spring-time all aglow
From the banks of living snow.

112

“Through the land where we for ages
Laid the bravest, dearest dead,
Grinds the savage white man's plowshare
Grinding sires' bones for bread—
We shall give them blood instead.

“I saw white skulls in a furrow,
And around the cursed plowshare
Clung the flesh of my own children,
And my mother's tangled hair
Trailed along the furrow there.

“Warriors! braves! I cry for vengeance!
And the dim ghosts of the dead
Unavenged do wail and shiver
In the storm cloud overhead,
And shoot arrows battle-red.”

Then he ceased and sat among them,
With his long locks backward strown;
They as mute as men of marble,
He a king upon the throne,
And as still as any stone.

Then uprose the war chief's daughter,
Taller than the tassell'd corn,
Sweeter than the kiss of morning,
Sad as some sweet star of morn,
Half defiant, half forlorn.

Robed in skins of stripéd panther
Lifting loosely to the air
With a face a shade of sorrow
And black eyes that said, Beware!
Nestled in a storm or hair;

113

With her stripéd robes around her,
Fasten'd by an eagle's beak,
Stood she by the stately chieftain,
Proud and pure as Shasta's peak,
As she ventured thus to speak:

“Must the tomahawk of battle
Be unburied where it lies,
O, last war chief of Taschastas?
Must the smoke of battle rise
Like a storm cloud in the skies?

“True, some wretch has laid a brother
With his swift feet to the sun,
But because one bough is broken,
Must the broad oak be undone?
All the fir trees fell'd as one?

“True, the braves have faded, wasted
Like ripe blossoms in the rain,
But when we have spent the arrows,
Do we twang the string in vain,
And then snap the bow in twain?”

Like a vessel in the tempest
Shook the warrior, wild and grim,
As he gazed out in the midnight,
As to things that beckon'd him,
And his eyes were moist and dim.

Then he turn'd, and to his bosom
Battle-scarr'd, and strong as brass,
Tenderly the warrior press'd her
As if she were made of glass,
Murmuring, “Alas! alas!

114

“Loua Ellah! Spotted Lily!
Streaks of blood shall be the sign,
On their cursed and mystic pages,
Representing me and mine!
By Tonatiu's fiery shrine!

“When the grass shall grow untrodden
In my war path, and the plow
Shall be grinding through this cañon
Where my braves are gather'd now,
Still shall they record this vow:

“War and vengeance! rise, my warrior,
Rise and shout the battle sign,
Ye who love revenge and glory!
Ye for peace, in silence pine,
And no more be braves of mine.”

Then the war yell roll'd and echoed
As they started from the ground,
Till an eagle from his cedar
Starting, answer'd back the sound,
And flew circling round and round.

“Enough, enough, my kingly father,”
And the glory of her eyes
Flash'd the valor and the passion
That may sleep but never dies,
As she proudly thus replies:

“Can the cedar be a willow,
Pliant and as little worth?
It shall stand the king of forests,

115

Or its fall shall shake the earth,
Desolating heart and hearth!”

III

From cold east shore to warm west sea
The red men followed the red sun,
And faint and failing fast as he,
They knew too well their race was run.
This ancient tribe, press'd to the wave,
There fain had slept a patient slave,
And died out as red embers die
From flames that once leapt hot and high;
But, roused to anger, half arose
Around that chief, a sudden flood,
A hot and hungry cry for blood;
Half drowsy shook a feeble hand,
Then sank back in a tame repose,
And left him to his fate and foes,
A stately wreck upon the strand.

His eyes was like the lightning's wing,
His voice was like a rushing flood;
And when a captive bound he stood
His presence look'd the perfect king.

'Twas held at first that he should die:
I never knew the reason why
A milder council did prevail,
Save that we shrank from blood, and save
That brave men do respect the brave.
Down sea sometimes there was a sail,
And far at sea, they said, an isle,

116

And he was sentenced to exile;
In open boat upon the sea
To go the instant on the main,
And never under penalty
Of death to touch the shore again.
A troop of bearded buckskinn'd men
Bore him hard-hurried to the wave,
Placed him swift in the boat; and then
Swift pushing to the gristling sea,
His daughter rush'd down suddenly,
Threw him his bow, leapt from the shore
Into the boat beside the brave,
And sat her down and seized the oar,
And never question'd, made replies,
Or moved her lips, or raised her eyes.

His breast was like a gate of brass,
His brow was like a gather'd storm;
There is no chisell'd stone that has
So stately and complete a form,
In sinew, arm, and every part,
In all the galleries of art.

Gray, bronzed, and naked to the waist,
He stood half halting in the prow,
With quiver bare and idle bow.
The warm sea fondled with the shore,
And laid his white face to the sands.
His daughter sat with her sad face
Bent on the wave, with her two hands
Held tightly to the dripping oar;
And as she sat, her dimpled knee
Bent lithe as wand or willow tree,
So round and full, so rich and free,

117

That no one would have ever known
That it had either joint or bone.

