The Fall of 1862
My brother's great-grandfather David Price
lifted the quilt and discovered the body
of James Edwards, his neighbor.
Eighteen-year-old Thomas J. Davis shot by Indians
on Harbo Hill - powerful John S. Jones (prairie-Horeb)
scalped, his body by a pitchfork
with bent and reddened tines -
All in the fall of 1862, all within sections
of where I sit -
If descendants of these victims are still bitter,
should they be condemned?
Five hundred whites, older men, women, children,
babies, fetuses, destroyed in ignoble war-
Little Crow could not control his young soldiers.
On the other hand, one thousand starving Dakota,
food locked in warehouses -
Indians forced to reserves, victims of travesty-treaties,
Traverse des Sioux and Mendota -
Relatives of the 38, descendants of women and children
on their trail of tears to Ft. Snelling -
if still bitter, should they be condemned?
Reconciliation? Between whites and Indians?
(As time goes on, it becomes easier.)
Within the Indian soul? - often torn between
troubled past and prospects of lost culture,
lost language, lost identity-
Please consider the context.
We - our European ancestors - drove first nations
brutally - from their homelands forever,
from Columbus' West Indies forays to Wounded Knee.
Some tribes we drove to annihilation.
Let us all atone together.
Walter O. Jones
Coed Marion Farm
Lake Crystal