beneath our tamaroa starlight

and the iroquois matched them
campfire for campfire
down the illinois river
on the opposite bank
until they backed on the mississippi
and that was the end

the old men with eyes
like stops for flutes
the children and the unborn
who clung so fiercely to the raw
rim of the world
the women who danced for us
like fireflies in the meadows
on the long good evenings

they went into darkness
the dawn could not rise from
they could not answer 
their names when we called them [1]

kickapoo dance

there was nothing but prairie
north of blooming grove then
all the way to chicago

they danced in twos
kept time with ankle bells
and the band chief
shaking a gourd full of pebbles

they were smeared with black
and they had these white hands
painted on their chests

old john dawson he danced too
doing their flatfooted steps
but when he thought he could sing with them
the band chief stopped him

he didnt know the words see
hell none of us knew
what it was they were singing

Notes

by John Knoepfle in poems from the sangamon

[1] beneath our tamaroa starlight The Tamaroa were members of the Illinois condeferacy, which included the Kaskaskia, Moinwena, Michigamea, Peoria, and the Cahokia. The Tamaroa were virtually destroyed by an Iroquois war party at the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers in 1680. The remnant is thought to have merged with the Cahokia, and so vanished from history as a distinctive people. The Tamaroa were the Sangamon valley hunters and gatherers.

Source

John Knoepfle. Poems from the Sangamon. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Reprinted by permission