Down with him! chain him! bind him fast!
Slam to the iron door and turn the key!
The one true Creek, perhaps the last
To dare declare, “You have wronged me!”
Defiant, stoical, silent,
Suffers imprisonment!
Such coarse black hair! such eagle eye!
Such stately mien!—how arrow-straight!
Such will! such courage to defy
The powerful makers of his fate!
A traitor, outlaw,—what you will,
He is the noble red man still.
Condemn him and his kind to shame!
I bow to him, exalt his name!
From The Poems of Alexander Lawrence Posey (Crane & Co., 1910). This poem is in the public domain.