The cattle thief

They were coming across the prairie, they were
   galloping hard and fast;
For the eyes of those desperate riders had sighted
   their man at last—
Sighted him off to Eastward, where the Cree
   encampment lay,
Where the cotton woods fringed the river, miles and
   miles away.
Mistake him? Never! Mistake him? the famous
   Eagle Chief!
That terror to all the settlers, that desperate Cattle
   Thief—
That monstrous, fearless Indian, who lorded it over
   the plain,
Who thieved and raided, and scouted, who rode like
   a hurricane!
But they've tracked him across the prairie; they've
   followed him hard and fast;
For those desperate English settlers have sighted
   their man at last.

Up they wheeled to the tepees, all their British
   blood aflame,
Bent on bullets and bloodshed, bent on bringing
   down their game;
But they searched in vain for the Cattle Thief: that
   lion had left his lair,
And they cursed like a troop of demons—for the
   women alone were there.
"The sneaking Indian coward," they hissed; "he
   hides while yet he can;
He'll come in the night for cattle, but he's scared
   to face a man."
"Never!" and up from the cotton woods rang the
   voice of Eagle Chief;
And right out into the open stepped, unarmed, the
   Cattle Thief.
Was that the game they had coveted? Scarce fifty
   years had rolled
Over that fleshless, hungry frame, starved to the
   bone and old;
Over that wrinkled, tawny skin, unfed by the
   warmth of blood.
Over those hungry, hollow eyes that glared for the
   sight of food.

He turned, like a hunted lion: "I know not fear,"
   said he;
And the words outleapt from his shrunken lips in
   the language of the Cree.
"I'll fight you, white-skins, one by one, till I
   kill you all," he said;
But the threat was scarcely uttered, ere a dozen
   balls of lead
Whizzed through the air about him like a shower
   of metal rain,
And the gaunt old Indian Cattle Thief dropped
   dead on the open plain.
And that band of cursing settlers gave one
   triumphant yell,
And rushed like a pack of demons on the body that
   writhed and fell.
"Cut the fiend up into inches, throw his carcass
   on the plain;
Let the wolves eat the cursed Indian, he'd have
   treated us the same."
A dozen hands responded, a dozen knives gleamed
   high,
But the first stroke was arrested by a woman's
   strange, wild cry.
And out into the open, with a courage past
   belief,
She dashed, and spread her blanket o'er the corpse
   of the Cattle Thief;
And the words outleapt from her shrunken lips in
   the language of the Cree,
"If you mean to touch that body, you must cut
   your way through me."
And that band of cursing settlers dropped
   backward one by one,
For they knew that an Indian woman roused, was
   a woman to let alone.
And then she raved in a frenzy that they scarcely
   understood,
Raved of the wrongs she had suffered since her
   earliest babyhood:
"Stand back, stand back, you white-skins, touch
   that dead man to your shame;
You have stolen my father's spirit, but his body I
   only claim.
You have killed him, but you shall not dare to
   touch him now he's dead.
You have cursed, and called him a Cattle Thief,
   though you robbed him first of bread—
Robbed him and robbed my people—look there, at
   that shrunken face,
Starved with a hollow hunger, we owe to you and
   your race.
What have you left to us of land, what have you
   left of game,
What have you brought but evil, and curses since
   you came?
How have you paid us for our game? how paid us
   for our land?
By a book, to save our souls from the sins you
   brought in your other hand.
Go back with your new religion, we never have
   understood
Your robbing an Indian's body, and mocking his
   soul with food.
Go back with your new religion, and find—if find
   you can—
The honest man you have ever made from out a
   starving man.
You say your cattle are not ours, your meat is not
   our meat;
When you pay for the land you live in, we'll pay
   for the meat we eat.
Give back our land and our country, give back our
   herds of game;
Give back the furs and the forests that were ours
   before you came;
Give back the peace and the plenty. Then come
   with your new belief,
And blame, if you dare, the hunger that drove him to
   be a thief."