We are the Ancient People; Our father is the Sun; Our mother, the Earth, where the mountains tower And the rivers seaward run; The stars are the children of the sky, The red men of the plain; And ages over us both had rolled Before you crossed the main;— For we are the Ancient People, Born with the wind and rain. And ours is the ancient wisdom, The lore of Earth and cloud:— We know what the awful lightnings mean, Wí-lo-lo-a-ne with arrows keen, And the thunder crashing loud; And why with his glorious, burning shield His face the Sun-God hides, As, glad from the east, while night recedes, Over the Path of Day he speeds To his home in the ocean tides; For the Deathless One at eve must die, To flame anew in the nether sky,— Must die, to mount when the Morning Star, First of his warrior-host afar, Bold at the dawning rides! And we carry our new-born children forth His earliest beams to face, And pray he will make them strong and brave As he looks from his shining place, Wise in council and firm in war, And fleet as the wind in the chase; And why the Moon, the Mother of Souls, On summer nights serene, Fair from the azure vault of heaven To Earth will fondly lean, While her sister laughs from the tranquil lake, Soft-robed in rippling sheen; For the Moon is the bride of the glowing Sun, But the Goddess of Love is she Who beckons and smiles from the placid depths Of the lake and the shell-strown sea. We know why the down of the Northland drifts O’er wood and waste and hill; And how the light-winged butterflies To the brown fields summer bear, And the balmy breath of the Corn-maids floats In June’s enchanted air; And when to pluck the Medicine flowers On the brow of the mountain peak, The lilies of Té-na-tsa-li, That brighten the faded cheek, And heal the wounds of the warrior And the hunter worn and weak; And where in the hills the crystal stones And the turquoise blue to seek; And how to plant the earliest maize, Sprinkling the sacred meal, And setting our prayer-plumes in the midst As full to the east we kneel,— The plumes whose life shall waft our wish To the heights the skies conceal; Nay, when the stalks are parched on the plain And the deepest springs are dry, And the Water-God, the jewelled toad, Is lost to every eye, With song and dance and voice of flutes That soothe the Regions Seven, We can call the blessed summer showers Down from the listening heaven! For ours is the lore of a dateless past, And we have power thereby,— Power which our vanished fathers sought Through toil and watch and pain, Till the spirits of wood and wave and air To grant us help were fain; For we are the Ancient People, Born with the wind and rain.
From "The Song of the Ancient People"
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