Anti Slavery, Labor and Reform, Complete

J >> John Greenleaf Whittier >> Anti Slavery, Labor and Reform, Complete

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"Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face,
"Revenge upon all the race
Of the White Chief with yellow hair!"
And the mountains dark and high
From their crags reechoed the cry
Of his anger and despair.

He is now a man of peace; and the agent at Standing Rock, Dakota,
writes, September 28, 1886: "Rain-in-the-Face is very anxious to go to
Hampton. I fear he is too old, but he desires very much to go." The
Southern Workman, the organ of General Armstrong's Industrial School at
Hampton, Va., says in a late number:--

"Rain-in-the-Face has applied before to come to Hampton, but his age
would exclude him from the school as an ordinary student. He has shown
himself very much in earnest about it, and is anxious, all say, to learn
the better ways of life. It is as unusual as it is striking to see a man
of his age, and one who has had such an experience, willing to give up
the old way, and put himself in the position of a boy and a student."

THE years are but half a score,
And the war-whoop sounds no more
With the blast of bugles, where
Straight into a slaughter pen,
With his doomed three hundred men,
Rode the chief with the yellow hair.

O Hampton, down by the sea!
What voice is beseeching thee
For the scholar's lowliest place?
Can this be the voice of him
Who fought on the Big Horn's rim?
Can this be Rain-in-the-Face?

His war-paint is washed away,
His hands have forgotten to slay;
He seeks for himself and his race
The arts of peace and the lore
That give to the skilled hand more
Than the spoils of war and chase.

O chief of the Christ-like school!
Can the zeal of thy heart grow cool
When the victor scarred with fight
Like a child for thy guidance craves,
And the faces of hunters and braves
Are turning to thee for light?

The hatchet lies overgrown
With grass by the Yellowstone,
Wind River and Paw of Bear;
And, in sign that foes are friends,
Each lodge like a peace-pipe sends
Its smoke in the quiet air.

The hands that have done the wrong
To right the wronged are strong,
And the voice of a nation saith
"Enough of the war of swords,
Enough of the lying words
And shame of a broken faith!"

The hills that have watched afar
The valleys ablaze with war
Shall look on the tasselled corn;
And the dust of the grinded grain,
Instead of the blood of the slain,
Shall sprinkle thy banks, Big Horn!

The Ute and the wandering Crow
Shall know as the white men know,
And fare as the white men fare;
The pale and the red shall be brothers,
One's rights shall be as another's,
Home, School, and House of Prayer!

O mountains that climb to snow,
O river winding below,
Through meadows by war once trod,
O wild, waste lands that await
The harvest exceeding great,
Break forth into praise of God!
1887.

NOTES

Note 1, page 18. The reader may, perhaps, call to mind the beautiful
sonnet of William Wordsworth, addressed to Toussaint L'Ouverture, during
his confinement in France.

"Toussaint!--thou most unhappy man of men
Whether the whistling rustic tends his plough
Within thy hearing, or thou liest now
Buried in some deep dungeon's earless den;
O miserable chieftain!--where and when
Wilt thou find patience?--Yet, die not, do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow;
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies,--
There's not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies.
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind."

Note 2, page 67. The Northern author of the Congressional rule against
receiving petitions of the people on the subject of Slavery.

Note 3, page 88. There was at the time when this poem was written an
Association in Liberty County, Georgia, for the religious instruction of
negroes. One of their annual reports contains an address by the Rev.
Josiah Spry Law, in which the following passage occurs: "There is a
growing interest in this community in the religious instruction of
negroes. There is a conviction that religious instruction promotes the
quiet and order of the people, and the pecuniary interest of the
owners."

Note 4, page 117. The book-establishment of the Free-Will Baptists in
Dover was refused the act of incorporation by the New Hampshire
Legislature, for the reason that the newspaper organ of that sect and
its leading preachers favored abolition.

Note 5, page 118. The senatorial editor of the Belknap Gazette all along
manifested a peculiar horror of "niggers" and "nigger parties."

Note 6, page 118. The justice before whom Elder Storrs was brought for
preaching abolition on a writ drawn by Hon. M. N., Jr., of Pittsfield.
The sheriff served the writ while the elder was praying.

Note 7, page 118. The academy at Canaan, N. H., received one or two
colored scholars, and was in consequence dragged off into a swamp by
Democratic teams.

Note 8, page 119. "Papers and memorials touching the subject of slavery
shall be laid on the table without reading, debate, or reference." So
read the gag-law, as it was called, introduced in the House by Mr.
Atherton.

Note 9, page 120. The Female Anti-Slavery Society, at its first meeting
in Concord, was assailed with stones and brickbats.

Note 10, page 168. The election of Charles Sumner to the United States
Senate "followed bard upon" the rendition of the fugitive Sims by the
United States officials and the armed police of Boston.

Note 11, page 290. For the idea of this line, I am indebted to Emerson,
in his inimitable sonnet to the Rhodora,--

"If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being."

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