Her eyes were black, her face was brown,
Her breasts were bare and there fell down
Such wealth of hair, it almost hid
The two, in its rich jetty fold—
Which I had sometime fain forbid,
They were so richer, fuller far
Than any polish'd bronzes are,
And richer hued than any gold.
On her brown arms and her brown hands
Were bars of gold and golden bands,
Rough hammer'd from the virgin ore,
So heavy, they could hold no more.

I wonder now, I wonder'd then,
That men who fear'd not gods nor men
Laid no rude hands at all on her,—
I think she had a dagger slid
Down in her silver'd wampum belt;
It might have been, instead of hilt,
A flashing diamond hurry-hid
That I beheld—I could not know
For certain, we did hasten so;
And I know now less sure than then:
Deeds strangle memories of deeds,
Red blossoms wither, choked with weeds,
And years drown memories of men.
Some things have happened since—and then
This happen'd years and years ago.

“Go, go!” the captain cried, and smote
With sword and boot the swaying boat,
Until it quiver'd as at sea

118

And brought the old chief to his knee.
He turn'd his face, and turning rose
With hand raised fiercely to his foes:
“Yes, I will go, last of my race,
Push'd by you robbers ruthlessly
Into the hollows of the sea,
From this my last, last resting place.
Traditions of my fathers say
A feeble few reach'd for this land,
And we reach'd them a welcome hand
Of old, upon another shore;
Now they are strong, we weak as they,
And they have driven us before
Their faces, from that sea to this:
Then marvel not if we have sped
Sometime an arrow as we fled,
So keener than a serpent's kiss.”

He turn'd a time unto the sun
That lay half hidden in the sea,
As in his hollows rock'd asleep,
All trembled and breathed heavily;
Then arch'd his arm, as you have done,
For sharp masts piercing through the deep.
No shore or kind ship met his eye,
Or isle, or sail, or anything,
Save white sea gulls on dipping wing,
And mobile sea and molten sky.

“Farewell!—push seaward, child!” he cried,
And quick the paddle-strokes replied.
Like lightning from the panther-skin,
That bound his loins round about
He snatch'd a poison'd arrow out,
That like a snake lay hid within,

119

And twang'd his bow. The captain fell
Prone on his face, and such a yell
Of triumph from that savage rose
As man may never hear again.
He stood as standing on the main,
The topmost main, in proud repose,
And shook his clench'd fist at his foes,
And call'd, and cursed them every one.
He heeded not the shouts and shot
That follow'd him, but grand and grim
Stood up against the level sun;
And, standing so, seem'd in his ire
So grander than some ship on fire.

And when the sun had left the sea,
That laves Abrup, and Blanco laves,
And left the land to death and me,
The only thing that I could see
Was, ever as the light boat lay
High lifted on the white-back'd waves,
A head as gray and toss'd as they.

We raised the dead and from his hands
Pick'd out some shells, clutched as he lay
And two by two bore him away,
And wiped his lips of blood and sands.

We bent and scooped a shallow home,
And laid him warm-wet in his blood,
Just as the lifted tide a-flood
Came charging in with mouth a-foam:
And as we turn'd, the sensate thing
Reached up, lick'd out its foamy tongue,
Lick' out its tongue and tasted blood;
The white lips to the red earth clung

120

An instant, and then loosening
All hold just like a living thing,
Drew back sad-voiced and shuddering,
All stained with blood, a stripéd flood.

Tc'hastas; a name given to King John by the French, a corruption of chaste; for he was a pure, just man and a great warrior. He was the king of the Rouge (Red) River Indians of Oregon, and his story is glorious with great deeds in defense of his people. When finally overpowered he and his son Moses were put on a ship at Port Orford and sent to Fort Alcatraz in the Golden Gate. In mid-ocean, these two Indians, in irons, rose up, and, after a bloody fight, took the ship. But one had lost a leg, the other an arm, and so they finally had to let loose the crew and soldiers tumbled into the hold, and surrender themselves again; for the ship was driving helpless in a storm toward the rocks. The king died a prisoner, but his son escaped and never again surrendered. He lives alone near Yreka and is known as “Prince Peg-leg Moses.” A daughter of the late Senator Nesmith sends me a picture, taken in 1896, of the king's devoted daughter, Princess Mary, who followed his fortunes in all his battles. She must be nearly one hundred years old. I remember her as an old woman full forty years ago, tall as a soldier, and most terrible in council. I have tried to picture her and her people as I once saw them in a midnight camp before the breaking out of the war; also their actions and utterances, so like some of the old Israelite councils and prophecies. This was the leading piece in my very first book, “Specimens,” published in Oregon in 1867–8, if I remember rightly.