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“There was no such thing as a horse Indian without a buffalo herd.”
—S.C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon.
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S P E N T
spent
buffalo: to alight upon bruise with robe from
in the tapestry of hide, . . . forlorn, —> penitence
pestilence
pestilential shroud parade
depredation sweeps
: the savage ravishes white women without concern
: the white man ravishes habitat
crisscrossery massacre
collisional impulses
rudiments lopsiding tumbling through —> rumble-storm
cavalcades of mis-use congregate
hunker human insufficiency posts —
apostolic seizure sulfuric boilings
steaming miasma to magic
+ The Anglo-American cherished development, change, progress, — promoting “civilization.”
+ The Amer-Indian embraced what is, ad(a)(o)pting to the spirits, the teachings of place.
Cherokee, Chocktaw, Chumash, Chippewa, Chickasaw, Arapaho, Seminole, Pima, Papago, Apache, & Commanche —> sonic wildfire chicory blasts chestnut swagger
ebony song
lip-loll
arrow-sough swift-feathering cloud froth
+ “The Commanches, the most fearsome tribe of the Great Plains, were the ultimate horse warriors. A highly mobile fighting machine without parallel. They ranked with the great & legendary mounted archers of history: the Mongols, Parthians, & Magyars.”
+ No other Indian tribe achieved the Commanche’s level of horsemanship. Horse & rider moved as one. A unanimous wind.
Was the pinto Indian pony awaiting Commanche. In attendance. As a woman awaits her man. Or a word awaits ignition by another word.
Would they, these horses, perceive “the people” (1) as a form of passage, of bounty, . . . boon, protection. Was there, when pinto & Indian approached one another, an electrical symbiosis, . . . a Neural Upcharging?
Designation: that which brings to alight
(The Designated = the Determined)
(portage importation correspondence(s))
skin-coagulative-migration
wanding conjunctions oscillative
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Plains Indian ://: Buffalo.
from Buffalo: food, utensils, tipis, clothing, rope, bedding, glue, cosmetics, fuel, and drink (blood).
“. . . one good buffalo robe was the equal of four woolen blankets in protection against chill.”
to follow the buffalo from follow this sustenance (2)
follow forsook = fallow
flow flood fulgent floor (moccasin skins the floor)
to forsake not follow —> cultures evaporate
curvatures ramp
follow as seizure, as magnetic arrest, a form of suction trellised with utensil
tribe twi(n)ning herd
“Plains tipis were generally superior in comfort to all the sod dugouts, cabins, and shanties that Anglo-Americans erected on this frontier. A tipi was put up in fifteen minutes by the women, and could be taken down and packed on horseback in five.”
the road to embarkation road (3)
the nomadically mobile
: setting up, taking down, setting off
triadic trill
maintenance-wrangling harmonies writhing in spools of undercurrent
trackable through sod
<< which dance TransShapes the Predator >>
<< does prey TranSubstantiate >>
3
uproot
root
rooted
root ://: cling
the cling-to uprooted in the disrupt
the disrupt uproots
is cling
rooting gone desperate?
currency dissatisfied?
to unhook & reestablish
to be unhooked when to hook is no longer possible, —> stamped into
the bed of melancholia
the encompassing encounters the dispossessed
the dispossessed nullity-fumbles
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melancholia flaming in the wake of the lost madrigal
lone
precipice
<< nihility-shudder
absence-dangle
sonority-rust >>
piercing the bladder of the composed
ceaseless salutes
blunt claw
abbreviation bloat
fester-squalls
warting
5
<< where in the quiver–load is
transpicuity >>
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Quanah & his commanches were never defeated in battle.
“The final fate of the southern Plains peoples was to be destroyed, not in battle with white men, but through the white’s destruction of their environment.”
War to the knife.
A few good men could save the city.
carbine-spattering malefic brood donkeys
slurring reptilian slink of the bluecoats lurid in the reek-sweating-belch of the Llano Estacado (4), swooning through limestone, ceder, this “sea of grass,” shunned by the Caprock Escarpment, catalyzed by drought,
puha (5), is ripe here,
& masterful
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entanglings speak
where: —>
limb seeks limb, auditory – vibration, olfactory – receptor, the bearing of part to part, — elegant accumulation, agglomerating consideration, connective careen, where the human interspersesbreedsalong with/into, calibrations made decidedly, . . . building blocks to amass, incidentals to fuse, to stockade a procedure, a Way, . . . .
bearing
bearing on/with bringing
bringing to bear
the bearing brings the procedure
to stock
the tribe
Extensions:
from follow this sustenance
blood beguile tracking
depletives cataract wind
issue signals
suggestion swell
from relinquish this endure
scent-pucker
chassis-wobble
spillage-loam
breath chromatics
the borough accumulates
— anticipation griddling
sustain retain —> leakage
the give-over conditions
the slaughter
the road to embarkation road
step
distance
>
crease
>
go to
move
the creases of placement
place to place
movement
an unwrinkling
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Footnotes:
(1) Commanches referred to themselves as “the Nemene,” “our people.”
(2) This EED applicated in “Extensions” at the end of this piece. For a definition of “EED” (Embedded Explosive Device) see from stone this running p. 209, Black Widow Press.
(3)This EED also applicated in the “Extensions.”
(4) “Coranado’s term (meaning “palisaded plains”) for a country populated exclusively by the most hostile Indians [the Commanches] on the continent, where few U.S. soldiers had ever gone before.”
(5) Puha = magic.
Sources consulted:
Empire of the Summer Moon, S.C. Gwynne
Commanches: The History of a People, T.R. Fehrenbach
War of a Thousand Deserts, Brian DeLay
The Wrath of Cochise, Terry Mort
From Cochise to Geronimo, Edwin R. Sweeney
Note:
The inspiration for “from Buffalo this Indian” derives principally from a study of the Commanche and Apache Indians, and, more specifically, the Penateka, Commanches and the Chiracahua, Apaches.
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