Under wide Kansas skies he rode, Black Kettle with a calm face, A council pipe, a warrior’s code, a people’s prayer for place. He knew the language of the wind, the river’s patient way, A father’s hush, a mother’s grief he carried every day. Buffalo bones and drumbeat hearts marked seasons as they passed, He taught his children how to hope, to honor songs that last.
There was no hunger in his hands for needless, needless war, Only the weight of promises that had been broken before.
Black Kettle, raise the white flag high against the merciless light, You walked for peace beneath a sky that turned to blood that night. They came with thunder, steel and smoke, and answered trust with flame, But the name you spoke for—home, for hearth—remembers still your name.
They signed the treaties in soft words, he listened, slow and wary, Believed the paper, believed the handshake — hope as fragile as prairie. Mothers braided mourning hair, the children’s laughter thinned, When dawn came like a pistol’s lash and death rode in with sin. Sand Creek remembered every cry — the ledger of the lost — A line of ghosts along the trail, a heavy counting cost.
He stood beside the wagons still, a leader’s silent plea: “Let us be safe, let us be free,” his heart’s humility.
Grief bent him like a winter tree but never broke his line, He walked the winter’s brittle roads, shared bread he could not find. He spoke of children, seasons lost, of songs that must endure, Of elders’ wisdom, steady hands, of futures to secure. And when the bugles woke the dawn at Washita’s shallow stream, The world was glass that shattered slow beneath a soldier’s dream.
Oh, listen to the old man’s breath as twilight pulls the land, He speaks of hollowed cradle songs and footprints in the sand. He taught his people how to heal though wounds ran deep and wide, He taught them how to stand with grief and guard the ones who died. They struck him down beside the creek where willows weep and bow, A flag above, a broken trust — his lesson then, as now:
Black Kettle, lift that white flag high though skies are cruel and torn, You chose the road of difficult peace, you carried quiet scorn. They painted shame across your path with fire and with stone, But love you kept within your chest — a homeland’s rolling bone. Black Kettle, memory breathes in prairie grass and rain, The names of those you held close by will rise and speak again.
Now grandmothers tell the children of a man who would not yield, Who gathered up the winter’s cold and planted dreams in field. They trace his footprints in the dust and speak his gentle law: That courage sometimes wears a flag of white and not of war. The corn will grow where laughter grew; the drum will sound at dawn, And in the hush between the stars his story carries on.
We will not let him vanish like a footprint in the dust, We will call his name in council halls and keep his truth in trust. Black Kettle’s voice rides with the wind Remember those who sought the peace.
Heathen_AJ
