Читать книгу Prairie Smoke, a Collection of Lore of the Prairies - Gilmore Melvin Randolph - Страница 7

Land and People
INDIANS’ APPRECIATION AND LOVE OF THEIR HOMELAND

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In the rituals of the various tribes may be found numerous expressions of the love and reverence which the people had for Holy Mother Earth in general and for their own homeland in particular. And in their thought of their homeland they did not regard it as a possession which they owned, but they regarded themselves as possessed by their homeland, their country, and that they owed her love and service and reverence. The following song is found in an ancient ritual of the Pawnee nation which is given entire in the Twenty-second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part 2. This song plainly reflects the topography and the scenery of the country of the Pawnee nation, that part of the Great Plains traversed by the Solomon, Republican, Platte, Loup, and Niobrara rivers.

SONG TO THE TREES AND STREAMS

I

Dark against the sky yonder distant line

Lies before us. Trees we see, long the line of trees,

Bending, swaying in the breeze.


II

Bright with flashing light yonder distant line

Runs before us, swiftly runs, swift the river runs,

Winding, flowing o’er the land.


III

Hark! O hark! A sound, yonder distant sound

Comes to greet us, singing comes, soft the river’s song,

Rippling gently ’neath the trees.


In the foregoing song one can hear the constant murmur of the summer south wind as it blows in that country for days, and see the broad stretch of the great level land, gently undulating in places, with its eastward-flowing streams bordered by zones of trees, the timbered zones along the stream courses being the only forest land in that country.

Prairie Smoke, a Collection of Lore of the Prairies

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