| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
I
SOLDIER SONGS
DAKOTA MILITIA (1862)
N
O "scare-heads" in big city papers, No "puffs" in Department reports, No pictures by "special staff artists" Of assaults on impregnable forts;
We are far from the v/ar-vexed Potomac, Our fights are too small to make news;
We are merely Dakota militia,
Patrolling the frontier for Sioux.
Three hundred-odd "empire builders,"
Gathered in from three hundred-odd claims,
Far scattered across the wide prairies
From Pierre to the mouth of the James.
Perhaps they seemed little or nothing, Our losses, our toil, and our pain,
The rush of the war ponies, tearing
Through cornfields and yellowing grain;
The whoop of the hostile at midnight,
The glare of the flaming log shacks,
A beacon of hate and destruction
As we fled, with the foe at our backs;
Our women and young driven, weeping,
Exhausted, half-naked, afraid, To the refugee huts of Vermillion
Or the sun-smitten Yankton stockade. |
||
|
15 |
||