
smallpox scarlet fever cholera
avarice
these came with the earliest arrivals
once ashore
raced ahead
devastated
Susquehannock Munsee
Erie Iroquois
Seneca Oneida
Shawnee Delaware
Lenape Mohawk
**
after the emptying
before the Revolution
my ancestors arrived
in vacant Pennsylvania
land deeded by the colony
no mention of vanished natives
**
Carl Boekmann painted “The Battle of Killdeer Mountain” in 1910, forty-six
years after the slaughter. He painted from descriptions in soldiers’
journals. Under impossible blue skies, blue-coated soldiers advance in a
massive line, firing and firing and firing on a distant village of tipis. There
is little resistance. The tipis are unaware. The journals claimed it was
scouts who shot the women and children. Homage to blood lust for land,
for Montana’s gold fields.
It foreshadows Wounded Knee.
Poem: CHARLES PATTERSON CURRY is a retired consultant, teacher, business owner, and financial officer in the Community of Christ, as well as a poet. His work has appeared inCommunity of Christ Herald, Minnesota Zoo Tracks, engagemn.com, and the Konundrum Engine Literary Review.
Art: GEORGE MORRISON (1919–2000) was an American painter. A member of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, he grew up in northern Minnesota and studied at the Minneapolis School of Art and the Art Students League in New York. A Fulbright scholarship brought him to Paris, where he became part of the Abstract Expressionist movement. He taught at Rhode Island School of Design, then returned to his home state to teach studio arts at the University of Minnesota. In 1983 Morrison retired to Grand Portage, where he created art in his studio known as Red Rock.

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