Poems Kit Carson and Lewis and Clark's Expedition

Kit Carson

Kit Carson was a German Jew
Married a squaw, had children two
When she died he married again
Eight more children by a Mexican.
As a youth he had been a run away
At sixteen or seventeen, some would say.
He didn't want a stable life
He wanted excitement, full of strife.
Kit Carson rode across the land
Killed many an Indian by his hand.
Many an Indian tried to kill him
Those were the times, that was the whim.


Kid Carson lived by trapping fir
Many a man had felt that lure.
When the fir trade became so scarce
The trappers went looking for another place.
Many men knew the trails and ways
Of tribes of Indians and where they lay.
Many a man had squaw for wife
And children too, they had brought to life.
All must live and find a way
The Military was in it's day.
The men had knowledge that it could use
The Indian problem to defuse.


There was the need, a man must provide
Against the tribes they began to ride.
The plan being clear the Indians must die
The plan being clear the Indians would hide.
But men like Carson were cunning and new
They knew how to conquer though being few.
They not only knew where the Indian lived,
They knew exactly where the Indian hid.
They would kill the braves, collect the tribe
To the reservation, dead and alive.
Confined forever from that day on
In that which was known as the Indian Reservation.

©2009 Wendy Gwen Martin

Posted by wm at 1:23 PM 0 comments


LEWIS AND CLARK'S EXPEDITION
(introduction)


In the history of our country

Is a story of exploration

By a people newly emigrant

Ignorant of land and species.

Across the prairies and the Rockies

Along the waterways beside them

Watched by people of great multitude

Old, with ancient understanding

Watched the people newly emigrant.


Out of greed and want and wonder

Began this early expedition

To be known and be recorded

By a president known as Jefferson.

Sent explorers to the mountains

To the valleys and the rivers

To know plants-the vegetation

To know animals prolific.


Natives too were mighty curious

Never seeing white or black man

And desirous of ammunition

To take buffalo the easier

And make their homes more prosperous.


So this gentleman, this Jefferson

Third president of our nation

Roamed himself, child of the woodlands,

Roamed himself, child of plantations.

Child of the Virginia Piedmont.

Lover of nature and of all things natural

Wrote out the declaration

'That all men are created equal.'


So this Thomas sent his secretary

To the wilds of Indian territory.

First to train him in the sciences.

Lewis studied plants and animals

And celestial navigation.

Lewis himself had been a soldier

And chose his friend and army captain,

A staid and steady one, a loyal one.

All through lifetime Clark was for him

Named his first son after Lewis,

Meriwether Lewis Clark the chosen.

Took his friend on expedition

Took his friend on 'The Discovery.'


Listen to these ancient histories

Of the Indians and their nations

On this continent so sacred-

First to know the sacred mountains

First to know the sacred rivers

The first to hunt, the first to gather

To plant the bean, squash, corn and sunflower

To dig the roots and use the herbs here

For their health and for their pleasure

Imagine endless generation

Loving earth and sky and water

Loving animal and kinsman

Before the foreign ships had landed

With the earliest invaders.

Vikings first before the Spanish

Then the Spanish, French and English.

Who were these with rifle ready,

Who were these with canon loaded,

To the people of the ancient

No beginning and no ending?



© 2009 Wendy Gwen Martin


Posted by wm at 12:40 PM
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) Lewis and Clark Epic
I have three objectives to my poem; 1-to show the relationship of the Indian to the land 2-to recount the lewis and clark expedition 3-to delight in the epic form, which I love to read