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white river poems 387
Be a Ute for all you're worth.
Marry a Ute wife,
Take your people each year into the mountains
For the hunting, summer and fall;
Trading and (no purist) rations in winter;
Fight the Sioux (with Crook --
`Jack's callous ferocity startled
Even Crook's veterans');
Dance the Bear Dance, dance
The war dance and sing
Its one word song the tribe name
tsiuta all night long,
Slow the Whites down with words:
You come see about dis.
Why all dese soldiers want to see too?
Ain' no trouble dere.
You come. I show you Meeker
Ain' beat up. Lot of soldier
Come to Agency, women get scared,
Children get scared,
Young men maybe dey want to fi ght.
Old ones say No fi ght,
But maybe young men don't hear
Old men -- then trouble.
When the troops come on anyway
Slow them down with bullets.
And when more troops come on
Use words once more, gain a month,
Gain half a year.... When the tribe
Is driven out at last
From its country, when the Ute self's broken,
Not to break along with it.