The Flight of the Plumage

(Ishi was the last of the Yahi, a small tribe of North American Indians. Mining bands had wiped them out. Ishi was found hiding under a bearskin in a cave and was taken in by the curator of a museum, where he learnt to accept the white man's ways. The following piece was inspired by Ishi's story)
I am Grey Eagle Feather, the last of my people, the last of those who know my people's ways. Far off, the Iron Horses belch and gallop along the iron road, across the buffalo lands that we thought would ever be. When I was but a little Grey Eagle Feather, just new from the papoose, I heard a voice that told me that the days of the red man would be painted anew and red would be the colour of our nation, as white pale steel dug deep into the heart of tribes and braves and squaws.
I am Grey Eagle Feather, grey before my days, grey like the twilight of my people; grey and sullen like the bitter bark of the invaders' Winchester. I lie in tepees, forever condemned by progress and hunt for the obsolete among the fallen leaves and watch the squirrels hug the forest nuts as I hug the bearskin against the coming chill.
When first we heard of paler men, many in the tribe disbelieved and said that such things were the imaginings of squaws after a birth and we smoked the pipes of peace as all our ancestors used to do and told the stories of the forest tribes as of old. Now, I am but the teller of lost tales and my audience are the owls that hoot, the silent falling leaves and the river that runs a passing commentary, as it seems to heckle my every word. The high trees are yet tall and the prairies are yet wide and Manitou's Great Mystery still remains in the lofty sky. Yet now, the songs in the birds' nests are ever less in my heart and ears.
In the river, the salmon leap and trout still peep above the water's roof. But still, all things have changed and put upon themselves the sad solemn arrays of winter and the funeral pyre. For the hawks have talons to devour the wise and the doe is naked before the metal of the Winchester's bark. And the miners who dig, dig not within themselves for the true worth of men and squaws, which comes from Manitou - The Great Mystery. My people are no more and the woods are chopped and shrinking while the prairie dogs gaze with suspicion as the Mustangs gallop to a new race. Now the dance of rain is drought and the wedding feast but a ghostly prance of death and the medicine is bitter to the eye and mind. Here I hide from trinkets and baubles, a grey feather of an old eagle. I have no eyrie atop the bough to grasp, no view across the even plain, no soaring flight above the hills. I am perched below the cliff above a precipice of loneliness. I am caught before the pleasant breezes of yesterday and the hurricanes of tomorrows yet to come, whilst all around the beavers' dams are falling before the flood of the oncomers. I can hear the Iron Horses belch far off, like the birds that screech in forest nights. And the roads of iron are too much for my breaking heart to mend as I run before the jaws of iron fate.
I am the last and I am the first, for all that my kind had been is left to lodge in me. I can recall the virgin snow blankets on winter's lands, the prairie dogs and mountain bears and those tepee nights where I would lie upon the trackless dreams of time ' forever smitten, and forever graven like crimson sky upon the wounds of my nation. I am Grey Eagle Feather, the flight of that plumage fallen upon the stone and hard rock, no more to dance with the wind in the mist-laden dawn.
O Manitou! O Great Mystery! Gird me with wings of fire. And I will arise and do my duty, sure as the mountain that watches over the buffalo plains.

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